You prob­a­bly haven’t heard about the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL). The group, formed in August of 2020, does­n’t have a huge pub­lic pro­file. State leg­is­la­tors, on the oth­er hand, might be famil­iar with the group. Because when we’re talk­ing about the NACL, we’re basi­cal­ly talk­ing about ALEC for theoc­ra­cy. Yes, it’s a group ded­i­cat­ed to the cre­ation of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism ‘mod­el leg­is­la­tion’, designed to be ped­dle to allied state law­mak­ers across the US. And while the group isn’t explic­it­ly oper­at­ing as an arm of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP), that’s basi­cal­ly what it is as we’re going to see when we look at who’s involved.

The NACL’s founder, Jason Rap­ert, is a for­mer Arkansas state leg­is­la­tor and open Domin­ion­ist. As we should expect by now, Rap­ert’s name shows up on the leaked CNP mem­ber­ship lists.

But Rap­ert isn’t run­ning the NACL on his own. The NACL advi­so­ry board con­sists of a num­ber of lead­ing theo­crat­ic per­son­al­i­ties: Mike Huck­abee, Texas Lt. Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick, Tony Perkins, and Matt Staver. Recall how Perkins served as the CNP’s pres­i­dent in 2018. Also recall that 2016 report about the leaked 2014 CNP mem­ber­ship list that list­ed Staver a CNP board mem­ber, along­side fel­low CNP board mem­bers like the League of the South’s Mike Per­out­ka who is an open advo­cate of the theo­crat­ic impo­si­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment. This is a CNP oper­a­tion. And with NACL leg­isla­tive mem­bers in 31 states, it’s anoth­er CNP oper­a­tion already in a posi­tion covert­ly wield the CNP’s enor­mous influ­ence.

So as we watch the ongo­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist takeover of Texas, which has the enthu­si­as­tic back­ing of Texas Lt. Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Texas isn’t Vegas. What hap­pens in Texas does­n’t stay in Texas. And ensur­ing that hap­pens is what the CNP’s new NACL out­fit is all about:

Rolling Stone

The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Machine Turn­ing Hate Into Law

The Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers is enact­ing its “bib­li­cal world­view,” one state leg­is­la­ture at a time

By Tim Dick­son
Feb­ru­ary 23, 2023

Jason Rap­ert has likened him­self to an Old Tes­ta­ment seer, con­vey­ing hard truths on behalf of an angry God. On his broad­cast Save the Nation, the 50-year-old preach­er and for­mer Arkansas state sen­a­tor calls him­self a “proud” Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist, insist­ing: “I reject that being a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist is some­how unseem­ly or wrong.”

Long a shad­owy force in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is hav­ing a com­ing out par­ty. The move­ment seeks a fusion of fun­da­men­tal­ist the­ol­o­gy with Amer­i­can civic life. “They believe that this coun­try was found­ed for Chris­tians like them, gen­er­al­ly nat­ur­al-born cit­i­zens and white,” says Andrew White­head, author of Tak­ing Amer­i­ca Back for God: Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in the Unit­ed States. White­head empha­sizes that the dan­ger of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism to democ­ra­cy is that the move­ment “sees no room for com­pro­mise — their vision must be the one that comes to pass.”

Thanks to Rap­ert, the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment now com­mands a bur­geon­ing polit­i­cal pow­er­house, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers. A first-of-its-kind orga­ni­za­tion in U.S. his­to­ry, NACL advances “bib­li­cal” leg­is­la­tion in America’s state­hous­es. These bills are not mere stunts or mes­sag­ing. They’re dark, free­dom-lim­it­ing bills that, in some cas­es, have become law.

NACL’s impact has already been felt nation­al­ly. The group played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the legal fight that cul­mi­nat­ed in the Supreme Court over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade. NACL mem­ber Bryan Hugh­es, who serves in the Texas leg­is­la­ture, led pas­sage of S.B. 8, the boun­ty-hunter bill that all-but out­lawed abor­tion in Texas by allow­ing pri­vate cit­i­zens to sue women who ter­mi­nate preg­nan­cies after six weeks, and their doc­tors, in civ­il court.

By the time that bill passed in Texas in Sept. 2021, it had been adopt­ed by NACL as mod­el leg­is­la­tion. The repro­duc­tive-rights group NARAL lat­er tracked copy­cat leg­is­la­tion in more than a dozen states. Rap­ert takes sub­stan­tial cred­it for that spread: “NACL was the first and only para-leg­isla­tive orga­ni­za­tion in the coun­try to adopt the Texas method­ol­o­gy as a mod­el law,” he tells Rolling Stone, “and we pro­mot­ed it to be passed in every state.”

The NACL logo is a crusader’s shield: red embla­zoned with a white cross. Rap­ert says the red rep­re­sents “the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross as a sac­ri­fice for the sal­va­tion of all human­i­ty.” The emblem, he says, is meant to evoke the bib­li­cal “shield of faith” that promis­es to “extin­guish all the flam­ing arrows of the evil one.”

Yet far from the defen­sive pos­ture sug­gest­ed by its shield, NACL is unabashed­ly on the offense. Rap­ert brags that NACL is at “the fore­front of the bat­tles to end abor­tion in the indi­vid­ual states” and also seeks to dri­ve queer Amer­i­cans back into the clos­et. “For far too long,” Rap­ert insists, “we have allowed one polit­i­cal par­ty in our nation to hold up Sodom and Gomor­rah as a goal to be achieved rather than a sin to be shunned.”

Today, NACL has leg­isla­tive mem­bers in 31 states, and touts a dozen “mod­el laws” that its mem­bers can intro­duce “in leg­isla­tive bod­ies around the coun­try.” NACL pre­vi­ous­ly made four of its mod­el laws pub­lic — includ­ing the Texas-style anti-abor­tion bill and a bill to man­date the dis­play of “In God We Trust” in pub­lic build­ings.

...

With a nation­al agen­da and a state-by-state focus, NACL is emu­lat­ing the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil. An infa­mous cor­po­rate front group, ALEC pio­neered the strat­e­gy of push­ing for nation­al polit­i­cal goals by advanc­ing car­bon-copy bills through state leg­is­la­tures. But where ALEC serves far-right bil­lion­aire mas­ters and pol­lut­ing spe­cial inter­ests, NACL sees itself as serv­ing the Lord on high. Rap­ert has tout­ed NACL as “basi­cal­ly ALEC from a bib­li­cal world­view.”

Found­ed in Aug. 2020, NACL is tied to top Chris­t­ian spir­i­tu­al and polit­i­cal lead­ers. The group’s advi­so­ry board includes one­time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mike Huck­abee — the for­mer gov­er­nor of Arkansas and father of the new gov­er­nor Sarah Huck­abee Sanders — Texas Lt. Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick, Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil pres­i­dent Tony Perkins, and Mat Staver, pres­i­dent of Lib­er­ty Coun­sel. (Lib­er­ty Coun­sel is a fre­quent lit­i­gant before the Supreme Court; the head of its min­istry, Rolling Stone exposed, bragged of pray­ing with SCOTUS jus­tices.)

Rap­ert declares that Amer­i­ca was found­ed as a “Judeo-Chris­t­ian nation.” And he believes that from the moment the found­ing fathers “ded­i­cat­ed this nation to God” that “Satan and his forces [have] put a tar­get on the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, try­ing to take us out.”

Rap­ert sees Amer­i­ca embroiled in “a spir­i­tu­al strug­gle that is pre­dict­ed and proph­e­sied in the 66 books of the bible.” He rails against the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a myth, and insists that America’s strug­gles with debt and divi­sion are the result of stray­ing from a God­ly path. To regain heav­en­ly favor, he says, the coun­try must free itself from the “yoke of bondage [to] the LGBTQ movement…and the abor­tion move­ment.”

Typ­i­cal of Rapert’s polit­i­cal views, in Decem­ber, NACL called on Con­gress to reject the Respect for Mar­riage Act, which now requires all states hon­or the mar­riage licens­es of same-sex cou­ples. Rap­ert con­demned the act as “Satan dressed up as a fam­i­ly man” argu­ing the law “demands respect for every kind of mar­riage except the only accept­able one — the sacred union of one man and one woman.”

...

The­o­log­i­cal­ly, Rap­ert is a domin­ion­ist, who believes that Chris­tians are charged by God to remake the world accord­ing to Old Tes­ta­ment man­dates. “God told us to go out there, fill the Earth … sub­due it and have domin­ion over every­thing,” he said on a recent episode of his broad­cast. “The rea­son this coun­try is strug­gling … is because the Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca have failed to take author­i­ty.”

To join NACL, leg­is­la­tors must agree to a “state­ment of faith” that anchors them on the fun­da­men­tal­ist fringe. It calls the bible the “supreme and final author­i­ty” and pro­claims belief in the ”immi­nent return of our Lord and Sav­ior Jesus Christ,” as well as the “bod­i­ly res­ur­rec­tion of the just and the unjust” and the “ever­last­ing con­scious pun­ish­ment” of the lat­ter.

NACL leg­is­la­tors must also agree to a mis­sion state­ment that inveighs against the “spir­i­tu­al decay of our cul­ture (includ­ing church­es).” It blasts the aggres­sion of “athe­ists and anti-Chris­t­ian groups” and it blames these “god­less” enti­ties for “tram­pling on the Chris­t­ian lib­er­ty we have enjoyed in this coun­try for cen­turies.” Despite this decried down­fall, it pro­pos­es that “the fer­vent prayer and action of the Chris­t­ian rem­nant in Amer­i­ca can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.”

As a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, NACL mem­bers must pledge to “uphold the sanc­ti­ty of human life” from the “moment of con­cep­tion” to “nat­ur­al death”; to define mar­riage as the “sacred union exclu­sive­ly between one man and one woman”; and to oppose “unhealthy influ­ences such as alco­hol abuse, drug addic­tion, pornog­ra­phy, pros­ti­tu­tion, vio­lence, gam­bling and crime.” Iron­i­cal­ly, NACLs web­site is “Pow­ered by GoDad­dy,” a web ser­vice firm that sells .sex and .porn domains.

NACL is a nat­ur­al out­growth of Rapert’s own his­to­ry as a mem­ber of the Arkansas state Sen­ate from 2011 until he retired this year, due to term lim­its. Rap­ert has a nose for con­tro­ver­sy — and intol­er­ance. At the begin­ning of his career, he was caught on tape rant­i­ng that then-Pres­i­dent Oba­ma “didn’t rep­re­sent the coun­try that I grew up with” and vow­ing to his con­stituents: “We’re not going to let minori­ties run roughshod over what you peo­ple believe in.” (Today, Rap­ert insists that NACL stands “pub­licly against racism and anti­semitism.”)

In 2013, Rap­ert spear­head­ed pas­sage of what was then the nation’s first “heart­beat” anti-abor­tion leg­is­la­tion, pro­hibit­ing the pro­ce­dure after fetal car­diac activ­i­ty is detectable. (That law was ruled uncon­sti­tu­tion­al). In 2015, Rap­ert suc­cess­ful­ly got a rev­o­lu­tion­ary war ban­ner, fea­tur­ing a pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heav­en,” raised over the state Capi­tol in Lit­tle Rock. The flag-rais­ing was nom­i­nal­ly an homage to George Wash­ing­ton. But the Appeal To Heav­en banner’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary and God­ly sen­ti­ment have been adopt­ed by Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists who believe a Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca is fat­ed to remake the world, bib­li­cal­ly, in advance of Jesus’ Sec­ond Com­ing.

Tak­ing a page out of Roy Moore’s hand­book, in 2017 Rap­ert passed a bill to install a 10 Com­mand­ments mon­u­ment at the state Capi­tol in Lit­tle Rock. (The mon­u­ment was almost imme­di­ate­ly destroyed by a van­dal dri­ving a Dodge Dart, but lat­er rebuilt.) Last year, Rap­ert set­tled a relat­ed legal case, after being sued for block­ing athe­ist con­stituents on his offi­cial social media accounts.

The June 2022 Supreme Court deci­sion Dobbs legal­ized direct lim­its on repro­duc­tive free­dom. That deci­sion, in turn, acti­vat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly-passed, state-lev­el leg­is­la­tion known as “trig­ger laws.” These bills spec­i­fied that if Roe were to fall, abor­tions would imme­di­ate­ly be banned. The lead spon­sor of the trig­ger law in Arkansas was one Jason Rap­ert, and he brags: “Now the Lit­tle Rock sur­gi­cal abor­tion clin­ic has com­plete­ly shut down.”

Rap­ert found­ed NACL because, he believes “ungod­ly lead­ers have led to ungod­ly results.” He calls his orga­ni­za­tion “the strongest force for good this nation has seen since the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion.” Even the group’s acronym is bib­li­cal: NaCl is the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion for salt. It is meant as an allu­sion to the bib­li­cal instruc­tion that Chris­tians should act as the “salt and the light” to pre­serve and puri­fy holi­ness on Earth. To Rolling Stone, Rap­ert insists: “I am sim­ply a child of God who under­stands that Psalm 33:12 says, ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.’”

In a sign that NACL is not just tar­get­ing state leg­is­la­tures, but also gov­er­nors’ man­sions, a top mem­ber of the group’s gov­ern­ing board, Hunter Lundy, recent­ly launched his bid to become the gov­er­nor of Louisiana, promis­ing to be a fight­er for “Faith, Fam­i­ly and Free­dom.”. (Lundy, in a legit­i­mate excuse for a man from South­ern Louisiana, was unavail­able to be inter­viewed due to Mar­di Gras.)

Apart from his lead­er­ship of NACL, Rap­ert has recent­ly made waves seek­ing friends in high places — and even on the high court. Dur­ing a recent trip to Tal­la­has­see, Rap­ert vis­it­ed with Flori­da state leg­is­la­tors and left a a hand-writ­ten note on the desk of Ron DeSan­tis, telling the GOP gov­er­nor, “We’re proud of your stand for God and Coun­try.” (Rap­ert lat­er praised DeSan­tis as “one of the best gov­er­nors in Amer­i­ca,” call­ing him a “Proven leader” with a “Back­bone of steel.”)

While in Flori­da, Rap­ert also bragged about meet­ing Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice John Roberts. Rap­ert said he approached the jus­tice “after a din­ner meet­ing,” say­ing he “shook his hand” and told the con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tice “we have been pray­ing for them” before telling Roberts about the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian law­mak­ers and hand­ing the jus­tice “our NACL card.” (A spokesper­son for Roberts has described the encounter as a pass­ing greet­ing of a stranger.)

Rap­ert is a para­dox­i­cal fig­ure, a man who wraps him­self in lan­guage of Chris­t­ian love while preach­ing a doc­trine that sounds a lot like hate. Rap­ert calls gay mar­riage a “stench in the nos­trils of God.” He sees the grow­ing rights of trans Amer­i­cans, whom he calls the “trans­gen­ders,” as a mor­tal threat: “Now is the time to fight to save the coun­try,” he’s said. “Do you think that Amer­i­ca is going to be free with a bunch of drag queens run­ning this place?”

...

————-

“The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Machine Turn­ing Hate Into Law” By Tim Dick­son; Rolling Stone; 02/23/2023

“Thanks to Rap­ert, the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment now com­mands a bur­geon­ing polit­i­cal pow­er­house, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers. A first-of-its-kind orga­ni­za­tion in U.S. his­to­ry, NACL advances “bib­li­cal” leg­is­la­tion in America’s state­hous­es. These bills are not mere stunts or mes­sag­ing. They’re dark, free­dom-lim­it­ing bills that, in some cas­es, have become law.”

Yes, thanks to Jason Rap­ert, the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism move­ment has a pow­er­ful new tool in the form of Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL). But Rap­ert prob­a­bly should­n’t take all the cred­it. Found­ed in August 2020, the NACL’s advi­so­ry board includes a num­ber of lead­ing theocrats: Mike Huck­abee, Texas Lt. Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick, Tony Perkins, and Matt Staver. Rap­ert, Staver, and Perkins are CNP mem­bers, with Perkins serv­ing as CNP pres­i­dent in 2018. Again, recall that 2016 report about the leaked 2014 CNP mem­ber­ship list that list­ed Staver a CNP board mem­ber, along­side fel­low CNP board mem­bers like the League of the South’s Mike Per­out­ka who is an open advo­cate of the theo­crat­ic impo­si­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment. So while Jason Rap­ert may have found­ed the NACL, this is clear­ly a CNP-backed ini­tia­tive:

...
Found­ed in Aug. 2020, NACL is tied to top Chris­t­ian spir­i­tu­al and polit­i­cal lead­ers. The group’s advi­so­ry board includes one­time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mike Huck­abee — the for­mer gov­er­nor of Arkansas and father of the new gov­er­nor Sarah Huck­abee Sanders — Texas Lt. Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick, Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil pres­i­dent Tony Perkins, and Mat Staver, pres­i­dent of Lib­er­ty Coun­sel. (Lib­er­ty Coun­sel is a fre­quent lit­i­gant before the Supreme Court; the head of its min­istry, Rolling Stone exposed, bragged of pray­ing with SCOTUS jus­tices.)

...

The­o­log­i­cal­ly, Rap­ert is a domin­ion­ist, who believes that Chris­tians are charged by God to remake the world accord­ing to Old Tes­ta­ment man­dates. “God told us to go out there, fill the Earth … sub­due it and have domin­ion over every­thing,” he said on a recent episode of his broad­cast. “The rea­son this coun­try is strug­gling … is because the Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca have failed to take author­i­ty.”

To join NACL, leg­is­la­tors must agree to a “state­ment of faith” that anchors them on the fun­da­men­tal­ist fringe. It calls the bible the “supreme and final author­i­ty” and pro­claims belief in the ”immi­nent return of our Lord and Sav­ior Jesus Christ,” as well as the “bod­i­ly res­ur­rec­tion of the just and the unjust” and the “ever­last­ing con­scious pun­ish­ment” of the lat­ter.

...

Rap­ert found­ed NACL because, he believes “ungod­ly lead­ers have led to ungod­ly results.” He calls his orga­ni­za­tion “the strongest force for good this nation has seen since the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion.” Even the group’s acronym is bib­li­cal: NaCl is the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion for salt. It is meant as an allu­sion to the bib­li­cal instruc­tion that Chris­tians should act as the “salt and the light” to pre­serve and puri­fy holi­ness on Earth. To Rolling Stone, Rap­ert insists: “I am sim­ply a child of God who under­stands that Psalm 33:12 says, ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.’”
...

And as we can see from the var­i­ous ‘suc­cess­es’ tout­ed by Rap­ert and the NACL, the “mod­el leg­is­la­tion” approach — ALEC for theoc­ra­cy — is part of what makes the ongo­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist cap­ture of indi­vid­ual states like Texas so pow­er­ful. Texas pass­es an unprece­dent­ed theo­crat­ic law, and NACL mem­bers in states around the US sud­den­ly put for­ward their own copy­cat leg­is­la­tion:

...
NACL’s impact has already been felt nation­al­ly. The group played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the legal fight that cul­mi­nat­ed in the Supreme Court over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade. NACL mem­ber Bryan Hugh­es, who serves in the Texas leg­is­la­ture, led pas­sage of S.B. 8, the boun­ty-hunter bill that all-but out­lawed abor­tion in Texas by allow­ing pri­vate cit­i­zens to sue women who ter­mi­nate preg­nan­cies after six weeks, and their doc­tors, in civ­il court.

By the time that bill passed in Texas in Sept. 2021, it had been adopt­ed by NACL as mod­el leg­is­la­tion. The repro­duc­tive-rights group NARAL lat­er tracked copy­cat leg­is­la­tion in more than a dozen states. Rap­ert takes sub­stan­tial cred­it for that spread: “NACL was the first and only para-leg­isla­tive orga­ni­za­tion in the coun­try to adopt the Texas method­ol­o­gy as a mod­el law,” he tells Rolling Stone, “and we pro­mot­ed it to be passed in every state.”

...

Today, NACL has leg­isla­tive mem­bers in 31 states, and touts a dozen “mod­el laws” that its mem­bers can intro­duce “in leg­isla­tive bod­ies around the coun­try.” NACL pre­vi­ous­ly made four of its mod­el laws pub­lic — includ­ing the Texas-style anti-abor­tion bill and a bill to man­date the dis­play of “In God We Trust” in pub­lic build­ings.

...

With a nation­al agen­da and a state-by-state focus, NACL is emu­lat­ing the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil. An infa­mous cor­po­rate front group, ALEC pio­neered the strat­e­gy of push­ing for nation­al polit­i­cal goals by advanc­ing car­bon-copy bills through state leg­is­la­tures. But where ALEC serves far-right bil­lion­aire mas­ters and pol­lut­ing spe­cial inter­ests, NACL sees itself as serv­ing the Lord on high. Rap­ert has tout­ed NACL as “basi­cal­ly ALEC from a bib­li­cal world­view.”

...

Final­ly, note the praise deliv­ered to Ron DeSan­tis. It’s long been clear that Ron DeSan­tis is one of the CNP’s favorite can­di­dates. And it’s no sur­prise why. DeSan­tis’s brand of pol­i­tics — like his ide­o­log­i­cal purge of New Col­lege — is basi­cal­ly a pre­view for what full blown Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is going to look like:

...
Apart from his lead­er­ship of NACL, Rap­ert has recent­ly made waves seek­ing friends in high places — and even on the high court. Dur­ing a recent trip to Tal­la­has­see, Rap­ert vis­it­ed with Flori­da state leg­is­la­tors and left a a hand-writ­ten note on the desk of Ron DeSan­tis, telling the GOP gov­er­nor, “We’re proud of your stand for God and Coun­try.” (Rap­ert lat­er praised DeSan­tis as “one of the best gov­er­nors in Amer­i­ca,” call­ing him a “Proven leader” with a “Back­bone of steel.”)

While in Flori­da, Rap­ert also bragged about meet­ing Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice John Roberts. Rap­ert said he approached the jus­tice “after a din­ner meet­ing,” say­ing he “shook his hand” and told the con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tice “we have been pray­ing for them” before telling Roberts about the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian law­mak­ers and hand­ing the jus­tice “our NACL card.” (A spokesper­son for Roberts has described the encounter as a pass­ing greet­ing of a stranger.)
...

Yes, Ron DeSan­tis — long seen as the can­di­date of choice for the GOP mega-donors — is the theocrats’ can­di­date of choice too. Which is more or less what we should expect by now. DeSan­tis has basi­cal­ly tai­lored his polit­i­cal brand to cham­pi­on the CNP’s cul­ture wars. Cul­ture wars that are no longer being fought to sim­ply win elec­tions, but instead to end them once and for all. It’s soci­etal cap­ture for God’s glo­ry. Or, well, some­one’s glo­ry.

It’s a bad look. But a nec­es­sary one if the insti­tu­tion is to sur­vive. Hence the bad act and non­sense excus­es. That’s a brief sum­ma­ry of the awful update to the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion’s (SBC) sex­u­al abuse cri­sis we got this week, stem­ming from a case before the Ken­tucky Supreme Court that, on the sur­face, has noth­ing to do with the SBC. Instead, the case is cen­tered around a woman who is suing the Louisville Police Depart­ment, argu­ing that they knew about the abus­es her father — a police offi­cer con­vict­ed of abus­ing her as a child in 2020 — was inflict­ing on her for years, and had a duty to report it.

So how did the SBC get involved in this case? An ami­cus brief filed back in April, but first pub­licly revealed in Octo­ber, oppos­ing expan­sion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for law­suits against third par­ties, includ­ing reli­gious insti­tu­tions. The brief that the SBC denom­i­na­tion has a “strong inter­est in the statute-of-lim­i­ta­tions issue” in the case, and argues that a 2021 state law allow­ing abuse vic­tims to sue third-par­ty “non-per­pe­tra­tors” was not intend­ed to be applied retroac­tive­ly.

It was a legal argu­ment eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the US gov­ern­men­t’s legal argu­ments in the Mohawk Moth­ers law­suit over the sys­temic abus­es of indige­nous chil­dren as part of the Cana­di­an wing of the MKUl­tra pro­gram. But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle excerpt describes, it’s a legal argu­ment that also direct­ly under­cuts the years-long efforts by reform­ers inside the SBC and its rough­ly 47,000 local church­es who are try­ing to put a stop to these abus­es. And it more or less con­firms the worst sus­pi­cions of the vic­tims. Sus­pi­cions that at the SBC lead­er­ship is intent on thwart­ing their work and keep­ing the abuse going.

So what’s the SBC’s expla­na­tion for this brief? Here’s where it gets extra sleazy. The expla­na­tion is basi­cal­ly, ‘oops, we did­n’t mean to do this’, or some­thing along those lines. That’s basi­cal­ly was SBC Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber com­mu­ni­cat­ed when he issued a state­ment tak­ing “full respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the SBC join­ing the brief. As he put it, the SBC legal team approached him ask­ing for approval and he gave that approval with­out giv­ing it the atten­tion he should have. And yet, in the same state­ment, Bar­ber kind of jus­ti­fies the brief by adding “I am not sure exact­ly what I think about statutes of lim­i­ta­tion. I think they are a mixed bag...I am uncom­fort­able with the harm statutes of lim­i­ta­tions can do, but I also think that they play a valid role in the law some­times.” So kind of ‘oops, but it was basi­cal­ly the right thing to do’ expla­na­tion.

Also note that one of par­ties sign­ing onto the brief is the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. Recall how for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son was forced to resign from his posi­tion as the Pres­i­dent of the South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in May of 2018 after he after he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down,” accord­ing to a state­ment from sem­i­nary trustees. Pat­ter­son and his wife are both mem­bers of the CNP.

We also get some com­ments from Jonathan White­head, described as a lawyer who often rep­re­sents reli­gious insti­tu­tions in court. White­head sug­gest­ed that, while try­ing to stop abus­es is a noble cause, it may be too much to expect the SBC denom­i­na­tion to assist vic­tims in their ques­tion for jus­tice while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tect­ing its own exis­tence. It turns out White­head­’s name also shows up on the CNP’s leaked mem­ber­ship lists. Sur­prise!

So that’s the bomb­shell the SBC com­mu­ni­ty has been grap­pling with in recent weeks. A kind of con­fir­ma­tion of the worst sus­pi­cions. As as Rus­sell Moore, the for­mer head of the SBC’s Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, put it, “I’ve nev­er seen such unmit­i­gat­ed and jus­ti­fied anger among South­ern Bap­tists”:

The New York Times

Why South­ern Bap­tists are Furi­ous Over a Sex Abuse Case in Ken­tucky

A brief filed in a Ken­tucky case has infu­ri­at­ed mem­bers of the denom­i­na­tion across the coun­try, just as it grap­ples with an abuse scan­dal.

By Ruth Gra­ham
Ruth Gra­ham writes about faith and val­ues, and has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.
Nov. 7, 2023

For six months, almost no one took notice of the brief filed qui­et­ly by South­ern Bap­tists in a case wind­ing its way to the Ken­tucky Supreme Court.

At the cen­ter of the case is a woman whose father, a police offi­cer, was con­vict­ed in 2020 of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing her over a peri­od of years when she was a child. The woman lat­er sued sev­er­al par­ties, includ­ing the Louisville Police Depart­ment, say­ing they knew about the abuse and had a duty to report it. Now, the state’s high­est court is con­sid­er­ing whether sex abuse vic­tims can have more time to sue “non-per­pe­tra­tors” — insti­tu­tions or their lead­ers that are oblig­at­ed to pro­tect chil­dren from such abuse.

None of it appeared to have any­thing to do with the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, the nation’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion. But in April, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the denom­i­na­tion filed an ami­cus brief oppos­ing expan­sion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for law­suits against third par­ties, includ­ing reli­gious insti­tu­tions.

The brief, report­ed by The Louisville Couri­er-Jour­nal in Octo­ber, land­ed like a bomb­shell in South­ern Bap­tist cir­cles. The orga­ni­za­tion has spent the last sev­er­al years grap­pling with rev­e­la­tions that its nation­al lead­ers sup­pressed reports of abuse and resist­ed reform for decades. The brief, abuse sur­vivors and those crit­i­cal of the church say, offers the first clear look at the church’s true posi­tion on whether its lead­ers can be held account­able for abuse.

It has led to a flur­ry of blis­ter­ing reac­tions and efforts by S.B.C. lead­ers to dis­tance them­selves from the brief, which they char­ac­ter­ize as a deci­sion dri­ven by lawyers. The brief says that the denom­i­na­tion has a “strong inter­est in the statute-of-lim­i­ta­tions issue” in the case, and argues that a 2021 state law allow­ing abuse vic­tims to sue third-par­ty “non-per­pe­tra­tors” was not intend­ed to be applied retroac­tive­ly.

“I’ve nev­er seen such unmit­i­gat­ed and jus­ti­fied anger among South­ern Bap­tists,” said Rus­sell Moore, the for­mer head of the denomination’s Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, who is now the edi­tor in chief of Chris­tian­i­ty Today.

The brief has dis­rupt­ed con­tin­u­ing reform efforts in the denom­i­na­tion, which have gained momen­tum since an inves­ti­ga­tion by The Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and The San Anto­nio Express-News in 2019 revealed that hun­dreds of South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers had plead­ed guilty or had been con­vict­ed of sex crimes in recent decades.

Since then, the denom­i­na­tion has passed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing abuse both a sin and a crime, com­mis­sioned and pub­lished a third-par­ty inves­ti­ga­tion into its han­dling of abuse and pledged to cre­ate a search­able data­base of peo­ple who have been cred­i­bly accused of abuse in South­ern Bap­tist set­tings.

The denomination’s pres­i­dent, Bart Bar­ber, who has sup­port­ed abuse reforms, said in a state­ment that he takes “full respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the denom­i­na­tion join­ing the brief. He said he was asked for approval by the S.B.C.’s legal team and regrets not giv­ing it the atten­tion he should have. “I know that my cred­i­bil­i­ty with you is harmed by this, per­haps irrepara­bly,” he wrote in an open state­ment to South­ern Bap­tists.

Yet, in that same state­ment, he said he is unde­cid­ed on the mat­ter. “I am not sure exact­ly what I think about statutes of lim­i­ta­tion. I think they are a mixed bag,” he wrote. “I am uncom­fort­able with the harm statutes of lim­i­ta­tions can do, but I also think that they play a valid role in the law some­times.”

States includ­ing Cal­i­for­nia and New York have expand­ed the statutes of lim­i­ta­tions for fil­ing civ­il suits in abuse cas­es. About a dozen Catholic dio­ce­ses in the Unit­ed States are cur­rent­ly in bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings.

Vic­tims and their advo­cates say that the brief under­cuts the inten­tions of the thou­sands of local pas­tors and oth­er del­e­gates at the denomination’s annu­al meet­ing who have con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed reform efforts.

In the last sev­er­al years of votes on the meet­ing floor, “abuse reform is unde­feat­ed,” said Mike Keah­bone, a pas­tor in Okla­homa who is on the denomination’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee and its Abuse Reform Imple­men­ta­tion Task Force, estab­lished last year.

Mr. Keah­bone said that mem­bers of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, the denomination’s top lead­er­ship body, were not informed about its lawyers’ inten­tions to join the brief.

Jules Wood­son, who has said her youth pas­tor sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her at a Texas church in the 1990s, said she and oth­er abuse sur­vivors felt the denom­i­na­tion seemed to be act­ing behind closed doors to oppose what it cham­pi­oned in pub­lic.

“This is exact­ly what us sur­vivors have been say­ing all along,” Ms. Wood­son said, describ­ing the denom­i­na­tion as an insti­tu­tion that, when push comes to shove, oper­ates as cold­ly as a busi­ness.

...

The par­ties sign­ing onto the brief include Life­way Chris­t­ian Resources, the denomination’s pub­lish­ing arm, and the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. Both are defen­dants in a suit filed in Ken­tucky by a woman who says that her father, a Bap­tist pas­tor, abused her for years and that employ­ees of var­i­ous insti­tu­tions failed to pro­tect her.

Al Mohler Jr., the seminary’s pres­i­dent, said in a state­ment that in “ques­tions of law” the sem­i­nary must defer to legal coun­sel. A Life­way spokes­woman did not respond to a request for com­ment.

Jonathan White­head, a lawyer who often rep­re­sents reli­gious insti­tu­tions in court, said that while the goal of rec­ti­fy­ing abuse is a noble one, it may be too much to expect the denom­i­na­tion to pro­vide pas­toral sup­port to vic­tims, to accept legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for past abus­es and to pro­tect its own exis­tence.

“It’s awful­ly hard to be the par­ty of care and the par­ty of respon­si­bil­i­ty at the same time.”

...

“We’re absolute­ly alien­at­ing women, and we’re alien­at­ing gen­er­a­tions like mil­len­ni­als,” said Kei­th Myer, a pas­tor in Mary­land who orga­nized a fund-rais­er to help abuse vic­tims attend the annu­al meet­ing this sum­mer. “It can’t just be about pre­serv­ing our insti­tu­tions. You have to think about pre­serv­ing the mem­ber­ship and pre­serv­ing what we stand for.”

———-

“Why South­ern Bap­tists are Furi­ous Over a Sex Abuse Case in Ken­tucky” By Ruth Gra­ham; The New York Times; 11/0/2023

“At the cen­ter of the case is a woman whose father, a police offi­cer, was con­vict­ed in 2020 of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing her over a peri­od of years when she was a child. The woman lat­er sued sev­er­al par­ties, includ­ing the Louisville Police Depart­ment, say­ing they knew about the abuse and had a duty to report it. Now, the state’s high­est court is con­sid­er­ing whether sex abuse vic­tims can have more time to sue “non-per­pe­tra­tors” — insti­tu­tions or their lead­ers that are oblig­at­ed to pro­tect chil­dren from such abuse.”

Should the insti­tu­tions that pro­tect sex­u­al preda­tors also be brought to jus­tice? That’s the ques­tion that was before Ken­tuck­y’s Supreme Court in a case that did­n’t seem to have any­thing to do with the SBC. And then an ami­cus brief was sub­mit­ted argu­ing against the expan­sion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for law­suits against third par­ties, includ­ing reli­gious insti­tu­tions. Sub­mit­ted by the SBC’s lawyers. All of a sud­den, this case was about the SBC and the sex­u­al abuse mega-scan­dal it’s still grap­pling with. In the worst pos­si­ble way:

...
None of it appeared to have any­thing to do with the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, the nation’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion. But in April, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the denom­i­na­tion filed an ami­cus brief oppos­ing expan­sion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for law­suits against third par­ties, includ­ing reli­gious insti­tu­tions.

The brief, report­ed by The Louisville Couri­er-Jour­nal in Octo­ber, land­ed like a bomb­shell in South­ern Bap­tist cir­cles. The orga­ni­za­tion has spent the last sev­er­al years grap­pling with rev­e­la­tions that its nation­al lead­ers sup­pressed reports of abuse and resist­ed reform for decades. The brief, abuse sur­vivors and those crit­i­cal of the church say, offers the first clear look at the church’s true posi­tion on whether its lead­ers can be held account­able for abuse.
...

And note the dis­turb­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties between this case and the ongo­ing law­suits in Cana­da being waged by the Mohawk Moth­ers over the decades of sys­temic abus­es of indige­nous chil­dren as part of the Cana­di­an branch of the MKUl­tra pro­gram. In that case, argu­ments about the retroac­tive applic­a­bil­i­ty of a Cana­di­an law passed in 1982 that allows for the suing of for­eign gov­ern­ments were made by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment to make the case that the 1982 law did­n’t retroac­tive­ly apply to crimes com­mit­ted before 1982. And in this case, we have the SBC lawyers argu­ing that the 2021 Ken­tucky state law allow­ing for “third-par­ties” to be sued also can­not be applied retroac­tive­ly:

...
It has led to a flur­ry of blis­ter­ing reac­tions and efforts by S.B.C. lead­ers to dis­tance them­selves from the brief, which they char­ac­ter­ize as a deci­sion dri­ven by lawyers. The brief says that the denom­i­na­tion has a “strong inter­est in the statute-of-lim­i­ta­tions issue” in the case, and argues that a 2021 state law allow­ing abuse vic­tims to sue third-par­ty “non-per­pe­tra­tors” was not intend­ed to be applied retroac­tive­ly.

“I’ve nev­er seen such unmit­i­gat­ed and jus­ti­fied anger among South­ern Bap­tists,” said Rus­sell Moore, the for­mer head of the denomination’s Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, who is now the edi­tor in chief of Chris­tian­i­ty Today.

...

Jules Wood­son, who has said her youth pas­tor sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her at a Texas church in the 1990s, said she and oth­er abuse sur­vivors felt the denom­i­na­tion seemed to be act­ing behind closed doors to oppose what it cham­pi­oned in pub­lic.

“This is exact­ly what us sur­vivors have been say­ing all along,” Ms. Wood­son said, describ­ing the denom­i­na­tion as an insti­tu­tion that, when push comes to shove, oper­ates as cold­ly as a busi­ness.
...

And notice how this ami­cus brief was filed in such a way that even the SBC exec­u­tive com­mit­tee is claim­ing igno­rance. Instead, we have SBC pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber issu­ing some excuse about how he gave his con­sent to the lawyers’ plan with­out real­iz­ing what it was all about. But then he goes on to more or less agree that the stat­ue of lim­i­ta­tions prob­a­bly should­n’t be expand­ed. It’s not exact­ly a com­pelling expla­na­tion but prob­a­bly as good a cov­er sto­ry as they could come up with giv­en the cir­cum­stances:

...
The brief has dis­rupt­ed con­tin­u­ing reform efforts in the denom­i­na­tion, which have gained momen­tum since an inves­ti­ga­tion by The Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and The San Anto­nio Express-News in 2019 revealed that hun­dreds of South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers had plead­ed guilty or had been con­vict­ed of sex crimes in recent decades.

Since then, the denom­i­na­tion has passed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing abuse both a sin and a crime, com­mis­sioned and pub­lished a third-par­ty inves­ti­ga­tion into its han­dling of abuse and pledged to cre­ate a search­able data­base of peo­ple who have been cred­i­bly accused of abuse in South­ern Bap­tist set­tings.

The denomination’s pres­i­dent, Bart Bar­ber, who has sup­port­ed abuse reforms, said in a state­ment that he takes “full respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the denom­i­na­tion join­ing the brief. He said he was asked for approval by the S.B.C.’s legal team and regrets not giv­ing it the atten­tion he should have. “I know that my cred­i­bil­i­ty with you is harmed by this, per­haps irrepara­bly,” he wrote in an open state­ment to South­ern Bap­tists.

Yet, in that same state­ment, he said he is unde­cid­ed on the mat­ter. “I am not sure exact­ly what I think about statutes of lim­i­ta­tion. I think they are a mixed bag,” he wrote. “I am uncom­fort­able with the harm statutes of lim­i­ta­tions can do, but I also think that they play a valid role in the law some­times.”

...

In the last sev­er­al years of votes on the meet­ing floor, “abuse reform is unde­feat­ed,” said Mike Keah­bone, a pas­tor in Okla­homa who is on the denomination’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee and its Abuse Reform Imple­men­ta­tion Task Force, estab­lished last year.

Mr. Keah­bone said that mem­bers of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, the denomination’s top lead­er­ship body, were not informed about its lawyers’ inten­tions to join the brief.
...

And then there’s the out­rage from the local con­gre­ga­tion lead­ers who have con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed anti-abuse reforms. Recall how ‘local church auton­o­my’ has long been the excuse SBC lead­ers used for explain­ing why the lead­er­ship was pow­er­less to do any­thing about the abuse. And here, we have the SBC lead­er­ship effec­tive­ly wag­ing a legal bat­tle that runs counter to the wish­es of many of those local lead­ers:

...
States includ­ing Cal­i­for­nia and New York have expand­ed the statutes of lim­i­ta­tions for fil­ing civ­il suits in abuse cas­es. About a dozen Catholic dio­ce­ses in the Unit­ed States are cur­rent­ly in bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings.

Vic­tims and their advo­cates say that the brief under­cuts the inten­tions of the thou­sands of local pas­tors and oth­er del­e­gates at the denomination’s annu­al meet­ing who have con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed reform efforts.
...

Final­ly, there’s the oblig­a­tory CNP angle here. First, not how the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary — which a defen­dant in a Ken­tucky abuse case — signed the ami­cus brief. Recall how for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son was forced to resign from his posi­tion as the Pres­i­dent of the South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in May of 2018 after he after he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down,” accord­ing to a state­ment from sem­i­nary trustees. Pat­ter­son and his wife are both mem­bers of the CNP. And then there’s the com­ments from lawyer Jonathan White­head, who sug­gest­ed it may be too much to expect the SBC denom­i­na­tion to assist vic­tims in their ques­tion for jus­tice while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tect­ing its own exis­tence. It’s the kind of com­men­tary that should make it come as no sur­prise to learn that White­head­’s name also shows up on the CNP’s leaked mem­ber­ship lists. It’s more or less what we should expect at this point:

...
The par­ties sign­ing onto the brief include Life­way Chris­t­ian Resources, the denomination’s pub­lish­ing arm, and the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. Both are defen­dants in a suit filed in Ken­tucky by a woman who says that her father, a Bap­tist pas­tor, abused her for years and that employ­ees of var­i­ous insti­tu­tions failed to pro­tect her.

Al Mohler Jr., the seminary’s pres­i­dent, said in a state­ment that in “ques­tions of law” the sem­i­nary must defer to legal coun­sel. A Life­way spokes­woman did not respond to a request for com­ment.

Jonathan White­head, a lawyer who often rep­re­sents reli­gious insti­tu­tions in court, said that while the goal of rec­ti­fy­ing abuse is a noble one, it may be too much to expect the denom­i­na­tion to pro­vide pas­toral sup­port to vic­tims, to accept legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for past abus­es and to pro­tect its own exis­tence.

“It’s awful­ly hard to be the par­ty of care and the par­ty of respon­si­bil­i­ty at the same time.”
...

Jonathan White­head may not have intend­ed to put it in such stark terms, but he does have a point: an insti­tu­tion with a his­to­ry filled with unad­dressed sys­temic abus­es and an unre­formed lead­er­ship real­ly does have to make a choice. It can either help try to address those abus­es or it can pro­tect its own exis­tence. And sure, in the­o­ry, the insti­tu­tion should be sav­ing itself by try­ing to rec­ti­fy these injus­tices. But what if the abus­es are so per­va­sive, deep, and ongo­ing, that there’s no plau­si­ble way they could be exposed with­out result­ing in a com­plete loss of faith in the SBC’s lead­er­ship? What then? That appears to be the moral and legal conun­drums the SBC is wrestling with. And we can see the kinds of solu­tions the SBC lead­er­ship came up. At least for the legal conun­drum, at the cost of a much deep­er moral conun­drum that will pre­sum­ably be ‘solved’ with more cov­er ups.

There’s an abun­dance of under­stand­able alarm today in the wake of Don­ald Trump’s open­ly fas­cist Vet­er­ans Day speech­es that includ­ed threats to “root out ... the rad­i­cal left thugs that live like ver­min with­in the con­fines of our coun­try.” As many point­ed out, the kind of dehu­man­iz­ing lan­guage not only echoes the tac­tics used by Hitler and the Nazis, but it’s hap­pen­ing amidst the ongo­ing warn­ings we keep get­ting about the scope of the planned Sched­ule F/Project 2025 mass purge. So with the grow­ing use of dehu­man­iz­ing lan­guage elic­it­ing all this alarm, it’s worth keep­ing in mind how the dehu­man­iza­tion of the LBGTQ com­mu­ni­ty — and in par­tic­u­lar the trans com­mu­ni­ty — and the aggres­sive por­tray­al of them as sex­u­al preda­tors who pose a threat to chil­dren has been one of the ‘go-to’ polit­i­cal mantra of the GOP since at least 2016.

And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing excerpt from a Jan­u­ary 2018 Rolling Stone arti­cle, it was the anti-LGBTQ activism of Jared Wood­fill, Steven Hotze, and their fel­low polit­i­cal activists at the Sec­ond Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton — led by Ed Young — where the tem­plate for this strat­e­gy of focused dehu­man­iza­tion of trans com­mu­ni­ty was first estab­lished. It was 2014, when the Hous­ton city coun­cil passed a robust anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion bill — the HERO bill — that set it all in motion. Wood­fill and Hotze soon formed the anti-HERO oppo­si­tion, draw­ing on the enor­mous sup­port of Ed Young’s the Sec­ond Bap­tist mega-church they attend along with Lt Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick.

Imme­di­ate­ly after the HERO ordi­nance passed, Wood­fill and Dave Welch — for­mer nation­al field direc­tor for the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion — launched a peti­tion to force a ref­er­en­dum vote on the mea­sure. It was Wood­fill who report­ed­ly came up with the strat­e­gy of focus­ing the ref­er­en­dum on one par­tic­u­lar part of the new law: trans peo­ple and bath­room access.

The city of Hous­ton pro­ceed­ed to inval­i­date thou­sands of the rough­ly 50,000 ref­er­en­dum sig­na­tures col­lect­ed by Wood­fil­l’s cam­paign, result­ing in a law­suit from Wood­fill. That law­suit, in turn, result­ed in the city of Hous­ton sub­poe­naing doc­u­ments from some of the local pas­tors, includ­ing their ser­mons. This legal move by the city got spun into an ‘attack on reli­gious free­dom’ nar­ra­tive, with the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF) and Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil (FRC), play­ing a direct role in whip­ping it up into a nation­al sto­ry. Recall how the ADF received large dona­tions from the Bet­sy DeVos and Erik Prince and fun­neled that mon­ey into sup­port­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments in Europe and backed a 2016 Belize law that pun­ished homo­sex­u­al sex with 10 years in prison. Also recall how the ADF has been play­ing a major behind the scenes role in shap­ing the cur­rent man­u­fac­tured anti-trans pan­ic. At the same time, the ADF shows up on the list of orga­ni­za­tions involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. CNP mem­ber Michael Far­ris, who co-found­ed the “Con­ven­tion of States” project designed to over­haul the Con­sti­tu­tion — has served as the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the ADF. And when it comes to the FRC, recall how the Pres­i­dent of the FRC, Tony Perkins, is list­ed on the leaked CNP mem­ber­ship lsits a being the CNP’s pres­i­dent in 2018. In fact, accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle, he was the CNP’s Pres­i­dent from 2014 through at least 2018, cov­er­ing the peri­od of the events in this sto­ry.

As the anti-HERO cam­paign­ing got under­way, fig­ures like Hotze would warn against the threat of “homo-fas­cists.” “Just like there was a Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, there’s a homo­sex­u­al man­i­festo,” As Hotze put it. “The hack­les will stand up on the back of your neck when you see what they have planned.”

In the end, the cam­paign worked and Hous­ton vot­ers reject­ed the HERO poli­cies with 61 per­cent vot­ing to reject it. And a nation­al tem­plate was born. By focus­ing the alleged threat of trans child preda­tors in bath­rooms, a pow­er­ful polit­i­cal cud­gel was now avail­able nation­wide.

And yes, it’s gross­ly cyn­i­cal and hyp­o­crit­i­cal that Jared Wood­fill — whose polit­i­cal rise can be attrib­uted to his rela­tion­ship to Paul Pressler who preyed on young men and teen boys for decades — is the fig­ure who report­ed­ly came up with the ‘trans bath­room preda­tor’ nar­ra­tive. Even more so giv­en how Wood­fill active­ly enabled the abuse through their law firm Wood­fill & Pressler, LLP.

And while it was obvi­ous that this trend of whip­ping up dehu­man­iz­ing cam­paigns was a threat to the entire LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty, not the trans com­mu­ni­ty, it may not have been obvi­ous that this approach of cyn­i­cal­ly dehu­man­iz­ing an entire swathe of the pop­u­la­tion can be applied to much larg­er group than just the LGBTQ pop­u­la­tion. It may not have been obvi­ous at the time. But it should be obvi­ous now, mak­ing now a good time to review how this CNP net­work dis­cov­ered the pow­er of pol­i­tics of dehu­man­iza­tion:

Rolling Stone

Anti-Trans Bath­room Debate: How a Local Reli­gious-Right Fac­tion Launched a Nation­al Move­ment

Chris­t­ian-right activists around the coun­try took note after strate­gic fear­mon­ger­ing in Hous­ton killed an equal-rights law

Sarah Pos­ner
Jan­u­ary 22, 2018

In May 2015, the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an elite orga­ni­za­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers, held a strat­e­gy ses­sion at the Ritz-Carl­ton Hotel in Tysons Cor­ner, Vir­ginia, just out­side Wash­ing­ton, D.C. The mood among con­ser­v­a­tives was bleak. A month lat­er, the Supreme Court would decide the case of Oberge­fell v. Hodges, which would estab­lish equal access to mar­riage as a con­sti­tu­tion­al right. “I don’t think any­body has an idea of the mag­ni­tude of what’s com­ing,” warned Kel­ly Shack­elford, a lawyer from Texas and the found­ing pres­i­dent of the First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, a non­prof­it legal firm well-known in Chris­t­ian-right legal cir­cles. He co-authored an op-ed in 2015 that char­ac­ter­ized laws pro­tect­ing LGBTQ peo­ple from dis­crim­i­na­tion as just “anoth­er route for suing Chris­tians.” An unfa­vor­able rul­ing in Oberge­fell, Shack­elford sug­gest­ed that day, “is going to be a direct attack” on the reli­gious free­dom of every­one in the coun­try. “No one will escape it.”

The Her­itage Foundation’s Ryan Ander­son, a lead­ing oppo­nent of LGBTQ rights, told the audi­ence that a deci­sion in Oberge­fell in favor of same-sex cou­ples would be a call to the bar­ri­cades: “Our mes­sage here needs to be that if the court tries to rede­fine mar­riage it will be doing the same exact thing that it did 42 years ago with Roe v. Wade.” That deci­sion, Ander­son remind­ed his audi­ence, “didn’t set­tle the abor­tion issue. It cre­at­ed a cul­ture war.”

Pan­ic on the Chris­t­ian right had been per­co­lat­ing even before the high court agreed to hear the case in ear­ly 2015. Over the course of the pre­vi­ous year, four fed­er­al appel­late courts had struck down state laws ban­ning same-sex mar­riage, while just one such law was upheld. Observers on both sides began to view a Supreme Court deci­sion rec­og­niz­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to mar­ry as inevitable. At the same time, local­i­ties across the coun­try were begin­ning to guar­an­tee LGBTQ peo­ple oth­er legal pro­tec­tions against dis­crim­i­na­tion. Blue cities, even in red states like Texas, were pass­ing ordi­nances bar­ring dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma had also tak­en action, issu­ing an exec­u­tive order pro­tect­ing LGBTQ peo­ple from dis­crim­i­na­tion in fed­er­al con­tract­ing and hir­ing, trig­ger­ing Chris­t­ian-right anx­i­eties about fed­er­al-gov­ern­ment over­reach and infringe­ment of Chris­tians’ reli­gious free­dom.

The avalanche of change wasn’t just legal but cul­tur­al as well, with polls show­ing a seis­mic shift in atti­tudes: Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was becom­ing increas­ing­ly accept­ed, even among a younger gen­er­a­tion of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. At stake in the new cul­ture war sparked by Oberge­fell, many con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals and Catholics believed, was the future of Chris­tian­i­ty itself. “We are mov­ing rapid­ly towards the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty,” for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor and then-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mike Huck­abee warned pas­tors in a con­fer­ence call less than two weeks before announc­ing his pres­i­den­tial run.

Fac­ing such polit­i­cal head­winds, Chris­t­ian-right activists des­per­ate­ly need­ed a fresh strat­e­gy. Pro­vok­ing fear of infringe­ment on reli­gious lib­er­ty would like­ly only gain trac­tion among fel­low believ­ers. They soon found an alter­na­tive in Shackelford’s home state, whose largest city was, at the time, led by a les­bian Demo­c­ra­t­ic may­or. There, in Hous­ton, a small band of well-con­nect­ed far-right activists was res­ur­rect­ing an approach from the old­est anti-LGBTQ play­book: to trans­form the civic debate about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty into a pan­ic about preda­tors. As nation­al activists fret­ted at the Ritz-Carl­ton, Hous­ton play­ers had already sketched out a plan to turn vot­ers against nondis­crim­i­na­tion ordi­nances by fram­ing the debate as one about safe­ty for women and girls. It proved so potent that it prompt­ed a shift in leg­isla­tive strat­e­gy across the coun­try.

In the 2014 and 2015 leg­isla­tive ses­sions, in the run-up to Oberge­fell, Repub­li­can law­mak­ers were focused on “reli­gious free­dom” bills to grant reli­gious exemp­tions from serv­ing same-sex cou­ples or their wed­dings. In 2016, that strat­e­gy changed, says Cather­ine Oak­ley, senior leg­isla­tive coun­sel at the Human Rights Cam­paign. That year, she says, “was about going after trans peo­ple with bath­room bills.” The Nation­al Con­fer­ence of State Leg­is­la­tures count­ed nine states that con­sid­ered bath­room bills in 2015; in 2016 that num­ber jumped to 19. The shift was a sign of a new strat­e­gy, post-Oberge­fell, of find­ing ways to wedge apart the grow­ing con­sen­sus for LGBTQ rights. Just like the Chris­t­ian right’s long march against abor­tion rights after Roe v. Wade, it will be a mul­ti-front war – in the courts, in state­hous­es, in pub­lic debate – per­sist­ing even while the ulti­mate prize, a Supreme Court rever­sal, is poten­tial­ly decades away. And like the long fight against Roe, this one would start not with legal argu­ments or even the­o­log­i­cal ones, but with a pure gut reac­tion: fear and dis­gust.

In May 2014, the Hous­ton City Coun­cil passed a com­pre­hen­sive anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion law, dubbed the Hous­ton Equal Rights Ordi­nance, or HERO, a mea­sure intro­duced by Houston’s first les­bian may­or, Annise Park­er, to out­law dis­crim­i­na­tion based not only on race, gen­der, age and eth­nic­i­ty, but also on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty. The bill, as intro­duced, would have also explic­it­ly per­mit­ted trans­gen­der peo­ple to use restrooms or lock­er rooms cor­re­spond­ing with their gen­der iden­ti­ty; though that spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion was elim­i­nat­ed before pas­sage, the broad nondis­crim­i­na­tion lan­guage in the bill would have cov­ered it. The vocal oppo­si­tion against HERO – large­ly ginned up in the city’s con­ser­v­a­tive church­es – was led by Jared Wood­fill, a Hous­ton lawyer and Repub­li­can polit­i­cal activist, and Dr. Steven Hotze, a dietary-sup­ple­ments sup­pli­er and local right-wing radio host. Togeth­er, they run the influ­en­tial Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas, whose lit­er­a­ture habit­u­al­ly refers to LGBTQ peo­ple as “per­verts,” “deviants” and “sodomites,” and which has been called “a cesspool of extrem­ism and open hate” by the civ­il-rights group Texas Free­dom Net­work. Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas has called on Chris­tians to join a “cul­tur­al bat­tle” against the left in order to halt “the Islamiza­tion of Amer­i­ca,” “the killing of the unborn” and “accep­tance of the per­vert­ed homo­sex­u­al and so-called ‘trans­gen­der’ lifestyle.” With their anti-HERO bat­tle, they would trans­form what appeared to be a local dis­pute into a nation­al cause célèbre for the Chris­t­ian right.

It’s unlike­ly that two local activists, on their own, would have been able to carve out such an influ­en­tial role for Hous­ton in a nation­al Chris­t­ian-right strat­e­gy. But Hotze and Wood­fill are part of a tight-knit cir­cle in Hous­ton, where they and many of their fel­low con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian activists attend the same megachurch, Sec­ond Bap­tist; the for­mer Chris­t­ian-right radio host and state sen­a­tor who in 2015 became Texas’ pow­er­ful lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, Dan Patrick, is also a parish­ioner. The church’s senior pas­tor, Dr. Ed Young, has used his plat­form to sway the polit­i­cal agen­da of his flock. As the cam­paign against HERO hit a fever pitch, he railed against the bill from the pul­pit and warned, “We will be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against” if LGBTQ peo­ple have equal rights. “It’s total­ly decep­tive and it’s dead­ly,” Young said. “It will car­ry our city fur­ther and fur­ther, fur­ther down the road of being total­ly, in my opin­ion, sec­u­lar and god­less.”

“So many of the anti-gay folks in the state are from Hous­ton,” says Dan Quinn, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for the Texas Free­dom Net­work. One of Wood­fill and Hotze’s key allies is Dave Welch, head of the Hous­ton Area Pas­tors’ Coun­cil, a pow­er­ful alliance that works with the pas­tors of sev­er­al megachurch­es, includ­ing Young. Welch, Quinn says, “has become one of the big faces of the anti-LGBT move­ment” in the state.

Wood­fill, raised in Hous­ton by a NASA engi­neer and a col­lege writ­ing instruc­tor, has deep roots on the Chris­t­ian right. Ear­ly in his legal career he worked in a law prac­tice with Paul Pressler, a cen­tral play­er in the 1970s in the “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence” of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and its bur­geon­ing union with the GOP. (Pressler was recent­ly accused in a law­suit of repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a young man he men­tored in Bible study in the 1970s and ’80s. Pressler denies the claims. As Pressler’s for­mer law part­ner, Wood­fill is also named in the suit, which he has called “absolute­ly false” and “an attempt to extort mon­ey.”)

It was through Pressler that Wood­fill met Hotze, who in 2014 tapped Wood­fill to suc­ceed him as pres­i­dent of Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas. Hotze, a white-haired fix­ture on the fringes of the Lone Star State’s con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, owns a health-and-well­ness cen­ter in Hous­ton, where he dis­pens­es advice on vit­a­mins, sup­ple­ments and oth­er “nat­ur­al approach­es to health” on the the­o­ry that Chris­tians need bet­ter health than oth­ers, “for the advance­ment of God’s King­dom.”

Imme­di­ate­ly after the HERO ordi­nance passed, Wood­fill and Welch, a sea­soned for­mer nation­al field direc­tor for the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, launched a peti­tion to force a ref­er­en­dum vote on the mea­sure. It was Woodfill’s piv­otal insight to latch onto one small aspect of the law: the ques­tion of bath­room access.

...

As homo­sex­u­al­i­ty became cul­tur­al­ly more nor­mal­ized, it no longer sparked the same out­rage that had pro­pelled vot­ers to the polls in droves a decade or more ago to pass ref­er­en­da ban­ning same-sex mar­riage in more than a dozen states, includ­ing Texas. But Wood­fill had zeroed in on some­thing that he believed could make even vot­ers out­side his base deeply uncom­fort­able – trans­gen­der bod­ies. By stir­ring up that dis­gust, and spark­ing out­rage at the notion of “men” being giv­en access to girls’ bath­rooms, he gam­bled that he could mobi­lize con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians and oth­ers, form­ing a large enough coali­tion to reverse HERO at the bal­lot box.

His efforts were bol­stered by a stroke of luck when a mis­step by the city also allowed him to stir up fears about gov­ern­ment oppres­sion of Chris­tians’ reli­gious free­dom. After the city ruled thou­sands of the 50,000 peti­tion sig­na­tures that Woodfill’s troops had col­lect­ed invalid, Wood­fill sued, rais­ing more than a half mil­lion dol­lars for legal fees from church­es and indi­vid­ual donors such as Hotze. In the course of the law­suit, the city sub­poe­naed records, includ­ing ser­mons, from five Hous­ton pas­tors whose con­gre­ga­tions had helped col­lect sig­na­tures. Although doc­u­ment requests are stan­dard dis­cov­ery pro­ce­dure in lit­i­ga­tion, the gov­ern­ment request for the ser­mons was like a match hit­ting gaso­line for Chris­t­ian-right activists who had spent years warn­ing that the gov­ern­ment aimed to infringe on the free speech and reli­gious free­dom of Chris­tians in order to advance LGBTQ equal­i­ty. Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, a ris­ing con­ser­v­a­tive legal advo­ca­cy group, accused the city of “engag­ing in an inqui­si­tion.” The city even­tu­al­ly mod­i­fied the sub­poe­nas – but a firestorm had already been unleashed.

The local fight over a munic­i­pal ordi­nance quick­ly went nation­al, held up by lead­ers of the Chris­t­ian right as the real­iza­tion of their dark­est warn­ings: a real-life effort by the state to muz­zle church­es. For the reli­gious-right rank and file, the Hous­ton case both height­ened their anx­i­eties and gave urgency to their polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing – offer­ing proof that the gov­ern­ment did indeed aim to sur­veil pas­tors’ speech to serve the aims of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. “Hous­ton, we have a prob­lem” soon became a refrain of Chris­t­ian-right action alerts.

“This is about polit­i­cal intim­i­da­tion,” Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil pres­i­dent Tony Perkins told Fox News’ Meg­yn Kel­ly in Octo­ber 2014. “This is unprece­dent­ed, and we’ve been hear­ing from pas­tors across the nation.”

Over the course of the next year, as HERO’s oppo­nents won the right to a ref­er­en­dum vote, con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal lead­ers ham­mered the mes­sage home to church­go­ers. Dur­ing a “Faith, Fam­i­ly, and Free­dom” ral­ly host­ed by Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas in August 2015, which attract­ed such polit­i­cal pow­er­hous­es as for­mer House Major­i­ty Leader Tom DeLay, Hotze warned the audi­ence of the threat of “homo-fas­cists.” “Just like there was a Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, there’s a homo­sex­u­al man­i­festo,” he said. “The hack­les will stand up on the back of your neck when you see what they have planned.”

The Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, one of the nation’s most pow­er­ful Chris­t­ian-right advo­ca­cy groups, orga­nized an “I Stand Sun­day” event at a Hous­ton megachurch just days before the Novem­ber 2015 ref­er­en­dum vote; the vote was being so close­ly watched on the right that the event was simul­cast to more than 750 church­es around the coun­try. There, Erik Stan­ley, an attor­ney from Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, called the sub­poe­nas “just one front in a rapid­ly devel­op­ing con­flict. The phi­los­o­phy under­ly­ing this con­flict is that sex­u­al lib­er­ty trumps every­thing, includ­ing reli­gious lib­er­ty.” The sub­poe­nas had pro­vid­ed the Chris­t­ian right a per­fect bridge between the bath­room-focused strat­e­gy and the broad­er reli­gious-lib­er­ty cam­paign, prov­ing, in activists’ minds, that gov­ern­ment hos­til­i­ty to reli­gion and pro­mot­ing LGBTQ rights went hand in hand.

...

Days lat­er, Hous­ton vot­ers went to the polls and defeat­ed HERO sound­ly, with 61 per­cent vot­ing for repeal. The Hous­ton strat­e­gy was offi­cial­ly a suc­cess, and activists in oth­er states quick­ly sought to repli­cate it, par­tic­u­lar­ly in North Car­oli­na, which the fol­low­ing year would pass the first law in the nation ban­ning trans­gen­der peo­ple from using the pub­lic restroom asso­ci­at­ed with their gen­der iden­ti­ty. Tam­mi Fitzger­ald, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North Car­oli­na Val­ues Coali­tion, which spear­head­ed sup­port for the bill, acknowl­edged that her group was deeply influ­enced by Hous­ton. She recalled the moment she first saw a tele­vi­sion ad that Wood­fill and Hotze had run: It fea­tured images of a young girl in a bath­room stall, with a chill­ing voiceover warn­ing that a man could enter at any time. Fitzger­ald found it so effec­tive that her coali­tion con­tact­ed the same ad agency to recast it for a North Car­oli­na audi­ence. “The pas­tors in Hous­ton rose up and decid­ed they were not going to allow a may­or of their city to over­ride their free­doms,” Fitzger­ald says, “their free­dom to have access to bath­rooms and show­ers and lock­er rooms with­out wor­ry­ing about some­one of the oppo­site sex view­ing their daugh­ters or their grand­daugh­ters.”

“We were win­ning big,” Wood­fill boasts, and “I do think that embold­ened a whole lot of oth­er folks.”

...

The Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Alliance, an umbrel­la of state lob­by­ing groups affil­i­at­ed with Focus on the Fam­i­ly and the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, sensed a change in the wind. “While the rad­i­cal agen­da of the homo­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der lob­by has rocked the nation in recent years, the ‘push­back’ is gain­ing real steam,” a May 2016 post on the organization’s site read. “It start­ed in Hous­ton last Novem­ber with the over­whelm­ing defeat of [HERO].”

Beyond North Car­oli­na, a wave of bills fol­lowed in oth­er states that explic­it­ly sought to block equal access to bath­rooms and ther pub­lic facil­i­ties for trans­gen­der peo­ple. Although none passed, Trump deliv­ered a vic­to­ry by rescind­ing a Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion guid­ance, first put in place by Oba­ma in May 2016, to pro­tect trans­gen­der stu­dents in pub­lic schools from dis­crim­i­na­tion. And despite so many bath­room bills stalling in state­hous­es, the fear-mon­ger­ing strat­e­gy con­tin­ued to gain steam: In 2017, Repub­li­cans not only kept up the pres­sure for bath­room bills in Texas and else­where, intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion in at least 16 states, but draft­ed oth­er bills pur­port­ing to pro­tect chil­dren from LGBTQ peo­ple. Laws per­mit­ting adop­tion and fos­ter-care agen­cies to refuse to place chil­dren with same-sex cou­ples passed in Texas, Alaba­ma and South Dako­ta.

The strat­e­gy faced push­back when North Car­oli­na was forced to repeal its bath­room law, HB2, under pres­sure of busi­ness boy­cotts. But the repeal was hard­ly a vic­to­ry for LGBTQ rights: State law­mak­ers replaced HB2 with a law that pro­hibits munic­i­pal­i­ties from pass­ing nondis­crim­i­na­tion laws. The bath­room bill, then, end­ed up open­ing the door to broad­er dis­crim­i­na­tion against LGBTQ peo­ple.

Last March, the Texas state leg­is­la­ture held a hear­ing on SB6, a bill that would require trans­gen­der peo­ple to use the pub­lic bath­room or lock­er room that cor­re­sponds with the gen­der list­ed on their birth cer­tifi­cate. The bill had become one of Lt. Gov. Patrick’s top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties. The day before the hear­ing, Patrick held a press con­fer­ence inside the capi­tol to ral­ly sup­port. There, flanked by Wood­fill, Hotze and pas­tors and Chris­t­ian-right lead­ers from around the state, Patrick praised “our own city of Hous­ton,” where, he said, vot­ers “reject­ed the mayor’s poli­cies” and would ral­ly behind SB6. Lat­er in the day, he deliv­ered a bel­li­cose address to pas­tors, com­par­ing the fight to pass SB6 to the bat­tle at the Alamo. He urged them to “win this fight for Amer­i­ca” because “a strong Amer­i­ca depends on a strong Texas.”

Patrick, who was elect­ed with a cru­cial $1.2 mil­lion elec­tion­eer­ing cam­paign from Hotze and Woodfill’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas, has become “the cen­ter of almost all activ­i­ty on the anti-LGBT front, par­tic­u­lar­ly on bills on trans­gen­der and so-called reli­gious free­dom,” says Quinn, of the Texas Free­dom Net­work.

In his push for SB6, Patrick appeared to be set­ting his sights far beyond the state’s bor­ders. His nation­al pro­file was grow­ing, and SB6 was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Texas to again lead the way. Though a num­ber of oth­er states had put bath­room leg­is­la­tion for­ward, so far only North Carolina’s ill-fat­ed bill had passed. Days before the press con­fer­ence, Patrick received a lauda­to­ry note of appre­ci­a­tion from Alan Sears, founder of Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, for a speech Patrick had deliv­ered to the influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive umbrel­la group the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, which had also pro­filed the SB6 cam­paign in its month­ly newslet­ter. In his note, Sears applaud­ed Patrick for his “desire to pro­tect our young peo­ple from the show­er and bath­room inva­sions.” Patrick was also inter­viewed by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, where he extolled the bill as “a mod­el for oth­er states to fol­low and end this dis­cus­sion once and for all about men being able to walk into ladies’ rooms in pub­lic build­ings and to stop school dis­tricts from allow­ing boys and girls to show­er togeth­er.”

/Nation­al Chris­t­ian-right fire­pow­er showed up in force to lob­by for the bill’s pas­sage. One of the first wit­ness­es at the SB6 hear­ing was Perkins, who is not only pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil but has since 2014 served as pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy. (Perkins and Sears did not respond to inter­view requests.)

Perkins hadn’t just flown to Austin to offer up his tes­ti­mo­ny to one state­house; he was using the Texas capi­tol as a com­mand cen­ter in the cul­ture war. A few hun­dred feet from the hear­ing room was an audi­to­ri­um the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil had reserved to train a gath­er­ing of Texas pas­tors on how to lob­by their state leg­is­la­tors. The pas­tors, who were tight-lipped about what had tran­spired inside the audi­to­ri­um, received talk­ing points in sup­port of SB6 and advice about how to influ­ence leg­is­la­tors to “sup­port bib­li­cal val­ues.”

...

After SB6 stalled, Patrick urged Gov. Greg Abbott to call a spe­cial sum­mer ses­sion to make anoth­er attempt to pass it. On short notice, the Sen­ate State Affairs Com­mit­tee held a fresh hear­ing on the bill in July. As with the first one, the hear­ing drew more oppo­nents than sup­port­ers, includ­ing Kim­ber­ly Shap­p­ley, the moth­er of a trans girl who stunned the hear­ing room into rapt silence when she revealed she was a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can and a “born-again believ­er in Jesus Christ,” going on to admon­ish the law­mak­ers, “the Lord is on our side.” Again, the bill failed to pass the House, a set­back Wood­fill and Hotze blamed on the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can House speak­er, Joe Straus, who Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas has relent­less­ly tar­get­ed as a lib­er­al RINO. Wood­fill called for pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to Straus and “his lieu­tenants,” accus­ing him of hav­ing “proud­ly killed leg­is­la­tion that would keep bio­log­i­cal males, includ­ing reg­is­tered sex offend­ers, from enter­ing women’s bath­rooms, show­ers, and lock­er rooms.”

...

Since tak­ing office last Jan­u­ary, Trump has made good on a vari­ety of oth­er com­mit­ments he made to Chris­t­ian-right lead­ers dur­ing the cam­paign. In addi­tion to his rever­sal of the DOE trans­gen­der guid­ance and his attempt to ban trans­gen­der ser­vice mem­bers from the mil­i­tary, he has stacked fed­er­al agen­cies, espe­cial­ly the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, with Chris­t­ian-right ide­o­logues. And he issued an exec­u­tive order last May, direct­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions to devel­op guid­ance for agen­cies on reli­gious-free­dom issues, which was released in Octo­ber. That guid­ance could open the door, accord­ing to the ACLU, to “wide­spread, reli­gious-based dis­crim­i­na­tion against women, LGBT peo­ple, peo­ple of minor­i­ty faiths and races, and oth­ers in a vari­ety of con­texts.”

Reli­gious exemp­tions, such as the ones the DOJ green-lit in its Trump-ordered guid­ance, could, if broad­ly inter­pret­ed, turn anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion rules into “Swiss cheese,” says ACLU deputy legal direc­tor Louise Melling. The Supreme Court has said that same-sex cou­ples have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to mar­ry, Melling says, but what does that right mean “when you then go to a store and you can be turned away because of who you are?”

Last spring, when I met Wood­fill at his office, Trump had just signed an exec­u­tive order sig­nal­ing that his admin­is­tra­tion would stop enforc­ing the John­son Amend­ment, a 1954 addi­tion to the Inter­nal Rev­enue Code that allows the IRS to revoke a non-prof­it organization’s tax-exempt sta­tus if it uses tax-exempt resources – includ­ing a pastor’s pul­pit – to endorse polit­i­cal can­di­dates. (Although Repub­li­can law­mak­ers attempt­ed to include a pro­vi­sion to repeal the John­son Amend­ment in the recent­ly passed tax-reform leg­is­la­tion, it did not sur­vive in the final ver­sion of the bill.) Wood­fill declared Trump to be more engaged “than any pres­i­dent I’m aware of on issues that are impor­tant to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians,” more even than Texas’ own evan­gel­i­cal son, George W. Bush. “A lot of can­di­dates talk the talk,” Wood­fill tells me, “but then to actu­al­ly walk the walk, and to actu­al­ly exe­cute on those cam­paign promis­es is a dif­fer­ent thing.”

Wood­fill is relent­less in his con­tin­ued fight against the advance of LGBTQ rights, which he por­trays as a spir­i­tu­al call. He is lit­i­gat­ing a case, Pid­geon v. Park­er, chal­leng­ing a deci­sion by Park­er, while she was Houston’s may­or, to grant ben­e­fits to the same-sex spous­es of Hous­ton city employ­ees who mar­ried in oth­er states, at a time when Texas’ ban on same-sex mar­riage was still in place. That pol­i­cy was obvi­at­ed by Oberge­fell, but Wood­fill is still lit­i­gat­ing the case in the hopes of secur­ing a rul­ing that Oberge­fell‘s recog­ni­tion of mar­i­tal rights does not extend to spousal ben­e­fits.

...

Wood­fill waves away the notion that Oberge­fell made his legal chal­lenge against Park­er moot; in the van­guard as always, pilot­ing new lines of attack in his urgent bat­tle against LGBTQ rights, he insists that Oberge­fell is lim­it­ed only to the mar­riage license itself and doesn’t extend to any of the atten­dant ben­e­fits of mar­riage. Com­par­ing the case to Roe, he hints at repli­cat­ing the Chris­t­ian right’s anti-abor­tion strat­e­gy: The Supreme Court may have decid­ed that abor­tion is a right, but the anti-abor­tion move­ment has spent decades hol­low­ing out that right in the courts, in Con­gress and in state leg­is­la­tures, which has result­ed in a pre­cip­i­tous drop in the num­ber of abor­tion providers since the ear­ly 1980s. “We’re nev­er going to stop fight­ing these bat­tles,” he says. “It’s a bat­tle for the heart and soul of our coun­try right now, and that battle’s being fought in leg­is­la­tures, that battle’s being fought in the courts, that battle’s being fought in the class­room.”

Gov. Abbott, Lt. Gov. Patrick and Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton have joined forces to file an ami­cus brief in Woodfill’s case, argu­ing that “Oberge­fell‘s judg­ment does not include a com­mand that pub­lic employ­ers like the City of Hous­ton take steps beyond rec­og­niz­ing same-sex mar­riage – steps like sub­si­diz­ing same-sex mar­riages (through the allo­ca­tion of employ­ee ben­e­fits) on the same terms as tra­di­tion­al mar­riage.” Last year, Wood­fill won a key rul­ing from the Texas Supreme Court that allows him to con­tin­ue to lit­i­gate the ques­tion; the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, allow­ing Wood­fill to con­tin­ue his cru­sade in Texas’ courts.

That goal – the grind­ing down of Oberge­fell’s reach – is already in full swing. In ear­ly Decem­ber, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments in Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop v. Col­orado Civ­il Rights Com­mis­sion, a case in which a bak­er claims he should be allowed to refuse to pre­pare a cake for a gay couple’s wed­ding because of his reli­gious objec­tions to same-sex mar­riage. The bak­er, Jack Phillips, is rep­re­sent­ed by Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, the same law firm that rep­re­sent­ed the Hous­ton pas­tors in the sub­poe­na fight; last Sep­tem­ber, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice weighed in to sup­port his posi­tion. And this month, the high court declined to review a rul­ing by the Fifth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, allow­ing a Mis­sis­sip­pi law to stand that grants wide-rang­ing reli­gious exemp­tions to those who object to LGBTQ rights. Both Trump’s pack­ing of the courts with con­ser­v­a­tives and his will­ing­ness to do the Chris­t­ian right’s bid­ding make for opti­mism in con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles that the anti-Oberge­fell strat­e­gy could suc­ceed.

In Trump, Wood­fill says, “you have some­one who arguably had a Saul to Paul expe­ri­ence” – refer­ring to the deci­sive moment along the road to Dam­as­cus when the Apos­tle Paul rec­og­nized that Jesus was the Mes­si­ah. When I ask Wood­fill to iden­ti­fy Trump’s road-to-Dam­as­cus moment, he reacts, as he fre­quent­ly does, with a bois­ter­ous, boy­ish laugh. “That’s a great ques­tion,” he says, although the answer is ulti­mate­ly irrel­e­vant. “Trump’s like­ly to get anoth­er one or two Supreme Court appoint­ments,” Wood­fill mus­es. Those nom­i­nees, and Trump’s stack­ing of the low­er courts with life­time appointees who have anti-LGBTQ views, could prove deci­sive in whether Woodfill’s dream is even­tu­al­ly ful­filled. “Those appoint­ments,” Wood­fill says point­ed­ly, “are going to be one of the most impor­tant things he’s going to do.”

———–

“Anti-Trans Bath­room Debate: How a Local Reli­gious-Right Fac­tion Launched a Nation­al Move­ment” by Sarah Pos­ner; Rolling Stone; 01/22/2018

“The avalanche of change wasn’t just legal but cul­tur­al as well, with polls show­ing a seis­mic shift in atti­tudes: Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was becom­ing increas­ing­ly accept­ed, even among a younger gen­er­a­tion of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. At stake in the new cul­ture war sparked by Oberge­fell, many con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals and Catholics believed, was the future of Chris­tian­i­ty itself. “We are mov­ing rapid­ly towards the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty,” for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor and then-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mike Huck­abee warned pas­tors in a con­fer­ence call less than two weeks before announc­ing his pres­i­den­tial run.”

“We are mov­ing rapid­ly towards the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty.” That’s the deeply cyn­i­cal fram­ing being put to work with this anti-LGBTQ polit­i­cal theme. A kind of ‘it is us or them’ fram­ing. And based on this report, it was at a May 2015 CNP meet­ing where Kel­ly Shack­elford — Mike John­son’s men­tor — warned the audi­ence that a Supreme Court rul­ing on gay mar­riage “is going to be a direct attack” on the reli­gious free­dom of every­one in the coun­try. “No one will escape it.” By the next year, anti-trans ‘bath­room bills’ were the new hot polit­i­cal trend in con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics. A planned pan­ic about trans preda­tors was already under­way, with Shack­elford’s home city of Hous­ton as ground zero:

...
In May 2015, the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an elite orga­ni­za­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers, held a strat­e­gy ses­sion at the Ritz-Carl­ton Hotel in Tysons Cor­ner, Vir­ginia, just out­side Wash­ing­ton, D.C. The mood among con­ser­v­a­tives was bleak. A month lat­er, the Supreme Court would decide the case of Oberge­fell v. Hodges, which would estab­lish equal access to mar­riage as a con­sti­tu­tion­al right. “I don’t think any­body has an idea of the mag­ni­tude of what’s com­ing,” warned Kel­ly Shack­elford, a lawyer from Texas and the found­ing pres­i­dent of the First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, a non­prof­it legal firm well-known in Chris­t­ian-right legal cir­cles. He co-authored an op-ed in 2015 that char­ac­ter­ized laws pro­tect­ing LGBTQ peo­ple from dis­crim­i­na­tion as just “anoth­er route for suing Chris­tians.” An unfa­vor­able rul­ing in Oberge­fell, Shack­elford sug­gest­ed that day, “is going to be a direct attack” on the reli­gious free­dom of every­one in the coun­try. “No one will escape it.”

...

Fac­ing such polit­i­cal head­winds, Chris­t­ian-right activists des­per­ate­ly need­ed a fresh strat­e­gy. Pro­vok­ing fear of infringe­ment on reli­gious lib­er­ty would like­ly only gain trac­tion among fel­low believ­ers. They soon found an alter­na­tive in Shackelford’s home state, whose largest city was, at the time, led by a les­bian Demo­c­ra­t­ic may­or. There, in Hous­ton, a small band of well-con­nect­ed far-right activists was res­ur­rect­ing an approach from the old­est anti-LGBTQ play­book: to trans­form the civic debate about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty into a pan­ic about preda­tors. As nation­al activists fret­ted at the Ritz-Carl­ton, Hous­ton play­ers had already sketched out a plan to turn vot­ers against nondis­crim­i­na­tion ordi­nances by fram­ing the debate as one about safe­ty for women and girls. It proved so potent that it prompt­ed a shift in leg­isla­tive strat­e­gy across the coun­try.

In the 2014 and 2015 leg­isla­tive ses­sions, in the run-up to Oberge­fell, Repub­li­can law­mak­ers were focused on “reli­gious free­dom” bills to grant reli­gious exemp­tions from serv­ing same-sex cou­ples or their wed­dings. In 2016, that strat­e­gy changed, says Cather­ine Oak­ley, senior leg­isla­tive coun­sel at the Human Rights Cam­paign. That year, she says, “was about going after trans peo­ple with bath­room bills.” The Nation­al Con­fer­ence of State Leg­is­la­tures count­ed nine states that con­sid­ered bath­room bills in 2015; in 2016 that num­ber jumped to 19. The shift was a sign of a new strat­e­gy, post-Oberge­fell, of find­ing ways to wedge apart the grow­ing con­sen­sus for LGBTQ rights. Just like the Chris­t­ian right’s long march against abor­tion rights after Roe v. Wade, it will be a mul­ti-front war – in the courts, in state­hous­es, in pub­lic debate – per­sist­ing even while the ulti­mate prize, a Supreme Court rever­sal, is poten­tial­ly decades away. And like the long fight against Roe, this one would start not with legal argu­ments or even the­o­log­i­cal ones, but with a pure gut reac­tion: fear and dis­gust.
...

And as the arti­cle describes, by the time Shack­elford issued that warn­ing at the May 2015 CNP gath­er­ing, Hous­ton’s lead­ing con­ser­v­a­tives had already been engaged in a heat­ing anti-LGBTQ polit­i­cal cam­paign in response to HERO, a May 2014 Hous­ton City Coun­cil anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion law. Specif­i­cal­ly, a cam­paign waged by Jared Wood­fill and Steven Hotze, who are both part of a tight-knit cir­cle cen­tered around Hous­ton’s Sec­ond Bap­tist mega-church led by Ed Young, where the parish­ioners include the vir­u­lent­ly anti-LGBTQ Lt Gov Dan Patrick. Iron­i­cal­ly, Wood­fill met Hotze via Paul Pressler, who is now at the cen­ter of an ongo­ing law­suit over decades of alleged sex­u­al abuse of young men and teen boys. A law­suit that cites Wood­fill as one of Pressler’s key enablers. It’s iron­ic, but also pro­found­ly cyn­i­cal. A bad faith polit­i­cal cam­paign waged by preda­to­ry hyp­o­crit­i­cal theocrats:

...
In May 2014, the Hous­ton City Coun­cil passed a com­pre­hen­sive anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion law, dubbed the Hous­ton Equal Rights Ordi­nance, or HERO, a mea­sure intro­duced by Houston’s first les­bian may­or, Annise Park­er, to out­law dis­crim­i­na­tion based not only on race, gen­der, age and eth­nic­i­ty, but also on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty. The bill, as intro­duced, would have also explic­it­ly per­mit­ted trans­gen­der peo­ple to use restrooms or lock­er rooms cor­re­spond­ing with their gen­der iden­ti­ty; though that spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion was elim­i­nat­ed before pas­sage, the broad nondis­crim­i­na­tion lan­guage in the bill would have cov­ered it. The vocal oppo­si­tion against HERO – large­ly ginned up in the city’s con­ser­v­a­tive church­es – was led by Jared Wood­fill, a Hous­ton lawyer and Repub­li­can polit­i­cal activist, and Dr. Steven Hotze, a dietary-sup­ple­ments sup­pli­er and local right-wing radio host. Togeth­er, they run the influ­en­tial Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas, whose lit­er­a­ture habit­u­al­ly refers to LGBTQ peo­ple as “per­verts,” “deviants” and “sodomites,” and which has been called “a cesspool of extrem­ism and open hate” by the civ­il-rights group Texas Free­dom Net­work. Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas has called on Chris­tians to join a “cul­tur­al bat­tle” against the left in order to halt “the Islamiza­tion of Amer­i­ca,” “the killing of the unborn” and “accep­tance of the per­vert­ed homo­sex­u­al and so-called ‘trans­gen­der’ lifestyle.” With their anti-HERO bat­tle, they would trans­form what appeared to be a local dis­pute into a nation­al cause célèbre for the Chris­t­ian right.

It’s unlike­ly that two local activists, on their own, would have been able to carve out such an influ­en­tial role for Hous­ton in a nation­al Chris­t­ian-right strat­e­gy. But Hotze and Wood­fill are part of a tight-knit cir­cle in Hous­ton, where they and many of their fel­low con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian activists attend the same megachurch, Sec­ond Bap­tist; the for­mer Chris­t­ian-right radio host and state sen­a­tor who in 2015 became Texas’ pow­er­ful lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, Dan Patrick, is also a parish­ioner. The church’s senior pas­tor, Dr. Ed Young, has used his plat­form to sway the polit­i­cal agen­da of his flock. As the cam­paign against HERO hit a fever pitch, he railed against the bill from the pul­pit and warned, “We will be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against” if LGBTQ peo­ple have equal rights. “It’s total­ly decep­tive and it’s dead­ly,” Young said. “It will car­ry our city fur­ther and fur­ther, fur­ther down the road of being total­ly, in my opin­ion, sec­u­lar and god­less.”

“So many of the anti-gay folks in the state are from Hous­ton,” says Dan Quinn, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for the Texas Free­dom Net­work. One of Wood­fill and Hotze’s key allies is Dave Welch, head of the Hous­ton Area Pas­tors’ Coun­cil, a pow­er­ful alliance that works with the pas­tors of sev­er­al megachurch­es, includ­ing Young. Welch, Quinn says, “has become one of the big faces of the anti-LGBT move­ment” in the state.

Wood­fill, raised in Hous­ton by a NASA engi­neer and a col­lege writ­ing instruc­tor, has deep roots on the Chris­t­ian right. Ear­ly in his legal career he worked in a law prac­tice with Paul Pressler, a cen­tral play­er in the 1970s in the “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence” of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and its bur­geon­ing union with the GOP. (Pressler was recent­ly accused in a law­suit of repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a young man he men­tored in Bible study in the 1970s and ’80s. Pressler denies the claims. As Pressler’s for­mer law part­ner, Wood­fill is also named in the suit, which he has called “absolute­ly false” and “an attempt to extort mon­ey.”)

It was through Pressler that Wood­fill met Hotze, who in 2014 tapped Wood­fill to suc­ceed him as pres­i­dent of Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas. Hotze, a white-haired fix­ture on the fringes of the Lone Star State’s con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, owns a health-and-well­ness cen­ter in Hous­ton, where he dis­pens­es advice on vit­a­mins, sup­ple­ments and oth­er “nat­ur­al approach­es to health” on the the­o­ry that Chris­tians need bet­ter health than oth­ers, “for the advance­ment of God’s King­dom.”

...

Patrick, who was elect­ed with a cru­cial $1.2 mil­lion elec­tion­eer­ing cam­paign from Hotze and Woodfill’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas, has become “the cen­ter of almost all activ­i­ty on the anti-LGBT front, par­tic­u­lar­ly on bills on trans­gen­der and so-called reli­gious free­dom,” says Quinn, of the Texas Free­dom Net­work.
...

And it did­n’t take long for the ADF — Mike John­son’s old employ­er — to get involved, thanks to a law­suit filed by the city of Hous­ton that involved the sub­poe­naing of ser­mons from five Hous­ton pas­tors who helped to gath­er sig­na­tures, giv­ing the ADF an oppor­tu­ni­ty engage in more bad faith cyn­i­cal pol­i­tics by accus­ing the city of “engag­ing in an inqui­si­tion”. It was a like bad faith polit­i­cal man­na rain­ing down on the city of Hous­ton:

...
Imme­di­ate­ly after the HERO ordi­nance passed, Wood­fill and Welch, a sea­soned for­mer nation­al field direc­tor for the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, launched a peti­tion to force a ref­er­en­dum vote on the mea­sure. It was Woodfill’s piv­otal insight to latch onto one small aspect of the law: the ques­tion of bath­room access.

...

As homo­sex­u­al­i­ty became cul­tur­al­ly more nor­mal­ized, it no longer sparked the same out­rage that had pro­pelled vot­ers to the polls in droves a decade or more ago to pass ref­er­en­da ban­ning same-sex mar­riage in more than a dozen states, includ­ing Texas. But Wood­fill had zeroed in on some­thing that he believed could make even vot­ers out­side his base deeply uncom­fort­able – trans­gen­der bod­ies. By stir­ring up that dis­gust, and spark­ing out­rage at the notion of “men” being giv­en access to girls’ bath­rooms, he gam­bled that he could mobi­lize con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians and oth­ers, form­ing a large enough coali­tion to reverse HERO at the bal­lot box.

His efforts were bol­stered by a stroke of luck when a mis­step by the city also allowed him to stir up fears about gov­ern­ment oppres­sion of Chris­tians’ reli­gious free­dom. After the city ruled thou­sands of the 50,000 peti­tion sig­na­tures that Woodfill’s troops had col­lect­ed invalid, Wood­fill sued, rais­ing more than a half mil­lion dol­lars for legal fees from church­es and indi­vid­ual donors such as Hotze. In the course of the law­suit, the city sub­poe­naed records, includ­ing ser­mons, from five Hous­ton pas­tors whose con­gre­ga­tions had helped col­lect sig­na­tures. Although doc­u­ment requests are stan­dard dis­cov­ery pro­ce­dure in lit­i­ga­tion, the gov­ern­ment request for the ser­mons was like a match hit­ting gaso­line for Chris­t­ian-right activists who had spent years warn­ing that the gov­ern­ment aimed to infringe on the free speech and reli­gious free­dom of Chris­tians in order to advance LGBTQ equal­i­ty. Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, a ris­ing con­ser­v­a­tive legal advo­ca­cy group, accused the city of “engag­ing in an inqui­si­tion.” The city even­tu­al­ly mod­i­fied the sub­poe­nas – but a firestorm had already been unleashed.
...

Even lead­ing CNP mem­ber Tony Perkins got in on the polit­i­cal the­atrics, using the sub­poe­nas to frame the whole debate as a ‘reli­gious lib­er­ties’ issue. This, as the same time Steven Hotze was warn­ing audi­ences, “Just like there was a Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, there’s a homo­sex­u­al man­i­festo”:

...
“This is about polit­i­cal intim­i­da­tion,” Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil pres­i­dent Tony Perkins told Fox News’ Meg­yn Kel­ly in Octo­ber 2014. “This is unprece­dent­ed, and we’ve been hear­ing from pas­tors across the nation.”

Over the course of the next year, as HERO’s oppo­nents won the right to a ref­er­en­dum vote, con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal lead­ers ham­mered the mes­sage home to church­go­ers. Dur­ing a “Faith, Fam­i­ly, and Free­dom” ral­ly host­ed by Con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans of Texas in August 2015, which attract­ed such polit­i­cal pow­er­hous­es as for­mer House Major­i­ty Leader Tom DeLay, Hotze warned the audi­ence of the threat of “homo-fas­cists.” “Just like there was a Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, there’s a homo­sex­u­al man­i­festo,” he said. “The hack­les will stand up on the back of your neck when you see what they have planned.”

The Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, one of the nation’s most pow­er­ful Chris­t­ian-right advo­ca­cy groups, orga­nized an “I Stand Sun­day” event at a Hous­ton megachurch just days before the Novem­ber 2015 ref­er­en­dum vote; the vote was being so close­ly watched on the right that the event was simul­cast to more than 750 church­es around the coun­try. There, Erik Stan­ley, an attor­ney from Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, called the sub­poe­nas “just one front in a rapid­ly devel­op­ing con­flict. The phi­los­o­phy under­ly­ing this con­flict is that sex­u­al lib­er­ty trumps every­thing, includ­ing reli­gious lib­er­ty.” The sub­poe­nas had pro­vid­ed the Chris­t­ian right a per­fect bridge between the bath­room-focused strat­e­gy and the broad­er reli­gious-lib­er­ty cam­paign, prov­ing, in activists’ minds, that gov­ern­ment hos­til­i­ty to reli­gion and pro­mot­ing LGBTQ rights went hand in hand.
...

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of the polit­i­cal cam­paign, a new nation­al tem­plate was born, with groups like the Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Alliance cit­ing the suc­cess in Hous­ton as the start of a nation­al ‘push­back’ against LGBTQ rights. Note that Paul E. Weber — the Pres­i­dent & CEP of the Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Alliance and for­mer exec­u­tive of the ADF — also shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship lists. Because of course his name shows up on those leaked mem­ber­ship lists. It would be weird if it did­n’t:

...
Days lat­er, Hous­ton vot­ers went to the polls and defeat­ed HERO sound­ly, with 61 per­cent vot­ing for repeal. The Hous­ton strat­e­gy was offi­cial­ly a suc­cess, and activists in oth­er states quick­ly sought to repli­cate it, par­tic­u­lar­ly in North Car­oli­na, which the fol­low­ing year would pass the first law in the nation ban­ning trans­gen­der peo­ple from using the pub­lic restroom asso­ci­at­ed with their gen­der iden­ti­ty. Tam­mi Fitzger­ald, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North Car­oli­na Val­ues Coali­tion, which spear­head­ed sup­port for the bill, acknowl­edged that her group was deeply influ­enced by Hous­ton. She recalled the moment she first saw a tele­vi­sion ad that Wood­fill and Hotze had run: It fea­tured images of a young girl in a bath­room stall, with a chill­ing voiceover warn­ing that a man could enter at any time. Fitzger­ald found it so effec­tive that her coali­tion con­tact­ed the same ad agency to recast it for a North Car­oli­na audi­ence. “The pas­tors in Hous­ton rose up and decid­ed they were not going to allow a may­or of their city to over­ride their free­doms,” Fitzger­ald says, “their free­dom to have access to bath­rooms and show­ers and lock­er rooms with­out wor­ry­ing about some­one of the oppo­site sex view­ing their daugh­ters or their grand­daugh­ters.”

...

The Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Alliance, an umbrel­la of state lob­by­ing groups affil­i­at­ed with Focus on the Fam­i­ly and the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, sensed a change in the wind. “While the rad­i­cal agen­da of the homo­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der lob­by has rocked the nation in recent years, the ‘push­back’ is gain­ing real steam,” a May 2016 post on the organization’s site read. “It start­ed in Hous­ton last Novem­ber with the over­whelm­ing defeat of [HERO].”
...

Flash for­ward to March of 2017, and we find Lt Gov Dan Patrick mak­ing an anti-trans bath­room bill, SB6, one of his top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties, with enor­mous sup­port from groups like the CNP, ADF, and FRC. That includes sup­port from these groups’ lead­ers like ADF founder Alan Sears and FRC pres­i­dent Tony Perkins. Recall how Sears sits on the board of the CNP. And Perkins — the CNP Pres­i­dent start­ing in 2014–2018 — even showed up as one of the first wit­ness­es at the SB6 hear­ing. What was tran­spir­ing in Hous­ton had the back­ing of the CNP’s nation­al lead­er­ship:

...
Last March, the Texas state leg­is­la­ture held a hear­ing on SB6, a bill that would require trans­gen­der peo­ple to use the pub­lic bath­room or lock­er room that cor­re­sponds with the gen­der list­ed on their birth cer­tifi­cate. The bill had become one of Lt. Gov. Patrick’s top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties. The day before the hear­ing, Patrick held a press con­fer­ence inside the capi­tol to ral­ly sup­port. There, flanked by Wood­fill, Hotze and pas­tors and Chris­t­ian-right lead­ers from around the state, Patrick praised “our own city of Hous­ton,” where, he said, vot­ers “reject­ed the mayor’s poli­cies” and would ral­ly behind SB6. Lat­er in the day, he deliv­ered a bel­li­cose address to pas­tors, com­par­ing the fight to pass SB6 to the bat­tle at the Alamo. He urged them to “win this fight for Amer­i­ca” because “a strong Amer­i­ca depends on a strong Texas.”

...

In his push for SB6, Patrick appeared to be set­ting his sights far beyond the state’s bor­ders. His nation­al pro­file was grow­ing, and SB6 was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Texas to again lead the way. Though a num­ber of oth­er states had put bath­room leg­is­la­tion for­ward, so far only North Carolina’s ill-fat­ed bill had passed. Days before the press con­fer­ence, Patrick received a lauda­to­ry note of appre­ci­a­tion from Alan Sears, founder of Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, for a speech Patrick had deliv­ered to the influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive umbrel­la group the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, which had also pro­filed the SB6 cam­paign in its month­ly newslet­ter. In his note, Sears applaud­ed Patrick for his “desire to pro­tect our young peo­ple from the show­er and bath­room inva­sions.” Patrick was also inter­viewed by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, where he extolled the bill as “a mod­el for oth­er states to fol­low and end this dis­cus­sion once and for all about men being able to walk into ladies’ rooms in pub­lic build­ings and to stop school dis­tricts from allow­ing boys and girls to show­er togeth­er.”

/Nation­al Chris­t­ian-right fire­pow­er showed up in force to lob­by for the bill’s pas­sage. One of the first wit­ness­es at the SB6 hear­ing was Perkins, who is not only pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil but has since 2014 served as pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy. (Perkins and Sears did not respond to inter­view requests.)

Perkins hadn’t just flown to Austin to offer up his tes­ti­mo­ny to one state­house; he was using the Texas capi­tol as a com­mand cen­ter in the cul­ture war. A few hun­dred feet from the hear­ing room was an audi­to­ri­um the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil had reserved to train a gath­er­ing of Texas pas­tors on how to lob­by their state leg­is­la­tors. The pas­tors, who were tight-lipped about what had tran­spired inside the audi­to­ri­um, received talk­ing points in sup­port of SB6 and advice about how to influ­ence leg­is­la­tors to “sup­port bib­li­cal val­ues.”
...

So as the use of dehu­man­iz­ing rhetoric by Don­ald Trump on the 2024 cam­paign heats up, it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that Trump isn’t sim­ply using this lan­guage for his own ambi­tions. He’s dehu­man­iz­ing on behalf of his part­ners on the theo­crat­ic Right who have been stand­ing by his side the entire time. Yes, the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 is Trump’s planned purged. But it’s the CNP’s planned purge too. The kind of planned purge that can’t hap­pen with­out years of pre­emp­tive dehu­man­iz­ing rhetoric.

It’s going to be one cringe induc­ing anec­dote after anoth­er after anoth­er. Mike John­son, the new Speak­er of the House, is a Jesus freak of the worst vari­ety. The prob­lem isn’t his love of Jesus, of course. It’s the love of all of the things that seem to go direct­ly against Jesus’s teach­ings. Like a love of earth­ly pow­er and the pur­suit of domin­ion over all. That and all the gross anti-LGBTQ stuff. The per­son inhab­it­ing this pow­er­ful posi­tion in gov­ern­ment — sec­ond in line to the pres­i­den­cy — is, quite sim­ply, a wretched fol­low­er of the real teach­ings of his pro­fessed prophet. It’s an awful sit­u­a­tion.

It’s not Mike John­son’s ques­tion­able reli­gios­i­ty that’s the prob­lem here. It’s his feal­ty. Because for all the talk of ‘lov­ing Jesus’, Mike John­son sure behaves like some­one who tru­ly wor­ships pow­er, damn the costs. Mike John­son fol­lows the lead of his fel­low trav­el­ers. Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pow­er­ful fel­low trav­el­ers. Hence his close align­ment to groups like the Coun­cil for Nation­al (CNP).

But as we’re going to see, Mike John­son’s author­i­tar­i­an allies include anoth­er very pow­er­ful group of CNP fel­low trav­el­ers: lead­ers of the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) denom­i­na­tion of evan­gel­i­cal move­ment. A move­ment that aggres­sive­ly backed Trump’s attempts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion and, as we’ve seen, fol­lows the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ theo­crat­ic man­date for Chris­tians to take con­trol of the sev­en ‘moun­tains’ of pow­er: fam­i­ly, the church, edu­ca­tion, media, arts, the econ­o­my, and the gov­ern­ment. John­son may be a pro­fessed Bap­tist, but he very much aligned with the ‘Chris­tians must take con­trol of soci­ety’ the­ol­o­gy of the NAR. Because while that the­ol­o­gy is cer­tain­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the NAR, the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ the­ol­o­gy isn’t an NAR pro­pri­etary con­cept. Instead, it’s the ani­mat­ing con­cept behind much of the CNP’s efforts which is why we should­n’t be sur­prised to find lead­ing CNP pseu­do-his­to­ri­an, and South Bap­tist, David Bar­ton also advo­cates the Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy as part of his ‘and that’s how the Found­ing Fathers want­ed it’ pseu­do-his­tor­i­cal Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ‘schol­ar­ship’. It’s that shared ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ the­ol­o­gy that we’re going to be look­ing at in the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles.

First, here’s a fol­low­ing Rolling Stone arti­cle excerpt about a video broad­cast of John­son back in Octo­ber — weeks before he became speak­er — dur­ing an appear­ance on Jim Gar­low’s World Prayer Net­work (WPN) event. John­son can be seen open­ly lament­ing the near Sodom-like state of Amer­i­can cul­ture, specif­i­cal­ly point­ing out the his­tor­i­cal­ly high per­cent of young peo­ple who iden­ti­fy on the LGBTQ spec­trum. As John­son puts it, the “cul­ture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irre­deemable.” While the com­ments them­selves are quite news­wor­thy giv­en John­son’s new sta­tus, it’s the venue that’s the biggest sto­ry here. Gar­low, like John­son, was a promi­nent defend­er of Trump’s attempts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results and is quite open about his Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy. And while Gar­low’s name may not show up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list, he is very much a fel­low trav­el­er:

Rolling Stone

Mike John­son: ‘Depraved’ Amer­i­ca Deserves God’s Wrath

Cit­ing the increase in queer youth, John­son called Amer­i­can cul­ture “dark and depraved” on a call with a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pas­tor

By Tim Dick­in­son
Novem­ber 15, 2023

In an Octo­ber prayer call host­ed by a Chris­t­ian-nation­al­ist MAGA pas­tor, Rep. Mike John­son was trou­bled that America’s wicked­ness was invit­ing God’s wrath.

Talk­ing to pas­tor Jim Gar­low on a broad­cast of the World Prayer Net­work, John­son spoke omi­nous­ly of Amer­i­ca fac­ing a “civ­i­liza­tion­al moment.” He said, “The only ques­tion is: Is God going to allow our nation to enter a time of judg­ment for our col­lec­tive sins? … Or is he going to give us one more chance to restore the foun­da­tions and return to Him?”

The seg­ment was filmed Oct. 3, just weeks before Johnson’s unex­pect­ed rise to become speak­er of the House. Gar­low pressed the clean-cut Louisiana con­gress­man to say “more about this ‘time of judg­ment’ for Amer­i­ca.” John­son replied: “The cul­ture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irre­deemable.” He cit­ed, as sup­posed evi­dence, the decline of nation­al church atten­dance and the rise of LGBTQ youth — the fact, John­son lament­ed, that “one-in-four high school stu­dents iden­ti­fies as some­thing oth­er than straight.”

Dis­cussing the risk of divine ret­ri­bu­tion, John­son invoked Sodom, the Old Tes­ta­ment city destroyed by God for its wicked­ness with a rain of burn­ing sul­fur. John­son is a pol­ished ora­tor, but in a clos­ing prayer with Gar­low he grew tear­ful. John­son intoned, “We repent for our sins indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly. And we ask that You not give us the judg­ment that we clear­ly deserve.”

Remark­ably, this was not the first time John­son brought up his fear of bib­li­cal ret­ri­bu­tion on a broad­cast with Gar­low. Dur­ing a WPN appear­ance last Decem­ber, John­son like­wise declared that he’d been “bur­dened” by the need for Amer­i­ca to “rec­og­nize there’s so much to repent for.” The future speak­er elab­o­rat­ed, “We’re vio­lat­ing His com­mands. We’re invent­ing new ways to do evil.” He added, “We have to ask our­selves: How long can His mer­cy and His grace be held back?”

The prayer calls under­score the new House speaker’s alarm­ing align­ment with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism — the extrem­ist move­ment that holds Amer­i­ca is not a sec­u­lar democ­ra­cy but was found­ed as a Chris­t­ian nation and should be gov­erned to uphold a fun­da­men­tal­ist moral­i­ty. They also pro­vide fresh evi­dence of Johnson’s apoc­a­lyp­tic world­view, in which he sees Amer­i­ca as exist­ing in “dis­as­trous, calami­tous” times and “hang­ing by a thread.” It rais­es ques­tions about whether the Repub­li­can, who’s now sec­ond in line for the pres­i­den­cy, is lever­ag­ing his pow­er not just to avoid a gov­ern­ment shut­down, but to appease an angry deity — and avoid a more per­ma­nent Heav­en­ly Shut­down.

Pas­tor Jim Gar­low is not a house­hold name, but he’s a nation­al fig­ure. A Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist based out of the San Diego area, Gar­low is viewed as an “apos­tle” with­in the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion, a strain of Charis­mat­ic Chris­tian­i­ty that holds that gifts of the spir­it — includ­ing prophe­cy — are not bib­li­cal bygones, but alive in our time. NAR dif­fer­en­ti­ates itself from oth­er strains of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty in its obses­sion with earth­ly pow­er. NAR lead­ers embrace “domin­ion­ism,” the con­cept that Chris­tians are sup­posed to rise and rule over “the nations,” in order to bring the globe into a bib­li­cal align­ment, in prepa­ra­tion for the sec­ond com­ing of Jesus.

To Gar­low, this trans­for­ma­tion is to be achieved through the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date” — with Chris­tians ascend­ing to the tops of sev­en cul­tur­al moun­tains (also referred to as “spheres of influ­ence”): reli­gion, fam­i­ly, edu­ca­tion, media, enter­tain­ment, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ment. “We’re the ones called the dis­ci­ple the nation,” Gar­low has said, teach­ing on the con­cept, “and we dis­ci­ple the nations through those sev­en spheres of influ­ence.”

John­son is a pro­fessed Bap­tist. But the 51-year-old has known Gar­low for “two decades or more,” he revealed on a third WPN call from 2021. John­son calls Gar­low a “pro­found influ­ence” on “my life and my walk with Christ.” Gar­low, using sim­i­lar lan­guage, calls John­son “a spe­cial broth­er.” (Nei­ther the speaker’s office nor Gar­low have respond­ed to ques­tions from Rolling Stone.)

In the prayer call videos, John­son appears unphased — in fact delight­ed — by the sho­far-bleat­ing the­atrics fea­tured on Garlow’s broad­cast. NAR Chris­tians not only fetishize the prac­tices of the Old Tes­ta­ment, they believe in spir­i­tu­al war­fare — an ongo­ing bat­tle between demons and angels that influ­ences cur­rent events. John­son speaks flu­ent­ly in this faith lan­guage on the call. He salutes the “prayer war­riors” in the audi­ence, and calls for “super­nat­ur­al inter­ven­tion” from God, to “with­hold the wrath of our ene­mies here on the Earth” and also to “restrain The Ene­my, the one that prowls around like a roar­ing lion.” John­son even offers a spe­cial shout-out for “all those who are lead­ing out in the field, in their spheres of influ­ence.”

Matthew Tay­lor is a reli­gion schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian, & Jew­ish Stud­ies, as well as an NAR expert who first high­light­ed Johnson’s links to Gar­low. Tay­lor describes Gar­low as “one of the front­line peo­ple for the NAR.” But he con­fess­es it is chal­leng­ing to know what to make of Johnson’s invo­ca­tion of the movement’s argot. “Is he speak­ing the local ver­nac­u­lar when he’s hang­ing out with Jim Gar­low? Does he real­ly believe in spir­i­tu­al war­fare? I don’t know. Jim Gar­low real­ly believes this stuff.”

...

Now in his mid-70s, Gar­low describes him­self as hav­ing received a “gov­ern­men­tal annoint­ing” when he was just a child, and has long preached pol­i­tics from the pul­pit. In 2008, he played a lead­ing role in pro­mot­ing the pas­sage of Prop 8 — a Cal­i­for­nia ini­tia­tive, root­ed in anti-gay big­otry that for a time out­lawed same-sex mar­riages in the state. In 2010, he joined on as chair­man of a Newt Gin­grich project called Renew­ing Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship, ded­i­cat­ed to “pre­serv­ing” America’s “Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage.” In 2018, Gar­low depart­ed his megachurch to focus on a new project, Well Versed, a group ded­i­cat­ed to min­is­ter­ing to mem­bers of Con­gress and the Unit­ed Nations. The min­istry car­ries an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist mes­sage, insist­ing that pol­i­tics “need to con­form to God’s Word, since He is the one who estab­lished gov­ern­ment and estab­lish­es nations.”

John­son and Gar­low are fel­low trav­el­ers in many key respects — includ­ing in that they’re both unabashed Trump boost­ers and elec­tion deniers. John­son first won office in the 2016 elec­tion, the same year Trump took the pres­i­den­cy, and infa­mous­ly helped prop­a­gate the Big Lie about the 2020 elec­tion from inside Capi­tol Hill. Gar­low was part of a small cir­cle of pas­tors around Trump dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion, even lay­ing hands on the pres­i­dent dur­ing Oval Office prayer. In Novem­ber 2020, Gar­low penned an op-ed for Charis­ma News endors­ing Trump, writ­ing, “God has put him in this posi­tion at this time. We need to keep him there.”

In the Decem­ber after­math of that elec­tion, Gar­low was the lead author of an open let­ter to Trump declar­ing that “God’s ordained assign­ment remains unfin­ished,” because “God’s will is for you to serve for a sec­ond term.” The let­ter con­clud­ed with a prophet­ic call for vengeance: “Mr. Pres­i­dent, the Lord is telling you to pur­sue the ene­mies of our Repub­lic. Our ene­mies are God’s ene­mies. And with the pow­er of God and the glob­al pray­ing church behind you, you shall recov­er all that the ene­mies have stolen.” (Sep­a­rate­ly, Gar­low was dis­miss­ing the ide­ol­o­gy of the incom­ing Biden-Har­ris tick­et as “anti-Christ, anti-Bib­li­cal to its core.”)

Dur­ing this post-elec­tion peri­od, Gar­low began a series of “Prayer Calls for Elec­tion Integri­ty” seek­ing divine inter­ven­tion to keep Trump in pow­er. These calls became a “hub of gath­er­ing, rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion, and plan­ning,” recalls Tay­lor. The calls includ­ed bor­der­line-sedi­tious rhetoric in advance of the unrest at the Capi­tol, includ­ing a call by then-Penn­syl­va­nia state Sen. Doug Mas­tri­ano for MAGA Repub­li­cans to “seize the pow­er” on Jan 6.

Garlow’s calls nev­er stopped when Biden took office. They mor­phed, instead, into a gen­er­al-pur­pose Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist broad­cast now labeled the World Prayer Net­work, cen­tered on “the Trans­for­ma­tion of Nations.” Despite reg­u­lar­ly fea­tur­ing GOP law­mak­ers, the online descrip­tion of the broad­cast insists it is not about Repub­li­cans vs. Democ­rats, insist­ing rather: “We ARE about God vs. Satan.” At the begin­ning of each call, Gar­low says he’s seek­ing “bib­li­cal jus­tice as opposed to social jus­tice.”

Johnson’s link to Gar­low goes well beyond appear­ing on these prayer calls. In Feb­ru­ary, John­son, Gar­low, and Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil pres­i­dent Tony Perkins — whom John­son says “is like my big broth­er” — orga­nized a Nation­al Gath­er­ing for Prayer and Repen­tance at the Nation­al Muse­um of the Bible. The ear­ly-morn­ing event was attend­ed by lead­ing Charis­mat­ic fig­ures like the Mes­sian­ic Rab­bi Jonathan Cahn and for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Michele Bach­mann, as well as more than a dozen mem­bers of Con­gress — includ­ing then-Speak­er Kevin McCarthy and House Major­i­ty Leader Steve Scalise.

The dole­ful day began with a bleat of a ram’s horn and intro­duc­to­ry words from Gar­low, who wel­comed “Amer­i­cans repent­ing for the sins of our nation.” Gar­low then pre­sent­ed a stark warn­ing, invok­ing two bib­li­cal king­doms of Israel that he said squan­dered heav­en­ly favor only to have God “take them out.” Amer­i­ca, he sug­gest­ed, was on that same path: “Present-day Amer­i­cans do not con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that God could…” He stopped dra­mat­i­cal­ly ask­ing the assem­bly to “fin­ish the sen­tence.”

Gar­low insists that his bib­li­cal call­ing is way past par­ti­san­ship. But he uses the Bible to blithe­ly sup­port stuff that Repub­li­cans want to do any­way. His web­site insists, for exam­ple, that frack­ing is holy because “ener­gy inde­pen­dence is a bib­li­cal issue” and “we are to have domin­ion over the earth, to ‘sub­due’ it, and to ‘stew­ard’ it for the Cre­ator.”

In his con­ver­sa­tions with Gar­low, John­son like­wise express­es pride that the House GOP’s gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples — e.g., lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, “peace through strength,” fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, and free mar­kets — “are the prin­ci­ples of our Cre­ator.” John­son points to the sup­posed holi­ness of the Repub­li­can agen­da to insist: “That’s why we can be so fer­vent about it.”

Yet even as he talks up divine sup­port for the Amer­i­can GOP, John­son makes clear he does not believe that many of his GOP col­leagues are true Chris­tians. On the Decem­ber 2022 call, he relates to lis­ten­ers how Gar­low “asked me the oth­er day, ‘How many do you think you would count as as tru­ly com­mit­ted Christ fol­low­ers?’” John­son reveals his count is less than a quar­ter of the GOP con­fer­ence. “I think in the House, I could col­lect, maybe 45, close to 50 peo­ple who I believe [are true] Christ fol­low­ers, and they live that every day,” John­son says.

...

Ulti­mate­ly John­son voic­es some opti­mism that the “rem­nant” will be big enough — express­ing hope that, “He’ll guide us through,” because, “I don’t think God is done with Amer­i­ca.” John­son insists that’s only because of the God­ly found­ing of Amer­i­ca. “We are a nation sub­servient to Him,” he says, adding that “col­lec­tive­ly as a nation, we need to turn to Him. We need a revival.”

———-

“Mike John­son: ‘Depraved’ Amer­i­ca Deserves God’s Wrath” by Tim Dick­in­son; Rolling Stone; 11/15/2023

“The prayer calls under­score the new House speaker’s alarm­ing align­ment with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism — the extrem­ist move­ment that holds Amer­i­ca is not a sec­u­lar democ­ra­cy but was found­ed as a Chris­t­ian nation and should be gov­erned to uphold a fun­da­men­tal­ist moral­i­ty. They also pro­vide fresh evi­dence of Johnson’s apoc­a­lyp­tic world­view, in which he sees Amer­i­ca as exist­ing in “dis­as­trous, calami­tous” times and “hang­ing by a thread.” It rais­es ques­tions about whether the Repub­li­can, who’s now sec­ond in line for the pres­i­den­cy, is lever­ag­ing his pow­er not just to avoid a gov­ern­ment shut­down, but to appease an angry deity — and avoid a more per­ma­nent Heav­en­ly Shut­down.”

We did­n’t exact­ly need fur­ther evi­dence of Mike John­son’s Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. But here is it: an Octo­ber prayer call where John­son laments how dark, depraved, and near­ly irre­deemable Amer­i­can cul­ture is with all the LGBTQ youths run­ning around. Divine ret­ri­bu­tion is at hand. Amer­i­ca is Sodom. Dis­turb­ing sen­ti­ments made all the more dis­turb­ing by the fact that this con­ver­sa­tion took place dur­ing a prayer call host­ed by a Chris­t­ian-nation­al­ist MAGA pas­tor Jim Gar­low and broad­cast on Gar­low’s World Prayer Net­work. Mike John­son was shar­ing these sen­ti­ments with a pow­er­ful net­work of fel­low domin­ion­ist. John­son may be a Bap­tist, but that has­n’t pre­vent­ed New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) domin­ion­ists preach­ers like Gar­low from being becom­ing a “pro­found influ­ence” on John­son. These are close polit­i­cal allies:

...
The seg­ment was filmed Oct. 3, just weeks before Johnson’s unex­pect­ed rise to become speak­er of the House. Gar­low pressed the clean-cut Louisiana con­gress­man to say “more about this ‘time of judg­ment’ for Amer­i­ca.” John­son replied: “The cul­ture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irre­deemable.” He cit­ed, as sup­posed evi­dence, the decline of nation­al church atten­dance and the rise of LGBTQ youth — the fact, John­son lament­ed, that “one-in-four high school stu­dents iden­ti­fies as some­thing oth­er than straight.”

Dis­cussing the risk of divine ret­ri­bu­tion, John­son invoked Sodom, the Old Tes­ta­ment city destroyed by God for its wicked­ness with a rain of burn­ing sul­fur. John­son is a pol­ished ora­tor, but in a clos­ing prayer with Gar­low he grew tear­ful. John­son intoned, “We repent for our sins indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly. And we ask that You not give us the judg­ment that we clear­ly deserve.”

Remark­ably, this was not the first time John­son brought up his fear of bib­li­cal ret­ri­bu­tion on a broad­cast with Gar­low. Dur­ing a WPN appear­ance last Decem­ber, John­son like­wise declared that he’d been “bur­dened” by the need for Amer­i­ca to “rec­og­nize there’s so much to repent for.” The future speak­er elab­o­rat­ed, “We’re vio­lat­ing His com­mands. We’re invent­ing new ways to do evil.” He added, “We have to ask our­selves: How long can His mer­cy and His grace be held back?”

...

Pas­tor Jim Gar­low is not a house­hold name, but he’s a nation­al fig­ure. A Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist based out of the San Diego area, Gar­low is viewed as an “apos­tle” with­in the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion, a strain of Charis­mat­ic Chris­tian­i­ty that holds that gifts of the spir­it — includ­ing prophe­cy — are not bib­li­cal bygones, but alive in our time. NAR dif­fer­en­ti­ates itself from oth­er strains of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty in its obses­sion with earth­ly pow­er. NAR lead­ers embrace “domin­ion­ism,” the con­cept that Chris­tians are sup­posed to rise and rule over “the nations,” in order to bring the globe into a bib­li­cal align­ment, in prepa­ra­tion for the sec­ond com­ing of Jesus.

To Gar­low, this trans­for­ma­tion is to be achieved through the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date” — with Chris­tians ascend­ing to the tops of sev­en cul­tur­al moun­tains (also referred to as “spheres of influ­ence”): reli­gion, fam­i­ly, edu­ca­tion, media, enter­tain­ment, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ment. “We’re the ones called the dis­ci­ple the nation,” Gar­low has said, teach­ing on the con­cept, “and we dis­ci­ple the nations through those sev­en spheres of influ­ence.”

John­son is a pro­fessed Bap­tist. But the 51-year-old has known Gar­low for “two decades or more,” he revealed on a third WPN call from 2021. John­son calls Gar­low a “pro­found influ­ence” on “my life and my walk with Christ.” Gar­low, using sim­i­lar lan­guage, calls John­son “a spe­cial broth­er.” (Nei­ther the speaker’s office nor Gar­low have respond­ed to ques­tions from Rolling Stone.)

...

Gar­low insists that his bib­li­cal call­ing is way past par­ti­san­ship. But he uses the Bible to blithe­ly sup­port stuff that Repub­li­cans want to do any­way. His web­site insists, for exam­ple, that frack­ing is holy because “ener­gy inde­pen­dence is a bib­li­cal issue” and “we are to have domin­ion over the earth, to ‘sub­due’ it, and to ‘stew­ard’ it for the Cre­ator.”

In his con­ver­sa­tions with Gar­low, John­son like­wise express­es pride that the House GOP’s gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples — e.g., lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, “peace through strength,” fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, and free mar­kets — “are the prin­ci­ples of our Cre­ator.” John­son points to the sup­posed holi­ness of the Repub­li­can agen­da to insist: “That’s why we can be so fer­vent about it.”
...

As anoth­er exam­ple of how NAR lead­ers like Gar­low close­ly coor­di­nates with the broad­er net­work of polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed reli­gious lead­ers asso­ci­at­ed with this domin­ion­ist move­ment, note how John­son, Gar­low, and Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil pres­i­dent Tony Perkins (CNP Pres­i­dent from 2014–2018) orga­nized the Nation­al Gath­er­ing for Prayer and Repen­tance back in Feb­ru­ary. It’s a big domin­ion­ist tent:

...
Johnson’s link to Gar­low goes well beyond appear­ing on these prayer calls. In Feb­ru­ary, John­son, Gar­low, and Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil pres­i­dent Tony Perkins — whom John­son says “is like my big broth­er” — orga­nized a Nation­al Gath­er­ing for Prayer and Repen­tance at the Nation­al Muse­um of the Bible. The ear­ly-morn­ing event was attend­ed by lead­ing Charis­mat­ic fig­ures like the Mes­sian­ic Rab­bi Jonathan Cahn and for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Michele Bach­mann, as well as more than a dozen mem­bers of Con­gress — includ­ing then-Speak­er Kevin McCarthy and House Major­i­ty Leader Steve Scalise.

The dole­ful day began with a bleat of a ram’s horn and intro­duc­to­ry words from Gar­low, who wel­comed “Amer­i­cans repent­ing for the sins of our nation.” Gar­low then pre­sent­ed a stark warn­ing, invok­ing two bib­li­cal king­doms of Israel that he said squan­dered heav­en­ly favor only to have God “take them out.” Amer­i­ca, he sug­gest­ed, was on that same path: “Present-day Amer­i­cans do not con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that God could…” He stopped dra­mat­i­cal­ly ask­ing the assem­bly to “fin­ish the sen­tence.”
...

And so, giv­en this close alliance between Gar­low and John­son, we should­n’t be sur­prise to learn that Gar­low became one of the reli­gious lead­ers advo­cat­ing for the over­turn­ing of the 2020 elec­tion. Because of course he was. Gar­low is clear­ly part of the same CNP-affil­i­at­ed net­work of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers who helped to for­mu­late the Trump White House­’s strat­e­gy that cul­mi­nat­ed in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. It’s the same group:

...
John­son and Gar­low are fel­low trav­el­ers in many key respects — includ­ing in that they’re both unabashed Trump boost­ers and elec­tion deniers. John­son first won office in the 2016 elec­tion, the same year Trump took the pres­i­den­cy, and infa­mous­ly helped prop­a­gate the Big Lie about the 2020 elec­tion from inside Capi­tol Hill. Gar­low was part of a small cir­cle of pas­tors around Trump dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion, even lay­ing hands on the pres­i­dent dur­ing Oval Office prayer. In Novem­ber 2020, Gar­low penned an op-ed for Charis­ma News endors­ing Trump, writ­ing, “God has put him in this posi­tion at this time. We need to keep him there.”

In the Decem­ber after­math of that elec­tion, Gar­low was the lead author of an open let­ter to Trump declar­ing that “God’s ordained assign­ment remains unfin­ished,” because “God’s will is for you to serve for a sec­ond term.” The let­ter con­clud­ed with a prophet­ic call for vengeance: “Mr. Pres­i­dent, the Lord is telling you to pur­sue the ene­mies of our Repub­lic. Our ene­mies are God’s ene­mies. And with the pow­er of God and the glob­al pray­ing church behind you, you shall recov­er all that the ene­mies have stolen.” (Sep­a­rate­ly, Gar­low was dis­miss­ing the ide­ol­o­gy of the incom­ing Biden-Har­ris tick­et as “anti-Christ, anti-Bib­li­cal to its core.”)

Dur­ing this post-elec­tion peri­od, Gar­low began a series of “Prayer Calls for Elec­tion Integri­ty” seek­ing divine inter­ven­tion to keep Trump in pow­er. These calls became a “hub of gath­er­ing, rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion, and plan­ning,” recalls Tay­lor. The calls includ­ed bor­der­line-sedi­tious rhetoric in advance of the unrest at the Capi­tol, includ­ing a call by then-Penn­syl­va­nia state Sen. Doug Mas­tri­ano for MAGA Repub­li­cans to “seize the pow­er” on Jan 6.
...

Intrigu­ing­ly, in 2018, Gar­low start­ed a new project, Well Versed, that pur­ports to be a be a group ded­i­cat­ed to min­is­ter­ing to mem­bers of Con­gress and the Unit­ed Nations with overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist mes­sages. It almost sounds like a new ver­sion of The Fel­low­ship (aka, “The Fam­i­ly”). So the pro-insur­rec­tion Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lob­by has a spe­cial new group focused on lob­by­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Great:

...
Now in his mid-70s, Gar­low describes him­self as hav­ing received a “gov­ern­men­tal annoint­ing” when he was just a child, and has long preached pol­i­tics from the pul­pit. In 2008, he played a lead­ing role in pro­mot­ing the pas­sage of Prop 8 — a Cal­i­for­nia ini­tia­tive, root­ed in anti-gay big­otry that for a time out­lawed same-sex mar­riages in the state. In 2010, he joined on as chair­man of a Newt Gin­grich project called Renew­ing Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship, ded­i­cat­ed to “pre­serv­ing” America’s “Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage.” In 2018, Gar­low depart­ed his megachurch to focus on a new project, Well Versed, a group ded­i­cat­ed to min­is­ter­ing to mem­bers of Con­gress and the Unit­ed Nations. The min­istry car­ries an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist mes­sage, insist­ing that pol­i­tics “need to con­form to God’s Word, since He is the one who estab­lished gov­ern­ment and estab­lish­es nations.”

...

Garlow’s calls nev­er stopped when Biden took office. They mor­phed, instead, into a gen­er­al-pur­pose Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist broad­cast now labeled the World Prayer Net­work, cen­tered on “the Trans­for­ma­tion of Nations.” Despite reg­u­lar­ly fea­tur­ing GOP law­mak­ers, the online descrip­tion of the broad­cast insists it is not about Repub­li­cans vs. Democ­rats, insist­ing rather: “We ARE about God vs. Satan.” At the begin­ning of each call, Gar­low says he’s seek­ing “bib­li­cal jus­tice as opposed to social jus­tice.”
...

So in case it’s not entire­ly clear that Jim Gar­low is very much an active mem­ber of the CNP-led ‘edu­ca­tion reform’ move­ment, here’s an excel­lent piece by Jen­nifer Cohn in the Bucks Coun­ty Bea­con detail­ing the exten­sive ties between Moms for Lib­er­ty (M4L) — the CNP’s lat­est ‘edu­ca­tion reform’ front group — and domin­ion­ists like Jim Gar­low. And domin­ion­ists like promi­nent CNP pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. Bap­tist. NAR. What­ev­er. Domin­ion­ism comes in many forms and the CNP is its umbrel­la:

Bucks Coun­ty Bea­con

Moms for Lib­er­ty and the Domin­ion­ist Assault on America’s ‘Edu­ca­tion Moun­tain’

The “sev­en moun­tains” man­date is a strat­e­gy used by Chris­t­ian suprema­cists in order to achieve soci­etal domin­ion for God. They seek con­trol over these sev­en spheres: busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, fam­i­ly, reli­gion, media, edu­ca­tion, and enter­tain­ment.

by Jen­nifer Cohn
Novem­ber 5, 2023

By now, many vot­ers have heard that Moms for Lib­er­ty, an anti-LGBTQ+ orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to take over pub­lic school boards nation­wide, has been des­ig­nat­ed as an extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC).

Few­er are aware that the “parental rights” slo­gan cham­pi­oned by Moms for Lib­er­ty derives from the Chris­t­ian home­school­ing move­ment led by Michael Far­ris, a high­ly influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cal attor­ney who once wrote that Chris­tians will know they have suc­ceed­ed when their chil­dren “engage whole­heart­ed­ly in the bat­tle to take the land.” (I have pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on Far­ris, includ­ing the leg­isla­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion between Moms for Lib­er­ty and a “parental rights” orga­ni­za­tion tied to Far­ris.)

Like­wise, few are aware that Moms for Lib­er­ty col­lab­o­rates with influ­en­tial pro­po­nents of the so-called ““sev­en moun­tains” man­date, the belief that Chris­tians have a man­date from God to step out­side of their church­es and head into their com­mu­ni­ties to help claim the fol­low­ing “moun­tains” for God: busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, fam­i­ly, reli­gion, media, edu­ca­tion, and enter­tain­ment.

The sev­en moun­tains man­date (some­times called the “sev­en spheres” or “sev­en pil­lars” of cul­tur­al influ­ence) was pop­u­lar­ized by Lance Wall­nau, a lead­ing apos­tle in the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR), as I report­ed here and here. The NAR is an under­re­port­ed and polit­i­cal­ly influ­en­tial world­wide move­ment and net­work of neo-charis­mat­ic Chris­t­ian author­i­tar­i­an zealots. Sev­er­al promi­nent NAR lead­ers were heav­i­ly involved with the eevents of Jan. 6, as I and a hand­ful of oth­ers (includ­ing reli­gious schol­ar Matthew Tay­lor and reli­gious extrem­ism researcher Bruce Wil­son) have warned repeat­ed­ly.

The NAR was named and orga­nized by the late C. Peter Wag­n­er, who wrote in 2007 that the sev­en moun­tains had “become a per­ma­nent fix­ture in my per­son­al teach­ing on tak­ing domin­ion,” adding that “our the­o­log­i­cal bedrock is what has been known as Domin­ion The­ol­o­gy.” He explained that, “Domin­ion has to do with con­trol. Domin­ion has to do with ruler­ship. Domin­ion has to do with author­i­ty and sub­du­ing. And it relates to soci­ety. In oth­er words, what the val­ues are in Heav­en need to be made man­i­fest here on earth. Domin­ion means being the head and not the tail. Domin­ion means rul­ing as kings … So we are kings for domin­ion.”

...

“The lead­er­ship of the Chris­t­ian Right has for decades been telling us that they want to demol­ish the pub­lic school sys­tem & replace it w/Christian schools fund­ed by tax­pay­er dol­lars...” Lis­ten to Edi­tor @cmychalejko’s full inter­view w/@kathsstewart: https://t.co/WI49fgpNEm pic.twitter.com/YhwTK67Lpv— BucksCoun­ty­Bea­con (@BucksCoBeacon) Octo­ber 25, 2023

Domin­ion the­ol­o­gy (domin­ion­ism) and the sev­en moun­tains phi­los­o­phy are not, how­ev­er, exclu­sive to the NAR. The sev­en moun­tains, for exam­ple, has also been pro­mot­ed by the likes of Turn­ing Point USA founder Char­lie Kirk, as well as Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz (R‑TX).

Unbe­knownst to most of the pub­lic, the NAR and oth­er sev­en moun­tains pro­po­nents have been involved in exten­sive efforts to take over pub­lic school boards: the so-called “edu­ca­tion moun­tain.” Kirk’s orga­ni­za­tion, for exam­ple, tar­gets pub­lic schools nation­wide, as report­ed by Doc­u­ment­ed, while Rafael Cruz has con­duct­ed week­ly Bible study class­es for Patri­ot Mobile, a Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny that tar­gets pub­lic school boards in Texas, as report­ed by NBC News.

Mean­while, NAR leader Lance Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, which tar­gets pub­lic schools in Col­orado and beyond, as report­ed by Reli­gion Dis­patch­es.

Truth and Lib­er­ty has also col­lab­o­rat­ed with Moms for Lib­er­ty in Col­orado, as report­ed by pub­lic school advo­cate Rob Rogers. Its web­site states that the orga­ni­za­tion seeks to “edu­cate, uni­fy and mobi­lize believ­ers in Jesus Christ to affect the ref­or­ma­tion of nations through the sev­en moun­tains of cul­tur­al influ­ence.” (Empha­sis added.)

Truth and Lib­er­ty direc­tor Lance Wallnau’s involve­ment in school board takeovers should con­cern every­one who cares about pub­lic schools because, in addi­tion to his sev­en moun­tains phi­los­o­phy, Wall­nau has explic­it­ly stat­ed that Amer­i­ca must “destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion before it destroys us” (as ini­tial­ly report­ed by Ellle hardy in her book, Beyond Belief: How Pen­te­costal Chris­tian­i­ty is Tak­ing Over the World).

In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged to his fol­low­ers that “we” (an appar­ent ref­er­ence to like-mind­ed reli­gious zealots) 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.”

[see screen­shot of tweet]

The stealth nature of this Chris­t­ian suprema­cist assault should con­cern sup­port­ers of pub­lic edu­ca­tion, as should the alliance that influ­en­tial sev­en moun­tains pro­po­nents have forged with Moms for Lib­er­ty, which has an esti­mat­ed “103,000 mem­bers across 278 chap­ters in 47 states,” accord­ing to a report ear­li­er this month by the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.

I first noticed this alliance in Novem­ber 2022, when I found that Moms for Lib­er­ty co-founder Tina Descovich had appeared on sep­a­rate shows host­ed by sev­en moun­tains pro­mot­ers Jim Gar­low (a promi­nent NAR leader) and David Bar­ton, a renowned oppo­nent of the sep­a­ra­tion between church and state. Bar­ton also sits on the board of Truth and Lib­er­ty with Wall­nau and found­ed an orga­ni­za­tion called Wall­Builders. (FN1)

[see screen­shot of tweet]

Gar­low, who once called same-sex mar­riage a “demon­ic hap­pen­ing,” has express­ly pro­mot­ed the “sev­en spheres of influ­ence.” In a video clip post­ed by Right Wing Watch, he explained to his audi­ence that these “sev­en spheres” include “the home; the church; civ­il gov­ern­ment; busi­ness, which includes tech­nol­o­gy; arts and enter­tain­ment, which includes sports; edu­ca­tion, and … media.” He also pro­claimed that, “I’m not the one who came up with this. This has been giv­en by God for decades now.”

As for Bar­ton, he and his son, Tim Bar­ton, explic­it­ly pro­mot­ed the “Sev­en Moun­tain Phi­los­o­phy” dur­ing a pan­el. You can hear him dis­cuss the sev­en moun­tains in a video post­ed by researcher @KiraResistance on X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter).

[see screen­shot of tweet]

The old­er Bar­ton also sits on the board of Unit­ed in Pur­pose, a Chris­t­ian data min­ing out­fit tied to both a mas­sive vot­er data leak in 2015 and to mes­sag­ing and financ­ing of the Big Lie in 2020, as I report­ed last year. Unit­ed in Pur­pose was found­ed by Bill Dal­las, a con­vict­ed embez­zler who has said that Unit­ed in Pur­pose seeks to trans­form cul­ture in “‘what some peo­ple call the sev­en moun­tains.”

As of 2019, Gar­low sat on the board of a relat­ed Unit­ed in Pur­pose enti­ty called Unit­ed in Pur­pose Edu­ca­tion.

Start­ing today, Unit­ed in Pur­pose Direc­tor Bob McEwen and Chris­t­ian poll­ster George Bar­na (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Cul­ture and Faith Insti­tute, a divi­sion of Unit­ed in Pur­pose) will attend a Lib­er­ty Pas­tors “train­ing camp” in Penn­syl­va­nia. This event was brought to my atten­tion by Bucks Coun­ty Bea­con reporter Jen­ny Stephens.

[see screen­shot of Lib­er­ty Pas­tors web­site]

...

Mean­while, the younger Bar­ton (who has said that “God nev­er intend­ed edu­ca­tion to be sec­u­lar”) spoke dur­ing the Moms for Lib­er­ty annu­al sum­mit in Penn­syl­va­nia ear­li­er this year.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

The Moms for Lib­er­ty sum­mit was spon­sored by, among oth­ers, the Penn­syl­va­nia Fam­i­ly Insti­tute, which is the state affil­i­ate of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil (FRC). The FRC’s strate­gic mod­el includes engag­ing church­es to pro­vide train­ing for con­gre­gants to invade local pol­i­tics, includ­ing school boards, via so-called “Cul­ture Impact Teams.”

To give you an idea of what the FRC would like to do to Amer­i­ca, it tweet­ed last year that “abor­tion is nev­er med­ical­ly nec­es­sary to save the life of the moth­er.”

[see screen­shot of tweet]

...

Accord­ing to PEN Amer­i­ca, Moms for Lib­er­ty has been “lead­ing the nation’s book ban move­ment,” as report­ed by jour­nal­ist Mau­rice Cun­ning­ham, writ­ing for the Bea­con.

Dur­ing the 2023 sum­mit spon­sored by the PA Fam­i­ly Insti­tute (FRC’s affil­i­ate), Moms for Lib­er­ty bestowed a “Lib­er­ty Sword” upon Mor­ton Black­well, founder of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, which employs Moms for Lib­er­ty co-founder Brid­get Ziegler and has trained legions of young Repub­li­can oper­a­tives that “moral out­rage is the most pow­er­ful moti­vat­ing force in pol­i­tics.”

[see screen­shot of tweet]

The 2022 Moms for Lib­er­ty sum­mit was also spon­sored by the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute (which con­tributed $50,000 to the event and has assist­ed Moms for Lib­er­ty with train­ings), as well as the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, as report­ed by Cun­ning­ham..

The sum­mit fea­tured Trump’s for­mer Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, Bet­sy DeVos, who once said that, “There are not enough phil­an­thropic dol­lars in Amer­i­ca to fund what is cur­rent­ly the need in edu­ca­tion … Our desire is to con­front the cul­ture in ways that will con­tin­ue to advance God’s king­dom.” Dur­ing her tenure in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, DeVos allowed reli­gious groups to “pro­vide tax­pay­er-fund­ed ser­vices in pri­vate schools,” as report­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Post.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

DeVos “has also been a force behind the spread of char­ter schools in Michi­gan, most of which have record­ed stu­dent test scores in read­ing and math below the state aver­age,” accord­ing to a Decem­ber 2016 report by the Wash­ing­ton Post.

Like­wise, DeVos is a big pro­po­nent of “school choice” in the form of vouch­ers, a strat­e­gy for redi­rect­ing tax­pay­er mon­ey from pub­lic schools to pri­vate (often reli­gious) schools, which get to choose which kids they will enroll and which they will turn away, unlike pub­lic schools.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

In March 2023, Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abott gave away the Christo­fas­cist endgame by pro­mot­ing “school choice” only to Chris­t­ian schools, as report­ed by the Texas Observ­er.

DeVos’s late father in law (Richard DeVos) and FRC pres­i­dent (Tony Perkins) are for­mer pres­i­dents of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP), a pow­er­ful umbrel­la and strat­e­gy group for the Chris­t­ian Right and wealthy donors. The CNP was heav­i­ly involved in efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, as report­ed by Shad­ow Net­work author Anne Nel­son. It has also advo­cat­ed the “vol­un­tary” replace­ment of pub­lic schools with pri­vate schools, church schools, and home schools as the nor­ma­tive Amer­i­can prac­tice .”(Ital­ics in orig­i­nal.)

(DeVos’s father, Edgar Prince, helped start FRC, and her moth­er, Elsa Prince, has belonged to the CNP’s “gold cir­cle.”)

The CNP is an “umbrel­la” in the sense that the lead­ers of many promi­nent Chris­t­ian Right orga­ni­za­tions belong to it, thus enabling them to coor­di­nate with each oth­er.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

Mor­ton Black­well (founder of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute), Michael Far­ris (founder of ParentalRights.org, the Home­school Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion, and Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege), Char­lie Kirk (founder of Turn­ing Point USA), and Edwin Feul­ner (founder of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion) are all list­ed in the CNP’s Sep­tem­ber 2020 direc­to­ry, where­as sev­en moun­tains pro­po­nent Bill Dal­las (founder of Unit­ed in Pur­pose) is list­ed in the CNP’s 2014 direc­to­ry. Unit­ed in Pur­pose direc­tor Bob McEwen is the CNP’s cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor,

Black­well (recip­i­ent of the 2023 Moms for Lib­er­ty “Lib­er­ty Sword”) sits on the CNP’s board of gov­er­nors, as does Far­ris. Black­well report­ed­ly helped found the CNP as well.

The Lead­er­ship Insti­tute spon­sors the Moms for Lib­er­ty sum­mit. @MassProfs wrote abt LI’s rela­tion­ship w/ M4L & how its founder Mor­ton Black­well wants to abol­ish pub­lic schools & replace them w/“free-market pri­vate schools, church schools, & home schools.” https://t.co/ysLwkZWUa6 pic.twitter.com/5CRF7GldXO— BucksCoun­ty­Bea­con (@BucksCoBeacon) June 30, 2023

Moms for Lib­er­ty seems to be the CNP’s lat­est weapon against pub­lic (sec­u­lar) edu­ca­tion.

If you want to send a chill down your spine, take a look at what CNP co-founder Gary North (now deceased) had to say on the sub­ject of edu­ca­tion, as ini­tial­ly report­ed by Reli­gion Dis­patch­es:

“We must use the doc­trine of reli­gious lib­er­ty to gain inde­pen­dence for Chris­t­ian schools until we train up a gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who know that there is no reli­gious neu­tral­i­ty, no neu­tral law, no neu­tral edu­ca­tion, and no neu­tral civ­il gov­ern­ment. Then they will get busy in con­struct­ing a Bible-based social, polit­i­cal and reli­gious order which final­ly denies the reli­gious lib­er­ty of the ene­mies of God.”

Below are some of the school board can­di­dates in Bucks Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia who are sup­port­ed by Moms for Lib­er­ty. The list is almost cer­tain­ly incom­plete because some can­di­dates don’t want vot­ers to know that they are backed by Moms for Lib­er­ty, an SPLC-des­ig­nat­ed extrem­ist group.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

...

Foot­note 1

Although this arti­cle focus­es on the so-called “edu­ca­tion moun­tain,” Chris­t­ian suprema­cists have also made alarm­ing progress scal­ing the “gov­ern­ment moun­tain.” NAR leader Jim Gar­low, for exam­ple, recent­ly gushed that new­ly elect­ed House Speak­er Mike John­son has had a “pro­found influ­ence” on his life, while Far­ris has said that John­son is the “high­est rank­ing, seri­ous bib­li­cal­ly trained per­son with a Chris­t­ian world­view gov­ern­ment offi­cial” in his life­time. “I’m very excit­ed about him,” he added.

[see screen­shot of tweets]

The new House Speak­er is also close with sev­en moun­tains pro­po­nent David Bar­ton. In 2021, John­son spoke dur­ing a Wall­builders event and said that Bar­ton had exert­ed a “pro­found influ­ence” on his life.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

———–

“Moms for Lib­er­ty and the Domin­ion­ist Assault on America’s ‘Edu­ca­tion Moun­tain’” by Jen­nifer Cohn; Bucks Coun­ty Bea­con; 11/05/2023

“Like­wise, few are aware that Moms for Lib­er­ty col­lab­o­rates with influ­en­tial pro­po­nents of the so-called ““sev­en moun­tains” man­date, the belief that Chris­tians have a man­date from God to step out­side of their church­es and head into their com­mu­ni­ties to help claim the fol­low­ing “moun­tains” for God: busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, fam­i­ly, reli­gion, media, edu­ca­tion, and enter­tain­ment.”

Moms for Lib­er­ty — the CNP’s lat­est ‘edu­ca­tion reform’ front group — is a domin­ion­ist enti­ty. Sur­prise! And while none of this should actu­al­ly be sur­pris­ing, it’s also all bare­ly rec­og­nized by the pub­lic at large. A stealth move­ment that includes NAR lead­er­ship but is not lim­it­ed to the NAR. It’s like an umbrel­la Sev­en Moun­tains domin­ion­ist move­ment:

...
Few­er are aware that the “parental rights” slo­gan cham­pi­oned by Moms for Lib­er­ty derives from the Chris­t­ian home­school­ing move­ment led by Michael Far­ris, a high­ly influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cal attor­ney who once wrote that Chris­tians will know they have suc­ceed­ed when their chil­dren “engage whole­heart­ed­ly in the bat­tle to take the land.” (I have pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on Far­ris, includ­ing the leg­isla­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion between Moms for Lib­er­ty and a “parental rights” orga­ni­za­tion tied to Far­ris.)

...

The sev­en moun­tains man­date (some­times called the “sev­en spheres” or “sev­en pil­lars” of cul­tur­al influ­ence) was pop­u­lar­ized by Lance Wall­nau, a lead­ing apos­tle in the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR), as I report­ed here and here. The NAR is an under­re­port­ed and polit­i­cal­ly influ­en­tial world­wide move­ment and net­work of neo-charis­mat­ic Chris­t­ian author­i­tar­i­an zealots. Sev­er­al promi­nent NAR lead­ers were heav­i­ly involved with the eevents of Jan. 6, as I and a hand­ful of oth­ers (includ­ing reli­gious schol­ar Matthew Tay­lor and reli­gious extrem­ism researcher Bruce Wil­son) have warned repeat­ed­ly.

The NAR was named and orga­nized by the late C. Peter Wag­n­er, who wrote in 2007 that the sev­en moun­tains had “become a per­ma­nent fix­ture in my per­son­al teach­ing on tak­ing domin­ion,” adding that “our the­o­log­i­cal bedrock is what has been known as Domin­ion The­ol­o­gy.” He explained that, “Domin­ion has to do with con­trol. Domin­ion has to do with ruler­ship. Domin­ion has to do with author­i­ty and sub­du­ing. And it relates to soci­ety. In oth­er words, what the val­ues are in Heav­en need to be made man­i­fest here on earth. Domin­ion means being the head and not the tail. Domin­ion means rul­ing as kings … So we are kings for domin­ion.”

...

Domin­ion the­ol­o­gy (domin­ion­ism) and the sev­en moun­tains phi­los­o­phy are not, how­ev­er, exclu­sive to the NAR. The sev­en moun­tains, for exam­ple, has also been pro­mot­ed by the likes of Turn­ing Point USA founder Char­lie Kirk, as well as Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz (R‑TX).

...

If you want to send a chill down your spine, take a look at what CNP co-founder Gary North (now deceased) had to say on the sub­ject of edu­ca­tion, as ini­tial­ly report­ed by Reli­gion Dis­patch­es:

“We must use the doc­trine of reli­gious lib­er­ty to gain inde­pen­dence for Chris­t­ian schools until we train up a gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who know that there is no reli­gious neu­tral­i­ty, no neu­tral law, no neu­tral edu­ca­tion, and no neu­tral civ­il gov­ern­ment. Then they will get busy in con­struct­ing a Bible-based social, polit­i­cal and reli­gious order which final­ly denies the reli­gious lib­er­ty of the ene­mies of God.”
...

And as we can see, Moms for Lib­er­ty isn’t the only domin­ion­ist group oper­at­ing in this ‘edu­ca­tion reform’ space on behalf of this ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ the­ol­o­gy. The Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion — which has NAR leader Lance Wall­nau sit­ting on its board — is a Moms and Lib­er­ty col­lab­o­ra­tor. Stealth col­lab­o­ra­tor, giv­en how this whole ‘reform’ move­ment is a stealth oper­a­tion:

...
Unbe­knownst to most of the pub­lic, the NAR and oth­er sev­en moun­tains pro­po­nents have been involved in exten­sive efforts to take over pub­lic school boards: the so-called “edu­ca­tion moun­tain.” Kirk’s orga­ni­za­tion, for exam­ple, tar­gets pub­lic schools nation­wide, as report­ed by Doc­u­ment­ed, while Rafael Cruz has con­duct­ed week­ly Bible study class­es for Patri­ot Mobile, a Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny that tar­gets pub­lic school boards in Texas, as report­ed by NBC News.

Mean­while, NAR leader Lance Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, which tar­gets pub­lic schools in Col­orado and beyond, as report­ed by Reli­gion Dis­patch­es.

Truth and Lib­er­ty has also col­lab­o­rat­ed with Moms for Lib­er­ty in Col­orado, as report­ed by pub­lic school advo­cate Rob Rogers. Its web­site states that the orga­ni­za­tion seeks to “edu­cate, uni­fy and mobi­lize believ­ers in Jesus Christ to affect the ref­or­ma­tion of nations through the sev­en moun­tains of cul­tur­al influ­ence.” (Empha­sis added.)

Truth and Lib­er­ty direc­tor Lance Wallnau’s involve­ment in school board takeovers should con­cern every­one who cares about pub­lic schools because, in addi­tion to his sev­en moun­tains phi­los­o­phy, Wall­nau has explic­it­ly stat­ed that Amer­i­ca must “destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion before it destroys us” (as ini­tial­ly report­ed by Ellle hardy in her book, Beyond Belief: How Pen­te­costal Chris­tian­i­ty is Tak­ing Over the World).

In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged to his fol­low­ers that “we” (an appar­ent ref­er­ence to like-mind­ed reli­gious zealots) 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.”

[see screen­shot of tweet]

The stealth nature of this Chris­t­ian suprema­cist assault should con­cern sup­port­ers of pub­lic edu­ca­tion, as should the alliance that influ­en­tial sev­en moun­tains pro­po­nents have forged with Moms for Lib­er­ty, which has an esti­mat­ed “103,000 mem­bers across 278 chap­ters in 47 states,” accord­ing to a report ear­li­er this month by the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.
...

And as we should expect to find, Moms for Lib­er­ty co-founder Tina Desco­v­ish has been mak­ing appear­ances on shows host­ed by promi­nent Sev­en Moun­tains pro­mot­ers Jim Gar­low and David Bar­ton, anoth­er one of fig­ures who has has a pro­found influ­ence on Mike John­son. It’s one big move­ment:

...
I first noticed this alliance in Novem­ber 2022, when I found that Moms for Lib­er­ty co-founder Tina Descovich had appeared on sep­a­rate shows host­ed by sev­en moun­tains pro­mot­ers Jim Gar­low (a promi­nent NAR leader) and David Bar­ton, a renowned oppo­nent of the sep­a­ra­tion between church and state. Bar­ton also sits on the board of Truth and Lib­er­ty with Wall­nau and found­ed an orga­ni­za­tion called Wall­Builders. (FN1)

[see screen­shot of tweet]

Gar­low, who once called same-sex mar­riage a “demon­ic hap­pen­ing,” has express­ly pro­mot­ed the “sev­en spheres of influ­ence.” In a video clip post­ed by Right Wing Watch, he explained to his audi­ence that these “sev­en spheres” include “the home; the church; civ­il gov­ern­ment; busi­ness, which includes tech­nol­o­gy; arts and enter­tain­ment, which includes sports; edu­ca­tion, and … media.” He also pro­claimed that, “I’m not the one who came up with this. This has been giv­en by God for decades now.”

As for Bar­ton, he and his son, Tim Bar­ton, explic­it­ly pro­mot­ed the “Sev­en Moun­tain Phi­los­o­phy” dur­ing a pan­el. You can hear him dis­cuss the sev­en moun­tains in a video post­ed by researcher @KiraResistance on X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter).
...

It’s one big move­ment oper­at­ing under the CNP’s umbrel­la. So when we see how David Bar­ton sets on the board of Chris­t­ian data min­ing firm Unit­ed in Pur­pose and Jim Gar­low sits on the board of the relat­ed Unit­ed in Pur­pose Edu­ca­tion, keep in mind that at Unit­ed in Pur­pose founder Bill Dal­las and direc­tor Bob McEwen are both CNP mem­bers along­side Bar­ton. McEwen is even the CNP’s exec­u­tive direc­tor. So while Gar­low’s name does­n’t show up on the CNP mem­ber­ship lists, he’s clear­ly part of this net­work:

...
The old­er Bar­ton also sits on the board of Unit­ed in Pur­pose, a Chris­t­ian data min­ing out­fit tied to both a mas­sive vot­er data leak in 2015 and to mes­sag­ing and financ­ing of the Big Lie in 2020, as I report­ed last year. Unit­ed in Pur­pose was found­ed by Bill Dal­las, a con­vict­ed embez­zler who has said that Unit­ed in Pur­pose seeks to trans­form cul­ture in “‘what some peo­ple call the sev­en moun­tains.”

As of 2019, Gar­low sat on the board of a relat­ed Unit­ed in Pur­pose enti­ty called Unit­ed in Pur­pose Edu­ca­tion.

Start­ing today, Unit­ed in Pur­pose Direc­tor Bob McEwen and Chris­t­ian poll­ster George Bar­na (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Cul­ture and Faith Insti­tute, a divi­sion of Unit­ed in Pur­pose) will attend a Lib­er­ty Pas­tors “train­ing camp” in Penn­syl­va­nia. This event was brought to my atten­tion by Bucks Coun­ty Bea­con reporter Jen­ny Stephens.
...

And when we see how this year’s Moms for Lib­er­ty sum­mit was spon­sored by the Penn­syl­va­nia branch of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil — found­ed by promi­nent CNP mem­ber Pres­i­dent Tony Perkins — recall how this was the same sum­mit where North Car­oli­na Lt Gov Mark Robin­son quot­ed Hitler dur­ing his speech, and not the first Moms for Lib­er­ty Hitler quote scan­dal from this year. Which is anoth­er reminder of the val­ue of stealth for this move­ment. Reli­gious extrem­ism isn’t the only form of extrem­ism man­i­fest­ing here:

...
Mean­while, the younger Bar­ton (who has said that “God nev­er intend­ed edu­ca­tion to be sec­u­lar”) spoke dur­ing the Moms for Lib­er­ty annu­al sum­mit in Penn­syl­va­nia ear­li­er this year.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

The Moms for Lib­er­ty sum­mit was spon­sored by, among oth­ers, the Penn­syl­va­nia Fam­i­ly Insti­tute, which is the state affil­i­ate of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil (FRC). The FRC’s strate­gic mod­el includes engag­ing church­es to pro­vide train­ing for con­gre­gants to invade local pol­i­tics, includ­ing school boards, via so-called “Cul­ture Impact Teams.”

To give you an idea of what the FRC would like to do to Amer­i­ca, it tweet­ed last year that “abor­tion is nev­er med­ical­ly nec­es­sary to save the life of the moth­er.”
...

Final­ly, don’t over­look how the many promi­nent CNP mem­bers in this net­work of edu­ca­tion ‘reform­ers’ — from Bet­sy DeVos to Mor­ton Black­well — also includes promi­nent CNP mem­ber Michael Far­ris, the fig­ure behind the Con­ven­tion of States move­ment to trans­form the US Con­sti­tu­tion. It’s a reminder that the long-game they are play­ing is very long indeed. Like per­ma­nent­ly long:

...
Dur­ing the 2023 sum­mit spon­sored by the PA Fam­i­ly Insti­tute (FRC’s affil­i­ate), Moms for Lib­er­ty bestowed a “Lib­er­ty Sword” upon Mor­ton Black­well, founder of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, which employs Moms for Lib­er­ty co-founder Brid­get Ziegler and has trained legions of young Repub­li­can oper­a­tives that “moral out­rage is the most pow­er­ful moti­vat­ing force in pol­i­tics.”

[see screen­shot of tweet]

The 2022 Moms for Lib­er­ty sum­mit was also spon­sored by the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute (which con­tributed $50,000 to the event and has assist­ed Moms for Lib­er­ty with train­ings), as well as the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, as report­ed by Cun­ning­ham..

The sum­mit fea­tured Trump’s for­mer Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, Bet­sy DeVos, who once said that, “There are not enough phil­an­thropic dol­lars in Amer­i­ca to fund what is cur­rent­ly the need in edu­ca­tion … Our desire is to con­front the cul­ture in ways that will con­tin­ue to advance God’s king­dom.” Dur­ing her tenure in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, DeVos allowed reli­gious groups to “pro­vide tax­pay­er-fund­ed ser­vices in pri­vate schools,” as report­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Post.

...

In March 2023, Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abott gave away the Christo­fas­cist endgame by pro­mot­ing “school choice” only to Chris­t­ian schools, as report­ed by the Texas Observ­er.

DeVos’s late father in law (Richard DeVos) and FRC pres­i­dent (Tony Perkins) are for­mer pres­i­dents of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP), a pow­er­ful umbrel­la and strat­e­gy group for the Chris­t­ian Right and wealthy donors. The CNP was heav­i­ly involved in efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, as report­ed by Shad­ow Net­work author Anne Nel­son. It has also advo­cat­ed the “vol­un­tary” replace­ment of pub­lic schools with pri­vate schools, church schools, and home schools as the nor­ma­tive Amer­i­can prac­tice .”(Ital­ics in orig­i­nal.)

(DeVos’s father, Edgar Prince, helped start FRC, and her moth­er, Elsa Prince, has belonged to the CNP’s “gold cir­cle.”)

The CNP is an “umbrel­la” in the sense that the lead­ers of many promi­nent Chris­t­ian Right orga­ni­za­tions belong to it, thus enabling them to coor­di­nate with each oth­er.

[see screen­shot of tweet]

Mor­ton Black­well (founder of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute), Michael Far­ris (founder of ParentalRights.org, the Home­school Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion, and Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege), Char­lie Kirk (founder of Turn­ing Point USA), and Edwin Feul­ner (founder of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion) are all list­ed in the CNP’s Sep­tem­ber 2020 direc­to­ry, where­as sev­en moun­tains pro­po­nent Bill Dal­las (founder of Unit­ed in Pur­pose) is list­ed in the CNP’s 2014 direc­to­ry. Unit­ed in Pur­pose direc­tor Bob McEwen is the CNP’s cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor,

Black­well (recip­i­ent of the 2023 Moms for Lib­er­ty “Lib­er­ty Sword”) sits on the CNP’s board of gov­er­nors, as does Far­ris. Black­well report­ed­ly helped found the CNP as well.

...

Moms for Lib­er­ty seems to be the CNP’s lat­est weapon against pub­lic (sec­u­lar) edu­ca­tion.
...

And that’s all part of the grim con­text of the com­ments Mike John­son made about the irre­deemable nature of Amer­i­can cul­ture, weeks before becom­ing the new Speak­er of the House and sec­ond in line for the pres­i­den­cy. John­son’s words word ugly, but it’s the con­text that is tru­ly chill­ing. Con­text that includes a pow­er­ful net­work of bad faith lead­ers of faith who nev­er seemed to quite learn the true teach­ings of Jesus but who def­i­nite­ly learned a lot from Machi­avel­li. A net­work that tried to secure a per­ma­nent grip on pow­er almost three years ago and is try­ing even hard­er to this day. A bad faith pow­er grab done in the name of Jesus. ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ cor­rupt­ed Bizarro Jesus. It’s a shock­ing­ly large stealth move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to coup­ing for Bizarro Jesus and it’s got prac­tice at this point.

You’re a lead­ing con­gres­sion­al mem­ber of a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist pow­er grab and you’ve just ascend­ed to the Speak­er­ship of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. And now one of the close­ly allied Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist lob­bies just invit­ed you to give the keynote address at their upcom­ing gala even at the Muse­um of the Bible in Wash­ing DC. What are you going to talk about dur­ing your speech to this group? Do you come straight out and crow about how Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is clos­er to per­ma­nent­ly grab­bing the reigns of pow­er than ever? Or stick with some sort of begin ue non-threat­en­ing pablum for pub­lic con­sump­tion?

These are the kinds of ques­tions recent­ly elect­ed House Speak­er Mike John­son is fac­ing now that he’s accept­ing an invi­ta­tion to give the keynote address at the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL) annu­al event on Decem­ber 5. As we’ve seen, the NACL is basi­cal­ly ALEC for push­ing ‘tem­plate’ Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist leg­is­la­tion at the state lev­el under the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) Evan­gel­i­cal the­ol­o­gy. Found­ed in 2020 by CNP mem­ber, and domin­ion­ist, Jason Rap­ert, NACL already claims to have leg­isla­tive mem­bers in 31 states. And here we are, just three years after its found­ing, and the NACL has a close ally as Speak­er of the House about to give the keynote address at its annu­al event. You can’t say they haven’t made progress. It might be progress back into the Dark Ages, but it’s progress.

And as we’re also going to see below, while John­son’s keynote speech as Speak­er is a pow­er­ful sym­bol of the suc­cess of the NAR move­men­t’s polit­i­cal ascen­dance, there’s anoth­er impor­tant sym­bol of the move­men­t’s suc­cess and it’s sit­ting right out­side Mike John­son’s con­gres­sion­al office. That would be the “Appeal to Heav­en” flag, a flag with roots going back to the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War but over the last decade has become adopt­ed as the kind of unstat­ed ref­er­ence to the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ NAR vision for the cap­ture of soci­ety. Fig­ures like Rap­ert start­ed advo­cat­ing for Evan­gel­i­cals to adopt the flag as a ral­ly­ing sym­bol around a decade ago. But it was in 2016, when NAR lead­ers began to tru­ly embrace Don­ald Trump, when the flag because syn­ony­mous with MAGA pol­i­tics too. Flash for­ward to Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, and we can find dozens of instances of this flag among the insur­rec­tionary crowds that stormed the Capi­tol.

And that’s the same flag now sit­ting out­side the House Speak­er’s con­gres­sion­al office. Which, all con­text con­sid­ered, is some pow­er­ful sym­bol­ism. Con­text made all the more pow­er­ful by the fact that the House Speak­er is going to give the keynote address to a group found­ed by these same domin­ion­ist:

Rolling Stone

Mike John­son to Keynote Far-Right Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Gala

The new Speak­er will speak to the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers — a group ded­i­cat­ed to giv­ing a right-wing “bib­li­cal world­view” the force of law

By Tim Dick­i­son
Novem­ber 29, 2023

If any­one was trust­ing that Mike John­son would cool his Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist jets now that he’s risen to Speak­er of the House, that faith was mis­placed. John­son has been announced as the keynote speak­er of a Dec. 5 gala of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers, host­ed at the Muse­um of the Bible in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

The NACL is an overt Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to give its “bib­li­cal world­view” the bind­ing force of law. The gala web­site touts NACL’s agen­da of “abol­ish­ing abor­tion,” pro­mot­ing “mar­riage between one man and one woman,” and “expos­ing the ungod­ly effort to under­mine our cul­ture by Left­ists.”

NACL func­tions a bit like the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil, or ALEC — cre­at­ing with “mod­el leg­is­la­tion” that state leg­is­la­tures can then copy and pass across the nation. NACL mem­bers have played a key role in pro­mot­ing anti-abor­tion leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing so-called “heart­beat” bills, and the infa­mous “boun­ty hunter” bill, SB 8, in Texas.

The orga­ni­za­tion is also fierce­ly anti-LGBTQ. As NACL founder and for­mer Arkansas state leg­is­la­tor Jason Rap­ert told Rolling Stone ear­li­er this year: “For far too long we have allowed one polit­i­cal par­ty in our nation to hold up Sodom and Gomor­rah as a goal to be achieved rather than a sin to be shunned.”

...

NACL’s acronym is an inten­tion­al play on words, invok­ing the chem­i­cal sym­bol for salt; Chris­tians nation­al­ist fre­quent­ly invoke the bib­li­cal exhor­ta­tion about being the “salt and the light” — or puri­fy­ing agents in the sin­ful world.

The NACL gala will be emceed by Gene Bai­ley, the host of the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist news show Flash­point, aired on tel­e­van­ge­list Ken­neth Copeland’s Vic­to­ry net­work. It will give a “Life­time Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Award” to Andrew Wom­ack, a Col­orado preach­er, linked to the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion, who is a top pro­po­nent of the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date,” a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist blue­print for seiz­ing con­trol of soci­ety.

Rap­ert will also be speak­ing. He was the lead author of Arkansas’ first-in-the nation “heart­beat” abor­tion law, that in 2013 sought to lim­it abor­tion access to a then-extreme 12 weeks ges­ta­tion. Rap­ert also authored the trig­ger law that repealed abor­tion rights in Arkansas when the Supreme Court, stacked with Trump jus­tices, over­turned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Rap­ert found­ed NACL because “ungod­ly lead­ers have led to ungod­ly results.”

Rap­ert and John­son are con­nect­ed by more than faith. They both fly the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rev­o­lu­tion­ary “Appeal to Heav­en” flag. Rap­ert was an ear­ly adopter of the sym­bol, get­ting the flag hoist­ed over the Capi­tol in Lit­tle Rock in 2015. As Rolling Stone recent­ly report­ed, John­son keeps the flag on a pole out­side his office. The flag is cham­pi­oned by the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist “apos­tle” Dutch Sheets — a fre­quent Flash­point pan­elist — who has also authored a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist decree that reads in part:

“We, the Church, are God’s gov­ern­ing Body on the Earth.”

“We have been giv­en legal pow­er and author­i­ty from Heav­en.”

“We are … del­e­gat­ed by Him to destroy every attempt­ed advance of the ene­my.”

...

———-

“Mike John­son to Keynote Far-Right Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Gala” By Tim Dick­i­son; Rolling Stone; 11/19/2023

“If any­one was trust­ing that Mike John­son would cool his Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist jets now that he’s risen to Speak­er of the House, that faith was mis­placed. John­son has been announced as the keynote speak­er of a Dec. 5 gala of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers, host­ed at the Muse­um of the Bible in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. ”

Yes, Mike John­son is slat­ed to be the keynote speak­er for the upcom­ing Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL) event at the DC Muse­um of the Bible. It’s pre­sum­ably quite an hon­or for John­son, giv­en how the NACL is one of the CNP’s out­fits push­ing a ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ Domin­ion­ist agen­da:

...
The NACL is an overt Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to give its “bib­li­cal world­view” the bind­ing force of law. The gala web­site touts NACL’s agen­da of “abol­ish­ing abor­tion,” pro­mot­ing “mar­riage between one man and one woman,” and “expos­ing the ungod­ly effort to under­mine our cul­ture by Left­ists.”

NACL func­tions a bit like the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil, or ALEC — cre­at­ing with “mod­el leg­is­la­tion” that state leg­is­la­tures can then copy and pass across the nation. NACL mem­bers have played a key role in pro­mot­ing anti-abor­tion leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing so-called “heart­beat” bills, and the infa­mous “boun­ty hunter” bill, SB 8, in Texas.

The orga­ni­za­tion is also fierce­ly anti-LGBTQ. As NACL founder and for­mer Arkansas state leg­is­la­tor Jason Rap­ert told Rolling Stone ear­li­er this year: “For far too long we have allowed one polit­i­cal par­ty in our nation to hold up Sodom and Gomor­rah as a goal to be achieved rather than a sin to be shunned.”

...

NACL’s acronym is an inten­tion­al play on words, invok­ing the chem­i­cal sym­bol for salt; Chris­tians nation­al­ist fre­quent­ly invoke the bib­li­cal exhor­ta­tion about being the “salt and the light” — or puri­fy­ing agents in the sin­ful world.
...

And when we see how the NACL gala will be emceed by Gene Bai­ly, host of a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist news show aired on Ken­neth Copeland’s Vic­to­ry net­work, recall how Glo­ria Copeland, co-founder of he Ken­neth Copeland Min­istries in Texas, became Don­ald Trump’s Evan­gel­i­cal advi­sors. Which is more or less what we should expect at this point:

...
The NACL gala will be emceed by Gene Bai­ley, the host of the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist news show Flash­point, aired on tel­e­van­ge­list Ken­neth Copeland’s Vic­to­ry net­work. It will give a “Life­time Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Award” to Andrew Wom­ack, a Col­orado preach­er, linked to the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion, who is a top pro­po­nent of the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date,” a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist blue­print for seiz­ing con­trol of soci­ety.

Rap­ert will also be speak­ing. He was the lead author of Arkansas’ first-in-the nation “heart­beat” abor­tion law, that in 2013 sought to lim­it abor­tion access to a then-extreme 12 weeks ges­ta­tion. Rap­ert also authored the trig­ger law that repealed abor­tion rights in Arkansas when the Supreme Court, stacked with Trump jus­tices, over­turned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Rap­ert found­ed NACL because “ungod­ly lead­ers have led to ungod­ly results.”
...

And then we get to this inter­est­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist sym­bol­ism used by both John­son and NACL founder Jason Rap­ert: the “Appeal to Heav­en” flag:

...
Rap­ert and John­son are con­nect­ed by more than faith. They both fly the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rev­o­lu­tion­ary “Appeal to Heav­en” flag. Rap­ert was an ear­ly adopter of the sym­bol, get­ting the flag hoist­ed over the Capi­tol in Lit­tle Rock in 2015. As Rolling Stone recent­ly report­ed, John­son keeps the flag on a pole out­side his office. The flag is cham­pi­oned by the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist “apos­tle” Dutch Sheets — a fre­quent Flash­point pan­elist — who has also authored a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist decree that reads in part:

“We, the Church, are God’s gov­ern­ing Body on the Earth.”

“We have been giv­en legal pow­er and author­i­ty from Heav­en.”

“We are … del­e­gat­ed by Him to destroy every attempt­ed advance of the ene­my.”
...

So is the new Speak­er of the House fly­ing a sym­bol of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism out­side of his con­gres­sion­al office? Or is this all just a big mis­un­der­stand­ing? Well, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle makes clear, it’s not a big misunderstanding...despite the attempts by John­son’s office to pass it all off as exact­ly that. While it is true the Appeal to Heav­en flag was­n’t always a sym­bol of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, it is a sym­bol now thanks in large part to the efforts over the last decade of Jason Rap­ert and his fel­low NAR lead­ers:

Rolling Stone

The Key to Mike Johnson’s Chris­t­ian Extrem­ism Hangs Out­side His Office

The new­ly elect­ed House speak­er has ties to the far-right New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion — which is hell-bent on turn­ing Amer­i­ca into a reli­gious state

By Bradley Onishi, Matthew D. Tay­lor
Novem­ber 10, 2023

The Amer­i­can pub­lic has had much to learn about Mike John­son over the past two weeks. Until his sur­prise ele­va­tion to House speak­er, the Louisiana rep­re­sen­ta­tive was an obscure, mild-man­nered, and book­ish four-term back-bencher. He is a for­mer con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer and hard­ly the type of polit­i­cal fig­ure who jeers dur­ing a State of the Union address, or gets caught in a Beetle­juice grop­ing scan­dal, or shows up on cable news to take a vic­to­ry lap after oust­ing the leader of his own par­ty. John­son is focused, method­i­cal, and up until now was hap­py to oper­ate behind the scenes.

He’s also a dyed-in-the-wool Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive, and there’s a flag hang­ing out­side his office that leads into a uni­verse of right-wing reli­gious extrem­ism as unknown to most Amer­i­cans as John­son was before he ascend­ed to the speak­er­ship.

...

John­son was also inte­gral to Don­ald Trump’s effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion. As The New York Times has report­ed, he col­lect­ed sig­na­tures for a brief sup­port­ing a Texas law­suit alleg­ing, with­out evi­dence, irreg­u­lar­i­ties in elec­tion results; served a key role in the GOP’s attempts to pre­vent the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Joe Biden’s elec­tion; and tout­ed Trump’s con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about elec­tion fraud, even say­ing, “You know the alle­ga­tions about these vot­ing machines, some of them being rigged with this soft­ware by Domin­ion, there’s a lot of mer­it to that.”

If this was all we knew about Mike John­son, we could accu­rate­ly say that he is a full-bore, right-wing Chris­t­ian and an elec­tion denier who dab­bles in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries — qual­i­ties that might give one pause before putting him sec­ond in line to the pres­i­den­cy. But there is anoth­er angle to Johnson’s extrem­ism that has received less scruti­ny, and it brings us back to that flag out­side his office.

The flag — which Rolling Stone has con­firmed hangs out­side his dis­trict office in the Can­non House Office Build­ing — is white with a sim­ple ever­green tree in the cen­ter and the phrase “An Appeal to Heav­en” at the top. His­tor­i­cal­ly, this flag was a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War ban­ner, com­mis­sioned by George Wash­ing­ton as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Mass­a­chu­setts. The quote “An Appeal to Heav­en” was a slo­gan from that war, tak­en from a trea­tise by the philoso­pher John Locke.. But in the past decade it has come to sym­bol­ize a die-hard vision of a hege­mon­i­cal­ly Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca.

To under­stand the con­tem­po­rary mean­ing of the Appeal to Heav­en flag, it’s nec­es­sary to enter a world of Chris­t­ian extrem­ism ani­mat­ed by mod­ern-day apos­tles, prophets, and apoc­a­lyp­tic visions of Chris­t­ian tri­umph that was cen­tral to the chaos and vio­lence of Jan. 6. Ear­li­er this year we released an audio-doc­u­men­tary series, root­ed in deep his­tor­i­cal research and ethno­graph­ic inter­views, on this sec­tor of Chris­tian­i­ty, which is known as the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR). The flag hang­ing out­side Johnson’s office is a key part of its sym­bol­o­gy.

The New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion is a set of net­works of Chris­t­ian lead­ers that formed in the 1990s around a rene­gade evan­gel­i­cal sem­i­nary pro­fes­sor named C. Peter Wag­n­er. These net­works are part of the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al charis­mat­ic seg­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty (“charis­mat­ic” here is a tech­ni­cal term of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and prac­tice describ­ing a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty built around mirac­u­lous man­i­fes­ta­tions and aim­ing to re-cre­ate the super­nat­u­ral­ly imbued envi­ron­ment of the ear­ly Chris­t­ian church). Wag­n­er and his cohort believed that they were at the van­guard of a rev­o­lu­tion in church lead­er­ship that Wag­n­er often described as “the most rad­i­cal change to the way of doing church since, at least, the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion.”

The hun­dreds of lead­ers who joined Wagner’s move­ment and lead­er­ship-net­work­ing cir­cles almost all iden­ti­fy as apos­tles (enter­pris­ing church builders) or prophets (who hear direct­ly from God), though some iden­ti­fy as both. In the mid-2000s, these NAR net­works col­lec­tive­ly embraced a the­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm called the “Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date,” a prophe­cy that divides soci­ety into sev­en are­nas — reli­gion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, arts and enter­tain­ment, media, and busi­ness. The “Man­date,” as they under­stand it, is giv­en by God for Chris­tians to “take domin­ion” and “con­quer” the tops of all sev­en of these sec­tors and have Chris­t­ian influ­ence flow down into the rest of soci­ety.

Drawn into Amer­i­can pol­i­tics by this aggres­sive the­o­log­i­cal vision, many New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion lead­ers became very active in right-wing polit­i­cal cir­cles, includ­ing one of Wagner’s key dis­ci­ples, an apos­tle-prophet named Dutch Sheets. Sheets is not a house­hold name in Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics like Jer­ry Fal­well or Ralph Reed or James Dob­son, but he has real influ­ence. Sheets has writ­ten more than 18 pop­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal books, and his Inter­ces­so­ry Prayer has sold more than a mil­lion copies. He was an endors­er and faith advis­er to Newt Gingrinch’s short-lived can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent in 2012, and he open­ly espoused the lie that Barack Oba­ma was secret­ly a Mus­lim.

In 2013, Sheets was giv­en an Appeal to Heav­en flag by a friend who told him that, because it pre­dat­ed the Stars and Stripes, it was the flag that “had flown over our nation at its birthing.” Sheets describes this expe­ri­ence as rev­e­la­to­ry, and he seized upon the flag as a sym­bol of the spir­i­tu­al-war­fare dri­ven Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rev­o­lu­tion he hoped to see in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. In 2015, he pub­lished a book titled An Appeal to Heav­en and rolled out a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign to prop­a­gate this sym­bol in right-wing Chris­t­ian cir­cles. That same year Sarah Palin wrote an opin­ion piece in Bre­it­bart, endors­ing the Appeal to Heav­en cam­paign and thank­ing her “[s]pecial friends, Pas­tor Dutch and Ceci Sheets,” who had giv­en her the flag.

Sheets and his fel­low New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion lead­ers were the tip of the spear of Chris­t­ian Trump­ism, endors­ing Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy ear­ly on and cham­pi­oning his cause to their fel­low Chris­tians. Over the course of the 2016 cam­paign, the Appeal to Heav­en flag and the NAR’s vision of a Chris­tian­i­ty-dom­i­nat­ed Amer­i­ca became entwined with Trump, a potent-though-covert sym­bol.

Since 2015, you can find these Appeal to Heav­en flags pop­ping up over and over: in the back­ground of pic­tures of far-right politi­cians and elec­tion deniers like Doug Mas­tri­ano; as wall dec­o­ra­tions in state leg­is­la­tors’ offices; at right-wing ral­lies. It even flew over the Illi­nois State Capi­tol for a time at the insti­ga­tion of the Illi­nois Apos­tolic Alliance, a local NAR activist group..

We make the case in our audio-doc­u­men­tary series that the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion net­works were at the molten core of Chris­t­ian mobi­liza­tion for Jan. 6, with many NAR lead­ers in atten­dance that day, includ­inga hand­ful of C. Peter Wagner’s clos­est mentees. Dutch Sheets was inte­gral to this effort, pro­pelling the Appeal to Heav­en nar­ra­tive along­side the Stop the Steal nar­ra­tive through his pop­u­lar dai­ly prophe­cy pod­cast in the lead-up to the riot.

This is why, if you look close­ly at the panop­ti­con of videos and pic­tures of the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, Appeal to Heav­en flags are every­where. There are dozens, per­haps hun­dreds, of them punc­tu­at­ing the crowd, includ­ing even on the front lines of clash­es between riot­ers and Capi­tol police offi­cers — a pow­er­ful sig­nal of the spread of Sheets’ ideas and influ­ence.

Hun­dreds of Chris­t­ian fig­ures sup­port­ed Trump’s effort to over­throw the 2020 elec­tion, but, hav­ing spent years research­ing and track­ing the direct influ­ences on Chris­tians who actu­al­ly showed up on Jan. 6, we con­tend that no sin­gle Chris­t­ian leader con­tributed more to this effort to mobi­lize Chris­tians against the very struc­tures of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy than Sheets. One case in point: Sheets and his team were report­ed­ly at the White House a week before the insur­rec­tion, strate­giz­ing with admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, as we report­ed on Jan. 6, 2023:

On Decem­ber 29, 2020 — eight days before the insur­rec­tion — Sheets and his team of prophets were in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., stay­ing at the Willard Hotel, the site of the var­i­ous war rooms over­seen by RRudy Giu­liani and Steve Ban­non. On that day, Sheets, along with 14 oth­er apos­tles and prophets, had a mul­ti-hour meet­ing inside the White House with Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. Who exact­ly among White House Staff attend­ed this meet­ing is unclear (and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has made the White House Vis­i­tor Logs secret and invul­ner­a­ble to FOIA requests until 2026). But mem­bers of Sheets’ team post­ed pho­tos of them­selves (with White House vis­i­tor pass­es) both out­side and inside the build­ing.

The Appeal to Heav­en flag was the ban­ner of this mobi­liza­tion, which brings us back to Mike John­son and the flag out­side his office. What does it sig­nal that the speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is pur­pose­ly fly­ing this sym­bol of Chris­t­ian war­fare?

When Rolling Stone reached out to Johnson’s office for com­ment, a spokesper­son for his per­son­al office not­ed that all mem­bers have three flag posts out­side their office and that John­son flies the Appeal to Heav­en flag along­side the Amer­i­can and Louisiana flags. “Rep. Johnson’s Appeal to Heav­en flag was a gift to him and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress by Pas­tor Dan Cum­mins, who has served as a guest chap­lain for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives over a dozen times, under Speak­ers from both par­ties,” the spokesper­son wrote, adding that John­son appre­ci­ates the “rich his­to­ry of the flag,” cit­ing its con­nec­tion to George Wash­ing­ton and John Locke.

Accept­ing this back­sto­ry as true, it does not in any way refute our basic premise that this flag, since Dutch Sheets’ spir­i­tu­al-war­fare appro­pri­a­tion of it in 2013, con­notes an aggres­sive form of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. In fact, Pas­tor Dan Cum­mins, whom John­son cred­its as the one who gave him the flag, is a mentee of anoth­er major NAR leader (and Trump evan­gel­i­cal advis­er) named Jim Gar­low. John­son has described Gar­low as hav­ing“a pro­found influ­ence” on his life and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

Gar­low and Cum­mins have long oper­at­ed as Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist activists tar­get­ing mem­bers of Con­gress. The Appeal to Heav­en Flag was flown over Garlow’s for­mer Cal­i­for­nia church begin­ning in 2017, and Gar­low him­self has cel­e­brat­ed how the flag “has recent­ly become an impor­tant flag in the present day spir­i­tu­al war­fare prayer move­ment.” If any­thing, Johnson’s office’s state­ment only high­lights anoth­er vec­tor of NAR and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist influ­ence on the new speak­er.

The Appeal to Heav­en flag isn’t Johnson’s only con­nec­tion to Sheets, either. John­son has spent his entire career in Con­gress link­ing arms with one of Sheets’ top acolytes, a Louisiana apos­tle named Tim­o­thy Carscad­den. Carscad­den leads a church in Johnson’s dis­trict called Chris­t­ian Cen­ter Shreve­port. John­son has spo­ken at the church, had Carscad­den come to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and expressed his close­ness to Carscadden’s views.

For his part, Tim­o­thy Carscad­den speaks along­side Dutch Sheets, mim­ics Sheets’ the­o­log­i­cal ideas, and shares in Sheets’ vision to see Chris­tian­i­ty reign supreme in every sphere of Amer­i­can life. Carscadden’s Face­book pro­file page is a pho­to of him hold­ing an Appeal to Heav­en flag, and the Louisiana apos­tle post­ed his sup­port for the gath­er­ing crowds of pro­test­ers on Jan. 6, 2021, writ­ing: “We will be live in per­son and online as we stand with the mil­lion plus in Wash­ing­ton DC today. We Appeal To The Courts of Heav­en today!!!!”

It is sim­ply unten­able to think that John­son is unaware of what the Appeal to Heav­en flag sig­nals today. It rep­re­sents an aggres­sive, spir­i­tu­al-war­fare style of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, and John­son is a legal insur­rec­tion­ist who has deeply tied him­self into net­works of Chris­t­ian extrem­ists whose rhetoric, lead­er­ship, and war­fare the­ol­o­gy fueled a lit­er­al insur­rec­tion.

...

————-

“The Key to Mike Johnson’s Chris­t­ian Extrem­ism Hangs Out­side His Office” by Bradley Onishi, Matthew D. Tay­lor; Rolling Stone; 11/10/2023

“To under­stand the con­tem­po­rary mean­ing of the Appeal to Heav­en flag, it’s nec­es­sary to enter a world of Chris­t­ian extrem­ism ani­mat­ed by mod­ern-day apos­tles, prophets, and apoc­a­lyp­tic visions of Chris­t­ian tri­umph that was cen­tral to the chaos and vio­lence of Jan. 6. Ear­li­er this year we released an audio-doc­u­men­tary series, root­ed in deep his­tor­i­cal research and ethno­graph­ic inter­views, on this sec­tor of Chris­tian­i­ty, which is known as the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR). The flag hang­ing out­side Johnson’s office is a key part of its sym­bol­o­gy.”

The “Appeal to Heav­en” flag, dat­ing back to the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, may not not always have been a sym­bol of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. But it is now, thanks to the efforts of Jason Rap­ert and oth­er NAR lead­ers over the last decade:

...
If this was all we knew about Mike John­son, we could accu­rate­ly say that he is a full-bore, right-wing Chris­t­ian and an elec­tion denier who dab­bles in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries — qual­i­ties that might give one pause before putting him sec­ond in line to the pres­i­den­cy. But there is anoth­er angle to Johnson’s extrem­ism that has received less scruti­ny, and it brings us back to that flag out­side his office.

The flag — which Rolling Stone has con­firmed hangs out­side his dis­trict office in the Can­non House Office Build­ing — is white with a sim­ple ever­green tree in the cen­ter and the phrase “An Appeal to Heav­en” at the top. His­tor­i­cal­ly, this flag was a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War ban­ner, com­mis­sioned by George Wash­ing­ton as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Mass­a­chu­setts. The quote “An Appeal to Heav­en” was a slo­gan from that war, tak­en from a trea­tise by the philoso­pher John Locke.. But in the past decade it has come to sym­bol­ize a die-hard vision of a hege­mon­i­cal­ly Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca.

...

The New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion is a set of net­works of Chris­t­ian lead­ers that formed in the 1990s around a rene­gade evan­gel­i­cal sem­i­nary pro­fes­sor named C. Peter Wag­n­er. These net­works are part of the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al charis­mat­ic seg­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty (“charis­mat­ic” here is a tech­ni­cal term of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and prac­tice describ­ing a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty built around mirac­u­lous man­i­fes­ta­tions and aim­ing to re-cre­ate the super­nat­u­ral­ly imbued envi­ron­ment of the ear­ly Chris­t­ian church). Wag­n­er and his cohort believed that they were at the van­guard of a rev­o­lu­tion in church lead­er­ship that Wag­n­er often described as “the most rad­i­cal change to the way of doing church since, at least, the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion.”

The hun­dreds of lead­ers who joined Wagner’s move­ment and lead­er­ship-net­work­ing cir­cles almost all iden­ti­fy as apos­tles (enter­pris­ing church builders) or prophets (who hear direct­ly from God), though some iden­ti­fy as both. In the mid-2000s, these NAR net­works col­lec­tive­ly embraced a the­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm called the “Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date,” a prophe­cy that divides soci­ety into sev­en are­nas — reli­gion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, arts and enter­tain­ment, media, and busi­ness. The “Man­date,” as they under­stand it, is giv­en by God for Chris­tians to “take domin­ion” and “con­quer” the tops of all sev­en of these sec­tors and have Chris­t­ian influ­ence flow down into the rest of soci­ety.
...

And, of course, the last decade was­n’t just a ran­dom decade for Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in Amer­i­ca. This was the decade when the move­ment made a deal with the dev­il in the form of an alliance with Don­ald Trump. And few were more influ­en­tial in cre­at­ing this theo­crat­ic fusion of move­ments than Dutch Sheets, one of the key dis­ci­ples of NAR founder C. Peter Wag­n­er. By the end of the 2016, the Ascend to Heav­en flag was syn­ony­mous with the MAGA move­ment. And as we should expect, it turns out Mike John­son has spent his polit­i­cal career glad hand­ing with a Sheets acolyte, Tim­o­thy Carscad­den:

...
Drawn into Amer­i­can pol­i­tics by this aggres­sive the­o­log­i­cal vision, many New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion lead­ers became very active in right-wing polit­i­cal cir­cles, includ­ing one of Wagner’s key dis­ci­ples, an apos­tle-prophet named Dutch Sheets. Sheets is not a house­hold name in Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics like Jer­ry Fal­well or Ralph Reed or James Dob­son, but he has real influ­ence. Sheets has writ­ten more than 18 pop­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal books, and his Inter­ces­so­ry Prayer has sold more than a mil­lion copies. He was an endors­er and faith advis­er to Newt Gingrinch’s short-lived can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent in 2012, and he open­ly espoused the lie that Barack Oba­ma was secret­ly a Mus­lim.

In 2013, Sheets was giv­en an Appeal to Heav­en flag by a friend who told him that, because it pre­dat­ed the Stars and Stripes, it was the flag that “had flown over our nation at its birthing.” Sheets describes this expe­ri­ence as rev­e­la­to­ry, and he seized upon the flag as a sym­bol of the spir­i­tu­al-war­fare dri­ven Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rev­o­lu­tion he hoped to see in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. In 2015, he pub­lished a book titled An Appeal to Heav­en and rolled out a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign to prop­a­gate this sym­bol in right-wing Chris­t­ian cir­cles. That same year Sarah Palin wrote an opin­ion piece in Bre­it­bart, endors­ing the Appeal to Heav­en cam­paign and thank­ing her “[s]pecial friends, Pas­tor Dutch and Ceci Sheets,” who had giv­en her the flag.

Sheets and his fel­low New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion lead­ers were the tip of the spear of Chris­t­ian Trump­ism, endors­ing Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy ear­ly on and cham­pi­oning his cause to their fel­low Chris­tians. Over the course of the 2016 cam­paign, the Appeal to Heav­en flag and the NAR’s vision of a Chris­tian­i­ty-dom­i­nat­ed Amer­i­ca became entwined with Trump, a potent-though-covert sym­bol.

Since 2015, you can find these Appeal to Heav­en flags pop­ping up over and over: in the back­ground of pic­tures of far-right politi­cians and elec­tion deniers like Doug Mas­tri­ano; as wall dec­o­ra­tions in state leg­is­la­tors’ offices; at right-wing ral­lies. It even flew over the Illi­nois State Capi­tol for a time at the insti­ga­tion of the Illi­nois Apos­tolic Alliance, a local NAR activist group..

...

The Appeal to Heav­en flag isn’t Johnson’s only con­nec­tion to Sheets, either. John­son has spent his entire career in Con­gress link­ing arms with one of Sheets’ top acolytes, a Louisiana apos­tle named Tim­o­thy Carscad­den. Carscad­den leads a church in Johnson’s dis­trict called Chris­t­ian Cen­ter Shreve­port. John­son has spo­ken at the church, had Carscad­den come to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and expressed his close­ness to Carscadden’s views.

For his part, Tim­o­thy Carscad­den speaks along­side Dutch Sheets, mim­ics Sheets’ the­o­log­i­cal ideas, and shares in Sheets’ vision to see Chris­tian­i­ty reign supreme in every sphere of Amer­i­can life. Carscadden’s Face­book pro­file page is a pho­to of him hold­ing an Appeal to Heav­en flag, and the Louisiana apos­tle post­ed his sup­port for the gath­er­ing crowds of pro­test­ers on Jan. 6, 2021, writ­ing: “We will be live in per­son and online as we stand with the mil­lion plus in Wash­ing­ton DC today. We Appeal To The Courts of Heav­en today!!!!”
...

And as we should also expect, those Appeal to Heav­en flags were heav­i­ly scat­tered across the Jan­u­ary 6 crowds that descend­ed into an insur­rec­tionary mob. Because this was­n’t just Trump’s insur­rec­tion. It was God’s insur­rec­tion, thanks to the bless­ings of NAR lead­ers like Dutch Sheets:

...
We make the case in our audio-doc­u­men­tary series that the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion net­works were at the molten core of Chris­t­ian mobi­liza­tion for Jan. 6, with many NAR lead­ers in atten­dance that day, includ­inga hand­ful of C. Peter Wagner’s clos­est mentees. Dutch Sheets was inte­gral to this effort, pro­pelling the Appeal to Heav­en nar­ra­tive along­side the Stop the Steal nar­ra­tive through his pop­u­lar dai­ly prophe­cy pod­cast in the lead-up to the riot.

This is why, if you look close­ly at the panop­ti­con of videos and pic­tures of the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, Appeal to Heav­en flags are every­where. There are dozens, per­haps hun­dreds, of them punc­tu­at­ing the crowd, includ­ing even on the front lines of clash­es between riot­ers and Capi­tol police offi­cers — a pow­er­ful sig­nal of the spread of Sheets’ ideas and influ­ence.

Hun­dreds of Chris­t­ian fig­ures sup­port­ed Trump’s effort to over­throw the 2020 elec­tion, but, hav­ing spent years research­ing and track­ing the direct influ­ences on Chris­tians who actu­al­ly showed up on Jan. 6, we con­tend that no sin­gle Chris­t­ian leader con­tributed more to this effort to mobi­lize Chris­tians against the very struc­tures of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy than Sheets. One case in point: Sheets and his team were report­ed­ly at the White House a week before the insur­rec­tion, strate­giz­ing with admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, as we report­ed on Jan. 6, 2023:

On Decem­ber 29, 2020 — eight days before the insur­rec­tion — Sheets and his team of prophets were in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., stay­ing at the Willard Hotel, the site of the var­i­ous war rooms over­seen by RRudy Giu­liani and Steve Ban­non. On that day, Sheets, along with 14 oth­er apos­tles and prophets, had a mul­ti-hour meet­ing inside the White House with Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. Who exact­ly among White House Staff attend­ed this meet­ing is unclear (and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has made the White House Vis­i­tor Logs secret and invul­ner­a­ble to FOIA requests until 2026). But mem­bers of Sheets’ team post­ed pho­tos of them­selves (with White House vis­i­tor pass­es) both out­side and inside the build­ing.

The Appeal to Heav­en flag was the ban­ner of this mobi­liza­tion, which brings us back to Mike John­son and the flag out­side his office. What does it sig­nal that the speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is pur­pose­ly fly­ing this sym­bol of Chris­t­ian war­fare?
...

Final­ly, as an exam­ple of how deeply embed­ded the NAR move­ment is inside the halls of pow­er, note the rather absurd expla­na­tion Mike John­son’s office gave for the pres­ence of the Appeal to Heav­en flag out­side of his office: “Rep. Johnson’s Appeal to Heav­en flag was a gift to him and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress by Pas­tor Dan Cum­mins, who has served as a guest chap­lain for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives over a dozen times, under Speak­ers from both par­ties.” It’s an expla­na­tion that ignores how Pas­tor Cum­mins is, him­self, a mentee of NAR leader (and Trump evan­gel­i­cal advis­er) Jim Gar­low:

...
When Rolling Stone reached out to Johnson’s office for com­ment, a spokesper­son for his per­son­al office not­ed that all mem­bers have three flag posts out­side their office and that John­son flies the Appeal to Heav­en flag along­side the Amer­i­can and Louisiana flags. “Rep. Johnson’s Appeal to Heav­en flag was a gift to him and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress by Pas­tor Dan Cum­mins, who has served as a guest chap­lain for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives over a dozen times, under Speak­ers from both par­ties,” the spokesper­son wrote, adding that John­son appre­ci­ates the “rich his­to­ry of the flag,” cit­ing its con­nec­tion to George Wash­ing­ton and John Locke.

Accept­ing this back­sto­ry as true, it does not in any way refute our basic premise that this flag, since Dutch Sheets’ spir­i­tu­al-war­fare appro­pri­a­tion of it in 2013, con­notes an aggres­sive form of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. In fact, Pas­tor Dan Cum­mins, whom John­son cred­its as the one who gave him the flag, is a mentee of anoth­er major NAR leader (and Trump evan­gel­i­cal advis­er) named Jim Gar­low. John­son has described Gar­low as hav­ing“a pro­found influ­ence” on his life and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

Gar­low and Cum­mins have long oper­at­ed as Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist activists tar­get­ing mem­bers of Con­gress. The Appeal to Heav­en Flag was flown over Garlow’s for­mer Cal­i­for­nia church begin­ning in 2017, and Gar­low him­self has cel­e­brat­ed how the flag “has recent­ly become an impor­tant flag in the present day spir­i­tu­al war­fare prayer move­ment.” If any­thing, Johnson’s office’s state­ment only high­lights anoth­er vec­tor of NAR and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist influ­ence on the new speak­er.
...

And Dan Cum­ming has been the guest chap­lain for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives over a dozen times. And if that seems like an alarm­ing num­ber of times for a domin­ion­ist pas­tor to be invit­ed as guest chap­lain, just wait until they com­plete the Sev­en Moun­tains takeover. Domin­ion­ist pas­tors are going to be doing a lot more than just show­ing up to con­gress to hand out his­tor­i­cal­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed flags at that point.

The should be the year of the Flori­da GOP. Home to both Don­ald Trump and Ron DeSan­tis, Flori­da has become a kind of grav­i­ty well of Repub­li­can par­ty’s zeit­geist. For a brief moment there were three Flori­da Repub­li­cans in the 2024 GOP Pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, before Mia­mi may­or Fran­cis Suarez dropped out. And yet, in real­i­ty, the GOP’s pri­ma­ry is already just an extend­ed audi­tion to be Trump’s veep while DeSan­tis con­tin­ues to embar­rass him­self.

And then this week hap­pened. A week that the Flori­da GOP isn’t going to for­get any time soon, one one of the young ris­ing star pow­er cou­ples saw their careers come crash­ing down. Or at least get very com­pli­cat­ed.

Chris­t­ian and Brid­get Ziegler aren’t just ris­ing stars in Flori­da GOP pol­i­tics. They are increas­ing­ly the pub­lic face of Ron DeSan­tis’s anti-woke pol­i­tics. As one of the co-founders of Moms for Lib­er­ty and Sara­so­ta Coun­ty School Board Mem­ber since 2014, Brid­get Ziegler has made her­self syn­ony­mous with the kind of anti-LGBTQ pol­i­tics that has come to define DeSan­tis’s pub­lic cru­sade. When Ron DeSan­tis signed his “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law this year, Brid­get Ziegler was stand­ing there right behind him. Beyond that, she’s the salaried vice pres­i­dent of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, the train­ing acad­e­my for con­ser­v­a­tive activists found­ed by CNP co-founder Mor­ton Black­well. The Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor for the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, Alex Van Anne, also shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list. Also, Marie Roger­son, who sits on the Moms for Lib­er­ty exec­u­tive board and the direc­tor of pro­gram devel­op­ment, is a Lead­er­ship Insti­tute grad­u­ate. You don’t become a salaried VP of the Leader Insti­tute if you aren’t a major con­ser­v­a­tive mover and shak­er. And then there’s her hus­band Chris­t­ian. He’s the chair of Florida’s Repub­li­can Par­ty, tasked this year with nav­i­gat­ing the state par­ty through the extra­or­di­nary chal­lenge of thread­ing the Trump/DeSantis pri­ma­ry nee­dle with­out trig­ger­ing Trump’s wrath.

That’s the Flori­da Repub­li­can pow­er cou­ple who had a sto­ry about them break this week that had Ron DeSan­tis call­ing for Chris­tian’s res­ig­na­tion and Moms for Lib­er­ty offer­ing poor­ly phrased defens­es of Brid­get. A sto­ry that cuts right into the pub­lic image of a hap­py pious Chris­t­ian cou­ple serv­ing as pub­lic advo­cates for the gov­ern­ment enforce­ment of a con­ser­v­a­tive moral code: Accord­ing to police reports, Chris­t­ian Ziegler has been accused of rape. The vic­tim was a stranger but instead a woman who has known the cou­ple for the past 20 years. And who has been in a secret sex three-way rela­tion­ship with the Zieglers for the past three years. So it’s a rape accu­sa­tion that is reveal­ing a secret three-way sex­u­al rela­tion­ship main­tained by this Repub­li­can pow­er cou­ple who has become the pub­lic face for Ron DeSan­tis’s anti-LGBTQ cru­sade. Which is clear­ly too hot for DeSan­tis, hence his imme­di­ate calls for Ziegler to step down as state par­ty chair.

But as we’re going to see, the Zieglers still have their defend­ers. Lee Coun­ty GOP Chair Michael Thomp­son Lee called the charges a “polit­i­cal hit job”. Moms for Lib­er­ty ini­tial­ly post­ed a tweet in sup­port of Ziegler, then delet­ed it, and then issued a sec­ond tweet with replies turned off “because we won’t be part of allow­ing the trolls to den­i­grate women any fur­ther today.” The group fol­lowed up with the idea that the rape accu­sa­tions are part of an attack against women by post­ing that “#Strong­Women scare those that seek to destroy our coun­try. We stand with (Ziegler) & every oth­er badass woman fight­ing for kids & Amer­i­ca.” So the rape alle­ga­tion is an attack against #Strong­Women, accord­ing to Moms for Lib­er­ty.

It also sounds like the denials can only go so far because there’s already so much that has been admit­ted to police. Chris­t­ian admits he not only slept with the woman but insists it was con­sen­su­al. He also told police he secret­ly video­taped it. He then delet­ed the video, but undelet­ed it after hear­ing about the accu­sa­tions, and uploaded the video to Google Dri­ve. We are told the police have yet to obtain the video.

The vic­tim has told police that she had a con­sen­su­al sex­u­al encounter with the Zieglers about a year ago and agreed to anoth­er one on Octo­ber 2 of this year. But Brid­get had to can­cel, so the vic­tim decid­ed to can­cel too since she was most­ly into Brid­get. Min­utes lat­er, she opened her apart­ment door to take her dog for a walk when she saw Chris­t­ian in the apart­ment hall­way. He entered her apart­ment and pro­ceed­ed to rape her. The vic­tim con­tact­ed her sis­ter after the assault, who drove her to Sara­so­ta Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal where a sex­u­al assault kit was per­formed. Two days lat­er, a friend of the vic­tim con­tact the police request­ing a wel­fare check after her friend missed two days of work. Describ­ing a sui­ci­dal-sound­ing friend, she told the dis­patch­er that, “She hasn’t shown up for work the past two days and I just got off the phone with her and she sounds drunk and I know she has pain med­ica­tion on her and she told me that she doesn’t think she can do it any­more.”

While those details make it sound like there were only a hand­ful of encoun­ters between the vic­tim and the Zieglers, we are also told by sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion that they’ve had a secret sex­u­al rela­tion­ship for the last three years. It’s a hint that this is the kind of sto­ry that’s going to get a lot more com­pli­cat­ed, and sor­did, before it’s over. Either that, or it’s a very elab­o­rate attack on #Strong­Women.

Also keep in mind that we have no idea about the iden­ti­ty of the vic­tim and there­fore have no idea as to whether or not there’s a pow­er dynam­ic between the two, like him being in a posi­tion to fire her or offer her new oppor­tu­ni­ties. Maybe that’s not the case but we don’t know yet. And if there is a pow­er dynam­ic between the two, that makes her appar­ent sui­ci­dal state that much worse look­ing for Chris­t­ian.

Ok, first, here’s an AP report about how Chris­t­ian Ziegler is refus­ing to resign and insist­ing he’s inno­cent. And while it remains to be seen if he’s inno­cent of rape, it does­n’t appear he or is wife can still claim to not be involved in an LGBTQ rela­tion­ship since he’s already admit­ted to police that he secret­ly videoed the inci­dent, then delet­ed it, and then undelet­ed it:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

Flori­da Repub­li­can chair­man won’t resign over rape alle­ga­tion, say­ing he is inno­cent

By TERRY SPENCER
Updat­ed 6:41 PM CST, Decem­ber 3, 2023

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The chair of Florida’s Repub­li­can Par­ty says he will not resign over a woman’s alle­ga­tion that he raped her, say­ing in an email to sup­port­ers that he is inno­cent. He did not address any specifics of the accu­sa­tion that has roiled the state’s con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics.

Chris­t­ian Ziegler sent the state­ment to state Repub­li­cans on Sat­ur­day, say­ing that he and his wife, Brid­get Ziegler, are being tar­get­ed because they are “such loud polit­i­cal voic­es.” His wife co-found­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive group Moms for Lib­er­ty, which has led a cam­paign with Gov. Ron DeSan­tis to roll back sex edu­ca­tion in Flori­da schools.

DeSan­tis said last week that while Chris­t­ian Ziegler is inno­cent until proven guilty, he should resign to avoid becom­ing a dis­trac­tion to their par­ty. Ziegler insists he won’t quit.

“We have a coun­try to save and I am not going to let false alle­ga­tions of a crime put that mis­sion on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up,” wrote Ziegler, 40. A long­time GOP activist, he ascend­ed to the state party’s top post in Feb­ru­ary.

No charges have been filed against Ziegler, but the Sara­so­ta Police inves­ti­ga­tion remains open. The accuser, who has known Chris­t­ian Ziegler for 20 years, told police in Octo­ber that he forced his way into her apart­ment and raped her, accord­ing to search war­rant affi­davits filed by police.

In his Sat­ur­day email, Ziegler did not address hav­ing told detec­tives that he did have sex with the woman but that it was con­sen­su­al. He also didn’t address his wife telling detec­tives that the cou­ple and the woman had group sex once, more than a year ago.

“My fam­i­ly is rock sol­id. My wife is behind me 150% and we have meth­ods in place to pro­tect our (three) chil­dren, just as we have with all pre­vi­ous attacks that we have faced,” Chris­t­ian Ziegler wrote. The Zieglers did not return calls and text mes­sages Sun­day seek­ing fur­ther com­ment.

...

The police ava­davits say­ing that the Zieglers had group sex with a woman have led Democ­rats and gay rights lead­ers to accuse the cou­ple of hypocrisy, giv­en that an orga­ni­za­tion Brid­get Ziegler cofound­ed — Moms for Lib­er­ty — has joined DeSan­tis and the Flori­da GOP in push­ing back against LGBTQ+ caus­es.

Brid­get Ziegler is also an elect­ed mem­ber of the Sara­so­ta Coun­ty school board and was appoint­ed by DeSan­tis to the board that now over­sees Walt Dis­ney World’s land devel­op­ment. DeSan­tis pushed through leg­is­la­tion last year dis­band­ing a Dis­ney-con­trolled board after the com­pa­ny opposed his bill that lim­its sex edu­ca­tion in schools.

...

The accuser’s name is redact­ed in the doc­u­ments. The Asso­ci­at­ed Press does not name pos­si­ble vic­tims of sex­u­al assault with­out their per­mis­sion.

Accord­ing to text mes­sages cit­ed in the affi­davit, the woman and the Zieglers had planned to again have group sex on Oct. 2, but the woman backed out after Brid­get Ziegler “couldn’t make it.”

The woman says she found Chris­t­ian Ziegler in her apartment’s hall­way lat­er that day, that he pushed her inside and then raped her.

In text and phone con­ver­sa­tions mon­i­tored by inves­ti­ga­tors, Ziegler offered the woman “finan­cial help” before becom­ing sus­pi­cious that they were being record­ed.

In a Nov. 2 inter­view with detec­tives, Ziegler said the sex was con­sen­su­al and that he had record­ed it. He said he delet­ed the video, then recov­ered it after the rape alle­ga­tion sur­faced.

Detec­tives seized Chris­t­ian Ziegler’s phone on Nov. 2, the affi­davits say. None of what they have found has been made pub­lic.

———–

“Flori­da Repub­li­can chair­man won’t resign over rape alle­ga­tion, say­ing he is inno­cent” By TERRY SPENCER; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 12/03/2023

“Chris­t­ian Ziegler sent the state­ment to state Repub­li­cans on Sat­ur­day, say­ing that he and his wife, Brid­get Ziegler, are being tar­get­ed because they are “such loud polit­i­cal voic­es.” His wife co-found­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive group Moms for Lib­er­ty, which has led a cam­paign with Gov. Ron DeSan­tis to roll back sex edu­ca­tion in Flori­da schools.”

The co-founder of Moms for Lib­er­ty was caught in an abu­sive three­some, accord­ing to the alle­ga­tions that are cur­rent­ly roil­ing Flori­da’s GOP polit­i­cal scene. Because Brid­get Ziegler isn’t just an M4L co-founder and increas­ing­ly promi­nent pub­lic fig­ure in Ron DeSan­tis’s ‘war on woke’. She’s a long-time Sara­so­ta Coun­ty School Board mem­ber known for her ‘anti-woke’ cru­sades and the wife of Chris­t­ian Ziegler, the chair of the Flori­da GOP who was, until now, tasked with the del­i­cate chal­lenge of man­ag­ing a 20204 pres­i­dent pri­ma­ry that includes being the home state for both Ron DeSan­tis and Don­ald Trump. The Zieglers are a Flori­da ris­ing star pow­er cou­ple in both the church and pol­i­tics. And now Chris­t­ian Ziegler is accused of rap­ing the woman they in in a secret three­some with. It’s the kind of scan­dal that can’t be swept under the rug with a few pub­lic state­ments and a few months of lay­ing low. The Zieglers are going to have to refute these charges one way or anoth­er:

...
“We have a coun­try to save and I am not going to let false alle­ga­tions of a crime put that mis­sion on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up,” wrote Ziegler, 40. A long­time GOP activist, he ascend­ed to the state party’s top post in Feb­ru­ary.

No charges have been filed against Ziegler, but the Sara­so­ta Police inves­ti­ga­tion remains open. The accuser, who has known Chris­t­ian Ziegler for 20 years, told police in Octo­ber that he forced his way into her apart­ment and raped her, accord­ing to search war­rant affi­davits filed by police.

In his Sat­ur­day email, Ziegler did not address hav­ing told detec­tives that he did have sex with the woman but that it was con­sen­su­al. He also didn’t address his wife telling detec­tives that the cou­ple and the woman had group sex once, more than a year ago.

“My fam­i­ly is rock sol­id. My wife is behind me 150% and we have meth­ods in place to pro­tect our (three) chil­dren, just as we have with all pre­vi­ous attacks that we have faced,” Chris­t­ian Ziegler wrote. The Zieglers did not return calls and text mes­sages Sun­day seek­ing fur­ther com­ment.

...

Brid­get Ziegler is also an elect­ed mem­ber of the Sara­so­ta Coun­ty school board and was appoint­ed by DeSan­tis to the board that now over­sees Walt Dis­ney World’s land devel­op­ment. DeSan­tis pushed through leg­is­la­tion last year dis­band­ing a Dis­ney-con­trolled board after the com­pa­ny opposed his bill that lim­its sex edu­ca­tion in schools.
...

And note the extent of the already avail­able evi­dence. There’s no ques­tion as to whether or they were in a secret three-way. That’s all estab­lished in texts and record­ed phone con­ver­sa­tions. He’s even admit­ted to police that he secret­ly record­ed the sex dur­ing the encounter in ques­tion. They he delet­ed the video, and then undelet­ed the video in response to the rape accu­sa­tion. He told all that to inves­ti­ga­tors. The only thing real­ly in ques­tion at this point is whether or not Chris­t­ian Ziegler com­mit­ted the rape he’s accused of:

...
Accord­ing to text mes­sages cit­ed in the affi­davit, the woman and the Zieglers had planned to again have group sex on Oct. 2, but the woman backed out after Brid­get Ziegler “couldn’t make it.”

The woman says she found Chris­t­ian Ziegler in her apartment’s hall­way lat­er that day, that he pushed her inside and then raped her.

In text and phone con­ver­sa­tions mon­i­tored by inves­ti­ga­tors, Ziegler offered the woman “finan­cial help” before becom­ing sus­pi­cious that they were being record­ed.

In a Nov. 2 inter­view with detec­tives, Ziegler said the sex was con­sen­su­al and that he had record­ed it. He said he delet­ed the video, then recov­ered it after the rape alle­ga­tion sur­faced.
...

So are the Ziegler’s going to sur­vive these accu­sa­tions? Could Chris­t­ian Ziegler face charges? How might this impact ‘anti-woke’ polit­i­cal brand that’s come to define Ron DeSan­tis’s pol­i­tics? These are just some of the ques­tion that has the Flori­da GOP thor­ough­ly roiled. This was not the scan­dal they want­ed to be deal­ing with right now. But as we can see in the fol­low­ing Sara­so­ta Her­ald-Tri­bune arti­cle excerpt, while DeSan­tis might already be dis­tanc­ing him­self, the Ziegler’s still have polit­i­cal allies will­ing to stand by them, like Lee Coun­ty GOP Chair Michael Thomp­son Lee, who called the charges a “polit­i­cal hit job”. Or Moms for Lib­er­ty, sort of. The group ini­tial­ly post­ed a tweet in sup­port of Ziegler, then delet­ed it, and then issued a sec­ond tweet with replies turned off “because we won’t be part of allow­ing the trolls to den­i­grate women any fur­ther today.” The group fol­lowed up with the idea that the rape accu­sa­tions are part of an attack against women by post­ing that “#Strong­Women scare those that seek to destroy our coun­try. We stand with (Ziegler) & every oth­er badass woman fight­ing for kids & Amer­i­ca.” So if if you were won­der­ing how Moms for Lib­er­ty was going to respond, they respond­ed by call­ing the rape accu­sa­tions against Chris­t­ian Ziegler an attack against #Strong­Women:

Sara­so­ta Her­ald-Tri­bune

‘The hypocrisy is just off the charts’: Zieglers face reck­on­ing after moral cru­sad­ing

The Repub­li­can pow­er cou­ple emerged as lead­ing advo­cates in Flori­da for a new wave of con­ser­v­a­tive moral cru­sad­ing large­ly cen­tered around LGBTQ issues, espe­cial­ly in schools.

Zac Ander­son
Sara­so­ta Her­ald-Tri­bune
Pub­lished 5:08 pm ETS Dec 1, 2023 | Updat­ed 5:27 pm ET Dec 1, 2023

Ear­li­er this year, Brid­get Ziegler attract­ed atten­tion when she post­ed an image of her­self on social media wear­ing a shirt embla­zoned with “REAL WOMEN AREN’T MEN.”

Ziegler, a Sara­so­ta Coun­ty School Board mem­ber and co-founder of con­ser­v­a­tive parental rights group Moms for Lib­er­ty, was respond­ing to a back­lash against Bud Light for a mar­ket­ing cam­paign fea­tur­ing a trans­gen­der influ­encer.

It’s the quin­tes­sen­tial cul­ture war bat­tle that has become increas­ing­ly com­mon in recent years, and Ziegler has been at the fore­front of such clash­es, along with her hus­band, Flori­da GOP Chair Chris­t­ian Ziegler.

The Repub­li­can pow­er cou­ple have emerged as lead­ing advo­cates in Flori­da for a new wave of con­ser­v­a­tive moral cru­sad­ing large­ly cen­tered around LGBTQ issues, espe­cial­ly in schools.

Now, Chris­t­ian Ziegler has been accused of sex­u­al bat­tery by a woman who alleged­ly was in a long-term sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with both Zieglers.

The Sara­so­ta Police Depart­ment released heav­i­ly-redact­ed doc­u­ments Thurs­day with few details about the crim­i­nal alle­ga­tion, which is still under inves­ti­ga­tion. Through his attor­ney, Chris­t­ian Ziegler adamant­ly denies any wrong­do­ing.

Cit­ing anony­mous sources with knowl­edge of the case, the Flori­da Tri­dent – a pub­li­ca­tion of the Flori­da Cen­ter for Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty – wrote that the woman accus­ing Chris­t­ian Ziegler of sex­u­al bat­tery “alleged that she and both Zieglers had been involved in a long­stand­ing con­sen­su­al three-way sex­u­al rela­tion­ship pri­or to the inci­dent.” The police are inves­ti­gat­ing an inci­dent that occurred when Chris­t­ian Ziegler and the woman were alone at the woman’s house, the sources told the advo­ca­cy group.

Yet even if no crim­i­nal charges are filed, the case is being close­ly watched to see what emerges because the Zieglers have made sex­u­al issues so cen­tral to their polit­i­cal brand.

No doc­u­men­ta­tion has been released pub­licly con­firm­ing that one or both Zieglers were involved in sex­u­al activ­i­ty with oth­er part­ners, but there already has been a tor­rent of com­men­tary about the Zieglers’ alleged “hypocrisy,” espe­cial­ly because of their per­ceived anti-LGBTQ activism and the Tri­den­t’s report­ing.

Moms for Lib­er­ty has been promi­nent nation­al­ly in debates around trans­gen­der school poli­cies and oth­er LGBTQ dis­cus­sions, while the Flori­da GOP has heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed these issues. Brid­get Ziegler stepped down from the Moms for Lib­er­ty board of direc­tors in 2021.

“The hypocrisy is just off the charts and that’s why this has res­onat­ed,” said Ron Fil­ip­kows­ki, a for­mer GOP activist in Sara­so­ta Coun­ty who broke with the par­ty and now is a promi­nent social media fig­ure.

Fil­ip­kows­ki has known both Zieglers for years. He remem­bers when Chris­t­ian Ziegler was a young par­ty activist just start­ing to make appear­ances at Sara­so­ta GOP meet­ings.

Clear­ly ambi­tious, Fil­ip­kows­ki said, Ziegler “imme­di­ate­ly start­ed work­ing the room fig­ur­ing out who the pow­er play­ers and influ­encers were.”

Ziegler worked for U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, a Long­boat Key Repub­li­can, and lat­er served on the Sara­so­ta Coun­ty Com­mis­sion. He has been active with the Flori­da GOP for more than a decade, serv­ing as the elect­ed GOP state com­mit­tee­man for Sara­so­ta Coun­ty and vice chair of the state par­ty before tak­ing over as chair in Feb­ru­ary.

...

Brid­get Ziegler wad­ed into trans­gen­der restroom use issue

Brid­get Ziegler had joined the Sara­so­ta Coun­ty School Board in 2014 and occa­sion­al­ly wad­ed into polar­iz­ing issues in the years lead­ing up to the pan­dem­ic, includ­ing a hot but­ton debate about trans­gen­der bath­room use in Sara­so­ta schools.

The pan­dem­ic led to a wave of con­ser­v­a­tive activism around schools, and both Zieglers – who have young chil­dren they often high­light in debates about edu­ca­tion poli­cies – became lead­ing advo­cates for the edu­ca­tion cul­ture war agen­da cham­pi­oned by Gov. Ron DeSan­tis, which attract­ed the most nation­al atten­tion with a bill lim­it­ing dis­cus­sion of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty in schools.

Brid­get Ziegler stood behind DeSan­tis as he signed the leg­is­la­tion, derid­ed by crit­ics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill – a nick­name that still irks its sup­port­ers. The gov­er­nor lat­er appoint­ed her to a board over­see­ing the spe­cial dis­trict that gov­erns Disney’s prop­er­ties in Cen­tral Flori­da. Dis­ney has been bat­tling with DeSan­tis over the company’s oppo­si­tion to the mea­sure, now in state law.

...

“The alle­ga­tions that have been made are incred­i­bly seri­ous and deserve a full inves­ti­ga­tion,” said Bran­don Wolf, who fought against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill as the for­mer press sec­re­tary for Equal­i­ty Flori­da, the state’s largest LGBTQ rights group.

He added: “The Zieglers have spent years telling peo­ple how to live and who to be. They’ve been the tip of the spear for right wing extrem­ism in a state being hijacked by the anti-LGBTQ+ agen­da.”

Chris­t­ian Ziegler has sparred with Wolf and oth­ers on the X social media plat­form, respond­ing to one of Wolf’s posts crit­i­ciz­ing DeSan­tis’ LGBTQ leg­is­la­tion with, “Leave the kids alone and there would be no issue.”

...

Moms for Lib­er­ty post­ed on X in sup­port of Brid­get Ziegler, delet­ed the tweet, and then repost­ed with the replies dis­abled “because we won’t be part of allow­ing the trolls to den­i­grate women any fur­ther today.”

“#Strong­Women scare those that seek to destroy our coun­try. We stand with (Ziegler) & every oth­er badass woman fight­ing for kids & Amer­i­ca,” the sec­ond post said.

DeSan­tis says Ziegler should step down as state GOP chair

Democ­rats aren’t the only ones speak­ing out: DeSan­tis called on Chris­t­ian Ziegler to resign as Flori­da GOP chair.

“I think he should step aside and think he should attend to that,” DeSan­tis told reporters fol­low­ing his debate with Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Gavin New­som on Thurs­day. “He’s inno­cent until proven guilty, but we just can’t have a par­ty chair that is under that type of scruti­ny.”

FOX News debate mod­er­a­tor Sean Han­ni­ty asked DeSan­tis and New­som about “parental rights” dur­ing the debate on Thurs­day night, and DeSan­tis pulled out a copy of a page from the book “Gen­der Queer,” which he said can be found in some Cal­i­for­nia schools.

“Flori­da, this is not con­sis­tent with our stan­dards,” he said.

The Ziegler scan­dal also could com­pli­cate efforts by DeSan­tis and oth­er Repub­li­cans to con­tin­ue cam­paign­ing on LGBTQ cul­ture war issues.

But Lee Coun­ty GOP Chair Michael Thomp­son said the par­ty would con­tin­ue to push for tra­di­tion­al val­ues.

“I don’t believe it’s going to stop any­thing the Repub­li­can par­ty is doing or advo­cat­ing for,” he said. “That’s the beau­ty of hav­ing a par­ty. It’s not one per­son every­one ral­lies around. It’s the entire par­ty.”

And Thomp­son believes the Zieglers are the vic­tims of a “polit­i­cal hit job.”

“You’ve got a great all-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly there in the Zieglers, so what do we do? Let’s destroy them,” he said. “They’re out there advo­cat­ing for chil­dren and tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can val­ues, so let’s give them a black eye.”

———-

“ ‘The hypocrisy is just off the charts’: Zieglers face reck­on­ing after moral cru­sad­ing” by Zac Ander­son; Sara­so­ta Her­ald-Tri­bune; 12/01/2023

“Cit­ing anony­mous sources with knowl­edge of the case, the Flori­da Tri­dent – a pub­li­ca­tion of the Flori­da Cen­ter for Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty – wrote that the woman accus­ing Chris­t­ian Ziegler of sex­u­al bat­tery “alleged that she and both Zieglers had been involved in a long­stand­ing con­sen­su­al three-way sex­u­al rela­tion­ship pri­or to the inci­dent.” The police are inves­ti­gat­ing an inci­dent that occurred when Chris­t­ian Ziegler and the woman were alone at the woman’s house, the sources told the advo­ca­cy group.”

The rape did­n’t come out of the blue. Chris­t­ian Ziegler and the vic­tim weren’t strangers. Instead, they were in a long­stand­ing con­sen­su­al three-way sex­u­al rela­tion­ship pri­or to the inci­dent. It was this one inci­dent that lacked con­sent, accord­ing to the details emerg­ing. And there’s not deny­ing this secret three-way rela­tion­ship at this point. The rape is still being denied. But the secret long­stand­ing sex­u­al three-way rela­tion­ship is very much unde­ni­able at this point. Which is a prob­lem for a pow­er cou­ple that has made anti-LGBTQ con­tent cen­tral to their rise to polit­i­cal and pub­lic promi­nence. Brid­get Ziegler stood behind DeSan­tis as he signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill back in May of this year, while she was car­ry­ing on these secret bisex­u­al trysts:

...
Yet even if no crim­i­nal charges are filed, the case is being close­ly watched to see what emerges because the Zieglers have made sex­u­al issues so cen­tral to their polit­i­cal brand.

...

Brid­get Ziegler had joined the Sara­so­ta Coun­ty School Board in 2014 and occa­sion­al­ly wad­ed into polar­iz­ing issues in the years lead­ing up to the pan­dem­ic, includ­ing a hot but­ton debate about trans­gen­der bath­room use in Sara­so­ta schools.

The pan­dem­ic led to a wave of con­ser­v­a­tive activism around schools, and both Zieglers – who have young chil­dren they often high­light in debates about edu­ca­tion poli­cies – became lead­ing advo­cates for the edu­ca­tion cul­ture war agen­da cham­pi­oned by Gov. Ron DeSan­tis, which attract­ed the most nation­al atten­tion with a bill lim­it­ing dis­cus­sion of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty in schools.

Brid­get Ziegler stood behind DeSan­tis as he signed the leg­is­la­tion, derid­ed by crit­ics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill – a nick­name that still irks its sup­port­ers. The gov­er­nor lat­er appoint­ed her to a board over­see­ing the spe­cial dis­trict that gov­erns Disney’s prop­er­ties in Cen­tral Flori­da. Dis­ney has been bat­tling with DeSan­tis over the company’s oppo­si­tion to the mea­sure, now in state law.
...

And while DeSan­tis is call­ing for Ziegler to step down as GOP state chair, Lee Coun­ty GOP Chair Michael Thomp­son called it a “polit­i­cal hit job” and Moms for Lib­er­ty char­ac­ter­ized the rape alle­ga­tions as an attack on #Strong­Women. Respons­es var­ied, from scared dis­tanc­ing to jad­ed ultra-cyn­i­cism:

...
Moms for Lib­er­ty has been promi­nent nation­al­ly in debates around trans­gen­der school poli­cies and oth­er LGBTQ dis­cus­sions, while the Flori­da GOP has heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed these issues. Brid­get Ziegler stepped down from the Moms for Lib­er­ty board of direc­tors in 2021.

...

Moms for Lib­er­ty post­ed on X in sup­port of Brid­get Ziegler, delet­ed the tweet, and then repost­ed with the replies dis­abled “because we won’t be part of allow­ing the trolls to den­i­grate women any fur­ther today.”

“#Strong­Women scare those that seek to destroy our coun­try. We stand with (Ziegler) & every oth­er badass woman fight­ing for kids & Amer­i­ca,” the sec­ond post said.

...

The Ziegler scan­dal also could com­pli­cate efforts by DeSan­tis and oth­er Repub­li­cans to con­tin­ue cam­paign­ing on LGBTQ cul­ture war issues.

But Lee Coun­ty GOP Chair Michael Thomp­son said the par­ty would con­tin­ue to push for tra­di­tion­al val­ues.

“I don’t believe it’s going to stop any­thing the Repub­li­can par­ty is doing or advo­cat­ing for,” he said. “That’s the beau­ty of hav­ing a par­ty. It’s not one per­son every­one ral­lies around. It’s the entire par­ty.”

And Thomp­son believes the Zieglers are the vic­tims of a “polit­i­cal hit job.”

“You’ve got a great all-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly there in the Zieglers, so what do we do? Let’s destroy them,” he said. “They’re out there advo­cat­ing for chil­dren and tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can val­ues, so let’s give them a black eye.”
...

So how long has the secret three-way been going on? Well, as we can see in the orig­i­nal Flori­da Tri­dent report that broke this sto­ry, the heav­i­ly redact­ed police report states the secret three-way has been going on for three years. That’s a seri­ous secret three-way. Also, as the report points out, Brid­get’s polit­i­cal includes her cur­rent posi­tion as the salaried vice pres­i­dent of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, ded­i­cat­ed to train­ing and net­work­ing young con­ser­v­a­tive activists. Recall how the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute was found­ed by CNP co-founder Mor­ton Black­well. The Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor for the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, Alex Van Anne, also shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list. Also, Marie Roger­son, who sits on the Moms for Lib­er­ty exec­u­tive board and the direc­tor of pro­gram devel­op­ment, is a Lead­er­ship Insti­tute grad­u­ate. Moms for Lib­er­ty isn’t the only orga­ni­za­tion with uncom­fort­able answers to give about its rela­tion­ship with Brid­get Ziegler:

Flori­da Tri­dent

Flori­da GOP Chair Chris­t­ian Ziegler, hus­band of Moms For Lib­er­ty cofounder, accused of sex­u­al assault by alleged menage a trois lover

by Bob Nor­man | Nov 30, 2023 | Fea­tured News

Chris­t­ian Ziegler, Florida’s GOP chair­man and hus­band of Sara­so­ta Coun­ty School Board mem­ber and Moms of Lib­er­ty co-founder Brid­get Ziegler, is under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion after a woman filed a com­plaint with the Sara­so­ta Police Depart­ment alleg­ing the long­time Repub­li­can offi­cial had raped her, accord­ing to a heav­i­ly redact­ed police report obtained by the Flori­da Tri­dent.

The com­plaint was filed on Octo­ber 4 and the alleged sex­u­al bat­tery occurred inside the woman’s home in Sara­so­ta on Octo­ber 2, accord­ing to the report. Among the few words that went unredact­ed in the report are “rape” and “sex­u­al assault com­plaint.”

The woman, accord­ing to sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion, alleged that she and both Zieglers had been involved in a three-year con­sen­su­al three-way sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. The inci­dent under inves­ti­ga­tion by Sara­so­ta police occurred when Chris­t­ian Ziegler and the woman were alone at the woman’s house, with­out Brid­get Ziegler present, the sources con­veyed.

Sources also cor­rob­o­rat­ed that a search war­rant was exe­cut­ed on Chris­t­ian Ziegler’s cell phone and that inves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue to con­duct a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion of the elec­tron­ic device. Chris­t­ian Ziegler is also alleged to have secret­ly video­taped the sex­u­al encoun­ters between the cou­ple and the woman, sources said.

There have been no charges filed in the case and the Tri­dent is unaware whether the woman’s alle­ga­tions have been sub­stan­ti­at­ed. A voice­mail was left with Mr. Ziegler for com­ment and a mes­sage was left at Brid­get Ziegler’s school board office. Nei­ther had been returned pri­or to pub­lish­ing this sto­ry.

After our sto­ry was pub­lished, Chris­t­ian Ziegler’s attor­ney, Derek Byrd, issued a writ­ten state­ment say­ing that his client has been “ful­ly coop­er­a­tive with the Sara­so­ta Police Depart­ment” and pre­dict­ing Ziegler will be “com­plete­ly exon­er­at­ed.”

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, pub­lic fig­ures are often accused of acts that they did not com­mit whether it be for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es or finan­cial gain,” Byrd said in the state­ment. “I would cau­tion any­one to rush to judg­ment until the inves­ti­ga­tion is con­clud­ed. Out of respect for the inves­ti­ga­tion, this is all Mr. Ziegler or myself can say at this time.”

The Zieglers are one of Florida’s top polit­i­cal pow­er cou­ples in the GOP. Chris­t­ian Ziegler is a long­time Repub­li­can Par­ty offi­cial who served as vice chair­man of the state par­ty pri­or to his elec­tion as chair in Feb­ru­ary. Pri­or to that he was a Sara­so­ta Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er who ran on a “fam­i­ly val­ues” plat­form.

Brid­get Ziegler has become a star with­in the MAGA move­ment who was per­son­al­ly endorsed for her school board seat by Flori­da Gov­er­nor and Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ron DeSan­tis, who also appoint­ed her in March to the state board that over­sees the spe­cial dis­trict pre­vi­ous­ly over­seen by Dis­ney World pri­or to DeSantis’s polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed feud with the enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny.

...

She is cur­rent­ly a salaried vice pres­i­dent at the con­ser­v­a­tive Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, which recent­ly opened an office in Sara­so­ta. At the Insti­tute she over­sees a school board train­ing pro­gram that she said “teach­es trains moms and dads how to run for school board, win, and then gov­ern!”

Chris­t­ian Ziegler has long­stand­ing ties to both DeSan­tis and for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who called out Ziegler’s name in a recent speech ear­li­er this month dur­ing the “Flori­da Free­dom Sum­mit” in Kissim­mee and said he was doing a “fan­tas­tic job.” Ziegler, as the state’s GOP chair, has remained offi­cial­ly neu­tral on the race.

...

———

“Flori­da GOP Chair Chris­t­ian Ziegler, hus­band of Moms For Lib­er­ty cofounder, accused of sex­u­al assault by alleged menage a trois lover” by Bob Nor­man; Flori­da Tri­dent; 11/30/2023

” The woman, accord­ing to sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion, alleged that she and both Zieglers had been involved in a three-year con­sen­su­al three-way sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. The inci­dent under inves­ti­ga­tion by Sara­so­ta police occurred when Chris­t­ian Ziegler and the woman were alone at the woman’s house, with­out Brid­get Ziegler present, the sources con­veyed.”

A three year-year con­sen­su­al three-way sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. That’s how sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion describe it. And while the rape was obvi­ous­ly non-con­sen­su­al, note that the video-tap­ing was appar­ent­ly non-con­sen­su­al too since it was done in secret. And while we don’t know the num­ber of video-taped sex­u­al encoun­ters, its sounds like it’s more than one, accord­ing to these sources:

...
Sources also cor­rob­o­rat­ed that a search war­rant was exe­cut­ed on Chris­t­ian Ziegler’s cell phone and that inves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue to con­duct a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion of the elec­tron­ic device. Chris­t­ian Ziegler is also alleged to have secret­ly video­taped the sex­u­al encoun­ters between the cou­ple and the woman, sources said.
...

And, again, when we see how Brid­get Ziegler is cur­rent­ly the salaried vice pres­i­dent of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, recall how the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute was found­ed by CNP co-founder Mor­ton Black­well. In addi­tion, Marie Roger­son, who sits on the M4L exec­u­tive board and the direc­tor of pro­gram devel­op­ment, is a Lead­er­ship Insti­tute grad­u­ate. The Ziegler’s were basi­cal­ly on the fast track for CNP mem­ber­ship if they were already secret mem­bers. Until now? Maybe. It remains unclear if Ziegler remains the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute’s vice pres­i­dent:

...
Brid­get Ziegler has become a star with­in the MAGA move­ment who was per­son­al­ly endorsed for her school board seat by Flori­da Gov­er­nor and Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ron DeSan­tis, who also appoint­ed her in March to the state board that over­sees the spe­cial dis­trict pre­vi­ous­ly over­seen by Dis­ney World pri­or to DeSantis’s polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed feud with the enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny.

...

She is cur­rent­ly a salaried vice pres­i­dent at the con­ser­v­a­tive Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, which recent­ly opened an office in Sara­so­ta. At the Insti­tute she over­sees a school board train­ing pro­gram that she said “teach­es trains moms and dads how to run for school board, win, and then gov­ern!”

Chris­t­ian Ziegler has long­stand­ing ties to both DeSan­tis and for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who called out Ziegler’s name in a recent speech ear­li­er this month dur­ing the “Flori­da Free­dom Sum­mit” in Kissim­mee and said he was doing a “fan­tas­tic job.” Ziegler, as the state’s GOP chair, has remained offi­cial­ly neu­tral on the race.
...

Will one, or both, of the Zieglers man­age to keep an intact polit­i­cal career? That’s pre­sum­ably going to depend heav­i­ly on the details that fur­ther come out. But as we can see in the fol­low­ing report, the more we’re learn­ing, the more unde­ni­able the whole sit­u­a­tion looks. This was­n’t a casu­al one night stand.

Although the exact nature of the sex­u­al rela­tion­ship over this three year peri­od remains a lit­tle mud­dled. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, The Zieglers had known this woman for 20 years. But the vic­tim told police, she “was sex­u­al­ly involved one time over a year ago” with Ziegler and his wife and they agreed to have a sec­ond sex­u­al encounter as a three-some on Octo­ber 2. So while some reports say they’ve been in a secret roman­tic sex­u­al rela­tion­ship for three years now, accord­ing to these details, there’s only been one sex­u­al encounter between the three, about a year ago, fol­lowed by this rape inci­dent. It’s the kind of mess that sug­gests we’re going to learn about a very com­pli­cat­ed roman­tic rela­tion­ship as more details come out.

Inter­est­ing­ly, while we are told that Chris­t­ian Ziegler admit­ted to the police that he record­ed the sex­u­al encounter, ini­tial­ly delet­ed the video, but then uploaded it to his Google Dri­ve after learn­ing of the accu­sa­tions. But police say that they had not recov­ered the video. So there’s talk of secret video that’s been delet­ed and undelet­ed. But no video? Keep in mind no charges have been filed yet so it’s pos­si­ble it’s just a mat­ter of police not ask­ing for it yet.

We also learned more about how the police got involved in the first place: they were con­tact on Octo­ber 4, after the vic­tim’s friend asked them to con­duct a wel­fare check, telling police, “She hasn’t shown up for work the past two days and I just got off the phone with her and she sounds drunk and I know she has pain med­ica­tion on her and she told me that she doesn’t think she can do it any­more.” But even before that, the vic­tim called her sis­ter after the assault and went to Sara­so­ta Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal where a sex­u­al assault kit was per­formed. This was­n’t an instance were the vic­tim con­cludes it was rape days after the encounter. This was unam­bigu­ous. So the vic­tim went to the hos­pi­tal after the assault to have a sex­u­al assault kit per­formed and was sound­ing so psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­traught that a friend got the cops involved:

Mia­mi Her­ald

Rape accu­sa­tion details revealed in search war­rant records against Flori­da GOP chair­man

By Max Green­wood and Alyssa John­son
Updat­ed Decem­ber 02, 2023 3:48 PM
This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished Decem­ber 2, 2023, 6:00 AM.

The woman accus­ing Flori­da GOP Chair­man Chris­t­ian Ziegler of sex­u­al assault told police she had planned to have sex with him and his wife, Moms for Lib­er­ty co-founder Brid­get Ziegler, but called it off when Brid­get couldn’t make it, accord­ing to a new­ly released search war­rant affi­davit.

The woman, whom Ziegler claimed to have known for 20 years in a mes­sage detailed in the war­rant, told Sara­so­ta police she “was sex­u­al­ly involved one time over a year ago” with Ziegler and his wife, a Sara­so­ta School Board mem­ber who helped start the con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates for more parental con­trol and tra­di­tion­al val­ues in pub­lic schools.

...

The vic­tim said she had agreed to have a sec­ond sex­u­al encounter with the cou­ple on Oct. 2, accord­ing to the affi­davit, which was first report­ed by the Orlan­do Sen­tinel and ABC Action News in Tam­pa. But when Brid­get Ziegler was unable to make it, the woman told inves­ti­ga­tors she can­celed the plans, tex­ting Chris­t­ian Ziegler that she was “most­ly in it for” his wife.

Min­utes after the woman can­celed, she opened her front door to walk her dog, where she claims to have seen Chris­t­ian Ziegler stand­ing in the hall­way out­side of her apart­ment, accord­ing to the affi­davit. He then pro­ceed­ed to enter her apart­ment, where he alleged­ly raped her.

With his attor­ney present, Chris­t­ian Ziegler told detec­tives that the Oct. 2 encounter was con­sen­su­al and that he record­ed it. He said he ini­tial­ly delet­ed the video but then uploaded it to his Google Dri­ve after learn­ing of the alle­ga­tion. Police said in the affi­davit that they had not recov­ered the video.

Accord­ing to the affi­davit, the vic­tim called her sis­ter after the alleged assault and went to Sara­so­ta Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal, where a sex­u­al assault kit was per­formed.

The alleged assault was report­ed to police two days after the encounter on Oct. 4. Audio of a 911 call from that day reveals that a friend of the vic­tim had asked law enforce­ment to per­form a well­ness check on the woman after she report­ed­ly failed to show up to work for two days.

“She hasn’t shown up for work the past two days and I just got off the phone with her and she sounds drunk and I know she has pain med­ica­tion on her and she told me that she doesn’t think she can do it any­more,” the caller told the dis­patch­er, accord­ing to audio of the 911 call that was obtained by the Flori­da Tri­dent, a watch­dog news out­let that first broke the news that police were inves­ti­gat­ing the sex­u­al bat­tery alle­ga­tion against Ziegler.

The affi­davit then recounts a series of mes­sages and phone calls between Chris­t­ian Ziegler and the woman. Accord­ing to the affi­davit, the vic­tim said that Ziegler liked to con­tact her through Insta­gram because he “con­ceals the mes­sages using van­ish mode.” The calls were record­ed.

In one call, the vic­tim expressed that Ziegler had “hurt her” and that she was deeply upset at what had hap­pened dur­ing the encounter. In a sep­a­rate call, she told Ziegler direct­ly that he had sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her.

“ ‘Those are big words, please don’t, no I didn’t,’ ” Ziegler respond­ed, accord­ing to the affi­davit.“ ‘You invit­ed me in, that’s it. I did not at all, and I nev­er want you to feel that way.’ ”

The inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing and no charges have been filed against Chris­t­ian Ziegler. His lawyer Derek Byrd issued a state­ment on Thurs­day say­ing that Ziegler was coop­er­at­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors and pre­dict­ing that he would ulti­mate­ly be exon­er­at­ed of any wrong­do­ing.

...

Chris­t­ian Ziegler, as Flori­da GOP chair­man, is tasked with guid­ing the par­ty through the state’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, when two Florid­i­ans — for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSan­tis — will be on the bal­lot.

Ziegler’s future at the helm of the Flori­da Repub­li­can Par­ty, how­ev­er, is fac­ing a real chal­lenge. On Thurs­day, short­ly after a debate with Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Gavin New­som, DeSan­tis told reporters that Ziegler should step down from the chair­man­ship amid the inves­ti­ga­tion.

“I don’t see how he can con­tin­ue with that inves­ti­ga­tion ongo­ing giv­en the grav­i­ty of those sit­u­a­tions, and so I think that he should step aside,” DeSan­tis said. “I think he should tend to that.”

————–

“Rape accu­sa­tion details revealed in search war­rant records against Flori­da GOP chair­man” by Max Green­wood and Alyssa John­son; Mia­mi Her­ald; 12/02/2023

“With his attor­ney present, Chris­t­ian Ziegler told detec­tives that the Oct. 2 encounter was con­sen­su­al and that he record­ed it. He said he ini­tial­ly delet­ed the video but then uploaded it to his Google Dri­ve after learn­ing of the alle­ga­tion. Police said in the affi­davit that they had not recov­ered the video.”

Ziegler told police the video exists, but they don’t have it yet. Are they ever going to get it? Have they even asked for it yet? It seems like an extreme­ly rel­e­vant piece of evi­dence to the case.

Still, bit by bit we are learn­ing more about this case, like the fact that the woman has known the Zieglers for 20 years and told police she “was sex­u­al­ly involved one time over a year ago” with Ziegler and his wife. The Octo­ber 2 encounter was to be the sec­ond time, before Brid­get had to bail. Min­utes lat­er, Chris­t­ian stand­ing in the hall­way out­side her apart­ment, accord­ing to the affi­davit. The expe­ri­ence left the vic­tim so pal­pa­bly hurt her friend con­tact­ed police over fears of self-harm. That’s how the police got involved. But even before that, the vic­tim called her sis­ter after the assault and went to Sara­so­ta Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal where a sex­u­al assault kit was per­formed. This was­n’t an instance were the vic­tim con­cludes it was rape days after the encounter. This was unam­bigu­ous:

...
The woman, whom Ziegler claimed to have known for 20 years in a mes­sage detailed in the war­rant, told Sara­so­ta police she “was sex­u­al­ly involved one time over a year ago” with Ziegler and his wife, a Sara­so­ta School Board mem­ber who helped start the con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates for more parental con­trol and tra­di­tion­al val­ues in pub­lic schools.

...

The vic­tim said she had agreed to have a sec­ond sex­u­al encounter with the cou­ple on Oct. 2, accord­ing to the affi­davit, which was first report­ed by the Orlan­do Sen­tinel and ABC Action News in Tam­pa. But when Brid­get Ziegler was unable to make it, the woman told inves­ti­ga­tors she can­celed the plans, tex­ting Chris­t­ian Ziegler that she was “most­ly in it for” his wife.

Min­utes after the woman can­celed, she opened her front door to walk her dog, where she claims to have seen Chris­t­ian Ziegler stand­ing in the hall­way out­side of her apart­ment, accord­ing to the affi­davit. He then pro­ceed­ed to enter her apart­ment, where he alleged­ly raped her.

...

Accord­ing to the affi­davit, the vic­tim called her sis­ter after the alleged assault and went to Sara­so­ta Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal, where a sex­u­al assault kit was per­formed.

The alleged assault was report­ed to police two days after the encounter on Oct. 4. Audio of a 911 call from that day reveals that a friend of the vic­tim had asked law enforce­ment to per­form a well­ness check on the woman after she report­ed­ly failed to show up to work for two days.

“She hasn’t shown up for work the past two days and I just got off the phone with her and she sounds drunk and I know she has pain med­ica­tion on her and she told me that she doesn’t think she can do it any­more,” the caller told the dis­patch­er, accord­ing to audio of the 911 call that was obtained by the Flori­da Tri­dent, a watch­dog news out­let that first broke the news that police were inves­ti­gat­ing the sex­u­al bat­tery alle­ga­tion against Ziegler.
...

Again, either this is some sort of elab­o­rate attack against #Strong­Women, like Moms for Lib­er­ty sug­gest­ed above, or this was a very real rape that left a woman sui­ci­dal. And one of those sit­u­a­tions seems a lot more prob­a­ble than the oth­er one at this point.

But, of course, thanks to the secret video tape Chris­t­ian told the police about, this should all be poten­tial­ly cleared up. Assum­ing the police even­tu­al­ly get the tape. So this seems like the kind of sto­ry where we should even­tu­al­ly get an answer. It may not be a pleas­ant answer, but the evi­dence is there. Might this come down to a ‘Is it rape?’ debate over some sort of sex­u­al rela­tions gray area? That sounds pos­si­ble. Either way, it’s awful pol­i­tics and career destroy­ing for this ris­ing Flori­da pow­er cou­ple.

It’s hard to imag­ine their polit­i­cal careers sur­viv­ing this regard­less of the ulti­mate legal con­clu­sion. That said, Brid­get Ziegler is prob­a­bly going to be invit­ed to a lot more par­ties as a result of all this. Chris­t­ian hope­ful­ly not so much.

Mike John­son is dan­ger­ous theo­crat who pals around with oth­er dan­ger­ous theocrats. It’s increas­ing­ly unde­ni­able with each new report on John­son’s extrem­ist asso­ci­a­tions. Like the recent report on John­son’s appear­ance back in Octo­ber on Jim Gar­low’s World Prayer Net­work where John­son laments the ris­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as LGBTQ, sug­gest­ing the “cul­ture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irre­deemable.” As saw, Gar­low is lead­ing New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) preach­er advo­cat­ing for the Domin­ion­ist “Sev­en Moun­tains” insti­tu­tion­al cap­ture of soci­ety. A move­ment with close ties to groups like Moms for Lib­er­ty push­ing anti-LGBTQ hys­ter­ics on pub­lic schools. And then there’s the fact that John­son agreed to give the keynote address at this year’s gala event for the Domin­ion­ist ori­ent­ed Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL). There’s not hid­ing these asso­ci­a­tions with John­son, which is part of what makes his ele­va­tion to speak­er so dis­turb­ing. Mak­ing John­son the House Speak­er is like an act of mask-drop­ping.

And as we’ve also seen, there’s no real divide between the groups advo­cat­ing this domin­ion­ist insti­tu­tion­al cap­ture of soci­ety and those who advo­cate for a vio­lent cap­ture of soci­ety. For exam­ple, recall the wild­ly dis­turb­ing reports we’ve had about Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Matt Shea, who secret­ly penned a man­i­festo in 2016 call­ing for the wag­ing of Bib­li­cal War to takeover the US in 2016 and the exe­cu­tion of any adult males who refused to sub­mit to the new theoc­ra­cy. Shea also 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. Shea is an ardent domin­ion­ist with close ties to the Oath Keep­ers who has been work­ing on devel­op­ing a nation­al net­work of “Prayer Cau­cus­es” in asso­ci­a­tion with allies like extrem­ist preach­er Ken Peters. Peters not only attend­ed the Jan 6 insur­rec­tion, but he actu­al­ly spoke at one of the Jan 5 ral­lies at the Capi­tol. Anoth­er close Shea ally, Rev­erend Matthew Trewhel­la, came to nation­al atten­tion in the 1990s as one of three dozen sig­na­to­ries to a state­ment that declared that the mur­der of abor­tion providers is “jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide,” and lat­er became an advo­cate for church-based mili­tias. Trewhel­la’s son-in-law, Jason Storms, videos him­self at the Capi­tol on Jan 6 call­ing it a “rev­o­lu­tion”. Shea him­self attend­ed a Jan 6 ral­ly in Ida­ho where he urged peo­ple to “fight back in every sin­gle sphere we pos­si­bly can,” and to pre­pare for “total war.”

It’s one big move­ment. So it should come as no sur­prise to learn that Mike John­son’s legal career at the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF) is emblem­at­ic of how inter­twined vio­lent Chris­t­ian extrem­ists like Shea are to this larg­er polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful move­ment. Recall how the ADF received large dona­tions from the Bet­sy DeVos and Erik Prince and fun­neled that mon­ey into sup­port­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments in Europe and backed a 2016 Belize law that pun­ished homo­sex­u­al sex with 10 years in prison. Also recall how the ADF has been play­ing a major behind the scenes role in shap­ing the cur­rent man­u­fac­tured anti-trans pan­ic. At the same time, the ADF shows up on the list of orga­ni­za­tions involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. CNP mem­ber Michael Far­ris, who co-found­ed the “Con­ven­tion of States” project designed to over­haul the Con­sti­tu­tion — has served as the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the ADF. And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Dai­ly Beast arti­cle excerpt, John­son’s ADF career is filled with the legal defense of the most vio­lent ele­ments of this domin­ion­ist move­ment.

One exam­ple is John­son’s legal work on behalf of rad­i­cal anti-gay preach­er Grant Storms. It turns out it was John­son, work­ing on behalf of the ADF, who suc­cess­ful­ly per­suad­ed New Orleans offi­cials in 2003 to allow Storm­s’s group demon­strate against that year’s South­ern Deca­dence fes­ti­val, known local­ly as “gay Mar­di Gras.” A man end­ed up get­ting stabbed at the event and the stab­ber made clear in a record­ed con­fes­sion that he went to the event because “he want­ed to kill a gay man”. Lat­er that year, Storms gave a speech at the Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Homo-Fas­cism in Wis­con­sin where he used rhetoric like, “It’s us or them. There’s no in between. There’s no hav­ing this peace­ful co-exis­tence.” Lat­er that year, John­son rep­re­sent­ed Storms in anoth­er legal case over per­mits for anti-abor­tion ral­lies in Jef­fer­son Parish.

John­son’s rela­tion­ship with Storms appears to have end­ed by the time Storms became nation­al news in 2012 fol­low­ing his con­fes­sion to mas­tur­bat­ing in a van by a play­ground. But that was­n’t John­son’s only ties to the Storms fam­i­ly. As the head of Oper­a­tion Save Amer­i­ca (OSA), which has been called the US’s largest mil­i­tant anti-abor­tion group, Grant’s son Jason Storms is the kind of fig­ure the ADF exists to defend. And in 2009, that’s exact­ly what John­son did on behalf of the ADF, rep­re­sent­ing Jason Storms in his law­suit against the city of Mil­wau­kee over a court injunc­tion at abor­tion protests. Johnson’s Mil­wau­kee law­suit includ­ed affi­davits from none oth­er than Storm­s’s father-in-law, Rev Trewhel­la (Storms has­n’t exact­ly had the best father fig­ures in his life). 2009 also hap­pens to be the year abor­tion doc­tor George Tiller was mur­dered by an assailant asso­ci­at­ed with Oper­a­tion Res­cue.

And, of course, all of this cul­mi­nates with Jason Storms, Ken Peters, and the rest of the insur­rec­tionary mob on Jan­u­ary 6 car­ry­ing out a coup attempt that had the theo­crat­ic Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and NAR Domin­ion­ist fin­gers all over it. Again, the selec­tion of some­one with John­son’s theo­crat­ic pedi­gree to be the next Speak­er of House real­ly was a kind of mask-drop­ping moment. Because the more we look at Mike John­son’s career arc, the more appar­ent it becomes that Mike John­son isn’t just a theo­crat. He’s a theo­crat ready and will­ing to do ‘what­ev­er is nec­es­sary’ to achieve that theo­crat­ic dream, and he’s just one per­son in a much larg­er army:

The Dai­ly Beast

The Vio­lent and Extreme His­to­ry of Mike Johnson’s Old Legal Clients

BOOK OF REVELATION

Speak­er Mike Johnson’s old clients include a man who spoke glow­ing­ly of killing gay peo­ple and anoth­er who said the gov­ern­ment “should be a ter­ror” to the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty.

by Roger Sol­len­berg­er, Riley Roger­son, and Sam Brodey
Updat­ed Dec. 05, 2023 10:11AM EST / Pub­lished Dec. 05, 2023 4:54AM EST

Speak­er Mike John­son has spo­ken mod­est­ly about his career before Con­gress, iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as a hum­ble con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian caus­es.

“I’m so grate­ful for the min­istry and your faith­ful­ness,” John­son said in August, return­ing praise from evan­gel­i­cal leader Jim Gar­low. “It’s a great encour­age­ment to me and oth­ers who are serv­ing in these some­times rocky cor­ners of the Lord’s vine­yard.”

...

The Dai­ly Beast’s review turned up one for­mer John­son client who said the gov­ern­ment “should be a ter­ror” to abor­tion providers and the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty, anoth­er who opposed the con­dem­na­tion of domes­tic ter­ror­ist attacks on abor­tion clin­ics, and anoth­er client who went on to record him­self endors­ing the hang­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials while in the thick of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capi­tol.

That for­mer client now leads a mil­i­tant orga­ni­za­tion tied to one of the dark­est chap­ters in the anti-abor­tion move­ment: the 2009 mur­der of a Kansas abor­tion doc­tor. And that plaintiff’s father also turned to John­son when he want­ed to secure a per­mit in 2003 for an anti-LGBTQ protest—a protest that end­ed in the attempt­ed stab­bing of a gay man.

In that par­tic­u­lar case, Johnson’s client—anti-gay activist and for­mer rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian preach­er Grant E. Storms—later made nation­al news in 2012 when he con­fessed to mas­tur­bat­ing in his van by a play­ground in Metairie, Louisiana. Storms was con­vict­ed of inde­cent expo­sure and sen­tenced to three years pro­ba­tion.

While John­son didn’t rep­re­sent Storms in that crim­i­nal mat­ter, Storms told The Dai­ly Beast in an inter­view on Mon­day that John­son had done reams of legal work for him in the ear­ly to mid-2000s, pro­vid­ing all of his ser­vices for free. Storms said he con­sid­ered John­son a friend.

“We were broth­ers on the path,” Storms said. “He always had our back.”

By all accounts, John­son indeed had their backs. While his caus­tic anti-abor­tion and anti-gay stances flew large­ly under the nation­al radar for years, they have been brought into pub­lic view since he clinched the speaker’s gav­el in Octo­ber. John­son has called abor­tion “a holo­caust” and once wrote in sup­port of crim­i­nal­iz­ing gay sex. He also has not been shy about bur­nish­ing his Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist cre­den­tials, recent­ly telling Fox News that the Bible dic­tates his beliefs on “any issue under the sun.”

...

Attor­neys are, of course, not respon­si­ble for their clients’ actions or choices—particularly after their legal rela­tion­ship ends. But John­son chose to rep­re­sent clients and causes—often for free—with a remark­able ide­o­log­i­cal con­sis­ten­cy. While he could argue he took their cas­es on a First Amend­ment basis, John­son was pre­oc­cu­pied with clients who reflect­ed the same anti-gay and anti-abor­tion stances that he has held open­ly for decades. His clients’ embrace of vio­lent rhetoric appar­ent­ly did lit­tle to dis­suade John­son from tak­ing their cas­es at the time, and the speak­er did not avail him­self of the oppor­tu­ni­ty now to denounce their actions, words, or involve­ment with the insur­rec­tion.

...

As this review of Johnson’s legal career shows, there is still more to learn about Johnson’s past and how tight­ly he was knit­ted into the fab­ric of some of the country’s most mil­i­tant reli­gious move­ments.

Grant Storms told The Dai­ly Beast that he first con­nect­ed with John­son in the ear­ly 2000s through Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, an influ­en­tial activist group that seeks to cod­i­fy right-wing Chris­t­ian beliefs into law.

While ADF styles itself as a phil­an­thropic foun­da­tion ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing reli­gious lib­er­ty, the group has engaged in a glob­al cru­sade to erode LGBTQ and abor­tion rights around the world. John­son land­ed at ADF after law school and worked there for near­ly 10 years as an attor­ney and spokesper­son.

Storms recalled that he ini­tial­ly con­tact­ed John­son to help him force the removal of what Storms con­sid­ered “lewd” imagery from an adver­tise­ment he’d seen at a bus sta­tion, which he claimed fea­tured an image of men hav­ing sex. At the time, Storms was well-known in Louisiana as a bull­horn-wield­ing Chris­t­ian zealot. He was a tire­less French Quar­ter gad­fly, and he retained Johnson’s pro bono assis­tance in an array of legal matters—one of which drew nation­al atten­tion and end­ed in a hate crime.

Accord­ing to Storms, it was John­son specif­i­cal­ly who per­suad­ed New Orleans offi­cials to grant a per­mit for his 2003 demon­stra­tion against that year’s South­ern Deca­dence fes­ti­val, the city’s annu­al Labor Day Bac­cha­nal cel­e­brat­ing gay cul­ture, known local­ly as “gay Mar­di Gras.” Storms, who had just con­vinced the Louisiana state leg­is­la­ture to pass stricter decen­cy laws—after hand­ing law­mak­ers videos that he per­son­al­ly record­ed of men hav­ing sex in public—had attained nation­al noto­ri­ety through his activism. He told The Dai­ly Beast that local offi­cials, as well as the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, had been opposed to his demon­stra­tion.

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press cov­ered the protest at length. But the event was marred by vio­lence, when an anti-gay assailant attempt­ed to mur­der a man with a five-inch steak knife. Storms denied that the attack­er was a mem­ber of his orga­ni­za­tion, Chris­t­ian Con­ser­v­a­tives for Reform. But Storms him­self was charged with bat­tery in a sep­a­rate event that week­end, after get­ting into a push­ing match with a secu­ri­ty guard who refused to let him record video inside a night­club.

Accord­ing to police, the stab­ber made clear in a record­ed con­fes­sion that he had gone to Storms’ event specif­i­cal­ly because “he want­ed to kill a gay man,” though it wasn’t clear whether the vic­tim he chose was, in fact, gay. The assailant was charged with attempt­ed first-degree mur­der and a felony hate crime, but he died pend­ing tri­al.

In an inter­view with The Dai­ly Beast, Storms repeat­ed­ly denounced that attack and all vio­lence against the LGBTQ and abor­tion rights com­mu­ni­ties. Still, Storms acknowl­edged in ret­ro­spect that his fiery rhetoric at the time—including on his five-day-per-week radio show, which he said almost cer­tain­ly fea­tured John­son sev­er­al times—may have cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment that unin­ten­tion­al­ly acti­vat­ed a bad actor.

“When every­thing was at the height—everything always on the news and every­one always talk­ing about it—well in the midst of our protest, a gay per­son got stabbed,” he said, admit­ting that some of his rhetoric around the event “didn’t come out right.”

“Every per­son who’s a pub­lic fig­ure has to be care­ful with their rhetoric, and as you get old­er you have to be more and more care­ful,” Storms told The Dai­ly Beast, before again call­ing the LGBTQ lifestyle “a per­ver­sion.”

But John­son did not dis­tance him­self from Storms after the vio­lence of the protest. In fact, he got clos­er to the preach­er. Eight months lat­er, John­son rep­re­sent­ed Storms in anoth­er legal case regard­ing per­mits, this time for anti-abor­tion ral­lies in Jef­fer­son Parish.

In the mean­time, Storms made news again when he appeared to endorse the mass mur­der of gay peo­ple at a reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ist con­fer­ence in Wis­con­sin.

The event—the “Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Homo-Fas­cism”—was host­ed that Octo­ber in Mil­wau­kee by a group called Wis­con­sin Chris­tians Unit­ed, and fea­tured a vol­canic, hour-long address from Storms. He spoke at length about his “bat­tle” against the South­ern Deca­dence Festival—where weeks ear­li­er a man was stabbed—saying “the Lord gave us a great break­through.” He repeat­ed­ly invoked vio­lent imagery, warn­ing his Chris­t­ian audi­ence that gay peo­ple “want to kill you” and “have to elim­i­nate us,” liken­ing his per­son­al cru­sade to Jonathan’s bib­li­cal bat­tle against the Philis­tine army.

“That first slaugh­ter which Jonathan and his armor bear­er made was about 20 men. Wheeeww! Come on. Let’s go. God has deliv­ered them all into our hands. Hal­lelu­jah!” Storms said, accord­ing to a tran­script of the speech. He then made the sounds “”boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

“There’s 20. Whew. Ca-Ching. Yes. Glo­ry. Glo­ry to God. Let’s go through the dri­ve-thru at McDonald’s and come back and get the rest,” Storms said in the tran­script.

After the event, LGBTQ rights group Fair Wis­con­sin accused Storms of mak­ing “sounds like gun­fire as if he were shoot­ing gay peo­ple” and “appar­ent­ly advo­cat­ing the mur­der” of gay peo­ple. Storms then sued Fair Wis­con­sin for defama­tion, which the Wis­con­sin Supreme Court lat­er ruled was friv­o­lous, uphold­ing $87,000 in sanc­tions against his attorney—who was not John­son.

In an inter­view with The Dai­ly Beast, Storms ini­tial­ly recalled these events as “hilar­i­ous,” say­ing that “obvi­ous­ly it was sym­bol­ic of not lit­er­al­ly killing” gay peo­ple, but “killing the agen­da” through legal means, such as protests.

When The Dai­ly Beast quot­ed some of his passages—for exam­ple, “It’s us or them. There’s no in between. There’s no hav­ing this peace­ful co-existence”—Storms allowed that he might have been “a lit­tle bit over-the-top.” Even­tu­al­ly, Storms said he could under­stand why an out­side group would have “mis­in­ter­pret­ed” his remarks as advo­cat­ing mass mur­der.

“I got­ta live with what I said, live with the way peo­ple inter­pret it,” Storms said. “But I’ll fight for everyone’s right to life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.”

But if Storms’ rhetoric was beyond the pale, it did­n’t stop John­son from rep­re­sent­ing him.

Months after Storms sued Action Wis­con­sin, John­son helped him sue Jef­fer­son Parish. The same month he filed that law­suit, John­son likened anoth­er reli­gious case he was work­ing on to “spir­i­tu­al war­fare.”

“The ulti­mate goal of the ene­my is silenc­ing the gospel,” John­son told the Shreve­port Times in April 2004. “This is spir­i­tu­al war­fare.”

Storms told The Dai­ly Beast that the two men lost con­tact some­time after Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na, in 2005—several years before the play­ground mas­tur­ba­tion inci­dent that pro­pelled him again into nation­al ignominy.

While Storms con­fessed, he still tried to fight the wit­ness account of the expo­sure charge—which he dis­put­ed again in his inter­view with The Dai­ly Beast. But the judge sen­tenced him to three years pro­ba­tion, and cit­ed his con­fes­sion that it was the third time he’d mas­tur­bat­ed in the park that week.

If John­son did lose touch with Storms in 2005, how­ev­er, he some­how still stum­bled on a path to Storms’ son, Jason Storms, who John­son and the ADF rep­re­sent­ed in anoth­er Mil­wau­kee case in 2009.

In that case, John­son argued that his plaintiffs—a cadre of anti-abor­tion extremists—had been “intim­i­dat­ed and imped­ed and chilled” in the exer­cise of their free speech rights by a fed­er­al court injunc­tion in the East­ern Dis­trict of Wis­con­sin against protests at abor­tion clin­ics.

The suit point­ed to inter­ac­tions the plain­tiffs had with law enforce­ment, includ­ing arrests. A num­ber of those charges were dis­missed, but John­son argued that because they were dis­missed “with­out prej­u­dice,” pros­e­cu­tors could bring them again if they wished—which John­son char­ac­ter­ized as intim­i­da­tion.

...

Jason Storms is the leader of Oper­a­tion Save Amer­i­ca, for­mer­ly Oper­a­tion Res­cue, which has been called the nation’s largest mil­i­tant anti-abor­tion group. Jason Storms also par­took in the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, post­ing a social media video of him­self on the building’s scaf­fold­ing short­ly after the breach.

Oper­a­tion Res­cue shot to infamy when it was tied to the slay­ing of a Kansas abor­tion provider in 2009—the same year John­son filed the law­suit. Today, OSA and its mil­i­tant allies still believe women who get abor­tions should be charged with murder—a step up from more main­stream anti-abor­tion­ists who would only place that bur­den on the doc­tor.

This sum­mer, Storms said abor­tion might only be end­ed in the U.S. through civ­il war. He rou­tine­ly draws wide­spread media cov­er­age for camp­ing out­side of abor­tion clin­ics and urg­ing women against end­ing their preg­nan­cies, fre­quent­ly along­side his wife and their 10 chil­dren.

Ear­li­er this year, a mem­ber of OSA was charged in con­nec­tion with a bomb scare at a Mil­wau­kee-area Pride event, the Mil­wau­kee Jour­nal Sen­tinel report­ed. In Octo­ber, the Sixth Cir­cuit of Fed­er­al Appeals upheld a 2022 restrain­ing order against the group, after unruly demon­stra­tions in Ten­nessee.

But in 2009, Johnson—on behalf of the ADF—represented Jason Storms along­side a group of vir­u­lent anti-abor­tion extrem­ists when they sued the city of Mil­wau­kee over a court injunc­tion at abor­tion protests. That crew includ­ed anti-LGBTQ activist Robert Breaud and Jim Soder­na, both of whom have their own sto­ried past.

In 1999, Soder­na entered his name in the pub­lic record as oppos­ing a Mil­wau­kee city coun­cil res­o­lu­tion “against domes­tic ter­ror­ism in the form of vio­lence against health-care providers, espe­cial­ly those pro­vid­ing fam­i­ly plan­ning ser­vices.” Mean­while, Breaud—a self-described for­mer “homosexual”—ran a 1999 failed cam­paign for the Louisiana state House as a Repub­li­can. Per an arti­cle from The Times-Picayune, which is not pub­licly avail­able online but acces­si­ble through the Lex­is Nex­is pub­li­ca­tion data­base, Breaud said the gov­ern­ment “should be a ter­ror to the evildoer”—quoting the apos­tle Paul in the Bible—further spec­i­fy­ing, as Paul did not, that the evil­do­ers were gay men, les­bians, and abor­tion providers.

Breaud, a nurse and musi­cian, spread his homo­pho­bic mes­sage via an orig­i­nal song called “It’s Not OK to be Gay.” A 2007 video of Breaud shows him strum­ming a gui­tar and singing, “It’s not OK to be gay. It’s not OK to be per­vert­ed. It’s not in your DNA. What you need is to be con­vert­ed.” A spo­ken-word inter­lude describes Breaud’s for­mer lifestyle as “unholy, unnat­ur­al, unsat­is­fy­ing, unful­fill­ing.”

But in the 2009 abor­tion case, John­son rep­re­sent­ed Breaud regard­ing a dif­fer­ent piece: an anti-abor­tion com­po­si­tion called “Baby Song,” which Breaud had ren­dered at a “dis­turb­ing” vol­ume out­side of a clin­ic, draw­ing a police cita­tion.

Breaud also went on to pub­licly boy­cott Star­bucks over CEO Howard Schultz’ 2013 sup­port of gay mar­riage, say­ing in a Chris­t­ian News Net­work inter­view that he would tell Schultz, “You’re pro­mot­ing sin. You’re help­ing destroy young people’s lives.”

Johnson’s Mil­wau­kee law­suit was bol­stered by affi­davits from Jason Storms’ father-in-law, mil­i­tant anti-abor­tion­ist Rev. Matthew Trewhel­la. Trewhella—who two years pri­or was rep­re­sent­ed by ADF in a sep­a­rate mat­ter in Ohio—previously defend­ed the mur­der of abor­tion doc­tors as “jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide.” And in 1994, Trewhel­la was record­ed urg­ing par­ents to give their chil­dren firearms train­ing and advo­cat­ing for reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions to launch mili­tias, The New York Times report­ed.

By 2009, Trewhel­la had served 14 months in prison for obstruct­ing clin­ics. He ran an Oper­a­tion Res­cue splin­ter group, called Mis­sion­ar­ies to the Pre-Born, which also fea­tured Jason Storms. Mis­sion­ar­ies to the Pre-Born has been described as “one of the most dan­ger­ous and vio­lent of the direct action anti-abor­tion groups active in the Unit­ed States.”

The city set­tled the Mil­wau­kee suit. Johnson’s co-coun­sel, Fin­tan Doo­ley, told The Dai­ly Beast that he was hap­py with the set­tle­ment at the time, though they didn’t win fees. Doo­ley, a Demo­c­rat, also plead­ed igno­rance about any ties to vio­lent groups among the plain­tiffs and Trewhel­la.

But the year of that law­suit, Oper­a­tion Res­cue was tied to the mur­der of Kansas abor­tion provider Dr. George Tiller. The killer had been in touch with a group offi­cial about Tiller’s where­abouts, and claimed to be a mem­ber. While the group denounced the slay­ing and the attacker’s claims to mem­ber­ship, Tiller was a top tar­get of Oper­a­tion Rescue’s ire for years—in 2002, they relo­cat­ed their head­quar­ters to Wichi­ta specif­i­cal­ly to pres­sure his clinic—and its leader at the time had pre­vi­ous­ly called the mur­der of abor­tion providers a “jus­ti­fi­able defen­sive action.”

Twelve years lat­er, Jason Storms was part of anoth­er siege. On Jan. 6, 2021, Storms and two oth­er OSA mem­bers “set up the Lord’s beach­head” at Trump’s ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., accord­ing to an OSA blog post two days after the attack. The post mar­veled that “many saints were encour­aged by the bold and plain dec­la­ra­tions of the Law/Word of God,” declar­ing that it was “a great and exhaust­ing time.”

What the post did not men­tion, how­ev­er, was that Storms par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sack­ing of the Capi­tol. He post­ed a social media video of him­self on the scaf­fold­ing short­ly after the build­ing was breached, admir­ing the insur­rec­tion as “Rev­o­lu­tion 2.0” and crow­ing, “Yeah, baby!” in reply to a bull­horned call to “Hang ’em high!”

Doo­ley, Johnson’s co-coun­sel, told The Dai­ly Beast that he was “dis­ap­point­ed but not sur­prised” to learn about Jason Storms’ involve­ment in the attack.

Grant Storms told The Dai­ly Beast that he “sup­port­ed” his son attend­ing the ral­ly, but, like Doo­ley, he con­demned Trump and the Repub­li­cans who still sup­port him—specifically includ­ing John­son.

“Trump went nuts,” Grant Storms told The Dai­ly Beast. “Any­one can see he tried to over­turn the elec­tion. He belongs in jail.”

Like Grant Storms, Doo­ley spoke admirably about John­son, not­ing his intel­lect and the influ­ence he had on his own legal work.

But asked what he would say to John­son regard­ing the speaker’s own unre­pen­tant efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion and his con­tin­ued sup­port of Trump, Doo­ley soured.

“Par­don me while I puke, Mr. John­son,” he said.

———-

“The Vio­lent and Extreme His­to­ry of Mike Johnson’s Old Legal Clients” by Roger Sol­len­berg­er, Riley Roger­son, and Sam Brodey; The Dai­ly Beast; 12/05/2023

“Attor­neys are, of course, not respon­si­ble for their clients’ actions or choices—particularly after their legal rela­tion­ship ends. But John­son chose to rep­re­sent clients and causes—often for free—with a remark­able ide­o­log­i­cal con­sis­ten­cy. While he could argue he took their cas­es on a First Amend­ment basis, John­son was pre­oc­cu­pied with clients who reflect­ed the same anti-gay and anti-abor­tion stances that he has held open­ly for decades. His clients’ embrace of vio­lent rhetoric appar­ent­ly did lit­tle to dis­suade John­son from tak­ing their cas­es at the time, and the speak­er did not avail him­self of the oppor­tu­ni­ty now to denounce their actions, words, or involve­ment with the insur­rec­tion.”

Defen­dants deserve legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. You can’t blame a lawyer for rep­re­sent­ing unseem­ly clients. And yet it’s hard to avoid the obser­va­tion that Mike John­son was­n’t defend­ing these clients out of some sort of sense that every­one deserves legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He was accept­ing ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned clients, often for free. Because of course those were the kinds of clients he was rep­re­sent­ing as a lawyer for Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF). Again, recall how the ADF received large dona­tions from the Bet­sy DeVos and Erik Prince and fun­neled that mon­ey into sup­port­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments in Europe and backed a 2016 Belize law that pun­ished homo­sex­u­al sex with 10 years in prison. Also recall how the ADF has been play­ing a major behind the scenes roll in shap­ing the cur­rent man­u­fac­tured anti-trans pan­ic. At the same time, the ADF shows up on the list of orga­ni­za­tions involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. CNP mem­ber Michael Far­ris, who co-found­ed the “Con­ven­tion of States” project designed to over­haul the Con­sti­tu­tion — has served as the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the ADF. Defend­ing Chris­t­ian extrem­ists like Storms is why the ADF exists. So when rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian preach­er Grant E. Storms John­son as a ‘broth­er on the path’ who ‘always had our back’, he could have added that the entire ADF had his back too. John­son was just doing his job as an ide­o­log­i­cal rad­i­cal:

...
That for­mer client now leads a mil­i­tant orga­ni­za­tion tied to one of the dark­est chap­ters in the anti-abor­tion move­ment: the 2009 mur­der of a Kansas abor­tion doc­tor. And that plaintiff’s father also turned to John­son when he want­ed to secure a per­mit in 2003 for an anti-LGBTQ protest—a protest that end­ed in the attempt­ed stab­bing of a gay man.

In that par­tic­u­lar case, Johnson’s client—anti-gay activist and for­mer rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian preach­er Grant E. Storms—later made nation­al news in 2012 when he con­fessed to mas­tur­bat­ing in his van by a play­ground in Metairie, Louisiana. Storms was con­vict­ed of inde­cent expo­sure and sen­tenced to three years pro­ba­tion.

While John­son didn’t rep­re­sent Storms in that crim­i­nal mat­ter, Storms told The Dai­ly Beast in an inter­view on Mon­day that John­son had done reams of legal work for him in the ear­ly to mid-2000s, pro­vid­ing all of his ser­vices for free. Storms said he con­sid­ered John­son a friend.

“We were broth­ers on the path,” Storms said. “He always had our back.”

...

Grant Storms told The Dai­ly Beast that he first con­nect­ed with John­son in the ear­ly 2000s through Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, an influ­en­tial activist group that seeks to cod­i­fy right-wing Chris­t­ian beliefs into law.

...

Storms recalled that he ini­tial­ly con­tact­ed John­son to help him force the removal of what Storms con­sid­ered “lewd” imagery from an adver­tise­ment he’d seen at a bus sta­tion, which he claimed fea­tured an image of men hav­ing sex. At the time, Storms was well-known in Louisiana as a bull­horn-wield­ing Chris­t­ian zealot. He was a tire­less French Quar­ter gad­fly, and he retained Johnson’s pro bono assis­tance in an array of legal matters—one of which drew nation­al atten­tion and end­ed in a hate crime.

Accord­ing to Storms, it was John­son specif­i­cal­ly who per­suad­ed New Orleans offi­cials to grant a per­mit for his 2003 demon­stra­tion against that year’s South­ern Deca­dence fes­ti­val, the city’s annu­al Labor Day Bac­cha­nal cel­e­brat­ing gay cul­ture, known local­ly as “gay Mar­di Gras.” Storms, who had just con­vinced the Louisiana state leg­is­la­ture to pass stricter decen­cy laws—after hand­ing law­mak­ers videos that he per­son­al­ly record­ed of men hav­ing sex in public—had attained nation­al noto­ri­ety through his activism. He told The Dai­ly Beast that local offi­cials, as well as the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, had been opposed to his demon­stra­tion.

...

But John­son did not dis­tance him­self from Storms after the vio­lence of the protest. In fact, he got clos­er to the preach­er. Eight months lat­er, John­son rep­re­sent­ed Storms in anoth­er legal case regard­ing per­mits, this time for anti-abor­tion ral­lies in Jef­fer­son Parish.

In the mean­time, Storms made news again when he appeared to endorse the mass mur­der of gay peo­ple at a reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ist con­fer­ence in Wis­con­sin.

...

In an inter­view with The Dai­ly Beast, Storms ini­tial­ly recalled these events as “hilar­i­ous,” say­ing that “obvi­ous­ly it was sym­bol­ic of not lit­er­al­ly killing” gay peo­ple, but “killing the agen­da” through legal means, such as protests.

When The Dai­ly Beast quot­ed some of his passages—for exam­ple, “It’s us or them. There’s no in between. There’s no hav­ing this peace­ful co-existence”—Storms allowed that he might have been “a lit­tle bit over-the-top.” Even­tu­al­ly, Storms said he could under­stand why an out­side group would have “mis­in­ter­pret­ed” his remarks as advo­cat­ing mass mur­der.

“I got­ta live with what I said, live with the way peo­ple inter­pret it,” Storms said. “But I’ll fight for everyone’s right to life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.”

But if Storms’ rhetoric was beyond the pale, it did­n’t stop John­son from rep­re­sent­ing him.

Months after Storms sued Action Wis­con­sin, John­son helped him sue Jef­fer­son Parish. The same month he filed that law­suit, John­son likened anoth­er reli­gious case he was work­ing on to “spir­i­tu­al war­fare.”

“The ulti­mate goal of the ene­my is silenc­ing the gospel,” John­son told the Shreve­port Times in April 2004. “This is spir­i­tu­al war­fare.”

Storms told The Dai­ly Beast that the two men lost con­tact some­time after Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na, in 2005—several years before the play­ground mas­tur­ba­tion inci­dent that pro­pelled him again into nation­al ignominy.
...

And then there’s John­son’s ADF work on behalf of Grant Storm­s’s son, Jason, who hap­pens to be the leader of Oper­a­tion Save Amer­i­ca (OSA). Giv­en that Oper­a­tion Save Amer­i­ca used to be called Oper­a­tion Res­cue, result­ing in a bat­tle over the name “Oper­a­tion Res­cue” with anoth­er group, it’s worth not­ing that the leader of the oth­er Oper­a­tion Res­cue is CNP Troy New­man. And it was 2009, the year New­man’s Oper­a­tion Res­cue was tied to the mur­der of George Tiller, when John­son and the ADF rep­re­sent­ed Jason Storms and Oper­a­tion Save Amer­i­ca over the free-speech rights of these extrem­ist groups:

...
If John­son did lose touch with Storms in 2005, how­ev­er, he some­how still stum­bled on a path to Storms’ son, Jason Storms, who John­son and the ADF rep­re­sent­ed in anoth­er Mil­wau­kee case in 2009.

In that case, John­son argued that his plaintiffs—a cadre of anti-abor­tion extremists—had been “intim­i­dat­ed and imped­ed and chilled” in the exer­cise of their free speech rights by a fed­er­al court injunc­tion in the East­ern Dis­trict of Wis­con­sin against protests at abor­tion clin­ics.

The suit point­ed to inter­ac­tions the plain­tiffs had with law enforce­ment, includ­ing arrests. A num­ber of those charges were dis­missed, but John­son argued that because they were dis­missed “with­out prej­u­dice,” pros­e­cu­tors could bring them again if they wished—which John­son char­ac­ter­ized as intim­i­da­tion.

...

Jason Storms is the leader of Oper­a­tion Save Amer­i­ca, for­mer­ly Oper­a­tion Res­cue, which has been called the nation’s largest mil­i­tant anti-abor­tion group. Jason Storms also par­took in the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, post­ing a social media video of him­self on the building’s scaf­fold­ing short­ly after the breach.

Oper­a­tion Res­cue shot to infamy when it was tied to the slay­ing of a Kansas abor­tion provider in 2009—the same year John­son filed the law­suit. Today, OSA and its mil­i­tant allies still believe women who get abor­tions should be charged with murder—a step up from more main­stream anti-abor­tion­ists who would only place that bur­den on the doc­tor.

This sum­mer, Storms said abor­tion might only be end­ed in the U.S. through civ­il war. He rou­tine­ly draws wide­spread media cov­er­age for camp­ing out­side of abor­tion clin­ics and urg­ing women against end­ing their preg­nan­cies, fre­quent­ly along­side his wife and their 10 chil­dren.
...

And it was dur­ing that 2009 case when John­son and the ADF were rep­re­sent­ing Jason Storms and the OSA when affi­davits for Storm­s’s father-in-law, Rev. Math­ew Trewhel­la. Recall how Trewhel­la first came to nation­al atten­tion in the 1990s as one of three dozen sig­na­to­ries to a state­ment that declared that the mur­der of abor­tion providers is “jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide,” and lat­er became noto­ri­ous for advo­cat­ing the for­ma­tion of church-based mili­tias. Trewhel­la is also close to for­mer Wash­ing­ton state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Shea, who was found in 2018 to have secret­ly penned a man­i­festo in 2016 call­ing for the wag­ing of Bib­li­cal War to takeover the US in 2016 and the exe­cu­tion of any adult males who refused to sub­mit to the new theoc­ra­cy. Shea also 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. Trewhel­la has been palling around with vio­lent extrem­ists for decades. And he was one of the peo­ple writ­ing affi­davits on behalf of Jason Storms in that at 2009 case rep­re­sent­ed by Mike John­son and the ADF:

...
Ear­li­er this year, a mem­ber of OSA was charged in con­nec­tion with a bomb scare at a Mil­wau­kee-area Pride event, the Mil­wau­kee Jour­nal Sen­tinel report­ed. In Octo­ber, the Sixth Cir­cuit of Fed­er­al Appeals upheld a 2022 restrain­ing order against the group, after unruly demon­stra­tions in Ten­nessee.

But in 2009, Johnson—on behalf of the ADF—represented Jason Storms along­side a group of vir­u­lent anti-abor­tion extrem­ists when they sued the city of Mil­wau­kee over a court injunc­tion at abor­tion protests. That crew includ­ed anti-LGBTQ activist Robert Breaud and Jim Soder­na, both of whom have their own sto­ried past.

...

Johnson’s Mil­wau­kee law­suit was bol­stered by affi­davits from Jason Storms’ father-in-law, mil­i­tant anti-abor­tion­ist Rev. Matthew Trewhel­la. Trewhella—who two years pri­or was rep­re­sent­ed by ADF in a sep­a­rate mat­ter in Ohio—previously defend­ed the mur­der of abor­tion doc­tors as “jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide.” And in 1994, Trewhel­la was record­ed urg­ing par­ents to give their chil­dren firearms train­ing and advo­cat­ing for reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions to launch mili­tias, The New York Times report­ed.

By 2009, Trewhel­la had served 14 months in prison for obstruct­ing clin­ics. He ran an Oper­a­tion Res­cue splin­ter group, called Mis­sion­ar­ies to the Pre-Born, which also fea­tured Jason Storms. Mis­sion­ar­ies to the Pre-Born has been described as “one of the most dan­ger­ous and vio­lent of the direct action anti-abor­tion groups active in the Unit­ed States.”

The city set­tled the Mil­wau­kee suit. Johnson’s co-coun­sel, Fin­tan Doo­ley, told The Dai­ly Beast that he was hap­py with the set­tle­ment at the time, though they didn’t win fees. Doo­ley, a Demo­c­rat, also plead­ed igno­rance about any ties to vio­lent groups among the plain­tiffs and Trewhel­la.

But the year of that law­suit, Oper­a­tion Res­cue was tied to the mur­der of Kansas abor­tion provider Dr. George Tiller. The killer had been in touch with a group offi­cial about Tiller’s where­abouts, and claimed to be a mem­ber. While the group denounced the slay­ing and the attacker’s claims to mem­ber­ship, Tiller was a top tar­get of Oper­a­tion Rescue’s ire for years—in 2002, they relo­cat­ed their head­quar­ters to Wichi­ta specif­i­cal­ly to pres­sure his clinic—and its leader at the time had pre­vi­ous­ly called the mur­der of abor­tion providers a “jus­ti­fi­able defen­sive action.”
...

Flash for­ward to Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, and we find Jason Storms post­ing cel­e­bra­to­ry videos while in the mid­dle of the insur­rec­tionary mob. Recall how anoth­er rad­i­cal preach­er there on Jan­u­ary 6 asso­ci­at­ed with Storms, Trewhel­la and Matt Shea was Ken Peters, who actu­al­ly spoke at one of the Jan 5 ral­lies at the Capi­tol. Amus­ing­ly, even Jason’s father, Grant Storms, now rec­og­nizes it was an insur­rec­tion:

...
Twelve years lat­er, Jason Storms was part of anoth­er siege. On Jan. 6, 2021, Storms and two oth­er OSA mem­bers “set up the Lord’s beach­head” at Trump’s ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., accord­ing to an OSA blog post two days after the attack. The post mar­veled that “many saints were encour­aged by the bold and plain dec­la­ra­tions of the Law/Word of God,” declar­ing that it was “a great and exhaust­ing time.”

What the post did not men­tion, how­ev­er, was that Storms par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sack­ing of the Capi­tol. He post­ed a social media video of him­self on the scaf­fold­ing short­ly after the build­ing was breached, admir­ing the insur­rec­tion as “Rev­o­lu­tion 2.0” and crow­ing, “Yeah, baby!” in reply to a bull­horned call to “Hang ’em high!”

Doo­ley, Johnson’s co-coun­sel, told The Dai­ly Beast that he was “dis­ap­point­ed but not sur­prised” to learn about Jason Storms’ involve­ment in the attack.

Grant Storms told The Dai­ly Beast that he “sup­port­ed” his son attend­ing the ral­ly, but, like Doo­ley, he con­demned Trump and the Repub­li­cans who still sup­port him—specifically includ­ing John­son.

“Trump went nuts,” Grant Storms told The Dai­ly Beast. “Any­one can see he tried to over­turn the elec­tion. He belongs in jail.”
...

Final­ly, when we see a ref­er­ence to Mike John­son exchanges prais­es with New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) preach­er Jim Gar­low, recall Gar­low is a lead­ing advo­cate of the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ the­ol­o­gy call­ing for an Evan­gel­i­cal takeover of soci­ety at an insti­tu­tion­al lev­el. Gar­low calls John­son “a spe­cial broth­er” while John­son has described Gar­low as a “pro­found influ­ence” on “my life and my walk with Christ”. Which is a reminder that when we are talk­ing about net­works of Chris­t­ian extrem­ists plot­ting the vio­lent takeovers of soci­ety, this can’t be sep­a­rat­ed from the larg­er Domin­ion­ist move­ment:

...
“I’m so grate­ful for the min­istry and your faith­ful­ness,” John­son said in August, return­ing praise from evan­gel­i­cal leader Jim Gar­low. “It’s a great encour­age­ment to me and oth­ers who are serv­ing in these some­times rocky cor­ners of the Lord’s vine­yard.”
...

It’s one big move­ment, as Mike John­son’s resume makes clear. And now, after decades of legal­ly defend­ing some of the most dan­ger­ous vio­lent theocrats in the US, this ‘spir­i­tu­al war­rior’ is serv­ing as the Speak­er of the House. So when we hear about Mike John­son inten­tion­al­ly assert­ing his inten­tion of blur­ring the pho­to of Jan 6 riot­ers in videos before releas­ing them to the pub­lic in order to pro­tect riot­ers from law enforce­ment, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that, at least when it comes to theocrats in that mob, this may not be the first time John­son has come to their defense.

It was always obvi­ous that the over­turn­ing of Roe v Wade was going to get ugly. It was­n’t obvi­ous it was going to get this ugly. Espe­cial­ly this quick­ly. But it’s hap­pen­ing. The state of Texas is oper­at­ing in an even more ghoul­ish man­ner than many cyn­ics expect­ed.

It start­ed with a rul­ing by Travis Coun­ty Dis­trict Judge Maya Guer­ra Gam­ble that Kate Cox — a woman preg­nant with a fetus afflict­ed by a fatal genet­ic con­di­tion that could jeop­ar­dize Cox’s abil­i­ty to have more chil­dren — should receive a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order to pur­sue an abor­tion under the ban’s med­ical emer­gen­cies clause. Hours lat­er, Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton asked the Texas Supreme Court to inter­vene and block the waiv­er. Pax­ton went on to issued a state­ment promis­ing to pros­e­cute doc­tors per­form­ing the pro­ce­dure with felony charges, even if a court per­mit­ted the pro­ce­dure. The state Supreme Court ulti­mate­ly sided with Pax­ton the next day. As a result, Cox has been forced to flee Texas and get the pro­ce­dure else­where, a move that may not have been pos­si­ble had her med­ical con­di­tion worsened...or had she sim­ply been too poor to trav­el out of state.

Why did this hap­pen? What con­sumed Pax­ton with the idea that this was good pol­i­tics, let alone decent pol­i­cy or humane behav­ior? Keep in mind some Pax­ton-spe­cif­ic con­text here: the guy only nar­row­ly sur­vived an impeach­ment vote less than three months ago over cor­rup­tion and bribery charges, with two Texas Repub­li­cans join­ing the Democ­rats in vot­ing to con­vict. And here he is, tak­ing the kind of extrem­ist abor­tion stance that only extrem­ists could love. What kind of game is he play­ing here with Cox’s life and health? What is the polit­i­cal log­ic here?

And that brings us to anoth­er scan­dal cur­rent­ly roil­ing Tex­as­’s Repub­li­cans. Two scan­dals, actu­al­ly. One new, and one that’s been build­ing for decades. The fresh scan­dal involves a now-famil­iar name: Nick Fuentes. Yes, the same reac­tionary Catholic neo-Nazi who man­aged to secure that now noto­ri­ous din­ner with Don­ald Trump and Kanye West, was spot­ted back in Octo­ber spend­ing near­ly sev­en hours some­where he should­n’t have been spot­ted at all. The offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy group owned by for­mer Repub­li­can state rep Jonathan Stick­land.

Stick­land also hap­pened to be the head of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee large­ly financed by two West Texas oil bil­lion­aires, one of whom is Tim Dunn. It turns out Dunn has man­aged to turn him­self into the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty’s king­mak­er over the last cou­ple of decades. Dunn also hap­pens to be an ardent theo­crat who does­n’t believe Jews should be posi­tions of pow­er in the US, some­thing he per­son­al­ly told for­mer Jew­ish Repub­li­can Texas Speak­er of the House Joe Straus. Straus was report­ed­ly shocked by the whole con­ver­sa­tion. So Nick Fuentes spent almost sev­en hours at the polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy group’s office owned by the guy who was the head of one of pri­ma­ry PACs run on behalf of Tex­as­’s bil­lion­aire Repub­li­can king-mak­er. A king-mak­er who does­n’t think Jews should be any­where near posi­tions of pow­er in Amer­i­ca.

Oh, and it also turns out that Matt Rinal­di, chair­man of the Texas GOP, was also seen enter­ing Pale Horse Strate­gies dur­ing Fuentes’s time there. Rinal­di claims he had no idea Fuentes was there. At the same time, Dunn acknowl­edges that Fuentes met with Stick­land, call­ing it a “seri­ous blun­der”. At least that was the state­ment from Dunn put out by none oth­er than Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick on behalf of Dunn. As we’re going to see, two of Tex­as­’s most promi­nent politi­cians owe their polit­i­cal for­tunes heav­i­ly to the mil­lions of dol­lars in dona­tion chan­neled to them from Dunn-con­trolled PACs: Dan Patrick and Ken Pax­ton. Defend Texas Lib­er­ty even pledged to go after any Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to con­vict Pax­ton.

But Fuentes’s vis­it to one of the most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal con­sult­ing groups in the state of Texas is just part of the emerg­ing scan­dal. Anoth­er part has to do with the GOP’s response to the Fuentes sto­ry: in a 32–29 vote, the Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee vot­ed to reject a res­o­lu­tion that would have barred Texas Repub­li­cans from meet­ing with known Nazis and Holo­caust deniers. Rinal­di abstained from the vote. As we’re going to see, the reject­ed res­o­lu­tion had actu­al­ly been watered down sig­nif­i­cant­ly. The orig­i­nal res­o­lu­tion was to call for a break from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty. Yep. It was only after push­back that they changed it to barred asso­ci­a­tions with indi­vid­u­als or groups “known to espouse or tol­er­ate anti­semitism, pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies or Holo­caust denial.” Still, that gener­ic pro­posed ban, some Repub­li­cans argued, was akin to “Marx­ist” and “left­ist” tac­tics that could cre­ate guilt by asso­ci­a­tion and be prob­lem­at­ic for the par­ty, its lead­ers and can­di­dates.

Repub­li­can House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan con­demned the Texas GOP’s rejec­tion of the anti-Nazi res­o­lu­tion, call­ing it “despi­ca­ble.” AS Phe­lan put it, the Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee “can’t even bring them­selves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holo­caust deniers or cut ties with their top donor who brought them to the dance...There is a moral, anti-Semit­ic rot fes­ter­ing with­in the fringes of BOTH par­ties that must be stopped.” After Phe­lan called for fel­low Repub­li­cans to redi­rect mon­ey from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick accused Phe­lan of politi­ciz­ing anti­semitism and demand­ed he resign.

So we have the imme­di­ate scan­dal of the Texas GOP’s rejec­tion of a ban on meet­ing with Nazis and Holo­caust deniers. But it’s real­ly just an small part of much larg­er scan­dal. That being Tim Dun­n’s cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. A cap­ture that he did­n’t do alone. He had help. Exten­sive Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) help. For exam­ple, in 1998, he joined the board of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), found­ed by CNP mem­ber James Leininger. Recall how for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Dunn still serves as the TPPF Vice Chair­man. In 2006, Dunn formed Empow­er Tex­ans, which has turned into one of main vehi­cles for exert­ing Dun­n’s polit­i­cal influ­ence. By 2018, the major­i­ty of the seats in the Repub­li­can cau­cus in the Texas Sen­ate were con­trolled by Empow­er Tex­ans and TPPF.

This is also a good time to recall the dis­turb­ing sto­ries about Charles Hay­wood and his fas­cist ties to TPPF. Recall how Hay­wood was seen as a ris­ing right-wing media per­son­al­i­ty, until it was revealed that he was the per­son behind an online per­sona who long called for an ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’. Hay­wood is now open­ly plan­ning on becom­ing an Amer­i­can ‘war­lord’ oper­at­ing an ‘armed patron­age net­work’ in the event of the break­down of gov­ern­ment rule. And as we’ve also seen, Hay­wood was one of the fig­ures work­ing with the now-indict­ed John East­man in devel­op­ing the “79 Days Report” in 2020, where sce­nar­ios involv­ing mass polit­i­cal vio­lence that pre­vent­ed the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote on Jan­u­ary 6 were gamed out. Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in this ‘exer­cise’ includ­ed Kevin Roberts, now the head of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. The whole ‘sim­u­la­tion’ was ran by the Clare­mont Insti­tute and TPPF. So the TPPF was run­ning fas­cist takeover sim­u­la­tions in the lead up to the 2020 and Dunn still serves as its Vice Chair­man.

Anoth­er Dunn inter­est involves over­haul­ing the US con­sti­tu­tion. In fact, Dunn co-found­ed the Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance (CSG) along with CNP mem­bers Mark Meck­ler and Michael Far­ris. Recall how it’s the CSG that runs the Con­ven­tion of States (COS) push to imple­ment a far right over­haul of the US Con­sti­tu­tion.

Those are big ambi­tions. And not just Texas ambi­tions. Tim Dunn — a theo­crat who claims to believe the oil he drills was placed there by God 4,000 years ago — is quite sim­ply one of the most pow­er­ful men in Amer­i­ca. And Dunn now admits guy who was run­ning the main PAC Dunn used to exert that influ­ence, Jonathan Stick­land, met with an open neo-Nazi, and is insist­ing that every­one just pre­tend this nev­er hap­pened and its all an inno­cent mis­take. And, sure enough, a major­i­ty of Texas Repub­li­can cau­cus is fol­low­ing Dun­n’s lead. Even the watered down res­o­lu­tion could­n’t pass.

That’s all part of the con­text of the remark­able deci­sion of Ken Pax­ton to take Tex­as­’s abor­tion pol­i­tics to a remark­able, and remark­ably unpop­u­lar, extreme. Why did Pax­ton’s office take the extreme posi­tion that fer­til­i­ty risks don’t qual­i­fy as a life-threat­en­ing con­di­tion that would allow a patient to get an abor­tion under Texas laws and that a fatal fetal abnor­mal­i­ty also would­n’t qual­i­fy? What role did Tim Dun­n’s reli­gious extrem­ism play in Pax­ton’s deci­sion-mak­ing? We don’t know. But we do know Tim Dunn has more influ­ence over Texas Repub­li­cans than any­one bar­ring, per­haps Don­ald Trump at this point. And that’s why we can’t real­ly sep­a­rate this sto­ry about Ken Pax­ton’s extrem­ist posi­tion on abor­tion from the extrem­ist views of the bil­lion­aire theo­crat lead­ing his par­ty:

The New Repub­lic

Texas Woman Bul­lied by Ken Pax­ton Forced to Flee State to Get Abor­tion

“She’s been in and out of the emer­gency room and she couldn’t wait any longer.”

Ellie Quin­lan Hough­tal­ing
Decem­ber 11, 2023/3:36 p.m. ET

A Texas woman who was plead­ing the courts for an emer­gency abortion—and who was per­son­al­ly and repeat­ed­ly tar­get­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Paxton—has been forced out-of-state in order to receive crit­i­cal care.

Kate Cox has been the cen­ter of a con­tentious post-Roe rul­ing, rid­ing out a legal chal­lenge to the state’s near-total abor­tion ban after learn­ing that her fetus has a fatal genet­ic con­di­tion that could jeop­ar­dize her health and future fer­til­i­ty if car­ried to term. The law­suit is the first of its kind since Roe v. Wade was decid­ed in 1973.

On Thurs­day, Travis Coun­ty Dis­trict Judge Maya Guer­ra Gam­ble ruled that Cox should receive a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order, allow­ing the 31-year-old moth­er of two to pur­sue an abor­tion under the ban’s med­ical emer­gen­cies clause. But hours after the rul­ing, Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton asked the state’s Supreme Court to inter­vene and issued a state­ment promis­ing to pros­e­cute doc­tors per­form­ing the pro­ce­dure with felony charges, even if a court per­mit­ted the pro­ce­dure. On Fri­day night, the state’s Supreme Court blocked the low­er court’s order and once again put Cox’s health in jeop­ardy.

“This past week of legal lim­bo has been hell­ish for Kate,” said Nan­cy Northup, pres­i­dent and CEO at the Cen­ter for Repro­duc­tive Rights. “Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of emer­gency rooms and she couldn’t wait any longer.”

“This is why judges and politi­cians should not be mak­ing health­care deci­sions for preg­nant people—they are not doc­tors. This is the result of the Supreme Court’s rever­sal of Roe v. Wade: women are forced to beg for urgent health­care in court,” Northup said. “While Kate had the abil­i­ty to leave the state, most peo­ple do not, and a sit­u­a­tion like this could be a death sen­tence.”

...

Vot­ers have made their posi­tions on the issue abun­dant­ly clear. Since Roe was reversed by the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty in June 2022, abor­tion has become a non­stop los­ing streak for Repub­li­cans, turn­ing what was once antic­i­pat­ed to be a red wave in Novem­ber into a trick­le. That has led to a qui­et strip­ping of pro-life poli­cies from con­ser­v­a­tive plat­forms across the coun­try, with the par­ty attempt­ing to ditch the “pro-life” brand­ing alto­geth­er in an effort to skirt more elec­toral loss­es.

————

“Texas Woman Bul­lied by Ken Pax­ton Forced to Flee State to Get Abor­tion” by Ellie Quin­lan Hough­tal­ing; The New Repub­lic; 12/11/2023

“On Thurs­day, Travis Coun­ty Dis­trict Judge Maya Guer­ra Gam­ble ruled that Cox should receive a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order, allow­ing the 31-year-old moth­er of two to pur­sue an abor­tion under the ban’s med­ical emer­gen­cies clause. But hours after the rul­ing, Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton asked the state’s Supreme Court to inter­vene and issued a state­ment promis­ing to pros­e­cute doc­tors per­form­ing the pro­ce­dure with felony charges, even if a court per­mit­ted the pro­ce­dure. On Fri­day night, the state’s Supreme Court blocked the low­er court’s order and once again put Cox’s health in jeop­ardy.”

With­ing hours of a judge grant­i­ng Kate Cox per­mis­sion to get an abor­tion under the Texas med­ical emer­gency clause, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton decides to sue to block the rul­ing, only to be backed up by the state Supreme Court. Leav­ing Cox only one option: flee­ing the state. An option that many women aren’t going to have, either for finan­cial or med­ical cir­cum­stances. It was a med­ical night­mare cre­at­ed by one of the state’s top elect­ed Repub­li­cans. The same Ken Pax­ton who was nar­row­ly acquit­ted on impeach­ment charges by his fel­low Repub­li­cans just a few months ago. And yet, Pax­ton’s move is bound to be a deeply polit­i­cal­ly unpop­u­lar move over­all and put the par­ty even more on the defen­sive over abor­tion at the same time the issue is turn­ing out to be polit­i­cal kry­ponite for Repub­li­cans:

...
Vot­ers have made their posi­tions on the issue abun­dant­ly clear. Since Roe was reversed by the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty in June 2022, abor­tion has become a non­stop los­ing streak for Repub­li­cans, turn­ing what was once antic­i­pat­ed to be a red wave in Novem­ber into a trick­le. That has led to a qui­et strip­ping of pro-life poli­cies from con­ser­v­a­tive plat­forms across the coun­try, with the par­ty attempt­ing to ditch the “pro-life” brand­ing alto­geth­er in an effort to skirt more elec­toral loss­es.
...

Why did the polit­i­cal­ly imper­iled Pax­ton pull a stunt like this? Was this intend­ed to be a kind of showy pow­er play intend­ed to defy his crit­ics? Pax­ton does­n’t appear to be a very prin­ci­pled politi­cian. Hence the impeach­ment vote. So what was his rea­son­ing here? It’s a mys­tery. But when it comes to answer­ing the ques­tion of who Ken Pax­ton answers to, there’s anoth­er sto­ry about Texas Repub­li­can tur­moil that gives us a big clue: The Texas GOP just gave itself anoth­er self-inflict­ed wound in the same of extrem­ism. This time it came in the form of a Texas GOP Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee 32–29 vote on Sat­ur­day reject­ing a pro­pos­al to ban the par­ty from asso­ci­at­ing with known Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers and Holo­caust deniers. The vote was­n’t in abstract. It was in direct response to unfold­ing scan­dal. The lat­est GOP/Nick Fuentes scan­dal.

Yes, Nick Fuentes caught spend­ing near­ly sev­en hours at the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, the polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy group owned by for­mer Repub­li­can State Rep Jonathan Stick­land. It gets worse. It also turns out Matt Rinal­di, chair­man of the Texas GOP, was seen enter­ing the Pale Horse Strate­gies office dur­ing this peri­od when Fuentes was there. Rinal­di claims he had no idea Fuentes was there at the time.

And we got con­fir­ma­tion that it was Stick­land him­self who met with Fuentes. Con­fir­ma­tion that came for Texas GOP king-mak­er Tim Dunn, a bil­lion­aire oil­man who has man­aged to turn him­self into one of the most pow­er­ful forces in Texas pol­i­tics, in part through the largess of his Defend Texas Lib­er­ty polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee. Stick­land was the head of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty at the time of his meet­ing with Fuentes. Dunn con­firmed the meet­ing, call­ing it a “seri­ous blun­der”, accord­ing to Lieu­tenant Gov Dan Patrick. Yes, Lt Gov Patrick was speak­ing on behalf of Dunn. It turns out Patrick and Pax­ton are both very close to Dunn. In fact, after Pax­ton nar­row­ly sur­vived an impeach­ment vote a few months ago, Defend Texas Free­dom pledged to go after the Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to con­vict. Dunn also hap­pens to be a Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist. The kind of evan­gel­i­cal who claims God put oil in Texas 4,000 years ago for human­i­ty’s use. And he’s become one of the most fig­ures in Texas today, hav­ing spent the last decade purg­ing the Texas GOP of those unwill­ing to sub­mit to his will. So when we’re try­ing to under­stand why Ken Pax­ton did what he did, keep in mind you can’t under­stand Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics with­out under­stand­ing the pro­found influ­ence of Tim Dunn, a rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist and Ken Pax­ton’s key polit­i­cal patron. And an embar­rassed fel­low trav­el­er of Nick Fuentes, it seems:

The Texas Tri­bune

Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee rejects pro­posed ban on asso­ci­at­ing with Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers and Holo­caust deniers

Some mem­bers of the com­mit­tee said such a ban, pro­posed two months after a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive activist was caught meet­ing with a famous white suprema­cist, might be a “slip­pery slope” or too vague.

by Robert Dow­nen
Dec. 2, 2023
Updat­ed: Dec. 3, 2023

Two months after a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive activist and fundrais­er was caught host­ing white suprema­cist Nick Fuentes, lead­ers of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas have vot­ed against bar­ring the par­ty from asso­ci­at­ing with known Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers and Holo­caust deniers.

In a 32–29 vote on Sat­ur­day, mem­bers of the Texas GOP’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee stripped a pro-Israel res­o­lu­tion of a clause that would have includ­ed the ban. In a sep­a­rate move that stunned some mem­bers, rough­ly half of the board also tried to pre­vent a record of their vote from being kept.

In reject­ing the pro­posed ban, the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee’s major­i­ty deliv­ered a seri­ous blow to a fac­tion of mem­bers that has called for the par­ty to con­front its ties to groups that have recent­ly employed or asso­ci­at­ed with out­spo­ken white suprema­cists and extrem­ists.

In Octo­ber, The Texas Tri­bune pub­lished pho­tos of Fuentes, an avowed admir­er of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, enter­ing and leav­ing the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a con­sult­ing firm for far-right can­di­dates and move­ments.

Pale Horse Strate­gies is owned by Jonathan Stick­land, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive and at the time the leader of a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, that two West Texas oil bil­lion­aires have used to fund right-wing move­ments, can­di­dates and politi­cians in the state — includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton.

Matt Rinal­di, chair­man of the Texas GOP, was also seen enter­ing the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for near­ly 7 hours. He denied par­tic­i­pat­ing, how­ev­er, say­ing he was vis­it­ing with some­one else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.

Defend Texas Lib­er­ty has not pub­licly com­ment­ed on the scan­dal, save for a two-sen­tence state­ment con­demn­ing those who’ve tried to con­nect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incen­di­ary” views. Nor has the group clar­i­fied Stick­land’s cur­rent role at Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, which qui­et­ly updat­ed its web­site in Octo­ber to reflect that he is no longer its pres­i­dent. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil bil­lion­aires who pri­mar­i­ly fund Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, con­firmed the meet­ing between Fuentes and Stick­land and called it a “seri­ous blun­der,” accord­ing to a state­ment from Patrick.

In response to the scan­dal — as well as sub­se­quent report­ing from the Tri­bune that detailed oth­er links between Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and white suprema­cists — near­ly half of the Texas GOP’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee had called for the par­ty to cut ties with Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its aux­il­iary groups until Stick­land was removed from any posi­tion of pow­er, and a full expla­na­tion for the Fuentes meet­ing was giv­en.

The pro­posed demands were sig­nif­i­cant­ly watered down ahead of the party’s quar­ter­ly meet­ing this week­end. Rather than call­ing for a break from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, the fac­tion pro­posed gen­er­al lan­guage that would have barred asso­ci­a­tions with indi­vid­u­als or groups “known to espouse or tol­er­ate anti­semitism, pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies or Holo­caust denial.”

But even that gen­er­al state­ment was too much for the major­i­ty of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. In at-times tense debate on Sat­ur­day, mem­bers argued that words like “tol­er­ate” or “anti­semitism” were too vague or sub­jec­tive. The ban, some argued, was akin to “Marx­ist” and “left­ist” tac­tics, and would cre­ate guilt by asso­ci­a­tion that could be prob­lem­at­ic for the par­ty, its lead­ers and can­di­dates.

“It could put you on a slip­pery slope,” said com­mit­tee mem­ber Dan Tul­ly.

Rinal­di abstained from vot­ing on the ban, but briefly argued that anti­semitism is not a seri­ous prob­lem on the right before ques­tion­ing what it would mean to “tol­er­ate” those who espouse it. “I don’t see any anti­se­mit­ic, pro-Nazi or Holo­caust denial move­ment on the right that has any sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion what­so­ev­er,” he said.

Sup­port­ers of the ban dis­agreed. They not­ed that the lan­guage was already a com­pro­mise, didn’t specif­i­cal­ly name any group or indi­vid­ual and would lend cre­dence to res­o­lu­tions in which the Texas GOP has gen­er­al­ly con­demned anti­semitism and restat­ed its sup­port for Israel.

...

Oth­er com­mit­tee mem­bers ques­tioned how their col­leagues could find words like “anti­semitism” too vague, despite fre­quent­ly lob­bing it and oth­er terms at their polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

“I just don’t under­stand how peo­ple who rou­tine­ly refer to oth­ers as left­ists, lib­er­als, com­mu­nists, social­ists and RINOs (‘Repub­li­cans in Name Only’) don’t have the dis­cern­ment to define what a Nazi is,” com­mit­tee mem­ber Mor­gan Cis­neros Gra­ham told the Tri­bune after the vote.

House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan sim­i­lar­ly con­demned the vote Sat­ur­day evening, call­ing it “despi­ca­ble.”

The Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee “can’t even bring them­selves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holo­caust deniers or cut ties with their top donor who brought them to the dance,” Phe­lan wrote on X, for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter. “There is a moral, anti-Semit­ic rot fes­ter­ing with­in the fringes of BOTH par­ties that must be stopped.”

For two months, Phe­lan and his staff have rou­tine­ly and pub­licly sparred with some in the par­ty – name­ly Rinal­di, a long­time polit­i­cal foe – over how to address the Fuentes scan­dal and extrem­ism more broad­ly. After the Tri­bune first report­ed on the Fuentes meet­ing, Phe­lan called on fel­low Repub­li­cans to redi­rect mon­ey from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty to pro-Israel char­i­ties, a request that quick­ly drew the ire of Patrick and oth­ers who accused Phe­lan of politi­ciz­ing anti­semitism and demand­ed he resign.

After sub­se­quent report­ing by the Tri­bune on Defend Texas Lib­er­ty’s ties to white suprema­cists and oth­er extreme fig­ures, Patrick said he was “appalled” and that anti­semitism is “not wel­come in our par­ty.” He then announced that the he had invest­ed the $3 mil­lion he recent­ly received from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty in Israeli bonds.

Patrick reit­er­at­ed that stance late Sat­ur­day night, call­ing the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee’s vote “total­ly unac­cept­able” and say­ing that he is “con­fi­dent” the board will recon­sid­er the ban at its Feb­ru­ary meet­ing.

“This lan­guage should have been adopt­ed – because I know that is our posi­tion as a Par­ty,” Patrick wrote on X. “I, and the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Repub­li­cans in Texas, do not tol­er­ate anti­semites, and those who deny the Holo­caust, praise Hitler or the Nazi regime.”

Saturday’s vote is the lat­est sign of major dis­uni­ty among the Texas GOP, which for years has dealt with sim­mer­ing ten­sions between its far-right and more mod­er­ate, but still deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, wings. Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its bil­lion­aire back­ers have been key play­ers in that fight, fund­ing pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to incum­bent Repub­li­cans who they deem insuf­fi­cient­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, and bankrolling a sprawl­ing net­work of insti­tu­tions, media web­sites and polit­i­cal groups that they’ve used to incre­men­tal­ly pull Texas fur­ther to the right.

The party’s internecine con­flict has explod­ed into all-out war since the impeach­ment and acquit­tal of Pax­ton, a cru­cial Defend Texas Lib­er­ty ally whose polit­i­cal life has been sub­si­dized by the PAC’s bil­lion­aire fun­ders.

After Paxton’s acquit­tal, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty vowed scorched-earth cam­paigns against those who sup­port­ed the attor­ney general’s removal, and promised mas­sive spend­ing ahead of next year’s pri­ma­ry elec­tions. (Before the Sat­ur­day vote, exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers sep­a­rate­ly approved a cen­sure of out­go­ing Rep. Andrew Murr, R‑Junction, over his lead role in the inves­ti­ga­tion and impeach­ment of Pax­ton.)

News of the Fuentes meet­ing has only com­pli­cat­ed Defend Texas Lib­er­ty’s ret­ri­bu­tion plans, as infight­ing inten­si­fies and some Repub­li­cans ques­tion whether the group and its bil­lion­aire fun­ders should have so much sway over the state par­ty.

...

Ahead of Saturday’s vote, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty-backed Reps. Nate Schat­z­line, R‑Fort Worth, and Tony Tin­der­holt, R‑Arlington, briefly spoke to the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.

The day pri­or, Sen. Bob Hall — an Edge­wood Repub­li­can who has received $50,000 from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty — was also at the Austin hotel where exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers were meet­ing, and in a speech con­demned attempts to cut ties with the group based on what he called “hearsay,” “fuzzy pho­tographs” and “nar­ra­tives.”

“If you want to pass a res­o­lu­tion, I would make it pos­i­tive,” Hall said to exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers on Fri­day. “We don’t need to do our enemy’s work for them.”

Hall reit­er­at­ed that stance in an inter­view with the Tri­bune, call­ing the Fuentes meet­ing a “mis­take” but claim­ing that there was “no evi­dence” that Stick­land or Defend Texas Lib­er­ty are anti­se­mit­ic. “I’ve had meet­ings with trans­gen­ders, gays and les­bians,” Hall said. “Does that make me a trans­gen­der, gay or a les­bian?”

Asked if he was com­par­ing gay peo­ple to white suprema­cists or Hitler admir­ers like Fuentes, Hall respond­ed: “I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who are polit­i­cal hot pota­toes.”

———-

“Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee rejects pro­posed ban on asso­ci­at­ing with Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers and Holo­caust deniers” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 12/02/2023

“In reject­ing the pro­posed ban, the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee’s major­i­ty deliv­ered a seri­ous blow to a fac­tion of mem­bers that has called for the par­ty to con­front its ties to groups that have recent­ly employed or asso­ci­at­ed with out­spo­ken white suprema­cists and extrem­ists.”

That’s right, the fac­tion of the Texas GOP that just had a blow struck against it is the fac­tion try­ing to con­front the par­ty’s asso­ci­a­tions with Nick Fuentes. In a 32–29 vote, the Texas GOP’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee stripped out a ban bar­ring the par­ty from asso­ci­at­ing with known Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers and Holo­caust deniers. And in a sep­a­rate move, rough­ly half of the com­mit­tee mem­bers tried to keep their votes off the record...it’s not hard to fig­ure out which half. This, of course, was­n’t the first ‘oop­sy’ meet­ing with Fuentes for the Repub­li­can Par­ty in recent years and not near­ly as high a nation­al pro­file as Fuentes’s din­ner with Don­ald Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. But Fuentes’s vis­it to Pale Horse Strate­gies con­sult­ing firm back in Octo­ber was a very big deal for Texas Repub­li­cans, espe­cial­ly after this vote:

...
In a 32–29 vote on Sat­ur­day, mem­bers of the Texas GOP’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee stripped a pro-Israel res­o­lu­tion of a clause that would have includ­ed the ban. In a sep­a­rate move that stunned some mem­bers, rough­ly half of the board also tried to pre­vent a record of their vote from being kept.

...

In Octo­ber, The Texas Tri­bune pub­lished pho­tos of Fuentes, an avowed admir­er of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, enter­ing and leav­ing the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a con­sult­ing firm for far-right can­di­dates and move­ments.
...

So why is Fuentes’s vis­it to a con­sult­ing group rock­ing the Texas GOP like this? Because Pale Horse Strate­gies is owned by for­mer state rep Jonathan Stick­land, who also hap­pened to run the Defend Texas Lib­er­ty polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee. And Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is no ordi­nary PAC. Financed by bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is a king-mak­er in Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics and close ally of about Lt. Gov Dan Patrick and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton. Dunn even con­firmed that it was Stick­land who held with meet­ing with Fuentes. It’s a polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive blun­der. And yet, we still find Lt Gov Patrick attack­ing fig­ures like Repub­li­can House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan for call­ing the Exec­u­tive com­mit­tee vote “despi­ca­ble”. Patrick actu­al­ly called on Phe­lan to resign over the “despi­ca­ble” com­ments and his demand that funds received from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty be redi­rect­ed at the same time Patrick was forced into dam­age con­trol over the vote and assur­ances that the $3 mil­lion he got from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty was invest­ed in Israeli bonds. It was just one dol­lop of bad faith spin on top of anoth­er:

...
Pale Horse Strate­gies is owned by Jonathan Stick­land, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive and at the time the leader of a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, that two West Texas oil bil­lion­aires have used to fund right-wing move­ments, can­di­dates and politi­cians in the state — includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton.

...

Defend Texas Lib­er­ty has not pub­licly com­ment­ed on the scan­dal, save for a two-sen­tence state­ment con­demn­ing those who’ve tried to con­nect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incen­di­ary” views. Nor has the group clar­i­fied Stick­land’s cur­rent role at Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, which qui­et­ly updat­ed its web­site in Octo­ber to reflect that he is no longer its pres­i­dent. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil bil­lion­aires who pri­mar­i­ly fund Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, con­firmed the meet­ing between Fuentes and Stick­land and called it a “seri­ous blun­der,” accord­ing to a state­ment from Patrick.

...

Oth­er com­mit­tee mem­bers ques­tioned how their col­leagues could find words like “anti­semitism” too vague, despite fre­quent­ly lob­bing it and oth­er terms at their polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

“I just don’t under­stand how peo­ple who rou­tine­ly refer to oth­ers as left­ists, lib­er­als, com­mu­nists, social­ists and RINOs (‘Repub­li­cans in Name Only’) don’t have the dis­cern­ment to define what a Nazi is,” com­mit­tee mem­ber Mor­gan Cis­neros Gra­ham told the Tri­bune after the vote.

House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan sim­i­lar­ly con­demned the vote Sat­ur­day evening, call­ing it “despi­ca­ble.”

The Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee “can’t even bring them­selves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holo­caust deniers or cut ties with their top donor who brought them to the dance,” Phe­lan wrote on X, for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter. “There is a moral, anti-Semit­ic rot fes­ter­ing with­in the fringes of BOTH par­ties that must be stopped.”

For two months, Phe­lan and his staff have rou­tine­ly and pub­licly sparred with some in the par­ty – name­ly Rinal­di, a long­time polit­i­cal foe – over how to address the Fuentes scan­dal and extrem­ism more broad­ly. After the Tri­bune first report­ed on the Fuentes meet­ing, Phe­lan called on fel­low Repub­li­cans to redi­rect mon­ey from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty to pro-Israel char­i­ties, a request that quick­ly drew the ire of Patrick and oth­ers who accused Phe­lan of politi­ciz­ing anti­semitism and demand­ed he resign.

After sub­se­quent report­ing by the Tri­bune on Defend Texas Lib­er­ty’s ties to white suprema­cists and oth­er extreme fig­ures, Patrick said he was “appalled” and that anti­semitism is “not wel­come in our par­ty.” He then announced that the he had invest­ed the $3 mil­lion he recent­ly received from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty in Israeli bonds.

Patrick reit­er­at­ed that stance late Sat­ur­day night, call­ing the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee’s vote “total­ly unac­cept­able” and say­ing that he is “con­fi­dent” the board will recon­sid­er the ban at its Feb­ru­ary meet­ing.

“This lan­guage should have been adopt­ed – because I know that is our posi­tion as a Par­ty,” Patrick wrote on X. “I, and the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Repub­li­cans in Texas, do not tol­er­ate anti­semites, and those who deny the Holo­caust, praise Hitler or the Nazi regime.”
...

And note how Dade Phe­lan was far from alone in his calls for the par­ty to cut ties with Defend Texas Lib­er­ty. Near­ly half of the Texas GOP’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee called for the par­ty to cut ties with Defend Texas Lib­er­ty. Again, we can eas­i­ly guess which half. And yet even those demands had been watered down before the vote to a more genet­ic bar­ring of asso­ci­a­tions with indi­vid­u­als or groups “known to espouse or tol­er­ate anti­semitism, pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies or Holo­caust denial.”. So when the Texas GOP Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee reject­ed the pro­pos­al, it was already a watered-down pro­pos­al and that was deemed to be too much of a slip­pery slope:

...
In response to the scan­dal — as well as sub­se­quent report­ing from the Tri­bune that detailed oth­er links between Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and white suprema­cists — near­ly half of the Texas GOP’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee had called for the par­ty to cut ties with Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its aux­il­iary groups until Stick­land was removed from any posi­tion of pow­er, and a full expla­na­tion for the Fuentes meet­ing was giv­en.

The pro­posed demands were sig­nif­i­cant­ly watered down ahead of the party’s quar­ter­ly meet­ing this week­end. Rather than call­ing for a break from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, the fac­tion pro­posed gen­er­al lan­guage that would have barred asso­ci­a­tions with indi­vid­u­als or groups “known to espouse or tol­er­ate anti­semitism, pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies or Holo­caust denial.”

But even that gen­er­al state­ment was too much for the major­i­ty of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. In at-times tense debate on Sat­ur­day, mem­bers argued that words like “tol­er­ate” or “anti­semitism” were too vague or sub­jec­tive. The ban, some argued, was akin to “Marx­ist” and “left­ist” tac­tics, and would cre­ate guilt by asso­ci­a­tion that could be prob­lem­at­ic for the par­ty, its lead­ers and can­di­dates.

“It could put you on a slip­pery slope,” said com­mit­tee mem­ber Dan Tul­ly.
...

There’s also the still unex­plained pres­ence of Texas GOP chair­man Matt Rinal­di the Pal Horse offices dur­ing Fuentes’s near­ly 7 hour vis­it. Rinal­di claims he had no idea Fuentes was there, and then went on to abstain from vot­ing on the ban after argu­ing that anti­semitism is not a seri­ous prob­lem on the right:

...
Matt Rinal­di, chair­man of the Texas GOP, was also seen enter­ing the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for near­ly 7 hours. He denied par­tic­i­pat­ing, how­ev­er, say­ing he was vis­it­ing with some­one else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.

...

Rinal­di abstained from vot­ing on the ban, but briefly argued that anti­semitism is not a seri­ous prob­lem on the right before ques­tion­ing what it would mean to “tol­er­ate” those who espouse it. “I don’t see any anti­se­mit­ic, pro-Nazi or Holo­caust denial move­ment on the right that has any sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion what­so­ev­er,” he said.

Sup­port­ers of the ban dis­agreed. They not­ed that the lan­guage was already a com­pro­mise, didn’t specif­i­cal­ly name any group or indi­vid­ual and would lend cre­dence to res­o­lu­tions in which the Texas GOP has gen­er­al­ly con­demned anti­semitism and restat­ed its sup­port for Israel.
...

And then there’s the dement­ed attempts by some Texas Repub­li­cans to equate meet­ing an open neo-Nazi like Nick Fuentes with a meet­ing of LGBTQ advo­cates. They’re all just “polit­i­cal hot pota­toes” that one should­n’t be judged for meet­ing with:

...
Ahead of Saturday’s vote, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty-backed Reps. Nate Schat­z­line, R‑Fort Worth, and Tony Tin­der­holt, R‑Arlington, briefly spoke to the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.

The day pri­or, Sen. Bob Hall — an Edge­wood Repub­li­can who has received $50,000 from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty — was also at the Austin hotel where exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers were meet­ing, and in a speech con­demned attempts to cut ties with the group based on what he called “hearsay,” “fuzzy pho­tographs” and “nar­ra­tives.”

“If you want to pass a res­o­lu­tion, I would make it pos­i­tive,” Hall said to exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers on Fri­day. “We don’t need to do our enemy’s work for them.”

Hall reit­er­at­ed that stance in an inter­view with the Tri­bune, call­ing the Fuentes meet­ing a “mis­take” but claim­ing that there was “no evi­dence” that Stick­land or Defend Texas Lib­er­ty are anti­se­mit­ic. “I’ve had meet­ings with trans­gen­ders, gays and les­bians,” Hall said. “Does that make me a trans­gen­der, gay or a les­bian?”

Asked if he was com­par­ing gay peo­ple to white suprema­cists or Hitler admir­ers like Fuentes, Hall respond­ed: “I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who are polit­i­cal hot pota­toes.”
...

Final­ly, giv­en Ken Pax­ton’s deci­sion to sue to block an abor­tion for a woman car­ry­ing a non-viable fetus, damn the con­se­quences, keep in mind who Pax­ton is ulti­mate­ly answer­ing to: Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is one of his top advo­cates. The group even vowed ret­ri­bu­tion against Repub­li­cans who sup­port­ed Pax­ton’s removal over cor­rup­tion charges. So when we are try­ing to under­stand Pax­ton’s polit­i­cal cal­cu­lus in mak­ing that deci­sion to sue a woman fac­ing a dead­ly med­ical emer­gency to pre­vent her from get­ting treat­ment, it’s impor­tant to under­stand just how behold­en Pax­ton is to the bil­lion­aires behind Defend Texas Lib­er­ty:

...
Saturday’s vote is the lat­est sign of major dis­uni­ty among the Texas GOP, which for years has dealt with sim­mer­ing ten­sions between its far-right and more mod­er­ate, but still deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, wings. Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its bil­lion­aire back­ers have been key play­ers in that fight, fund­ing pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to incum­bent Repub­li­cans who they deem insuf­fi­cient­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, and bankrolling a sprawl­ing net­work of insti­tu­tions, media web­sites and polit­i­cal groups that they’ve used to incre­men­tal­ly pull Texas fur­ther to the right.

The party’s internecine con­flict has explod­ed into all-out war since the impeach­ment and acquit­tal of Pax­ton, a cru­cial Defend Texas Lib­er­ty ally whose polit­i­cal life has been sub­si­dized by the PAC’s bil­lion­aire fun­ders.

After Paxton’s acquit­tal, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty vowed scorched-earth cam­paigns against those who sup­port­ed the attor­ney general’s removal, and promised mas­sive spend­ing ahead of next year’s pri­ma­ry elec­tions. (Before the Sat­ur­day vote, exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers sep­a­rate­ly approved a cen­sure of out­go­ing Rep. Andrew Murr, R‑Junction, over his lead role in the inves­ti­ga­tion and impeach­ment of Pax­ton.)

News of the Fuentes meet­ing has only com­pli­cat­ed Defend Texas Lib­er­ty’s ret­ri­bu­tion plans, as infight­ing inten­si­fies and some Repub­li­cans ques­tion whether the group and its bil­lion­aire fun­ders should have so much sway over the state par­ty.
...

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing Decem­ber 2018 giant Texas Month­ly report on what was then Tim Dun­n’s ascen­sion as the most pow­er­ful fig­ure in Texas pol­i­tics. But as we’re going to see, while Dunn has indeed spent decades work­ing to cre­ate this influ­ence ped­dling net­work, he did­n’t do it alone. Dunn had help. From one promi­nent CNP mem­ber after anoth­er. Along with a bunch of Koch net­work dark mon­ey:

Texas Month­ly

The Pow­er Issue: Tim Dunn Is Push­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty Into the Arms of God

The social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Mid­land oil man has been putting a lot of mon­ey into the fight for the GOP’s soul.
By R.G. Rat­cliffe
Decem­ber 2018

In Novem­ber 2010, as he was ready­ing for his sec­ond term as Speak­er of the Texas House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Joe Straus invit­ed Mid­land oil­man Tim Dunn to break­fast. It was an attempt, after a bruis­ing elec­tion sea­son, to extend an olive branch. Dunn had helped bankroll the tea par­ty surge in Texas, and an orga­ni­za­tion he start­ed, Empow­er Tex­ans, had attacked Democ­rats and par­tic­i­pat­ed in ral­lies across the state protest­ing prop­er­ty tax­es and exces­sive gov­ern­ment spend­ing. Straus, a San Anto­nio busi­ness­man from a well-off Repub­li­can fam­i­ly, had been cho­sen as Speak­er in Jan­u­ary 2009 by a coali­tion that com­prised GOP fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives like him­self and all the chamber’s Democ­rats.

But in the 2010 elec­tion, the Democ­rats lost 24 seats. Dunn, in oth­er words, had done much to shrink the Speaker’s base of sup­port. Nev­er­the­less, Straus regard­ed him­self as fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble and thought he and Dunn might find com­mon ground on that sub­ject.

With plates of eggs before them, Dunn and Straus sat at a table in the Speaker’s Con­fer­ence Room, sur­round­ed by dark pecan pan­el­ing, Audubon prints, and pho­tographs of Straus fam­i­ly mem­bers pos­ing with George H. W. Bush (a friend of Straus’s moth­er) and U.S. sen­a­tor John Tow­er. Dunn nev­er lift­ed his fork. He didn’t seem inter­est­ed in hear­ing what the Speak­er had to say. But he did have an agen­da. He demand­ed that Straus remove a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of com­mit­tee chairs and replace them with tea par­ty activists sup­port­ed by Empow­er Tex­ans. Straus refused. Then the con­ver­sa­tion moved on to evan­gel­i­cal social pol­i­cy, and, accord­ing to Straus insid­ers, Dunn aston­ished Straus, who is Jew­ish, by say­ing that only Chris­tians should be in lead­er­ship posi­tions.

After the meet­ing, a stunned Straus told aides that he had nev­er been spo­ken to in that way. Though Straus’s aides con­sid­ered the state­ment anti-Semit­ic, it was more like­ly an expres­sion of Dunn’s pro-evan­gel­i­cal­ism. In ser­mons and oth­er pub­lic state­ments, Dunn has assert­ed a belief that born-again evan­gel­i­cals who fol­low bib­li­cal laws are graced by God and giv­en a duty of polit­i­cal lead­er­ship. “If you are an evan­gel­i­cal and you don’t vote, that means you are not doing your duty because you are the ones that God gave the author­i­ty to,” Dunn once said.

“The real bib­li­cal approach to gov­ern­ment is—the ide­al is—a king­dom with a per­fect king,” Dunn told a Chris­t­ian radio audi­ence in 2016. (Dunn begins speak­ing 58 min­utes into the video.) “But pend­ing that, yes, the ide­al is a self-gov­ern­ing soci­ety.” Dunn’s notion of self-gov­ern­ment, though, is dif­fer­ent from that of most Amer­i­cans. He has stat­ed repeat­ed­ly that our democ­ra­cy must be brought into line with bib­li­cal laws. When sec­u­lar gov­ern­ments stray from the Ten Com­mand­ments and try to make their own rules, he says, “you have a false per­fect gov­ern­ment with a false mes­si­ah.”

Dunn is prob­a­bly the most influ­en­tial donor oper­at­ing in Texas today. Since 2002, he has giv­en at least $9.3 mil­lion in pub­licly report­ed cam­paign dona­tions to Texas politi­cians. Fed­er­al can­di­dates and super PACs have received $3.2 mil­lion of Dunn’s mon­ey since 2010. Quite like­ly, a sim­i­lar amount of his mon­ey has flowed in obscu­ri­ty, through a maze of non­prof­it foun­da­tions, some of which he con­trols and many of which hide their true iden­ti­ty and nev­er report their donors.

The dri­ving ide­o­log­i­cal forces behind Dunn’s orga­ni­za­tions are small-gov­ern­ment lib­er­tar­i­an­ism and a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da, the lat­ter of which has been embraced by the tea par­ty in Texas. (While the tea par­ty began as a protest against big gov­ern­ment and cer­tain Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion pro­grams, as ear­ly as 2010 Texas tea par­ty groups had start­ed to morph into vehi­cles for social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive activism.) It wasn’t long after Dunn and Straus met for break­fast that tea party–style con­ser­v­a­tives around the state start­ed send­ing out emails and press releas­es push­ing for a House leader who was both right-wing and a Chris­t­ian; as one mem­ber of the State Repub­li­can Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee put it in a pri­vate note to anoth­er mem­ber of the com­mit­tee, “We elect­ed a House with Chris­t­ian, con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. We now want a true Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive run­ning it.” Whether the email cam­paign was spon­ta­neous or coor­di­nat­ed remains unclear. In an inter­view with the Texas Observ­er, Empow­er Tex­ans’ direc­tor, Michael Quinn Sul­li­van, called the emails “vile and dis­gust­ing.” But he also seemed to take a swipe at Straus. “I’ve nev­er heard any­one talk about Mr. Straus’s reli­gion,” Sul­li­van told the mag­a­zine. “There is no place in the speak­er­ship race for dis­cus­sions of people’s reli­gion or lack there­of” [empha­sis added].

Dunn is a pow­er­ful fig­ure in the ongo­ing strug­gle for the soul of the Repub­li­can par­ty, a fight that has been waged for years between the fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives who built the mod­ern par­ty and the social con­ser­v­a­tives who want to claim it. He is rarely the pub­lic face of these efforts, pre­fer­ring instead to use his mon­ey and influ­ence behind the scenes. For more than a decade, Empow­er Texans—which encom­pass­es a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee and two foun­da­tions, all named Empow­er Texans—has chal­lenged Repub­li­can incum­bents in par­ty pri­maries, often using ques­tion­able meth­ods to sul­ly its tar­gets’ rep­u­ta­tions.

Dur­ing the 2014 elec­tions, the Empow­er Tex­ans PAC spent $4.7 mil­lion to affect state elec­tions, includ­ing almost $2 mil­lion in loans and con­tri­bu­tions to two can­di­dates, now Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton and Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick. While Dunn’s allies have yet to seize con­trol of the House, their takeover of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can Cau­cus empow­ered Patrick to pri­or­i­tize gen­der-spe­cif­ic bath­room leg­is­la­tion over pub­lic school finance issues and prop­er­ty tax reform.

But in the 2018 pri­maries, Empow­er Tex­ans’ tac­tics trig­gered a back­lash. Even the con­ser­v­a­tive web­site Bre­it­bart had by then soured on Dunn’s oper­a­tions, liken­ing his grip on state pol­i­tics to “a Russ­ian oli­garchy sit­u­a­tion where you have a bil­lion­aire who doesn’t even live here choos­ing who’s my leader because the guy didn’t kiss his ring.” Pay­back came from con­ser­v­a­tive busi­ness lead­ers across Texas who were wor­ried that Dunn’s agen­da was bad for the Texas econ­o­my. They poured more than $3 mil­lion into defeat­ing most of the leg­isla­tive can­di­dates backed by Empow­er Tex­ans and its ally, the antiabor­tion group Texas Right to Life. But Dunn is unde­terred, because he believes he has a duty to God.

“Noth­ing comes easy to West Texas,” for­mer first lady Bar­bara Bush once said of liv­ing in the Per­mi­an Basin. “Every tree must be cul­ti­vat­ed, and every flower is a joy.” It’s a harsh envi­ron­ment where sand creeps under the barbed-wire fences and across the road­ways, ever threat­en­ing to erase civ­i­liza­tion. Here, the fleet­ing nature of life is evi­dent and reli­gion blooms. But beneath the brown desert lies an ancient seabed con­tain­ing some of the rich­est oil and gas deposits on earth. Oil is the rea­son peo­ple live there. With each boom, the rough­necks and geol­o­gists and petro­le­um engi­neers come; with each bust, most of them leave. The oil­men remain, hav­ing con­vert­ed some of those fos­sil fuels into gold.

Amid this aus­tere land­scape, Dunn embraced evan­gel­i­cal faith and made a for­tune financ­ing wells to extract oil that he once told a British jour­nal­ist was deposit­ed beneath the earth’s sur­face by God a mere 4,000 years ago, not the 200 mil­lion years as deter­mined by earth sci­ence. He has been through boom and bust and has joked that Mid­land is “the eas­i­est place to lose mon­ey that you can ever imag­ine.”

...

The youngest of four boys, whose father was a Howard Coun­ty Farm Bureau insur­ance agent, Dunn grew up in Big Spring, about forty miles from Mid­land. In high school he was an Eagle Scout and a gui­tarist in a rock band. He left home to study chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at Texas Tech Uni­ver­si­ty, where he met his future wife, Ter­ri. They mar­ried in 1977, at the end of their junior year, and eight months lat­er she was preg­nant with the first of their six chil­dren. Dunn went to work for Exxon, then spent sev­er­al years work­ing in com­mer­cial bank­ing. The fam­i­ly moved to Mid­land, where he worked at a bank before join­ing Park­er & Pars­ley Petro­le­um as direc­tor and, even­tu­al­ly, chief finan­cial offi­cer. There, his deep involve­ment in the two anchors of Midland’s stark culture—the oil busi­ness and evan­gel­i­cal Christianity—would spur him to polit­i­cal activism.

Already on a path to wealth, Dunn formed his own oil and gas com­pa­ny, now known as Crown­Quest Oper­at­ing LLC, in 1996, with wells in Texas, New Mex­i­co, and Utah. As a pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny, Crown­Quest doesn’t have to make its finan­cials pub­licly avail­able, but over the years it has clear­ly done quite well; the Texas Rail­road Com­mis­sion lists Crown­Quest as the thir­ti­eth most pro­duc­tive Texas oil com­pa­ny in 2017, hav­ing pro­duced 6.6 mil­lion bar­rels of oil that year. At the aver­age price of West Texas Inter­me­di­ate crude for the year, that would trans­late into about $335 mil­lion in gross rev­enue.

Dunn’s busi­ness career has informed his lib­er­tar­i­an think­ing. At Park­er & Pars­ley, he over­saw secu­ri­ties trans­ac­tions that were sub­ject to plain­tiff law­suits, an expe­ri­ence that made him a strong sup­port­er of tort reform. At Crown­Quest, he has fought against lim­its on methane emis­sions and the poten­tial list­ing of the dunes sage­brush lizard as endan­gered, a des­ig­na­tion that would have halt­ed drilling in parts of West Texas and east­ern New Mex­i­co.

In 2006 he opposed a Texas tax reform pro­pos­al to cut prop­er­ty tax­es and off­set those loss­es by expand­ing the state busi­ness tax to include part­ner­ships, such as those used by doc­tors, lawyers, and oil com­pa­nies that finance wells through investors. He showed up at a hear­ing of the Texas Tax Reform Com­mis­sion in Mid­land and pre­sent­ed a 22-page report in which he argued that school prop­er­ty tax­es could be not just reduced but com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ed in sev­en­teen years. He assert­ed that this could be done with­out rais­ing busi­ness tax­es if the state increased its share of spend­ing on pub­lic schools by draw­ing on sur­plus state tax rev­enue and restrict­ing spend­ing increas­es to no more than what was need­ed to keep up with pop­u­la­tion growth and infla­tion. Leg­is­la­tors passed their own pro­pos­al, but Dunn’s idea became dog­ma for con­ser­v­a­tive prop­er­ty tax oppo­nents. The Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank where Dunn serves as vice chair­man, is push­ing the Leg­is­la­ture to adopt a ver­sion of the plan when it meets in 2019.

It’s not clear what impact the 2006 tax reform has had on Crown­Quest; oil pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies and roy­al­ty own­ers were hit with new tax pay­ments, but these were sup­posed to be off­set by cuts in the tax­es paid on oil and gas prop­er­ties. (In 2017 Crown­Quest owned more than $2 mil­lion in tax­able real estate in five West Texas coun­ties.) When the tax reform passed, Dunn was unhap­py that the new busi­ness tax had been negotiated—as he saw it—behind closed doors by lob­by­ists doing what was best for their clients rather than the cit­i­zens at large. In short, inter­est groups had a seat at the table. It was then that he formed Empow­er Tex­ans, giv­ing his direc­tor Sul­li­van a clear direc­tive: “I don’t want you to get a seat at the table. I want you to get rid of the table.”

But though it was born as an anti-tax orga­ni­za­tion, Empow­er Tex­ans would soon advo­cate for social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tions, in keep­ing with the evan­gel­i­cal reli­gion that has been the oth­er pil­lar of Dunn’s world­view.

...

There are more Protes­tants in Mid­land than mem­bers of any oth­er faith, and evan­gel­i­cals out­num­ber main­line Protes­tants by a fac­tor of five to one. Dunn and his wife attend the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al Mid­land Bible Church, where the Bible is viewed as inspired by God and with­out error. Along with sev­er­al oth­er fam­i­lies, they home­schooled their chil­dren; the old­er ones fol­lowed a course of instruc­tion that Dunn cre­at­ed, in which they would read great works of lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy and then be chal­lenged to square their read­ings with the Bible. At the urg­ing of friends, in 1998 Dunn turned that cur­ricu­lum into the basis for the pri­vate and unac­cred­it­ed Mid­land Clas­si­cal Acad­e­my. “It’s our job to give the kids a faith cri­sis every day and then lead them to what the true answer is and let them decide,” Dunn says in a pro­mo­tion­al video for the school.

For Dunn, the inter­twin­ing of lib­er­tar­i­an ideas with Chris­t­ian-con­ser­v­a­tive ones didn’t start with Empow­er Tex­ans. His ear­li­est-known for­ay into state pol­i­tics, in the ear­ly nineties, was join­ing the board of direc­tors of the Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion of Plano, which before that had been called Chris­t­ian Cit­i­zens Inc. Found­ed by a retired real estate bro­ker named Richard Ford, it was intend­ed to oper­ate as the Texas chap­ter of Focus on the Fam­i­ly, a nation­al social-con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy group. Dur­ing Dunn’s ear­ly time on the board, the foun­da­tion trav­eled around Texas, teach­ing men how to become bet­ter par­ents through Christ and help­ing physi­cians prac­tice med­i­cine in a god­ly man­ner.

In a recent inter­view, Ford fond­ly recalled the time he spent with Dunn. “He is very intel­li­gent. He has a very strong—very, very strong—spiritual com­mit­ment,” Ford said. “That’s his total moti­va­tion.” Ford said Dunn believes gov­ern­ment has improp­er­ly med­dled in mat­ters of faith and that the coun­try is in spir­i­tu­al decline.

The Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion por­trayed itself as con­cerned with eco­nom­ic lib­er­ty but usu­al­ly aligned itself with groups like the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion and the Eagle Forum, oppos­ing gay rights and sup­port­ing the restora­tion of pub­lic school–sponsored prayer. Anoth­er hall­mark of Free Mar­ket, which Dunn would lat­er deploy at Empow­er Tex­ans, was vot­ing score­cards that allowed evan­gel­i­cals to rate can­di­dates for reelec­tion based on how much sup­port they’d giv­en to social-con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

But the most sig­nif­i­cant tac­tic that Dunn would adopt as his own was that of con­cen­trat­ing on Repub­li­can pri­maries. After the 1998 elec­tions, it was appar­ent that Democ­rats were unlike­ly to win statewide office again any­time soon and that their grip on the Leg­is­la­ture was slip­ping away. “I felt like the real Achilles’ heel for con­ser­v­a­tives was the mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans,” Ford said. “And so we decid­ed we would go after them.”

In 2002 the foundation’s take-no-pris­on­ers approach ignit­ed a statewide con­tro­ver­sy after it tar­get­ed six Repub­li­can incum­bents, includ­ing act­ing lieu­tenant gov­er­nor Bill Ratliff, with an incen­di­ary piece of direct mail, paid for in part with a $10,000 dona­tion from Dunn. Because Ratliff had sup­port­ed includ­ing “sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion” in a hate crimes bill, the mail­er denounced him as a sup­port­er of “the Homo­sex­u­al Agen­da” and includ­ed pho­tos of a man kiss­ing anoth­er man on the cheek, a man in a leather bondage out­fit, and two men in tuxe­dos cut­ting a wed­ding cake. All six incum­bents won reelec­tion, but a year lat­er Ratliff announced his res­ig­na­tion from the Sen­ate. The les­son learned was sim­ple: junk­yard polit­i­cal attacks may not work in a sin­gle elec­tion, but the prospect of such bat­tles scares peo­ple off. It’s a long-term strat­e­gy that keeps incum­bents won­der­ing whether a prob­lem­at­ic vote on the floor of the Leg­is­la­ture will draw them an oppo­nent in the next elec­tion.

Dunn remained on the Free Mar­ket board after a young lawyer named Kel­ly Shack­elford took over Ford’s posi­tion and the foun­da­tion changed its name to the First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute. Under Shack­elford, the foun­da­tion shift­ed its focus to coor­di­nat­ing legal chal­lenges to per­ceived gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in reli­gious mat­ters. One of its best-known cas­es in Texas is a court vic­to­ry that allowed cheer­lead­ers in the small East Texas town of Kountze to paint reli­gious vers­es on spir­it ban­ners for the foot­ball teams. Although First Lib­er­ty clients have includ­ed the Falun Gong and Ortho­dox Jews, most of them are evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.

In 1998, short­ly after launch­ing Mid­land Clas­si­cal Acad­e­my, Dunn joined the board of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, which was found­ed by James Leininger, an advo­cate of law­suit reform and pri­vate school vouch­ers. Leininger, a San Anto­nio physi­cian turned busi­ness­man who, since 2000, has giv­en $10.3 mil­lion to con­ser­v­a­tive Texas can­di­dates and polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, is the Repub­li­can megadonor Dunn bears the most sim­i­lar­i­ty to.

Long­time Texas Capi­tol observ­er Har­vey Kro­n­berg, the own­er of the Quo­rum Report polit­i­cal newslet­ter, says that the biggest dif­fer­ence between the two mil­lion­aires is that Leininger’s ambi­tions seem more mod­est: Leininger want­ed to pass pri­vate school vouch­ers, and when his vouch­er push died in the 2007 Leg­is­la­ture, he start­ed to with­draw from fund­ing Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry races. “He was a sin­gle-issue guy,” Kro­n­berg said. “With Tim Dunn, it’s a more per­va­sive lib­er­tar­i­an-style phi­los­o­phy, per­haps an extreme small-gov­ern­ment phi­los­o­phy.” And since the 2010 elec­tion cycle, when Empow­er Tex­ans ral­lied with local tea par­ty groups, Dunn has been con­nect­ed to a potent base of activists. “They’ve mas­tered social net­work­ing, and they’ve got a vol­un­teer cadre out there,” Kro­n­berg said. “They’re play­ing every­thing from bond elec­tions to school board elec­tions.”

Ever since the rise of the cell­phone and inter­net broad­casts of the leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the gallery of the Texas House has been less crowd­ed with lob­by­ists than it once was; nowa­days, lob­by­ists can sit in their offices on Con­gress Avenue and call a mem­ber direct­ly if they wish to prompt a vote. But Michael Quinn Sul­li­van, Dunn’s right-hand man, is often at the Capi­tol, gath­er­ing his leg­isla­tive allies into a gag­gle out­side the cham­ber. He is a law­mak­er whis­per­er, advis­ing mem­bers of the House Free­dom Cau­cus—a bloc of hard-line conservatives—on how to vote and what amend­ments to offer.

At six feet four inch­es tall, Sul­li­van tow­ers over most peo­ple, though his cheru­bic cheeks give him a friend­ly look. As a one­time news­pa­per reporter and for­mer aide to con­gress­man Ron Paul, Sul­li­van is a pol­i­cy wonk and can turn a glib phrase, but he also has a rep­u­ta­tion for cyn­i­cism and a shame­less dis­re­gard for fair play. In a riff on his ini­tials, MQS, oppo­nents deri­sive­ly call him “mucus.” In 2012 Texas Month­ly’s Paul Bur­ka wrote that Sul­li­van would win a con­test as the most tox­ic per­son at the Capi­tol and be proud of it.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram colum­nist Bud Kennedy has been watch­ing Empow­er Tex­ans for years. He told me that the group is often less inter­est­ed in major pieces of leg­is­la­tion than in “poi­son pill” amend­ments that can be used against incum­bents in a future elec­tion. “They pick one lit­tle vote and say it was against pup­pies or what­ev­er, and then they blow that up to say that so-and-so hates pup­pies,” Kennedy said. “It real­ly has noth­ing to do with whether that per­son was mak­ing good deci­sions for the future of Texas.”

Empow­er Tex­ans pro­duces tip sheets telling leg­is­la­tors how to vote, and then, come elec­tion time, Sul­li­van, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Texas Right to Life pres­i­dent Jim Gra­ham, pro­duces leg­is­la­tor score­cards to sway vot­er opin­ion. The score­cards are so mis­lead­ing that they have been denounced by the Texas Catholic Con­fer­ence of Bish­ops, the Tex­ans for Life Coali­tion, and the Texas Alliance for Life. Law­mak­ers allied with Empow­er Tex­ans intro­duce hot-but­ton bills and amend­ments “just for the pur­pose of their score­card, know­ing that the peo­ple who aren’t just lick­ing their boots all the time are going to vote against them,” says Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Char­lie Geren, a Fort Worth busi­ness­man and Repub­li­can who has often been a tar­get of Empow­er Tex­ans because of his sup­port for Straus as Speak­er.

Spin is noth­ing new in pol­i­tics. Yet Dunn, Sul­li­van, and Empow­er Tex­ans car­ry spin to an extreme, label­ing any Repub­li­can politi­cian who doesn’t fol­low Empow­er Tex­ans’ direc­tions as “lib­er­al” or part of the “Austin estab­lish­ment” or a RINO—a Repub­li­can in name only.

Take, for exam­ple, Kel Seliger, a burly man in his mid-six­ties who likes to ride Harley-David­sons. He made his liv­ing man­ag­ing a Pan­han­dle steel com­pa­ny but is bet­ter known for his years in pol­i­tics. In 2004, after serv­ing as the first Jew­ish may­or of Amar­il­lo, Seliger won a seat in the Texas Sen­ate as a Repub­li­can, rep­re­sent­ing a sprawl­ing West Texas dis­trict that stretch­es from Amar­il­lo to Mid­land. Around the time he took office, Seliger met Dunn for the first time. “He’s real­ly smart and ami­able,” Seliger recalled. “Not par­tic­u­lar­ly gar­ru­lous, but ami­able.” Dunn asked Seliger about his posi­tion on pri­vate school vouch­ers, and Seliger told him that he was a pub­lic school sup­port­er.

For the bet­ter part of the next decade, there were no signs of polit­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty. Seliger estab­lished him­self as a bit of a mav­er­ick in the state Sen­ate, but one with sol­id con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials. He served on the board of the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Council—viewed by the left as a nation­al bill fac­to­ry for big business—and in 2011, as chair of the Sen­ate Redis­trict­ing Com­mit­tee, he drew the cur­rent ger­ry­man­dered con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts that Democ­rats and minori­ties have since chal­lenged in fed­er­al court.

But dur­ing the years that Seliger was earn­ing his con­ser­v­a­tive stripes in the Sen­ate, Dunn was pour­ing mon­ey into Empow­er Tex­ans, which would fash­ion its own def­i­n­i­tion of what a con­ser­v­a­tive was sup­posed to be. Seliger nev­er had any rea­son to sus­pect that Dunn had turned on him until late 2011, when he was blind­sided by an Empow­er Tex­ans attack. The group slammed Seliger for vot­ing for the busi­ness tax that Dunn had opposed in 2006 and for favor­ing an increase in gaso­line tax­es to pay for high­way projects in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, which Sul­li­van had called “boon­dog­gles.”

Fol­low­ing the attack, Seliger and Geren passed a bill to require non­prof­its like Empow­er Tex­ans to dis­close their source of funds when­ev­er they spent more than $1,000 in an elec­tion. Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry vetoed the bill. Empow­er Tex­ans recruit­ed oppo­nents to run against Seliger in his next three elec­tions. And though he won them all, his 2018 pri­ma­ry was par­tic­u­lar­ly tough. Seliger faced two oppo­nents: one a for­mer mem­ber of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion and the oth­er a for­mer Mid­land may­or who received $350,000 from the Empow­er Tex­ans PAC. The dou­ble-team­ing may have been an attempt to force Seliger into a runoff, where he like­ly would have been at a dis­ad­van­tage. It almost worked—Seliger squeaked by with 50.4 per­cent of the vote, nar­row­ly avoid­ing a runoff.

The com­bi­na­tion of dark mon­ey and hard­ball tac­tics has had a defin­ing impact on state pol­i­tics. “Here’s where things become omi­nous, as Empow­er Tex­ans and TPPF fig­ure out what polit­i­cal pow­er they can buy,” Seliger said. “Empow­er Tex­ans has a 501(c)(4) [an IRS-des­ig­nat­ed non­prof­it that can par­tic­i­pate in pol­i­tics], so they don’t have to tell where the mon­ey came from. And right now, the major­i­ty of the seats in the Repub­li­can cau­cus in the Sen­ate are con­trolled by Empow­er Tex­ans and TPPF.”

A phys­i­cal reminder of that clout is a 42,000-square-foot build­ing on Con­gress Avenue, two blocks from the Capi­tol grounds, which TPPF moved into in 2015. (Its 2017 mar­ket val­ue was $15.1 mil­lion, but because TPPF is a non­prof­it, it didn’t have to pay an esti­mat­ed $336,204 in real estate tax­es on its prime down­town prop­er­ty.) “That you’ve got a very few, very wealthy peo­ple who essen­tial­ly own the seats in the Leg­is­la­ture is the very def­i­n­i­tion of Russ­ian-style oli­garchy, and they even have their own Krem­lin on Con­gress,” Seliger said, echo­ing Breitbart’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Empow­er Tex­ans. “And I think that is a bad form of gov­ern­ment. I think it’s dan­ger­ous.”

House Free­dom Cau­cus chair­man Matt Schae­fer, a Repub­li­can from Tyler, denied to me that the cau­cus takes its orders from Sul­li­van or Empow­er Tex­ans. All sorts of lob­by groups keep score­cards of leg­is­la­tors’ votes and put out mail­ers in their dis­tricts filled with dis­tor­tions, he said. And Schae­fer had high praise for Dunn: “The first thing that you’re going to pick up from him is he is deeply involved in his fam­i­ly, a man of faith, and a man who looks at the big pic­ture.”

But there also are Empow­er Tex­ans apos­tates. State rep­re­sen­ta­tive Gio­van­ni “Gio” Capriglione, of South­lake, orig­i­nal­ly won office in 2012 with the help of Empow­er Tex­ans, but he sep­a­rat­ed him­self from the group because he got tired of being told how to vote. Empow­er Tex­ans is “very good about nev­er accu­rate­ly telling the truth,” Capriglione says. As an exam­ple, he point­ed to House Bill 550 from the 2017 ses­sion. The bill was intend­ed to bring Texas into com­pli­ance with fed­er­al law by requir­ing all canoes, kayaks, pad­dle­boards, and oth­er water­borne ves­sels to have sound-pro­duc­ing devices, such as whis­tles. Fail­ure to pass the bill would have endan­gered mil­lions of dol­lars in fed­er­al funds for the state, but Empow­er Tex­ans decid­ed that vot­ing for it would be a blow to indi­vid­ual free­dom and put the vote on its score­card. The bill died. “Holy crap, this became like the hill to die on for the tea par­ty and for some of the Free­dom Cau­cus mem­bers,” Capriglione said.

Empow­er Tex­ans also some­times uses assumed names. In this year’s elec­tion, the group mailed an attack piece to homes in Geren’s dis­trict accus­ing him of hav­ing a “rela­tion­ship” with a lobbyist—namely, his wife. Point­ing out that Geren’s spouse is a lob­by­ist is fair game. But Empow­er Tex­ans attacked Geren using one of its alter­nate names, the Texas Ethics Dis­clo­sure Board, and the let­ter it sent to vot­ers mim­ic­ked an offi­cial gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment, pos­si­bly vio­lat­ing a law that pro­hibits any­one from pos­ing as a gov­ern­ment author­i­ty. At least one Texas coun­ty pros­e­cu­tor reviewed a com­plaint against the mail­ing, though no case has been brought.

Joe Poj­man, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Texas Alliance for Life, told me that many tra­di­tion­al estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans whom his group regards as “extreme­ly pro-life” have been labeled as “not Repub­li­can” because they haven’t done exact­ly what is expect­ed of them by the Empow­er Texans/Texas Right to Life machine. Their score­cards are “disin­gen­u­ous and dis­hon­est,” Poj­man says. “It’s [done] to deceive vot­ers, to deceive Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers.”

Ahead of the 2012 elec­tion Dunn tar­get­ed mul­ti­ple Straus lieu­tenants in the House, among them Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive Vic­ki Tru­itt, of Keller, who a few years ear­li­er had briefly thought about run­ning for Speak­er her­self but ulti­mate­ly joined Straus’s team and retained her chair­man­ship of the House Pen­sions, Invest­ments, and Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee.

The first shot was fired in Decem­ber 2011, by Agen­da Wise, a non­prof­it that Dunn helped form along with a Wis­con­sin lib­er­tar­i­an named Leslie Graves. Agen­da Wise oper­at­ed under the Empow­er Tex­ans umbrel­la and pub­lished a newslet­ter that was sharply crit­i­cal of Speak­er Straus and his allies in the Leg­is­la­ture, and it denounced the con­ser­v­a­tive pro-busi­ness group Tex­ans for Law­suit Reform for endors­ing Tru­itt, because, accord­ing to Agen­da Wise, she “had con­sis­tent­ly been assailed by con­ser­v­a­tives.” But the unhap­py con­ser­v­a­tives assail­ing her were none oth­er than offi­cials at Empow­er Tex­ans, Agen­da Wise’s sib­ling orga­ni­za­tion.

Tru­itt then came under the scruti­ny of a group called Texas Watch­dog. Set up by Dunn’s ally Graves and a lib­er­tar­i­an jour­nal­ist named Trent Seib­ert as a self-described “inde­pen­dent inves­tiga­tive and enter­prise jour­nal­ism orga­ni­za­tion,” Watch­dog ran a sto­ry that was quick­ly picked up by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram imply­ing that Truitt’s physi­cian-recruit­ing busi­ness had received no-bid con­tracts from the Tar­rant Coun­ty Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict because of her role in the Leg­is­la­ture. Sul­li­van fol­lowed up on the Empow­er Tex­ans web­site with a col­umn crit­i­ciz­ing the con­tracts, and Agen­da Wise con­tin­ued the pile-on two weeks lat­er with an arti­cle called “Vic­ki Truitt’s Trou­ble.”

Tru­itt respond­ed with an op-ed in the Star-Telegram, demand­ing an apol­o­gy. She not­ed that her con­tract with the hos­pi­tal dis­trict was award­ed in the ear­ly nineties as the result of a bid­ding process, years before she entered the Leg­is­la­ture. And she claimed that there were finan­cial ties between Texas Watch­dog and Sul­li­van and Dunn. “These men wish to con­trol the agen­da and the votes of mem­bers of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture. I refuse to be intim­i­dat­ed by their threats,” Tru­itt wrote, adding, “I am a tar­get because I stand up to these bul­lies.”

Empow­er Tex­ans par­tial­ly financed Truitt’s opponent—future apos­tate Gio­van­ni Capriglione—spending $33,900 on design and postage for direct mail and $437 for robo­calls to the dis­trict. In May of 2012, Tru­itt lost the pri­ma­ry elec­tion. Along with fel­low Repub­li­can law­mak­er Jim Kef­fer, she filed an ethics com­plaint in 2012 accus­ing Sul­li­van of lob­by­ing with­out reg­is­ter­ing as a lob­by­ist and the Empow­er Tex­ans foun­da­tion of act­ing as a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee with­out dis­clos­ing its donors. Near­ly sev­en years lat­er, those com­plaints are still tied up in lit­i­ga­tion. Sul­li­van claims he does not have to reg­is­ter as a lob­by­ist, because he is a jour­nal­ist.

Dur­ing a recent inter­view, Tru­itt, who now works as a lob­by­ist, was hes­i­tant to speak, still fear­ing the pow­er of Dunn’s orga­ni­za­tion. I asked her why Dunn and Empow­er Tex­ans spent so much time and mon­ey try­ing to break Straus’s lead­er­ship of the House. She hes­i­tat­ed, took a breath, and then said, “Because they can’t tell him what to do, and I think they real­ly have not liked [hav­ing] a Jew­ish Speak­er.”

In Texas, the non­prof­its Dunn has set up move mon­ey from place to place, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to keep track of who is pay­ing for what. At the nation­al lev­el, Dunn has ties to a net­work of lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing mil­lion­aires whose polit­i­cal spend­ing is sim­i­lar­ly secre­tive.

Two key U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions made that pos­si­ble. The first, NAACP v. Alaba­ma (1958), ruled that the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of free asso­ci­a­tion meant that the NAACP could keep its mem­ber­ship rolls pri­vate and there­fore refuse to turn them over to the state of Alaba­ma. More recent­ly, Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. FEC (2010) over­turned large por­tions of fed­er­al cam­paign finance law while giv­ing cor­po­ra­tions and non­prof­its the right to par­tic­i­pate as indi­vid­u­als in elec­tions. While the court specif­i­cal­ly upheld laws requir­ing trans­paren­cy in polit­i­cal financ­ing, right-wing groups imme­di­ate­ly weaponized the decades-old NAACP rul­ing, argu­ing that they could with­hold the source of their fund­ing on the grounds that trans­paren­cy would vio­late their right of free asso­ci­a­tion.

As a result, the amount of dark money—spending by orga­ni­za­tions that don’t dis­close their donors—in U.S. elec­tions has soared. Accord­ing to a study by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, the amount of undis­closed spend­ing jumped from $5.2 mil­lion in 2006 to more than $178 mil­lion in 2016. “The pro­lif­er­a­tion of dark mon­ey in elec­tions absolute­ly has the poten­tial of play­ing a cor­rupt­ing role in democ­ra­cy,” says John Dun­bar, the chief exec­u­tive of the Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integri­ty, a non­prof­it jour­nal­ism orga­ni­za­tion. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we can’t say for sure, because we don’t know who is giv­ing how much to sup­port whom.”

In Texas, Dunn had already set up a bifur­cat­ed sys­tem for Empow­er Tex­ans, with a pub­lic PAC and pri­vate foun­da­tions. Dunn and four wealthy oil fam­i­lies have open­ly donat­ed 95 per­cent of the $11.4 mil­lion raised by the Empow­er Tex­ans PAC since 2010. The two Empow­er Tex­ans foun­da­tions, by con­trast, have not report­ed the source of the $13.9 mil­lion they raised between 2010 and 2016. Empow­er Tex­ans, doing busi­ness as Tex­ans for Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty, is a non­prof­it that can spend mon­ey to affect elec­tions, and Empow­er Tex­ans is an issues edu­ca­tion­al foun­da­tion.

Nation­al­ly, Dunn has affil­i­at­ed him­self with his Agen­da Wise cofounder Leslie Graves and her hus­band, Wis­con­sin investor and polit­i­cal activist Eric O’Keefe, and Tea Par­ty Patri­ots cofounder Mark Meck­ler. (Agen­da Wise no longer exists, but Dunn helps Graves direct Bal­lot­pe­dia, an infor­ma­tion­al polit­i­cal wiki that some­times puts an Empow­er Texans–style spin on the facts.) Graves, O’Keefe, and Meck­ler are all linked to the con­ser­v­a­tive net­work of high-dol­lar donors tied to lib­er­tar­i­an polit­i­cal heavy­weights Charles and David Koch. This cross-pol­li­na­tion between Dunn’s oper­a­tion and out-of-state groups began in earnest in 2010, the same year the tea par­ty took off and Texas Democ­rats suf­fered major defeats in the state’s leg­isla­tive elec­tions.

For exam­ple, in 2011 a foun­da­tion called Donors Trust con­tributed $185,000 to the Empow­er Tex­ans edu­ca­tion­al foun­da­tion and $162,500 to Agen­da Wise—more than 90 per­cent of its oper­at­ing bud­get at a time when Graves was the chair, Sul­li­van the pres­i­dent, and Dunn a board mem­ber. Donors Trust, based in Alexan­dria, Vir­ginia, was set up in 1999 to “safe­guard the char­i­ta­ble intent of donors com­mit­ted to the prin­ci­ples of lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and free enter­prise,” accord­ing to the trust’s web­site. Koch fam­i­ly foun­da­tions were major donors to the trust. “Donors Trust is basi­cal­ly a front for donors to right-wing caus­es who want to be anony­mous,” Dun­bar says.

In 2014, when the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion was rais­ing mon­ey for its new build­ing, twelve dona­tions adding up to more than $554,000 flowed to it from Donors Trust—the kind of dona­tions that Dunn, by then serv­ing as TPPF’s vice chair­man, might be more like­ly to make than the Koch broth­ers.

The web of finance can get dizzy­ing. Dur­ing the 2014 Texas elec­tions, one of Dunn’s non­prof­it foundations—Empower Tex­ans doing busi­ness under the name Tex­ans for Fis­cal Responsibility—disclosed spend­ing $1.5 mil­lion in dark mon­ey to influ­ence state leg­isla­tive races. And that was on top of the $4.7 mil­lion that the Empow­er Tex­ans PAC spent. If Empow­er Tex­ans has its way, this sort of thing will become even eas­i­er. In a three-year-old law­suit, the orga­ni­za­tion has demand­ed that state courts strip the already-tooth­less Texas Ethics Com­mis­sion of any abil­i­ty to reg­u­late cam­paign finance.

Dunn’s largesse has not been con­fined to state races. Dur­ing this year’s elec­tions, he gave $2.2 mil­lion to the Sen­ate Reform Fund, a Super PAC run by Meck­ler that was sole­ly ded­i­cat­ed to defeat­ing the re-elec­tion bid of Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Sen­a­tor Jon Tester of Mon­tana. Despite the mon­ey arrayed against him—and Pres­i­dent Trump’s vocal opposition—Tester won by a com­fort­able three-point mar­gin. The Sen­ate Reform Fund essen­tial­ly spent $8.98 on every vote against Tester, and lost.

Along with O’Keefe and Hous­ton busi­ness­man Leo Lin­beck III, Dunn was also part of the Cam­paign for Pri­ma­ry Account­abil­i­ty, a super PAC that spent about $3 mil­lion and tar­get­ed fif­teen incumbents—eight Repub­li­cans and sev­en Democrats—in con­gres­sion­al pri­maries around the coun­try. It man­aged to defeat three Democ­rats and two Repub­li­cans. This spend­ing was not so much ide­o­log­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed as it was a tac­ti­cal demon­stra­tion project: because con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts are ger­ry­man­dered to strong­ly favor one par­ty, the CPA believes that the most effec­tive way to change gov­ern­ment is to knock out incum­bents in pri­ma­ry elec­tions. CPA want­ed to prove that this could be done. (As it hap­pened, one of the Democ­rats that CPA helped take down was El Paso incum­bent Sil­vestre Reyes—who was defeat­ed by a young and ambi­tious pol named Beto O’Rourke.)

In an inter­view, Lin­beck praised Dunn for his intel­lect, his deter­mi­na­tion to trans­fer pow­er from Wash­ing­ton to state and local gov­ern­ments, and his desire to make politi­cians more account­able to cit­i­zens. “I nev­er got the sense that he was doing this for per­son­al self-aggran­dize­ment or per­son­al gain,” Lin­beck said.

Per­haps Dunn’s most ambi­tious endeav­or is his attempt to rewrite the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. In 2010 Dunn, Sul­li­van, and O’Keefe start­ed yet anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion, Cit­i­zens for Self Gov­er­nance. Between 2010 and 2016, CSG raised $21.1 mil­lion, includ­ing $748,000 from Donors Trust. As part of its agen­da, CSG aims to call a con­ven­tion of the states to revise the Con­sti­tu­tion. In its pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, CSG usu­al­ly claims that the con­ven­tion would address bal­anc­ing the fed­er­al bud­get and imple­ment­ing term lim­its for mem­bers of Con­gress. But its aims are broad­er than that. CSG wants to give states the pow­er to over­turn fed­er­al laws, such as envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, and Supreme Court deci­sions on issues like abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage. Though pulling off major changes in the Con­sti­tu­tion seems like the longest of long shots, the move­ment reflects the deep ani­mus against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in right-wing cir­cles.

CSG, like Dunn’s oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, has an evan­gel­i­cal side. Its web­site has a sec­tion titled “The Bible & Pol­i­tics,” which links to Wall­builders, a Chris­t­ian-right orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to pre­sent­ing Amer­i­can his­to­ry in a reli­gious con­text. Last year the head of CSG, Mark Meck­ler, explained in an inter­view on the Faith Radio Net­work that Chris­tian­i­ty “informs vir­tu­al­ly every­thing we do.”

...

This year, Dunn and his net­work were in posi­tion to pro­found­ly increase their influ­ence in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture. Although can­di­dates backed by Empow­er Tex­ans had, since 2010, won slight­ly less than a third of the time, the group helped defeat five com­mit­tee chair­men who were allies of Speak­er Straus. And a sixth, Jim Kef­fer, of East­land, fend­ed off an Empow­er Tex­ans oppo­nent in 2014 only to see his seat fall under its con­trol when he retired in 2016. Mean­while, the Empow­er Tex­ans coali­tion defeat­ed sev­er­al main­stream Repub­li­cans in the state Sen­ate, giv­ing Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Patrick a near-absolute com­mand of the upper cham­ber. If it had picked up some key seats in the House in this year’s pri­maries, Dunn’s allies in the Leg­is­la­ture would have become a dom­i­nant pow­er at the Capi­tol. But Dunn and Sul­li­van went too far. A com­bi­na­tion of ques­tion­able tac­tics and angst in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty caused by Patrick’s bath­room bill cre­at­ed a back­lash against Empow­er Tex­ans and Texas Right to Life.

One seem­ing­ly unlike­ly tar­get of those groups was Natal­ie Lacy Lange, of Bren­ham. Lange would seem to be the epit­o­me of a mod­ern, small-town Repub­li­can woman; she owns a pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness, attends church reg­u­lar­ly, and serves as the pres­i­dent of the local school board. Once a teacher her­self, Lange believes firm­ly that pub­lic schools are the future of a thriv­ing Texas work­force.

On the Sat­ur­day before ear­ly vot­ing began in this year’s Repub­li­can pri­maries, pol­i­tics was far from Lange’s mind. She had spent part of the day play­ing with her sons—a first-grad­er and a three-year-old—and their new res­cue pup­py. That evening, after she’d put her sons to bed and was prepar­ing to watch a movie with her hus­band, a fel­low school board mem­ber texted Lange a pho­to­graph of a let­ter that had been sent to vot­ers in Bren­ham, head­ed, “Sub­ject: Is school board pres­i­dent Natal­ie Lange break­ing the law?”

The let­ter, sent by Empow­er Tex­ans, ques­tioned whether Lange and the Bren­ham school board had vio­lat­ed state law by approv­ing a “Cul­ture of Vot­ing” res­o­lu­tion urg­ing stu­dents and teach­ers to vote. Empow­er Tex­ans claimed the res­o­lu­tion was pro­mot­ed by “lib­er­al activists” who might be ille­gal­ly using school dis­trict tax dol­lars to get stu­dents and teach­ers to vote against con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates.

Lange had nev­er heard of Empow­er Tex­ans or Dunn, but being called a lib­er­al in Bren­ham could be a polit­i­cal kiss of death, even to some­one serv­ing in a non­par­ti­san posi­tion. How many of her neigh­bors now thought she was lib­er­al or per­haps a crim­i­nal? She was mor­ti­fied. At that moment, Lange felt very alone and a lit­tle bit fright­ened. Who would want to destroy her rep­u­ta­tion?

She was not alone, though. Sim­i­lar let­ters had been sent out assail­ing school board pres­i­dents in Sealy, Ned­er­land, Mar­shall, and Cop­pell. The let­ters came on the heels of an ear­li­er one ask­ing teach­ers to “blow the whis­tle” on fel­low edu­ca­tors who might spend dis­trict mon­ey get­ting peo­ple to the polls to vote. Empow­er Tex­ans’ like­ly moti­va­tion was clear: though the orga­ni­za­tions that pro­mot­ed the vot­er dri­ve were non­par­ti­san, the dri­ve was fueled by teach­ers’ groups that were angry about the Legislature’s fail­ure to pass school finance reform and its attempt to cre­ate pri­vate school vouch­ers, for which many blamed Patrick and the Empow­er Tex­ans crowd.

Edu­ca­tors across the state respond­ed to the mys­te­ri­ous let­ters by tak­ing to Twit­ter to cas­ti­gate Empow­er Tex­ans and cel­e­brate teach­ers who’d gone above and beyond for their stu­dents. One tweet read, “I just want to #blowthe­whis­tle on all my sup­port staff in my class­room that come in ear­ly, stay late and spend their own mon­ey help­ing me make sure our stu­dents have every­thing they need.” Anoth­er called out a spe­cif­ic teacher by name, “This amaz­ing teacher pours out her heart every­day into mak­ing learn­ing fun!” Some pulled at heart­strings: “@EmpowerTexans I’ve got to #blowthe­whis­tle on a teach­ing staff that has pro­vid­ed Christ­mas gifts for a student’s fam­i­ly who was in hard times, helped pay for a student’s med­ical bills, and buy shoes/clothing for stu­dents who need­ed it.” The tweet-sham­ing of Empow­er Tex­ans went on for days.

After the Dal­las Morn­ing News pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cal of Dunn and Empow­er Tex­ans’ tac­tics, Dunn respond­ed with an op-ed defend­ing the orga­ni­za­tion. Empow­er Tex­ans’ spend­ing in the pri­maries, he wrote, was minus­cule com­pared with the mon­ey that lob­by­ists and the busi­ness estab­lish­ment put into Texas pol­i­tics. “Most Tex­ans know there is a swamp in Austin as well as in DC,” Dunn wrote. “That’s why the con­cept of term lim­its is so pop­u­lar. But we have term lim­its in Texas: the pri­ma­ry elec­tions. If all of us out­siders stick togeth­er, we can drain the Austin Swamp.”

Edu­ca­tors turned out to vote in those pri­maries, and main­stream Repub­li­can busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions poured more than $3 mil­lion into defeat­ing the social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates backed by Dunn’s net­work. Out of six­teen chal­lenges to House incum­bents, Empow­er Tex­ans knocked off only two and won just three of eight open races. The clos­est Sul­li­van came to admit­ting that his tac­tics had been a mis­take was at a con­ser­v­a­tive con­fer­ence this past sum­mer. “We’ve got­ten more right than we’ve got­ten wrong,” Sul­li­van said, “but don’t con­fuse being the least drunk per­son at the bar with being a mod­el of sobri­ety.”

The day after the Empow­er Tex­ans let­ter arrived, rais­ing ques­tions about whether Lange had bro­ken the law, she met with her min­is­ter to pray for strength and then wrote angry respons­es to Dunn and Empow­er Tex­ans that she post­ed on Face­book, where they were wide­ly shared. Attack­ing vol­un­teer school board mem­bers with “slick pro­pa­gan­da meant to stir false dis­cord sinks to a new low,” she wrote, “even for an orga­ni­za­tion known for ruth­less­ness and bul­ly­ing.”

“It’s dan­ger­ous to our democ­ra­cy,” Lange told me when we met in the Bren­ham School Dis­trict offices in April. “[Dunn] may be a Chris­t­ian, but his tac­tics are not very Christ­like.” Lange has a com­mand­ing pres­ence and self-assur­ance. She was still indig­nant about the attack on her integri­ty. When I asked her if she had any­thing to say to Dunn, she replied, “How do you sleep at night?”

...

———–

“The Pow­er Issue: Tim Dunn Is Push­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty Into the Arms of God” by R.G. Rat­cliffe; Texas Month­ly; Decem­ber 2018

“Dunn is prob­a­bly the most influ­en­tial donor oper­at­ing in Texas today. Since 2002, he has giv­en at least $9.3 mil­lion in pub­licly report­ed cam­paign dona­tions to Texas politi­cians. Fed­er­al can­di­dates and super PACs have received $3.2 mil­lion of Dunn’s mon­ey since 2010. Quite like­ly, a sim­i­lar amount of his mon­ey has flowed in obscu­ri­ty, through a maze of non­prof­it foun­da­tions, some of which he con­trols and many of which hide their true iden­ti­ty and nev­er report their donors.”

Dunn was prob­a­bly the most influ­en­tial donor oper­a­tion in Texas in 2018 when this Texas Month­ly report was first pub­lished. And there’s no indi­ca­tion that influ­ence has waned. In oth­er words, Dunn is arguably the most influ­en­tial per­son in Texas pol­i­tics today. And he’s a theo­crat­ic lunatic. The kind of theo­crat who does­n’t think Jews or any non-Chris­tians should even be allowed to have lead­er­ship roles in the soci­ety he is try­ing to form. Yes, Dunn actu­al­ly told the Jew­ish Repub­li­can Speak­er of the Texas House that only Chris­tians should be in lead­er­ship posi­tions. Pre­sum­ably fel­low Chris­tians who, like Dunn, insists the earth is only a few thou­sand years old:

...
With plates of eggs before them, Dunn and Straus sat at a table in the Speaker’s Con­fer­ence Room, sur­round­ed by dark pecan pan­el­ing, Audubon prints, and pho­tographs of Straus fam­i­ly mem­bers pos­ing with George H. W. Bush (a friend of Straus’s moth­er) and U.S. sen­a­tor John Tow­er. Dunn nev­er lift­ed his fork. He didn’t seem inter­est­ed in hear­ing what the Speak­er had to say. But he did have an agen­da. He demand­ed that Straus remove a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of com­mit­tee chairs and replace them with tea par­ty activists sup­port­ed by Empow­er Tex­ans. Straus refused. Then the con­ver­sa­tion moved on to evan­gel­i­cal social pol­i­cy, and, accord­ing to Straus insid­ers, Dunn aston­ished Straus, who is Jew­ish, by say­ing that only Chris­tians should be in lead­er­ship posi­tions.

After the meet­ing, a stunned Straus told aides that he had nev­er been spo­ken to in that way. Though Straus’s aides con­sid­ered the state­ment anti-Semit­ic, it was more like­ly an expres­sion of Dunn’s pro-evan­gel­i­cal­ism. In ser­mons and oth­er pub­lic state­ments, Dunn has assert­ed a belief that born-again evan­gel­i­cals who fol­low bib­li­cal laws are graced by God and giv­en a duty of polit­i­cal lead­er­ship. “If you are an evan­gel­i­cal and you don’t vote, that means you are not doing your duty because you are the ones that God gave the author­i­ty to,” Dunn once said.

“The real bib­li­cal approach to gov­ern­ment is—the ide­al is—a king­dom with a per­fect king,” Dunn told a Chris­t­ian radio audi­ence in 2016. (Dunn begins speak­ing 58 min­utes into the video.) “But pend­ing that, yes, the ide­al is a self-gov­ern­ing soci­ety.” Dunn’s notion of self-gov­ern­ment, though, is dif­fer­ent from that of most Amer­i­cans. He has stat­ed repeat­ed­ly that our democ­ra­cy must be brought into line with bib­li­cal laws. When sec­u­lar gov­ern­ments stray from the Ten Com­mand­ments and try to make their own rules, he says, “you have a false per­fect gov­ern­ment with a false mes­si­ah.”

...

“Noth­ing comes easy to West Texas,” for­mer first lady Bar­bara Bush once said of liv­ing in the Per­mi­an Basin. “Every tree must be cul­ti­vat­ed, and every flower is a joy.” It’s a harsh envi­ron­ment where sand creeps under the barbed-wire fences and across the road­ways, ever threat­en­ing to erase civ­i­liza­tion. Here, the fleet­ing nature of life is evi­dent and reli­gion blooms. But beneath the brown desert lies an ancient seabed con­tain­ing some of the rich­est oil and gas deposits on earth. Oil is the rea­son peo­ple live there. With each boom, the rough­necks and geol­o­gists and petro­le­um engi­neers come; with each bust, most of them leave. The oil­men remain, hav­ing con­vert­ed some of those fos­sil fuels into gold.

Amid this aus­tere land­scape, Dunn embraced evan­gel­i­cal faith and made a for­tune financ­ing wells to extract oil that he once told a British jour­nal­ist was deposit­ed beneath the earth’s sur­face by God a mere 4,000 years ago, not the 200 mil­lion years as deter­mined by earth sci­ence. He has been through boom and bust and has joked that Mid­land is “the eas­i­est place to lose mon­ey that you can ever imag­ine.”

...

It’s a polit­i­cal influ­ence empire. But it did­n’t pop up overnight. Dunn has been build­ing his influ­ence for decades. In 1998, he joined the board of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), found­ed by CNP mem­ber James Leininger. Recall how for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. The TPPF is a sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal force, and not just in Texas. Dunn still serves as the TPPF Vice Chair­man. But it was 2006 when Dunn formed Empow­er Tex­ans, which has turned into one of main vehi­cles for exert­ing Dun­n’s polit­i­cal influ­ence. By 2018, the major­i­ty of the seats in the Repub­li­can cau­cus in the Texas Sen­ate were con­trolled by Empow­er Tex­ans and TPPF:

...
In 2006 he opposed a Texas tax reform pro­pos­al to cut prop­er­ty tax­es and off­set those loss­es by expand­ing the state busi­ness tax to include part­ner­ships, such as those used by doc­tors, lawyers, and oil com­pa­nies that finance wells through investors. He showed up at a hear­ing of the Texas Tax Reform Com­mis­sion in Mid­land and pre­sent­ed a 22-page report in which he argued that school prop­er­ty tax­es could be not just reduced but com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ed in sev­en­teen years. He assert­ed that this could be done with­out rais­ing busi­ness tax­es if the state increased its share of spend­ing on pub­lic schools by draw­ing on sur­plus state tax rev­enue and restrict­ing spend­ing increas­es to no more than what was need­ed to keep up with pop­u­la­tion growth and infla­tion. Leg­is­la­tors passed their own pro­pos­al, but Dunn’s idea became dog­ma for con­ser­v­a­tive prop­er­ty tax oppo­nents. The Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank where Dunn serves as vice chair­man, is push­ing the Leg­is­la­ture to adopt a ver­sion of the plan when it meets in 2019.

It’s not clear what impact the 2006 tax reform has had on Crown­Quest; oil pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies and roy­al­ty own­ers were hit with new tax pay­ments, but these were sup­posed to be off­set by cuts in the tax­es paid on oil and gas prop­er­ties. (In 2017 Crown­Quest owned more than $2 mil­lion in tax­able real estate in five West Texas coun­ties.) When the tax reform passed, Dunn was unhap­py that the new busi­ness tax had been negotiated—as he saw it—behind closed doors by lob­by­ists doing what was best for their clients rather than the cit­i­zens at large. In short, inter­est groups had a seat at the table. It was then that he formed Empow­er Tex­ans, giv­ing his direc­tor Sul­li­van a clear direc­tive: “I don’t want you to get a seat at the table. I want you to get rid of the table.”

But though it was born as an anti-tax orga­ni­za­tion, Empow­er Tex­ans would soon advo­cate for social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tions, in keep­ing with the evan­gel­i­cal reli­gion that has been the oth­er pil­lar of Dunn’s world­view.

...

In 1998, short­ly after launch­ing Mid­land Clas­si­cal Acad­e­my, Dunn joined the board of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, which was found­ed by James Leininger, an advo­cate of law­suit reform and pri­vate school vouch­ers. Leininger, a San Anto­nio physi­cian turned busi­ness­man who, since 2000, has giv­en $10.3 mil­lion to con­ser­v­a­tive Texas can­di­dates and polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, is the Repub­li­can megadonor Dunn bears the most sim­i­lar­i­ty to.

Long­time Texas Capi­tol observ­er Har­vey Kro­n­berg, the own­er of the Quo­rum Report polit­i­cal newslet­ter, says that the biggest dif­fer­ence between the two mil­lion­aires is that Leininger’s ambi­tions seem more mod­est: Leininger want­ed to pass pri­vate school vouch­ers, and when his vouch­er push died in the 2007 Leg­is­la­ture, he start­ed to with­draw from fund­ing Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry races. “He was a sin­gle-issue guy,” Kro­n­berg said. “With Tim Dunn, it’s a more per­va­sive lib­er­tar­i­an-style phi­los­o­phy, per­haps an extreme small-gov­ern­ment phi­los­o­phy.” And since the 2010 elec­tion cycle, when Empow­er Tex­ans ral­lied with local tea par­ty groups, Dunn has been con­nect­ed to a potent base of activists. “They’ve mas­tered social net­work­ing, and they’ve got a vol­un­teer cadre out there,” Kro­n­berg said. “They’re play­ing every­thing from bond elec­tions to school board elec­tions.”

Ever since the rise of the cell­phone and inter­net broad­casts of the leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the gallery of the Texas House has been less crowd­ed with lob­by­ists than it once was; nowa­days, lob­by­ists can sit in their offices on Con­gress Avenue and call a mem­ber direct­ly if they wish to prompt a vote. But Michael Quinn Sul­li­van, Dunn’s right-hand man, is often at the Capi­tol, gath­er­ing his leg­isla­tive allies into a gag­gle out­side the cham­ber. He is a law­mak­er whis­per­er, advis­ing mem­bers of the House Free­dom Cau­cus—a bloc of hard-line conservatives—on how to vote and what amend­ments to offer.

...

Empow­er Tex­ans pro­duces tip sheets telling leg­is­la­tors how to vote, and then, come elec­tion time, Sul­li­van, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Texas Right to Life pres­i­dent Jim Gra­ham, pro­duces leg­is­la­tor score­cards to sway vot­er opin­ion. The score­cards are so mis­lead­ing that they have been denounced by the Texas Catholic Con­fer­ence of Bish­ops, the Tex­ans for Life Coali­tion, and the Texas Alliance for Life. Law­mak­ers allied with Empow­er Tex­ans intro­duce hot-but­ton bills and amend­ments “just for the pur­pose of their score­card, know­ing that the peo­ple who aren’t just lick­ing their boots all the time are going to vote against them,” says Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Char­lie Geren, a Fort Worth busi­ness­man and Repub­li­can who has often been a tar­get of Empow­er Tex­ans because of his sup­port for Straus as Speak­er.

Spin is noth­ing new in pol­i­tics. Yet Dunn, Sul­li­van, and Empow­er Tex­ans car­ry spin to an extreme, label­ing any Repub­li­can politi­cian who doesn’t fol­low Empow­er Tex­ans’ direc­tions as “lib­er­al” or part of the “Austin estab­lish­ment” or a RINO—a Repub­li­can in name only.

...

The com­bi­na­tion of dark mon­ey and hard­ball tac­tics has had a defin­ing impact on state pol­i­tics. “Here’s where things become omi­nous, as Empow­er Tex­ans and TPPF fig­ure out what polit­i­cal pow­er they can buy,” Seliger said. “Empow­er Tex­ans has a 501(c)(4) [an IRS-des­ig­nat­ed non­prof­it that can par­tic­i­pate in pol­i­tics], so they don’t have to tell where the mon­ey came from. And right now, the major­i­ty of the seats in the Repub­li­can cau­cus in the Sen­ate are con­trolled by Empow­er Tex­ans and TPPF.”
...

And who do we find as two of the biggest recip­i­ents of Empow­er Tex­an­s’s polit­i­cal sup­port? Dan Patrick and Ken Pax­ton. These are Dun­n’s polit­i­cal crea­tures:

...
Dunn is a pow­er­ful fig­ure in the ongo­ing strug­gle for the soul of the Repub­li­can par­ty, a fight that has been waged for years between the fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives who built the mod­ern par­ty and the social con­ser­v­a­tives who want to claim it. He is rarely the pub­lic face of these efforts, pre­fer­ring instead to use his mon­ey and influ­ence behind the scenes. For more than a decade, Empow­er Texans—which encom­pass­es a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee and two foun­da­tions, all named Empow­er Texans—has chal­lenged Repub­li­can incum­bents in par­ty pri­maries, often using ques­tion­able meth­ods to sul­ly its tar­gets’ rep­u­ta­tions.

Dur­ing the 2014 elec­tions, the Empow­er Tex­ans PAC spent $4.7 mil­lion to affect state elec­tions, includ­ing almost $2 mil­lion in loans and con­tri­bu­tions to two can­di­dates, now Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton and Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick. While Dunn’s allies have yet to seize con­trol of the House, their takeover of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can Cau­cus empow­ered Patrick to pri­or­i­tize gen­der-spe­cif­ic bath­room leg­is­la­tion over pub­lic school finance issues and prop­er­ty tax reform.
...

And as an indi­ca­tion of Dun­n’s ties to the larg­er CNP net­work of theocrats, notice how, before he start­ed Empow­er Tex­ans in 2006, he joined the board of direc­tors of the Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion of Plano in the ear­ly 90s, which was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to oper­ate as the Texas chap­ter of Focus on the Fam­i­ly, the group found­ed by CNP found­ing mem­ber James Dob­son. Oth­er Focus on the Fam­i­ly CNP mem­bers include Tim Goe­glein, Tom Min­nery, Faye Bott, and Kevin B. Brown. Beyond that, Dunn remained on the board of the Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion after CNP mem­ber Kel­ly Shack­elford took over the lead­er­ship. Recall how House Speak­er Mike John­son has called Shack­elford his per­son­al men­tor. Whether or not Dun­n’s name shows up on the CNP’s leaked mem­ber­ship lists, he’s obvi­ous­ly a close fel­low trav­el­er:

...
There are more Protes­tants in Mid­land than mem­bers of any oth­er faith, and evan­gel­i­cals out­num­ber main­line Protes­tants by a fac­tor of five to one. Dunn and his wife attend the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al Mid­land Bible Church, where the Bible is viewed as inspired by God and with­out error. Along with sev­er­al oth­er fam­i­lies, they home­schooled their chil­dren; the old­er ones fol­lowed a course of instruc­tion that Dunn cre­at­ed, in which they would read great works of lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy and then be chal­lenged to square their read­ings with the Bible. At the urg­ing of friends, in 1998 Dunn turned that cur­ricu­lum into the basis for the pri­vate and unac­cred­it­ed Mid­land Clas­si­cal Acad­e­my. “It’s our job to give the kids a faith cri­sis every day and then lead them to what the true answer is and let them decide,” Dunn says in a pro­mo­tion­al video for the school.

For Dunn, the inter­twin­ing of lib­er­tar­i­an ideas with Chris­t­ian-con­ser­v­a­tive ones didn’t start with Empow­er Tex­ans. His ear­li­est-known for­ay into state pol­i­tics, in the ear­ly nineties, was join­ing the board of direc­tors of the Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion of Plano, which before that had been called Chris­t­ian Cit­i­zens Inc. Found­ed by a retired real estate bro­ker named Richard Ford, it was intend­ed to oper­ate as the Texas chap­ter of Focus on the Fam­i­ly, a nation­al social-con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy group. Dur­ing Dunn’s ear­ly time on the board, the foun­da­tion trav­eled around Texas, teach­ing men how to become bet­ter par­ents through Christ and help­ing physi­cians prac­tice med­i­cine in a god­ly man­ner.

In a recent inter­view, Ford fond­ly recalled the time he spent with Dunn. “He is very intel­li­gent. He has a very strong—very, very strong—spiritual com­mit­ment,” Ford said. “That’s his total moti­va­tion.” Ford said Dunn believes gov­ern­ment has improp­er­ly med­dled in mat­ters of faith and that the coun­try is in spir­i­tu­al decline.

The Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion por­trayed itself as con­cerned with eco­nom­ic lib­er­ty but usu­al­ly aligned itself with groups like the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion and the Eagle Forum, oppos­ing gay rights and sup­port­ing the restora­tion of pub­lic school–sponsored prayer. Anoth­er hall­mark of Free Mar­ket, which Dunn would lat­er deploy at Empow­er Tex­ans, was vot­ing score­cards that allowed evan­gel­i­cals to rate can­di­dates for reelec­tion based on how much sup­port they’d giv­en to social-con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

...

Dunn remained on the Free Mar­ket board after a young lawyer named Kel­ly Shack­elford took over Ford’s posi­tion and the foun­da­tion changed its name to the First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute. Under Shack­elford, the foun­da­tion shift­ed its focus to coor­di­nat­ing legal chal­lenges to per­ceived gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in reli­gious mat­ters. One of its best-known cas­es in Texas is a court vic­to­ry that allowed cheer­lead­ers in the small East Texas town of Kountze to paint reli­gious vers­es on spir­it ban­ners for the foot­ball teams. Although First Lib­er­ty clients have includ­ed the Falun Gong and Ortho­dox Jews, most of them are evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.
...

Beyond that, there’s Dun­n’s close ties to CNP mem­ber Mark Meck­ler, of the key fig­ures behind the Con­ven­tion of States (COS) push to imple­ment a far right over­haul of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. Dunn co-found­ed Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance (CSG), which is the group that actu­al­ly runs the COS project. Yes, Tim Dunn is one of key fig­ures behind the COS scheme, along with peo­ple like Meck­ler and fel­low CNP mem­ber Michael Far­ris. Again, if Dunn isn’t a secret CNP mem­ber, he’s a very close ally:

...
Per­haps Dunn’s most ambi­tious endeav­or is his attempt to rewrite the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. In 2010 Dunn, Sul­li­van, and O’Keefe start­ed yet anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion, Cit­i­zens for Self Gov­er­nance. Between 2010 and 2016, CSG raised $21.1 mil­lion, includ­ing $748,000 from Donors Trust. As part of its agen­da, CSG aims to call a con­ven­tion of the states to revise the Con­sti­tu­tion. In its pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, CSG usu­al­ly claims that the con­ven­tion would address bal­anc­ing the fed­er­al bud­get and imple­ment­ing term lim­its for mem­bers of Con­gress. But its aims are broad­er than that. CSG wants to give states the pow­er to over­turn fed­er­al laws, such as envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, and Supreme Court deci­sions on issues like abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage. Though pulling off major changes in the Con­sti­tu­tion seems like the longest of long shots, the move­ment reflects the deep ani­mus against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in right-wing cir­cles.

CSG, like Dunn’s oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, has an evan­gel­i­cal side. Its web­site has a sec­tion titled “The Bible & Pol­i­tics,” which links to Wall­builders, a Chris­t­ian-right orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to pre­sent­ing Amer­i­can his­to­ry in a reli­gious con­text. Last year the head of CSG, Mark Meck­ler, explained in an inter­view on the Faith Radio Net­work that Chris­tian­i­ty “informs vir­tu­al­ly every­thing we do.”
...

Final­ly, note anoth­er one of the ‘usu­al sus­pects’ fuel­ing this influ­ence ped­dling net­work: Donors Trust, the pri­ma­ry dark mon­ey vehi­cle for the Koch net­work. Tim Dunn may have built the most pow­er­ful influ­ence ped­dling net­work in Texas, but he did­n’t build it alone:

...
Nation­al­ly, Dunn has affil­i­at­ed him­self with his Agen­da Wise cofounder Leslie Graves and her hus­band, Wis­con­sin investor and polit­i­cal activist Eric O’Keefe, and Tea Par­ty Patri­ots cofounder Mark Meck­ler. (Agen­da Wise no longer exists, but Dunn helps Graves direct Bal­lot­pe­dia, an infor­ma­tion­al polit­i­cal wiki that some­times puts an Empow­er Texans–style spin on the facts.) Graves, O’Keefe, and Meck­ler are all linked to the con­ser­v­a­tive net­work of high-dol­lar donors tied to lib­er­tar­i­an polit­i­cal heavy­weights Charles and David Koch. This cross-pol­li­na­tion between Dunn’s oper­a­tion and out-of-state groups began in earnest in 2010, the same year the tea par­ty took off and Texas Democ­rats suf­fered major defeats in the state’s leg­isla­tive elec­tions.

For exam­ple, in 2011 a foun­da­tion called Donors Trust con­tributed $185,000 to the Empow­er Tex­ans edu­ca­tion­al foun­da­tion and $162,500 to Agen­da Wise—more than 90 per­cent of its oper­at­ing bud­get at a time when Graves was the chair, Sul­li­van the pres­i­dent, and Dunn a board mem­ber. Donors Trust, based in Alexan­dria, Vir­ginia, was set up in 1999 to “safe­guard the char­i­ta­ble intent of donors com­mit­ted to the prin­ci­ples of lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and free enter­prise,” accord­ing to the trust’s web­site. Koch fam­i­ly foun­da­tions were major donors to the trust. “Donors Trust is basi­cal­ly a front for donors to right-wing caus­es who want to be anony­mous,” Dun­bar says.

In 2014, when the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion was rais­ing mon­ey for its new build­ing, twelve dona­tions adding up to more than $554,000 flowed to it from Donors Trust—the kind of dona­tions that Dunn, by then serv­ing as TPPF’s vice chair­man, might be more like­ly to make than the Koch broth­ers..
...

And, of course, when we’re talk­ing about groups like the CSG and COS, we aren’t just talk­ing about Texas. These are groups with nation­al ambi­tions. Tim Dunn isn’t just Tex­as­’s theo­crat­ic headache. He’s got big­ger ambi­tions. And many fel­low trav­el­ers. Some of those fel­low trav­el­ers are focused on Texas. Some on DC. And some, like Nick Fuentes, are focused on rais­ing the kind of youth armies of Nazi thugs are will be required to pro­vide the street mus­cle and threat of vio­lence need­ed to cement Dun­n’s vision in place when the time comes. A time that is pre­sum­ably com­ing soon­er rather than lat­er, in Dun­n’s esti­ma­tion. And he should know.

The Unit­ed States is no stronger to being a democ­ra­cy in name only, efec­tive­ly speak­ing. And yet it’s hard to ignore the accel­er­at­ing trans­for­ma­tion of the US from a covert­ly cor­rupt­ed oli­garchy into quite an overt one. Heck, that trans­for­ma­tion into an overt author­i­tar­i­an style of gov­ern­ment is more or less what Don­ald Trump is cam­paign­ing on in his 2024 reelec­tion cam­paign. But that author­i­tar­i­an lurch is far from a Trump exclu­sive. The pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) is deeply involved with those evolv­ing plans for author­i­tar­i­an rule, and well posi­tioned to make it a real­i­ty should Trump — or any oth­er Repub­li­can — win in 2024, thanks in large part to a far right Supreme Court major­i­ty seem­ing­ly will­ing to make real­i­ty the CNP’s vision for a form of theo­crat­ic fas­cism. Amer­i­cans are, quite sim­ply, expect­ed to get used to gov­ern­ment by theocrats. At least that’s pre­sum­ably the long term plan giv­en that a com­plete cap­ture of soci­ety is also part of the plan.

But no one said cap­tur­ing a plu­ral­is­tic democ­ra­cy and putting it under your theo­crat­ic thumb would be easy. As a result, we are get­ting reports like the fol­low­ing Politi­co arti­cle about some rather sig­nif­i­cant warn­ings to Repub­li­cans com­ing from some unex­pect­ed sources. Warn­ings about the polit­i­cal death trap Repub­li­cans might be walk­ing into over the pol­i­tics of not just abor­tion but con­tra­cep­tion. As we’ve seen with the stun­ning treat­ment of a preg­nant woman fac­ing a non-viable preg­nan­cy by Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton and the Texas Supreme Court, the GOP can’t seem to help itself, in part, because the CNP runs much of the par­ty and the CNP can’t seem to help itself either. The CNP isn’t just an elit­ist orga­ni­za­tion. It’s an extrem­ist elit­ist orga­ni­za­tion with some very unpop­u­lar views of how the world should oper­ate that it intends on impos­ing on the pub­lic whether it likes it or not. Domin­ion­ism isn’t exact­ly inter­est­ed in what’s pop­u­lar, after all.

And that brings us to the group of con­ser­v­a­tives sound­ing an alarm about the stun­ning­ly low lev­els of sup­port among even con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers for an issue that the CNP can’t pos­si­bly resist impos­ing its will upon: con­tra­cep­tion. It turns out access to con­tra­cep­tion is extreme­ly pop­u­lar across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. So pop­u­lar that a recent poll found that near­ly half of con­ser­v­a­tive women “would con­sid­er vot­ing for a can­di­date from a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal par­ty” if Repub­li­cans back birth con­trol restric­tions. A poll car­ried out by none oth­er than Kellyanne Con­way’s polling firm. Con­way, along with lob­by­ist Susan Hirschmann and Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice CEO Heather Hig­gins, are now going pub­lic with their warn­ing to con­ser­v­a­tives about the tox­ic nature of restrict­ing access to con­tra­cep­tion. It’s quite a find­ing, made all the more sig­nif­i­cant by the fact that Con­way and Heather Hig­gins both show up on the leaked CNP mem­ber­ship list. Susan Hirschman­n’s name does­n’t show up the mem­ber­ship lists, but she did used to work as Chief of Staff for for­mer Repub­li­can House Major­i­ty Leader Tom DeLay, him­self a CNP mem­ber. So this is kind of an intra-CNP mes­sage we’re all get­ting exposed to here.

It points towards what will pre­sum­ably be one of major chal­lenges for this big author­i­tar­i­an push we see the CNP and MAGA forces prep­ping for fol­low­ing the next elec­tion. Because it’s hard enough for a minor­i­ty par­ty to impose an agen­da on a nation that is at least pop­u­lar with the par­ty’s base. But it’s anoth­er thing when even the author­i­tar­i­an base isn’t on board with the plan.

How is the CNP plan­ning on thread­ing that nee­dle? Con­way has a pro­pos­al: the GOP needs to advo­cate for greater access to con­tra­cep­tives. A rea­son­able sound­ing plan, until you learn that almost all of the GOP vot­ed down the Right to Con­tra­cep­tion Act that passed the House in July of 2022 but was ulti­mate­ly blocked by Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate.

Now, it is the case that Repub­li­cans have already pro­posed a bill that would do a lit­tle bit to expand over-the-counter access to oral con­tra­cep­tion, the OTC (Oral­ly-Tak­en Con­tra­cep­tive) Act. The bill was even co-spon­sored by Rep Mar­jorie Tay­lor-Greene, which some sus­pect was due to the fact that the bill would­n’t expand access to Plan B, which Greene has pre­vi­ous­ly decried as an abor­ti­fa­cient that “kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already preg­nant.” It’s the kind of bill that feels like an attempt to threat a polit­i­cal nee­dle. And yet it ‘s not clear that will actu­al­ly hap­pen, with a 2022 poll show­ing 62 per­cent of con­ser­v­a­tives sup­port­ing “emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion like Plan B.”

The GOP’s pol­i­tics around abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion aren’t just unpop­u­lar. They’re even more unpop­u­lar than many con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers expect­ed in the post Dobbs polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment. In fact, con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers even came out over­whelm­ing­ly in sup­port of access to con­tra­cep­tives regard­less of the cost. As Con­way put it, “I’ve been doing this for over three decades and I’m very sur­prised that over 8 in 10 inde­pen­dents and over 8 in 10 pro-lif­ers would agree with that...Because some peo­ple say: ‘You may have a right to con­tra­cep­tion but why am I pay­ing for it?’ That’s the clas­sic lib­er­tar­i­an argu­ment.” Yes, con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers appear to back gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies to con­tra­cep­tives at the same time con­ser­v­a­tives are talk­ing about even more abor­tion restric­tion.

And now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could end nation­al access to the ‘abor­tion pill’ Mifepri­s­tone. The case, of course, was brought by the CNP-backed Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF). The same group House Speak­er Mike John­son worked for as a lawyer for a num­ber of years. That’s all part of the con­text of what amounts to an intra-CNP debate over how to thread this author­i­tar­i­an nee­dle:

Politi­co

Con­tra­cep­tion is a win­ning issue, con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gists tell GOP

For­mer Trump con­fi­dante Kellyanne Con­way and oth­er strate­gists are cit­ing poll data show­ing strong demand among GOP vot­ers for birth con­trol after the fall of Roe.

By Alice Miran­da Oll­stein
12/13/2023 05:00 AM EST

Kellyanne Con­way is going to Capi­tol Hill on Wednes­day with a mes­sage for Repub­li­cans: pro­mote con­tra­cep­tion or risk defeat in 2024.

The for­mer senior coun­selor and cam­paign man­ag­er for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is part of a group set to brief Repub­li­cans on how they might get ahead of Democ­rats’ attacks that the GOP is anti-woman by talk­ing more about pro­tect­ing con­tra­cep­tion and less about ban­ning abor­tion.

The vis­it comes as GOP pres­i­den­tial and con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates have strug­gled to craft a salient mes­sage on the fall­out from the Supreme Court over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade.

Trump him­self has blamed anti-abor­tion groups and the strict laws they sup­port for elec­toral defeats in 2022 and 2023. And sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tives have implored Repub­li­cans in the post-Roe era to focus on issues such as con­tra­cep­tion and mater­nal care to improve per­cep­tion of the GOP’s approach to women’s health as Democ­rats have wield­ed the issue to notch sev­er­al elec­tion wins.

Con­way, lob­by­ist Susan Hirschmann and Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice CEO Heather Hig­gins hope to back up these calls with fresh polling data. On Wednes­day, they plan to meet with GOP mem­bers and staff in the House and Sen­ate, as well as the Repub­li­can cam­paign arms fight­ing to hold the House and flip the Sen­ate, to warn that if they don’t talk about birth con­trol and work to make it more acces­si­ble, they risk los­ing vot­ers and con­firm­ing argu­ments from the left that the par­ty that out­lawed abor­tion in much of the coun­try is com­ing next for con­tra­cep­tion.

Mean­ing­ful action on con­tra­cep­tion, they argue, could help Repub­li­cans with their own base and with Democ­rats dis­sat­is­fied with Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

“You’ve got a fair num­ber of Democ­rats say­ing that they want an alter­na­tive to Biden and Har­ris, or they may sit it out,” Con­way said in an inter­view. “He’s espe­cial­ly bleed­ing young vot­ers, who you would think would be ani­mat­ed and inter­est­ed to hear about [con­tra­cep­tion], and who are in the prime of their years and choos­ing to con­ceive or not to con­ceive.”

The group will share polling com­mis­sioned by Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice and con­duct­ed by KA Con­sult­ing, Conway’s firm, that shows over­whelm­ing pub­lic sup­port — includ­ing from Repub­li­cans and peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as “pro-life” — for poli­cies that make con­tra­cep­tion cheap­er and more avail­able, includ­ing implantable long-act­ing ver­sions like IUDs that some con­ser­v­a­tives view as akin to abor­tion.

...

“Repub­li­cans are like your uncle, who real­ly loves you and loves the women in his fam­i­ly, but he’s bad about show­ing it,” Hig­gins said in an inter­view. “It’s just not in their nat­ur­al vocab­u­lary. And we’re try­ing to help them learn how to make this be more part of their vocab­u­lary and tell them that they need to talk about these things that their con­stituents all sup­port, and be more vis­i­ble and vocal.”

None of the group brief­ing mem­bers on the poll are work­ing for any pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Con­way, a Fox News con­trib­u­tor, remains friend­ly and in con­tact with Trump but has no for­mal role in his White House bid, accord­ing to a per­son close to both her and the cam­paign.

The long­time GOP poll­ster told POLITICO that while it’s no shock that con­tra­cep­tion is pop­u­lar, par­tic­u­lar­ly as states move to out­law most abor­tions, she was struck by some of the poll results, includ­ing how many con­ser­v­a­tives believe Con­gress should ensure access to con­tra­cep­tion regard­less of cost.

“I’ve been doing this for over three decades and I’m very sur­prised that over 8 in 10 inde­pen­dents and over 8 in 10 pro-lif­ers would agree with that,” she said. “Because some peo­ple say: ‘You may have a right to con­tra­cep­tion but why am I pay­ing for it?’ That’s the clas­sic lib­er­tar­i­an argu­ment.”

Con­way plans to tell Capi­tol Hill Repub­li­cans that they “will lose pre­cious polit­i­cal cur­ren­cy and votes” if they do noth­ing or take steps to put con­tra­cep­tion fur­ther out of reach — point­ing to the poll’s find­ing that near­ly half of con­ser­v­a­tive women “would con­sid­er vot­ing for a can­di­date from a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal par­ty” if Repub­li­cans back birth con­trol restric­tions.

But pro­gres­sives prepar­ing for bat­tles in 2024 to hold the Sen­ate and White House are skep­ti­cal Repub­li­cans can cast them­selves as cham­pi­ons of birth con­trol head­ing into 2024.

“It won’t work,” said Sara Spain, the spokesper­son for the group EMILYS List, which funds and coach­es can­di­dates who sup­port repro­duc­tive rights. “Actions speak loud­er than words and vot­ers know which law­mak­ers stand with the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans and which don’t. So efforts like this attempt­ed rebrand won’t do much, because we’ve all seen their record and we’ve seen they are will­ing to ban abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion.”

Orga­ni­za­tions like EMILYS List plan to keep that record firm­ly on vot­ers’ radar going into next year.

For exam­ple, House Repub­li­cans’ spend­ing bills, set to come up for a vote ear­ly next year, would elim­i­nate fund­ing for the Title X fam­i­ly plan­ning pro­gram and the Teen Preg­nan­cy Pre­ven­tion Pro­gram — both of which pro­vide con­tra­cep­tion to mil­lions of peo­ple who might not oth­er­wise be able to afford it. And last sum­mer, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans blocked the House-passed Right to Con­tra­cep­tion Act, which would have enshrined the right to con­tra­cep­tion into fed­er­al law.

Democ­rats have also high­light­ed Jus­tice Clarence Thomas’ call for the high court to “recon­sid­er” the decades-old fed­er­al prece­dent guar­an­tee­ing the right to con­tra­cep­tion. And con­ser­v­a­tive groups aligned with the GOP, includ­ing Turn­ing Point USA, have urged women to stop tak­ing birth con­trol pills, claim­ing they “are actu­al­ly abor­ti­fa­cients.”

Hig­gins hopes the sur­vey con­vinces Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress that these efforts do not reflect their con­stituents’ views and play right into Democ­rats’ hands.

“If any con­ser­v­a­tives believe that this is what the pro-life world actu­al­ly wants, it might help break through to them and explain to them that even among the most pro-life con­ser­v­a­tives, you find this strong sup­port for safe, mod­ern, effec­tive, acces­si­ble con­tra­cep­tion ... avail­able for every­one,” she said.

...

————-

“Con­tra­cep­tion is a win­ning issue, con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gists tell GOP” By Alice Miran­da Oll­stein; Politi­co; 12/13/2023

“Con­way plans to tell Capi­tol Hill Repub­li­cans that they “will lose pre­cious polit­i­cal cur­ren­cy and votes” if they do noth­ing or take steps to put con­tra­cep­tion fur­ther out of reach — point­ing to the poll’s find­ing that near­ly half of con­ser­v­a­tive women “would con­sid­er vot­ing for a can­di­date from a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal par­ty” if Repub­li­cans back birth con­trol restric­tions.”

Near­ly half of con­ser­v­a­tive women are telling poll­sters they “would con­sid­er vot­ing for a can­di­date from a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal par­ty” if Repub­li­cans back birth con­trol restric­tions. Beyond just guar­an­tee­ing access to con­tra­cep­tion, con­ser­v­a­tives over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port the idea that the gov­ern­ment should ensure access regard­less of cost. Or as Kellyanne Con­way put it, “I’ve been doing this for over three decades and I’m very sur­prised that over 8 in 10 inde­pen­dents and over 8 in 10 pro-lif­ers would agree with that...Because some peo­ple say: ‘You may have a right to con­tra­cep­tion but why am I pay­ing for it?’ That’s the clas­sic lib­er­tar­i­an argu­ment.”

It’s the kind of poll results that some might con­sid­er that a dire warn­ing for the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Hence, this warn­ing to fel­low Repub­li­cans. A warn­ing from a group that, inter­est­ing­ly, has a num­ber of CNP ties. Con­way and Heather Hig­gins both show up on the leaked CNP mem­ber­ship list. And while Susan Hirschman­n’s name does­n’t show up the mem­ber­ship lists, it’s worth not­ing she used to work as Chief of Staff for for­mer Repub­li­can House Major­i­ty Leader Tom DeLay, who him­self hap­pens to be a CNP mem­ber. This is a warn­ing to fel­low theocrats from fel­low theocrats:

...
Con­way, lob­by­ist Susan Hirschmann and Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice CEO Heather Hig­gins hope to back up these calls with fresh polling data. On Wednes­day, they plan to meet with GOP mem­bers and staff in the House and Sen­ate, as well as the Repub­li­can cam­paign arms fight­ing to hold the House and flip the Sen­ate, to warn that if they don’t talk about birth con­trol and work to make it more acces­si­ble, they risk los­ing vot­ers and con­firm­ing argu­ments from the left that the par­ty that out­lawed abor­tion in much of the coun­try is com­ing next for con­tra­cep­tion.

...

The group will share polling com­mis­sioned by Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice and con­duct­ed by KA Con­sult­ing, Conway’s firm, that shows over­whelm­ing pub­lic sup­port — includ­ing from Repub­li­cans and peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as “pro-life” — for poli­cies that make con­tra­cep­tion cheap­er and more avail­able, includ­ing implantable long-act­ing ver­sions like IUDs that some con­ser­v­a­tives view as akin to abor­tion.

...

The long­time GOP poll­ster told POLITICO that while it’s no shock that con­tra­cep­tion is pop­u­lar, par­tic­u­lar­ly as states move to out­law most abor­tions, she was struck by some of the poll results, includ­ing how many con­ser­v­a­tives believe Con­gress should ensure access to con­tra­cep­tion regard­less of cost.

“I’ve been doing this for over three decades and I’m very sur­prised that over 8 in 10 inde­pen­dents and over 8 in 10 pro-lif­ers would agree with that,” she said. “Because some peo­ple say: ‘You may have a right to con­tra­cep­tion but why am I pay­ing for it?’ That’s the clas­sic lib­er­tar­i­an argu­ment.”

...

Hig­gins hopes the sur­vey con­vinces Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress that these efforts do not reflect their con­stituents’ views and play right into Democ­rats’ hands.

“If any con­ser­v­a­tives believe that this is what the pro-life world actu­al­ly wants, it might help break through to them and explain to them that even among the most pro-life con­ser­v­a­tives, you find this strong sup­port for safe, mod­ern, effec­tive, acces­si­ble con­tra­cep­tion ... avail­able for every­one,” she said.
...

And it’s a warn­ing that comes after Repub­li­cans in the House and Sen­ate have not only come out against fam­i­ly plan­ning pro­grams but Sen­ate Repub­li­cans blocked the House-passed Right to Con­tra­cep­tion Act last year. And then there’s groups like Turn­ing Point USA — led by CNP Char­lie Kirk — active­ly con­flat­ing con­tra­cep­tion with abor­tion. Kellyanne Con­way has her work cut out for her:

...
Orga­ni­za­tions like EMILYS List plan to keep that record firm­ly on vot­ers’ radar going into next year.

For exam­ple, House Repub­li­cans’ spend­ing bills, set to come up for a vote ear­ly next year, would elim­i­nate fund­ing for the Title X fam­i­ly plan­ning pro­gram and the Teen Preg­nan­cy Pre­ven­tion Pro­gram — both of which pro­vide con­tra­cep­tion to mil­lions of peo­ple who might not oth­er­wise be able to afford it. And last sum­mer, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans blocked the House-passed Right to Con­tra­cep­tion Act, which would have enshrined the right to con­tra­cep­tion into fed­er­al law.

Democ­rats have also high­light­ed Jus­tice Clarence Thomas’ call for the high court to “recon­sid­er” the decades-old fed­er­al prece­dent guar­an­tee­ing the right to con­tra­cep­tion. And con­ser­v­a­tive groups aligned with the GOP, includ­ing Turn­ing Point USA, have urged women to stop tak­ing birth con­trol pills, claim­ing they “are actu­al­ly abor­ti­fa­cients.”
...

So is the GOP going to need Con­way’s warn­ings? Maybe. Sort of, assum­ing the Repub­li­cans’ OTC (Oral­ly-Tak­en Con­tra­cep­tive) Act sat­is­fies all those con­cerned vot­ers. But observers point out, the pro­posed bill specif­i­cal­ly aims to expand access to over-the-counter hor­mon­al birth con­trol, and not Plan B, which could be seen as a fea­ture in the bill by back­ers like Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene who has con­demned Plan B as an abor­ti­fa­cient. In fact, Green claimed back in June that “Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already preg­nant.” This was the same months of the Turn­ing Points USA con­fer­ence, where con­ser­v­a­tive pod­cast­er Alex Carp made the case that women should stop tak­ing hor­mon­al birth con­trol because, “it is com­plete­ly alter­ing your per­son­al­i­ty” and that “many birth con­trol pills are actu­al­ly abor­ti­fa­cients.” In oth­er words, even the cur­rent GOP pro­pos­al to expand access to con­tra­cep­tives is in line with the par­ty’s anti-abor­tion pol­i­tics.

And yet, polls show 62 per­cent of con­ser­v­a­tives even sup­port “emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion like Plan B.” The GOP inten­tion­al­ly mod­er­at­ed stances on abor­tion remain wild­ly unpop­u­lar even with the par­ty’s base:

Politi­co

The GOP’s com­pli­cat­ed con­tra­cep­tive dance

By SOPHIE GARDNER
10/13/2023 11:00 AM EDT

The GOP is man­ag­ing an emerg­ing inter­nal strug­gle: dif­fer­ing opin­ions on con­tra­cep­tion.

For years, many anti-abor­tion groups have con­demned con­tra­cep­tion – often forreli­gious rea­sons or because they believe it to be a form of abor­tion. But in recent months, that rhetoric has been heat­ing up, get­ting air-time in the most con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tions of the GOP — and stir­ring up fears that access to con­tra­cep­tion might not be safe.

At a Turn­ing Point USA women’s sum­mit held in June, pod­cast host Alex Clark encour­aged women to stop tak­ing their hor­mon­al birth con­trol, because, she said, “it is com­plete­ly alter­ing your per­son­al­i­ty” and that “many birth con­trol pills are actu­al­ly abor­ti­fa­cients.” The same month, Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene false­ly claimed that the “Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already preg­nant.” And in his con­cur­ring opin­ion to the Dobbs deci­sion, Clarence Thomas sug­gest­ed that the court recon­sid­er oth­er cas­es, includ­ing Gris­wold v. Con­necti­cut, the 1965 case that grant­ed mar­ried cou­ples the right to buy and use con­tra­cep­tives.

But that’s not the opin­ion of the major­i­ty of the par­ty, says Court­ney Joslin, res­i­dent fel­low at the R Street Insti­tute, a cen­ter-right think tank. And she’s wor­ried about the optics of hav­ing a fringe minor­i­ty get­ting atten­tion for denounc­ing con­tra­cep­tion.

“Some of these peo­ple speak­ing on this issue [against con­tra­cep­tives], who are con­ser­v­a­tives or Repub­li­cans, are sort of infer­ring that they’re rep­re­sent­ing the major­i­ty of con­ser­v­a­tives and Repub­li­cans on this issue, when time and time again, sur­vey data shows that’s not true,” Joslin tells Women Rule.

Birth con­trol is over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ed with­in the GOP, with a 2022 FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll show­ing that 93 per­cent of Repub­li­cans sup­port birth con­trol pills in “all or most cas­es.” A slight­ly small­er num­ber of Repub­li­cans sup­port oth­er forms of con­tra­cep­tion, with 82 per­cent sup­port­ing IUDs and 62 per­cent sup­port­ing “emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion like Plan B.”

Some of those num­bers are actu­al­ly high­er than the gen­er­al pub­lic, of which 89 per­cent sup­port birth con­trol pills, 81 per­cent sup­port IUDs and 70 per­cent sup­port emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion. But those num­bers also show that con­tra­cep­tion is over­whelm­ing­ly pop­u­lar across par­ty lines.

...

Things get a lit­tle more com­plex when you look to Con­gress.

In July 2022, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans blocked the Demo­c­rat-led Right to Con­tra­cep­tion Act – which would have enshrined the right to con­tra­cep­tion into fed­er­al law. The act passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, which was then con­trolled by Democ­rats — with only eight Repub­li­cans vot­ing for it.

Now, House Repub­li­cans have intro­duced their own bill that they say is intend­ed to expand access to con­tra­cep­tion, called the OTC (Oral­ly-Tak­en Con­tra­cep­tive) Act. The Act would require the FDA to send guid­ance to man­u­fac­tur­ers on how to sub­mit suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tions to get their own over-the-counter birth con­trol pills approved.

The act was co-spon­sored by Greene, among oth­er Repub­li­can women, per­haps because it specif­i­cal­ly aims to expand access to over-the-counter hor­mon­al birth con­trol, and not Plan B, which she has con­demned as an abor­ti­fa­cient. That’s inac­cu­rate, accord­ing to the FDA. Mary T. Jacob­son, OB-GYN and chief med­ical offi­cer at Hel­lo Alpha, tells Women Rule “bot­tom line is that emer­gency con­tra­cep­tive pills do not stop or harm an ongo­ing preg­nan­cy.”

The FDA has already approved an over-the-counter hor­mon­al birth con­trol pill, called Opill. Joslin says the OTC Act could encour­age oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers to sub­mit appli­ca­tions – mean­ing more choic­es on phar­ma­cy store shelves.

“What we don’t want to see is women switch­ing to a method just because it’s more read­i­ly avail­able to them, even if they don’t real­ly like side effects that come with it,” Joslin says.

But crit­ics of the act say that it’s just meant to draw atten­tion away from Repub­li­cans’ unpop­u­lar abor­tion posi­tion — and that there are more effec­tive ways to sup­port con­tra­cep­tion access — like sup­port­ing the Right to Con­tra­cep­tion Act, which has been rein­tro­duced in the House and Sen­ate (and blocked by Repub­li­cans again in the Sen­ate), and the Afford­abil­i­ty is Access Act, which would require most pri­vate health insur­ance plans to cov­er over-the-counter birth con­trol with­out out-of-pock­et costs to the patient.

...

———–

“The GOP’s com­pli­cat­ed con­tra­cep­tive dance” By SOPHIE GARDNER; Politi­co; 10/13/2023

“Birth con­trol is over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ed with­in the GOP, with a 2022 FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll show­ing that 93 per­cent of Repub­li­cans sup­port birth con­trol pills in “all or most cas­es.” A slight­ly small­er num­ber of Repub­li­cans sup­port oth­er forms of con­tra­cep­tion, with 82 per­cent sup­port­ing IUDs and 62 per­cent sup­port­ing “emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion like Plan B.””

Yes, birth con­trol is over­whelm­ing­ly pop­u­lar with the US pub­lic. Even con­ser­v­a­tives. But not so much for con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians. It’s a kind of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance for the par­ty that won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be easy to paper over. But that won’t stop them from try­ing, lead­ing to leg­isla­tive gim­micks like the OTC (Oral­ly-Tak­en Con­tra­cep­tive) Act, a bill seem­ing­ly designed to thread this polit­i­cal nee­dle, where hor­mon­al OTC con­tra­cep­tives will, poten­tial­ly be me more avail­able but not ‘abor­ti­fa­cients’ like Plan B:

...
At a Turn­ing Point USA women’s sum­mit held in June, pod­cast host Alex Clark encour­aged women to stop tak­ing their hor­mon­al birth con­trol, because, she said, “it is com­plete­ly alter­ing your per­son­al­i­ty” and that “many birth con­trol pills are actu­al­ly abor­ti­fa­cients.” The same month, Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene false­ly claimed that the “Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already preg­nant.” And in his con­cur­ring opin­ion to the Dobbs deci­sion, Clarence Thomas sug­gest­ed that the court recon­sid­er oth­er cas­es, includ­ing Gris­wold v. Con­necti­cut, the 1965 case that grant­ed mar­ried cou­ples the right to buy and use con­tra­cep­tives.

But that’s not the opin­ion of the major­i­ty of the par­ty, says Court­ney Joslin, res­i­dent fel­low at the R Street Insti­tute, a cen­ter-right think tank. And she’s wor­ried about the optics of hav­ing a fringe minor­i­ty get­ting atten­tion for denounc­ing con­tra­cep­tion.

“Some of these peo­ple speak­ing on this issue [against con­tra­cep­tives], who are con­ser­v­a­tives or Repub­li­cans, are sort of infer­ring that they’re rep­re­sent­ing the major­i­ty of con­ser­v­a­tives and Repub­li­cans on this issue, when time and time again, sur­vey data shows that’s not true,” Joslin tells Women Rule.

...

Now, House Repub­li­cans have intro­duced their own bill that they say is intend­ed to expand access to con­tra­cep­tion, called the OTC (Oral­ly-Tak­en Con­tra­cep­tive) Act. The Act would require the FDA to send guid­ance to man­u­fac­tur­ers on how to sub­mit suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tions to get their own over-the-counter birth con­trol pills approved.

The act was co-spon­sored by Greene, among oth­er Repub­li­can women, per­haps because it specif­i­cal­ly aims to expand access to over-the-counter hor­mon­al birth con­trol, and not Plan B, which she has con­demned as an abor­ti­fa­cient. That’s inac­cu­rate, accord­ing to the FDA. Mary T. Jacob­son, OB-GYN and chief med­ical offi­cer at Hel­lo Alpha, tells Women Rule “bot­tom line is that emer­gency con­tra­cep­tive pills do not stop or harm an ongo­ing preg­nan­cy.”
...

The CNP can’t afford to lose the con­ser­v­a­tive women on board with its agen­da. At least not before it man­ages to seize enough pow­er that it no longer has to wor­ry about win­ning elec­tions. But even author­i­tar­i­an soci­eties rely on pub­lic sup­port on some lev­el. They can’t become too unpop­u­lar. And that’s part of what it’s going to be very inter­est­ing to see how the rest of the GOP responds to Con­way’s warn­ings. The over­turn­ing of Roe is more unpop­u­lar than the CNP expect­ed at the same time the GOP is grow­ing more open­ly author­i­tar­i­an by the day. Some­thing has got to give here. It will prob­a­bly be the prin­ci­ple of major­i­ty rule that ulti­mate­ly gives, but it’s got to be some­thing.

It can always get worse. It’s one of those lessons we should­n’t have to learn over and over, but that’s kind of how humans work. We keep being forced to relearn that it can always get worse. Either by for­get­ting and blun­der­ing into an even worse sit­u­a­tion. Or just by active­ly work­ing to make things worse. Les­son learned either way. Learned and then gen­er­al­ly for­got­ten.

It was a les­son res­i­dents of Okla­homa got to learn again this week after the vot­ers of Dis­trict 32 elect­ed Dusty Deev­ers to the state sen­ate. A pas­tor run­ning on an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist plat­form, Deev­ers has called for mea­sures includ­ing the ban­ning of pornog­ra­phy and end­ing no-fault divorce. Beyond that, Deev­ers called for pub­lic sham­ing dur­ing divorces. Deev­ers won with 55 per­cent of the vote.

But it’s Deev­ers’ abor­tion stances that have received the most atten­tion, in part because they are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what has been a rad­i­cal­iza­tion inside the ‘pro-life’ move­ment since the Dobbs deci­sion and the over­turn­ing or Roe v Wade. Deev­ers isn’t just pro-life. He’s an “abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist” who views life begin­ning at con­cep­tion and any attempts to end that life as an act that should be pun­ished as mur­der. This would include not just pun­ish­ing the doc­tors who per­form abor­tions for mur­der but also the women receiv­ing them.

While the “abor­tion abo­li­tion” seg­ment of the anti-abor­tion com­mu­ni­ty does­n’t yet appear to be a major­i­ty, it does appear to be grow­ing fast, in part as a response to all the con­tra­dic­tions and jux­ta­po­si­tions laid clear with the over­turn­ing of Roe. If abor­tion is mur­der, as so many politi­cians love to tell audi­ences, then how can abor­tion to be allowed for up to 6 weeks, let alone 15 weeks? And how can the women choos­ing these acts of mur­der not be charged as mur­der­ers? These are exam­ples of the kind of moral gray zones that now have to be grap­pled with and, as we should expect, a lot of the Chris­t­ian right has adopt­ed a ‘black or white’ approach to in response. Deev­er­s’s elec­tion is a reflec­tion of that. But just one exam­ple. Leg­is­la­tors in at least nine states intro­duced bills that would advance ‘abor­tion abo­li­tion’ poli­cies this year alone. Dusty Deev­ers is only going to have more and more allies as these trends con­tin­ue.

But Deev­ers’ extrem­ist posi­tions aren’t just an imme­di­ate issue for Okla­homans. As we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing set of arti­cle excerpts, Deev­ers has­n’t just been pur­su­ing lead­er­ship posi­tions in the Okla­homa state capi­tol. Deev­ers ran for the posi­tion of “first vice pres­i­dent” of SBC in this year’s elec­tions. He did­n’t win, and ulti­mate­ly only got 20 per­cent of the vote. But it was 20 per­cent of the vote rep­re­sent­ing a grow­ing fac­tion of what has become known as the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence: an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive wing of the SBC lead­er­ship that insists the group is cur­rent­ly far too pro­gres­sive and needs to be more con­ser­v­a­tive on a range of issues. For exam­ple, the per­son who nom­i­nat­ed Deev­ers for the posi­tion of first vice pres­i­dent was Allen Nel­son, a pas­tor from cen­tral Arkansas who has spent the last sev­er­al years pop­u­lar­iz­ing the “take the ship!” phrase to describe the move­men­t’s intent with the SBC. A phrase that comes with a real pirate flag. Yes, as Nel­son makes clear with his now sym­bol­ic noto­ri­ous black flag — that fea­tures a Skull and crossed swords that he likes to unfurl when describ­ing the plan — he is advo­cat­ing for an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive SBC takeover. But it’s obvi­ous­ly much more than that when we are talk­ing about domin­ion­ism and well-oiled Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist machines. Dusty Deev­ers may not have won that SBC lead­er­ship posi­tion, but he is an Okla­homa state sen­a­tor now. One elec­tion at a time.

As we’re also going to see, while the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the SBC, Bart Bar­ber, is deemed to be ‘too pro­gres­sive’ by the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence crowd, the divide between Bar­ber and the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tion is a great exam­ple of just how far to the right the SBC’s lead­er­ship is these days. Start­ing off as a Chris­t­ian blog­ger in 2006, Bar­ber had long been ful­ly on board with the kind of Bib­li­cal fun­da­men­tal­ism advo­cat­ed by SBC lead­ers like Paul Pressler and Paige Pat­ter­son, both of whom are, of course, the sub­ject of a range of sex­u­al abuse/cover up alle­ga­tions. In 2008, Bar­ber even wrote a post enti­tled “Why I Love Dr. Paige Pat­ter­son”. But by 2018, Bar­ber found him­self in a posi­tion where he could no longer sup­port Pat­ter­son, which appears to have been the ori­gin of his split with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence fac­tion of the SBC.

What was it that forced Bar­ber to pub­licly break with Pat­ter­son? Well, recall how Pat­ter­son, in May of 2018, was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of the South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tions around how he tried to “break down” a stu­dent who claimed she was raped. It turns out Bar­ber was on the board of trustees for the sem­i­nary and there­fore in posi­tion where he need­ed to vote on whether or not Pat­ter­son should resign. Ini­tial­ly, Bar­ber was one of two trustees to vote against ask­ing Pat­ter­son to resign. But then the Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lished an arti­cle describ­ing Pat­ter­son­’s role “break­ing down” the rape vic­tim. A new vote was held and the board of trustees vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to ask Pat­ter­son to resign. The vote led to a wave of out­cry by the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gent crowd. Because that crowd was Pat­ter­son­’s crowd. And used to be Bar­ber’s crowd. Flash for­ward to 2022, Bar­ber gets elect­ed SBC pres­i­dent, and has end­ed up hav­ing to spend­ing his time in office deal­ing with an ongo­ing cam­paign to “take the ship!” and push the SBC into an even more con­ser­v­a­tive direct­ly. Except now, that Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence is tur­bo-charged with the abor­tion abo­li­tion move­men­t’s grow­ing res­o­nance among evan­gel­i­cals in the post-Roe era.

In 2023, Bar­ber was again chal­lenged in his run for the SBC pres­i­den­cy post by mem­ber of this Chris­t­ian Resur­gence crowd close to Pat­ter­son: Mike Stone, who chal­lenged Bar­ber despite the SBC prece­dent that pres­i­dents run­ning for reelec­tion not be chal­lenged. What were the issues divid­ing the two? Not the­ol­o­gy. Bar­ber and Stone are both extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. The dif­fer­ence was how to pro­ceed on the sex abuse reforms, with Stone push­ing for a less aggres­sive approach that empha­sized ‘local authon­o­my’ over some sort of nation­al­ly enforced denom­i­na­tion.

That’s all part of the con­text of Dusty Deev­ers’ new role as an open­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Okla­homa state sen­a­tor. Thanks in part to the increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful fac­tion of theocrats who have their sites set on the SBC’s lead­er­ship too...seemingly large­ly so they can go eas­i­er on sex­u­al abusers among oth­er awful things. Things are get­ting worse in the Okla­homa sen­ate. And if Deev­ers’ allies suc­ceed in their cam­paign to retake the lead­er­ship of the SBC, they’ll be get­ting worse for the fate of those sex­u­al abuse reforms. But Deev­ers’ vic­to­ry appears to be also thanks in part to an “abor­tion abo­li­tion” extrem­ist move­ment inside the anti-abor­tion com­mu­ni­ty that is only grow­ing in response to the over­turn­ing of Roe. It’s a con­ver­gence of unpleas­ant fac­tors.

Ok, first, here’s a look at this week’s big bad news for Okla­homans in need of decent rep­re­sen­ta­tion in their state sen­ate. Instead, they got Dusty Deev­ers’ parade of open Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. The kind of parade increas­ing­ly seen in state cap­i­tals across the US:

The Guardian

An ‘abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist’ became an Okla­homa sen­a­tor. The fringe is cel­e­brat­ing its big vic­to­ry

The hard­line frag­ment of the anti-abor­tion move­ment is gain­ing trac­tion in the wake of Roe v Wade’s fall

Carter Sher­man
Thu 14 Dec 2023 06.00 EST
Last mod­i­fied on Thu 14 Dec 2023 10.31 EST

When Dusty Deev­ers won his race to become an Okla­homa state sen­a­tor on Tues­day night, he wast­ed no time in mak­ing sure his new con­stituents knew what he stood for.

“Here in Okla­homa, it’s time to abol­ish abor­tion, abol­ish pornog­ra­phy, abol­ish the state income tax and give pow­er and equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion back to the peo­ple!” the Repub­li­can post­ed on X, the plat­form for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter.

Deev­ers’ use of the term “abol­ish abor­tion” is no mere rhetor­i­cal flour­ish. On his cam­paign web­site, Deev­ers has iden­ti­fied him­self as an “abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist” – an adher­ent of a hard­line, fringe seg­ment of the anti-abor­tion move­ment that, in Okla­homa and else­where, is grow­ing in the wake of the fall of Roe v Wade.

Oppo­si­tion to abor­tion is root­ed in the belief that fetus­es are peo­ple, wor­thy of rights and pro­tec­tions. But the main­stream “pro-life” move­ment posits that abor­tion patients should not be pun­ished, since they are seen as the bam­boo­zled vic­tims of nefar­i­ous doc­tors and the “abor­tion indus­try”. Typ­i­cal­ly, abor­tion bans tar­get abor­tion providers, not patients.

Abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ists,” on the oth­er hand, hold what they believe to be a more ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent stance: if a fetus is a per­son, then abor­tion is tan­ta­mount to mur­der. And patients should be pun­ished accord­ing­ly.

Roe’s over­turn­ing has made a broad­er range of anti-abor­tion ideas look accept­able, as well as cast a spot­light on the con­tra­dic­tions and lim­its in cur­rent anti-abor­tion law, said Mary Ziegler, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis School of Law pro­fes­sor who stud­ies the legal his­to­ry of repro­duc­tion. In turn, that’s embold­ened the abo­li­tion­ists.

...

Over the last sev­er­al years, “abor­tion abo­li­tion­ists” and their ide­ol­o­gy have qui­et­ly amassed pop­u­lar­i­ty in church­es, state leg­is­la­tures and online. Sev­er­al abo­li­tion­ist orga­ni­za­tions filed an ami­cus brief in the deci­sion that over­turned Roe. Abo­li­tion­ists Ris­ing – which fea­tures a video of Deev­ers on its web­site – has almost 200,000 sub­scribers on YouTube, with at least one video with more than half a mil­lion views. (Deev­ers did not imme­di­ate­ly reply to an inter­view request.) The YouTube account of Apolo­gia Stu­dios, which is run by promi­nent abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ist” and pas­tor Jeff Durbin, has more than 500,000 sub­scribers.

In 2023, leg­is­la­tors in at least nine states intro­duced bills that would advance the abor­tion abo­li­tion cause, such as by eras­ing pro­vi­sions in laws that explic­it­ly pro­tect preg­nant peo­ple from being pros­e­cut­ed for hav­ing abor­tions. At least two of those bills explic­it­ly cite the 14th amend­ment, which was orig­i­nal­ly passed to ensure that for­mer­ly enslaved peo­ple had equal rights, to extend rights and pro­tec­tions to fetus­es.

The anti-abor­tion move­ment has a long his­to­ry of draw­ing com­par­isons between their cause and that of pre-civ­il war abo­li­tion­ists try­ing to end US slav­ery, as well as civ­il rights cru­saders. For decades, they have tried to use the 14th amend­ment to estab­lish fetus­es’ right to per­son­hood, a push that is see­ing renewed inter­est post-Roe.

How­ev­er, anti-abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ists” often draw a line between their work and that of the main­stream pro-life move­ment. Not only do they fre­quent­ly dis­dain the pro-life label, but while the pro-life move­ment has increas­ing­ly sought to por­tray its mis­sion as sec­u­lar, anti-abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ists” are staunch­ly and open­ly Chris­t­ian.

“I think that the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment is a lit­mus test for how much the anti-abor­tion move­ment needs to win or wants to win in demo­c­ra­t­ic pol­i­tics ver­sus oth­er means,” Ziegler said. “If you need to win with vot­ers, abo­li­tion­ists are not going to get any­where, ever.”

There is lit­tle sup­port for severe pun­ish­ments for peo­ple who get ille­gal abor­tions. Although 47% of US adults believe that women who have ille­gal abor­tions should face some form of penal­ty, just 14% think they should serve jail time, accord­ing to a 2022 poll by the Pew Research Cen­ter. “Abo­li­tion­ists” don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly believe that peo­ple should face the death penal­ty for abor­tions. “I do believe that the unjus­ti­fied tak­ing of human life, if prov­able, ulti­mate­ly, just­ly, ought to be cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” Durbin told the New York Times last year. “How­ev­er, I don’t trust our sys­tem today to deal that out.”

None of the “abolitionist”-style bills ulti­mate­ly advanced very far in state leg­is­la­tures this year. Still, they can be some­thing of a PR night­mare for Repub­li­cans and the main­stream pro-life move­ment. After a host of news arti­cles about South Carolina’s Pre­na­tal Equal Pro­tec­tion Act, which would allow peo­ple who have abor­tions to face the death penal­ty, 10 Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors asked to remove their names as spon­sors of the bill.

That bill died in com­mit­tee.

While these bills tech­ni­cal­ly focus on abor­tion seek­ers, in real­i­ty they would prob­a­bly also be used to penal­ize peo­ple of col­or or poor peo­ple who have unin­tend­ed preg­nan­cy loss­es, accord­ing to Farah Diaz-Tel­lo, senior coun­sel and legal direc­tor of If/When/How, a legal advo­ca­cy group for repro­duc­tive jus­tice.

...

Deev­ers won his seat in the Okla­homa state leg­is­la­ture after its for­mer occu­pant resigned for anoth­er job. On his cam­paign web­site, Deev­ers says that he sup­ports Oklahoma’s ver­sion of the Pre­na­tal Equal Pro­tec­tion Act, which was intro­duced in 2023. That bill elim­i­nates lan­guage that would block Okla­homa pros­e­cu­tors from tar­get­ing preg­nant peo­ple for “caus­ing the death of the unborn child”. Its spon­sor, whose 2020 elec­tion was sup­port­ed by the abo­li­tion­ist group Free the States, did not imme­di­ate­ly reply to a request for com­ment.

...

———-

“An ‘abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist’ became an Okla­homa sen­a­tor. The fringe is cel­e­brat­ing its big vic­to­ry” by Carter Sher­man; The Guardian; 12/14/2023

“Deev­ers’ use of the term “abol­ish abor­tion” is no mere rhetor­i­cal flour­ish. On his cam­paign web­site, Deev­ers has iden­ti­fied him­self as an “abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist” – an adher­ent of a hard­line, fringe seg­ment of the anti-abor­tion move­ment that, in Okla­homa and else­where, is grow­ing in the wake of the fall of Roe v Wade.”

Dusty Deev­ers’ elec­tion to the Okla­homa sen­ate was­n’t just the elec­toral vic­to­ry of a pas­tor-turned-politi­cian. As an open “abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist”, Deev­ers’ vic­to­ry rep­re­sents the rise of a anti-abor­tion fringe that’s only grown in strength since the over­turn­ing of Roe. A move­ment that calls for the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of women who seek abor­tions. For the crime of mur­der. In 2023, nine states saw leg­is­la­tion that would do exact­ly that intro­duced as bills. None of the bills passed. But, again, this move­ment is only grow­ing:

...
Oppo­si­tion to abor­tion is root­ed in the belief that fetus­es are peo­ple, wor­thy of rights and pro­tec­tions. But the main­stream “pro-life” move­ment posits that abor­tion patients should not be pun­ished, since they are seen as the bam­boo­zled vic­tims of nefar­i­ous doc­tors and the “abor­tion indus­try”. Typ­i­cal­ly, abor­tion bans tar­get abor­tion providers, not patients.

Abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ists,” on the oth­er hand, hold what they believe to be a more ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent stance: if a fetus is a per­son, then abor­tion is tan­ta­mount to mur­der. And patients should be pun­ished accord­ing­ly.

Roe’s over­turn­ing has made a broad­er range of anti-abor­tion ideas look accept­able, as well as cast a spot­light on the con­tra­dic­tions and lim­its in cur­rent anti-abor­tion law, said Mary Ziegler, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis School of Law pro­fes­sor who stud­ies the legal his­to­ry of repro­duc­tion. In turn, that’s embold­ened the abo­li­tion­ists.

...

Over the last sev­er­al years, “abor­tion abo­li­tion­ists” and their ide­ol­o­gy have qui­et­ly amassed pop­u­lar­i­ty in church­es, state leg­is­la­tures and online. Sev­er­al abo­li­tion­ist orga­ni­za­tions filed an ami­cus brief in the deci­sion that over­turned Roe. Abo­li­tion­ists Ris­ing – which fea­tures a video of Deev­ers on its web­site – has almost 200,000 sub­scribers on YouTube, with at least one video with more than half a mil­lion views. (Deev­ers did not imme­di­ate­ly reply to an inter­view request.) The YouTube account of Apolo­gia Stu­dios, which is run by promi­nent abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ist” and pas­tor Jeff Durbin, has more than 500,000 sub­scribers.

In 2023, leg­is­la­tors in at least nine states intro­duced bills that would advance the abor­tion abo­li­tion cause, such as by eras­ing pro­vi­sions in laws that explic­it­ly pro­tect preg­nant peo­ple from being pros­e­cut­ed for hav­ing abor­tions. At least two of those bills explic­it­ly cite the 14th amend­ment, which was orig­i­nal­ly passed to ensure that for­mer­ly enslaved peo­ple had equal rights, to extend rights and pro­tec­tions to fetus­es.

...

Deev­ers won his seat in the Okla­homa state leg­is­la­ture after its for­mer occu­pant resigned for anoth­er job. On his cam­paign web­site, Deev­ers says that he sup­ports Oklahoma’s ver­sion of the Pre­na­tal Equal Pro­tec­tion Act, which was intro­duced in 2023. That bill elim­i­nates lan­guage that would block Okla­homa pros­e­cu­tors from tar­get­ing preg­nant peo­ple for “caus­ing the death of the unborn child”. Its spon­sor, whose 2020 elec­tion was sup­port­ed by the abo­li­tion­ist group Free the States, did not imme­di­ate­ly reply to a request for com­ment.
...

And as pro­fes­sor Mary Zei­gler observed, this move­ment is grow­ing in strength inside the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty at the same time it’s becom­ing clear­er and clear­er that “abor­tion abo­li­tion” is, for the most part, a polit­i­cal los­er. As Zei­gler puts it, “I think that the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment is a lit­mus test for how much the anti-abor­tion move­ment needs to win or wants to win in demo­c­ra­t­ic pol­i­tics ver­sus oth­er means.” It points towards one of the iron­ic ele­ments of Deev­ers’ vic­to­ry: it’s a sign of a deep­en­ing com­mit­ment with­in the anti-abor­tion move­ment to pri­or­i­tiz­ing abor­tion restric­tions over electability...which is a recipe for win­ning through ‘oth­er means’:

...
The anti-abor­tion move­ment has a long his­to­ry of draw­ing com­par­isons between their cause and that of pre-civ­il war abo­li­tion­ists try­ing to end US slav­ery, as well as civ­il rights cru­saders. For decades, they have tried to use the 14th amend­ment to estab­lish fetus­es’ right to per­son­hood, a push that is see­ing renewed inter­est post-Roe.

How­ev­er, anti-abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ists” often draw a line between their work and that of the main­stream pro-life move­ment. Not only do they fre­quent­ly dis­dain the pro-life label, but while the pro-life move­ment has increas­ing­ly sought to por­tray its mis­sion as sec­u­lar, anti-abor­tion “abo­li­tion­ists” are staunch­ly and open­ly Chris­t­ian.

“I think that the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment is a lit­mus test for how much the anti-abor­tion move­ment needs to win or wants to win in demo­c­ra­t­ic pol­i­tics ver­sus oth­er means,” Ziegler said. “If you need to win with vot­ers, abo­li­tion­ists are not going to get any­where, ever.”

There is lit­tle sup­port for severe pun­ish­ments for peo­ple who get ille­gal abor­tions. Although 47% of US adults believe that women who have ille­gal abor­tions should face some form of penal­ty, just 14% think they should serve jail time, accord­ing to a 2022 poll by the Pew Research Cen­ter. “Abo­li­tion­ists” don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly believe that peo­ple should face the death penal­ty for abor­tions. “I do believe that the unjus­ti­fied tak­ing of human life, if prov­able, ulti­mate­ly, just­ly, ought to be cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” Durbin told the New York Times last year. “How­ev­er, I don’t trust our sys­tem today to deal that out.”
gal advo­ca­cy group for repro­duc­tive jus­tice.
...

And in case it’s not obvi­ous that extreme abor­tion penal­ties aren’t the only part of this move­men­t’s plat­form that is going to be very unpop­u­lar with the gen­er­al elec­torate, note the oth­er extrem­ist posi­tions cham­pi­oned by Deev­ers. Like abol­ish­ing pornog­ra­phy. Or the end to no-fault divorce to be replaced with pub­lic sham­ing for divorces. This isn’t just Deev­ers’ posi­tion. It’s the posi­tion of his fel­low trav­el­ers. Like House Speak­er Mike John­son:

Newsweek

Repub­li­can Can­di­date Wants ‘Pub­lic Sham­ing’ for Peo­ple Who Divorce

Dec 01, 2023 at 1:42 PM EST
By Matthew Impel­li

A Repub­li­can Okla­homa Sen­ate can­di­date said this week that those at fault in a divorce should face “pub­lic sham­ing.”

In a video post­ed to X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter by @RightWingWatch, Dusty Deev­ers, a pas­tor and Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­date in Okla­homa’s 32nd Dis­trict, spoke about some of the issues he is focused on includ­ing pornog­ra­phy and no-fault divorce.

“I want to see pornog­ra­phy abol­ished, I want to see no-fault divorce come back to at-fault in divorce and even pub­lic sham­ing for those who are at fault in divorce,” Deev­ers says in the clip. “I want to see abor­tion abol­ished. These are the kinds of moral­i­ty and gov­ern­ment issues that we need to get back to.”

Dusty Deev­ers is a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pas­tor run­ning for a seat in the Okla­homa state Sen­ate in order to apply “the word of God to every issue” by abol­ish­ing abor­tion, pornog­ra­phy, no-fault divorce, and even insti­tut­ing the pub­lic sham­ing of adul­ter­ers. https://t.co/5vIvsVfnbU pic.twitter.com/TbsvKUNEUz— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) Novem­ber 30, 2023

...

Deev­ers’ remarks this week come as some oth­er con­ser­v­a­tives have also dis­cussed the idea of end­ing no-fault divorce laws, which are cur­rent­ly in place across all 50 U.S. states. These laws allow for a per­son in a mar­riage to file for a divorce with­out cit­ing a spe­cif­ic rea­son or behav­ior, such as abuse or adul­tery, as a rea­son for their deci­sion.

The Repub­li­can-led state of Louisiana dis­cussed the removal of no-fault divorce laws ear­li­er this year. How­ev­er, no deci­sion was made, and these laws remain in place.

House Speak­er Mike John­son also pre­vi­ous­ly spoke about no-fault divorce laws in a 2016 ser­mon, where he said they have led the nation into a “com­plete­ly amoral soci­ety,” CNN report­ed.

...

Some Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress are cur­rent­ly divorced, includ­ing Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene and Lau­ren Boe­bert. For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump divorced twice before mar­ry­ing his cur­rent wife, Mela­nia Trump.

Paulette Rigo, a cer­ti­fied divorce coach, pre­vi­ous­ly spoke to CNN about no-fault divorce laws and how these laws are sup­port­ed by wom­en’s rights groups.

...

———-

“Repub­li­can Can­di­date Wants ‘Pub­lic Sham­ing’ for Peo­ple Who Divorce” By Matthew Impel­li; Newsweek; 12/01/2023

“Deev­ers’ remarks this week come as some oth­er con­ser­v­a­tives have also dis­cussed the idea of end­ing no-fault divorce laws, which are cur­rent­ly in place across all 50 U.S. states. These laws allow for a per­son in a mar­riage to file for a divorce with­out cit­ing a spe­cif­ic rea­son or behav­ior, such as abuse or adul­tery, as a rea­son for their deci­sion.”

Again, Deev­er­s’s isn’t just lone out­lier here. He’s part of a move­ment. He’s not alone in call­ing for an end to things like no-fault divorces. Just ask House Speak­er Mike John­son, who claimed back in 2016 that no-fault divorce laws led the nation into a “com­plete­ly amoral soci­ety”:

...
“I want to see pornog­ra­phy abol­ished, I want to see no-fault divorce come back to at-fault in divorce and even pub­lic sham­ing for those who are at fault in divorce,” Deev­ers says in the clip. “I want to see abor­tion abol­ished. These are the kinds of moral­i­ty and gov­ern­ment issues that we need to get back to.”

...

The Repub­li­can-led state of Louisiana dis­cussed the removal of no-fault divorce laws ear­li­er this year. How­ev­er, no deci­sion was made, and these laws remain in place.

House Speak­er Mike John­son also pre­vi­ous­ly spoke about no-fault divorce laws in a 2016 ser­mon, where he said they have led the nation into a “com­plete­ly amoral soci­ety,” CNN report­ed.
...

But Deev­ers isn’t just cham­pi­oning posi­tions that are on the fringes of Amer­i­can soci­ety. His extrem­ist views were sharply cri­tiqued by none oth­er than SBC pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber in 2022, who warned that, “Unless you 100% agree with every jot and tit­tle of Deevers’s obses­sion with send­ing 16-year-old girls to prison for suc­cumb­ing to the coer­cion of their par­ents to have an abor­tion, he will label you ‘against the inno­cent pre­born.’” What prompt­ed Bar­ber’s harsh words? The fact that Deev­ers had accused staunch anti-abor­tion advo­cate Brent Leather­wood — then the pres­i­dent of the SBC Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion — of not oppos­ing abor­tion strong­ly enough. It’s the kind of absur­dist cri­tique that would have sug­gest­ed Deev­ers was just a troll, if he was­n’t such a sin­cere zealot:

Bap­tist

Abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist pas­tor run­ning for state Sen­ate in Okla­homa

News­Mark Wing­field | Octo­ber 16, 2023

An ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist pas­tor has won the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry nom­i­na­tion to rep­re­sent part of South Cen­tral Okla­homa in the state Sen­ate, if he wins the Dec. 12 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The pre­vi­ous occu­pant of the Dis­trict 32 Sen­ate seat, John Mont­gomery, is a Repub­li­can who resigned in August to become pres­i­dent of the Law­ton Fort Sill Cham­ber of Com­merce. Mont­gomery had won the seat with 64% of the vote last fall.

Dusty Deev­ers, the new Repub­li­can nom­i­nee, serves as bivo­ca­tion­al pas­tor at Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church of Elgin, Okla., which is locat­ed north of Law­ton. Law­ton is home to Fort Sill, a large Army base.

This sum­mer, Deev­ers was nom­i­nat­ed for elec­tion as the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s first vice pres­i­dent but lost that race to Jay Adkins, a pas­tor from New Orleans. Deev­ers drew 20% of the vote.

Deev­ers holds extreme anti-abor­tion views, known as abo­li­tion­ist, and last year drew sharp cri­tique from SBC Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber, who lat­er apol­o­gized for his angry tone.

Bar­ber had writ­ten: “Unless you 100% agree with every jot and tit­tle of Deevers’s obses­sion with send­ing 16-year-old girls to prison for suc­cumb­ing to the coer­cion of their par­ents to have an abor­tion, he will label you ‘against the inno­cent pre­born.’”

One of the oth­er rea­sons Bar­ber lashed out at Deev­ers was because the Okla­homa pas­tor had been crit­i­cal of Brent Leather­wood, elect­ed last year as pres­i­dent of the SBC Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion. Deev­ers accused Leather­wood, who is known as a staunch anti-abor­tion advo­cate, of not oppos­ing abor­tion strong­ly enough or con­sis­tent­ly enough.

With­in the SBC, there is a small but vocal minor­i­ty that wants to abol­ish the ERLC because they believe it is “divi­sive” and not con­ser­v­a­tive enough.

Deev­ers is part of the Calvin­is­tic move­ment with­in the SBC. His church pre­vi­ous­ly was known as First Bap­tist Church and Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church but since 2016 has been called Grace Reformed Bap­tist Church of Elgin.

If elect­ed to the state Sen­ate, Deev­ers would plan to con­tin­ue as pas­tor. He already man­ages a prop­er­ty com­pa­ny in addi­tion to his pas­toral work. The church, in a Reformed tra­di­tion, is over­seen by a team of male elders.

...

He is a 2001 grad­u­ate of Okla­homa City Uni­ver­si­ty and a 2008 grad­u­ate of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, where he earned the mas­ter of divin­i­ty degree.

In an inter­view with the online pub­li­ca­tion The Sen­tinel, Deev­ers said his con­gre­ga­tion asked him to take up this polit­i­cal call­ing.

...

One of Oklahoma’s cur­rent U.S. sen­a­tors also is a Bap­tist pas­tor. James Lank­ford also is a grad­u­ate of South­west­ern Sem­i­nary and pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Okla­homa.

————-

“Abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist pas­tor run­ning for state Sen­ate in Okla­homa” by Mark Wing­field; Bap­tist; 10/16/2023

“This sum­mer, Deev­ers was nom­i­nat­ed for elec­tion as the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s first vice pres­i­dent but lost that race to Jay Adkins, a pas­tor from New Orleans. Deev­ers drew 20% of the vote.”

Yes, Deev­ers was nom­i­nat­ed to posi­tion of first vice pres­i­dent for the SBC in the 2023 elec­tions. He only got about 20% of the vote. It’s sign of the rel­a­tive strength of this fringe Calvin­is­tic fac­tion with­in the SBC. A fac­tion that appar­ent­ly wants to abol­ish the SBC Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion because it is “divi­sive” and not con­ser­v­a­tive enough:

...
Dusty Deev­ers, the new Repub­li­can nom­i­nee, serves as bivo­ca­tion­al pas­tor at Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church of Elgin, Okla., which is locat­ed north of Law­ton. Law­ton is home to Fort Sill, a large Army base.

...

Deev­ers holds extreme anti-abor­tion views, known as abo­li­tion­ist, and last year drew sharp cri­tique from SBC Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber, who lat­er apol­o­gized for his angry tone.

Bar­ber had writ­ten: “Unless you 100% agree with every jot and tit­tle of Deevers’s obses­sion with send­ing 16-year-old girls to prison for suc­cumb­ing to the coer­cion of their par­ents to have an abor­tion, he will label you ‘against the inno­cent pre­born.’”

One of the oth­er rea­sons Bar­ber lashed out at Deev­ers was because the Okla­homa pas­tor had been crit­i­cal of Brent Leather­wood, elect­ed last year as pres­i­dent of the SBC Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion. Deev­ers accused Leather­wood, who is known as a staunch anti-abor­tion advo­cate, of not oppos­ing abor­tion strong­ly enough or con­sis­tent­ly enough.

With­in the SBC, there is a small but vocal minor­i­ty that wants to abol­ish the ERLC because they believe it is “divi­sive” and not con­ser­v­a­tive enough.

Deev­ers is part of the Calvin­is­tic move­ment with­in the SBC. His church pre­vi­ous­ly was known as First Bap­tist Church and Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church but since 2016 has been called Grace Reformed Bap­tist Church of Elgin.

If elect­ed to the state Sen­ate, Deev­ers would plan to con­tin­ue as pas­tor. He already man­ages a prop­er­ty com­pa­ny in addi­tion to his pas­toral work. The church, in a Reformed tra­di­tion, is over­seen by a team of male elders.
...

And, again, Deev­ers isn’t alone. He has a lot of allies. He got 20% of the vote, after all. Allies like Allen Nel­son, the fig­ure who actu­al­ly nom­i­nat­ed Deev­ers for the first vice pres­i­dent role:

Bap­tist Press

Bar­ber leads slate of offi­cers elect­ed at SBC annu­al meet­ing

By Tim­o­thy Cock­es, post­ed June 14, 2023 in SBC Annu­al Meet­ings

NEW ORLEANS (BP) – New­ly reelect­ed SBC Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber leads a slate of offi­cers elect­ed dur­ing the 2023 SBC Annu­al Meet­ing in New Orleans, which includes two oth­er reelect­ed can­di­dates.

Bar­ber was elect­ed to a sec­ond term after receiv­ing just over 68 per­cent of mes­sen­ger votes. Four oth­er offi­cer posi­tions were elect­ed, two by mes­sen­ger bal­lot votes and two by accla­ma­tion as the can­di­dates ran unop­posed.

Pres­i­dent

Bar­ber, a Texas pas­tor, was reelect­ed to a sec­ond term as pres­i­dent of the SBC on Tues­day, June 13, at the 2023 SBC Annu­al Meet­ing in New Orleans.

Out of 11,014 mes­sen­ger votes, Bar­ber received 7,531 votes (68.38 per­cent) while Geor­gia pas­tor Mike Stone received 3,458 (31.40) per­cent. There were 25 bal­lots dis­al­lowed.

Bar­ber was nom­i­nat­ed by Jar­rett Stephens, senior pas­tor of Cham­pi­on For­est Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton. Stone was nom­i­nat­ed by Willy Rice, pas­tor of Cal­vary Church in Clear­wa­ter, Fla.

First Vice Pres­i­dent

Jay Adkins, pas­tor of First Bap­tist West­wego in New Orleans, was elect­ed after receiv­ing 63 per­cent of cast mes­sen­ger bal­lots.

Adkins received 2,393 (63.27 per­cent) out of 3,782 votes cast. He was nom­i­nat­ed by Fred Luter, for­mer SBC pres­i­dent and pas­tor of Franklin Avenue Bap­tist in New Orleans.

Dusty Deev­ers, pas­tor of Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church of Elign, Okla., received 784 votes (20.73 per­cent). Deev­ers was nom­i­nat­ed by Allen Nel­son, an elder at Per­ryville Sec­ond Bap­tist Church in Per­ryville, Ark.

Gevan Spin­ney, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Louisiana Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and pas­tor of First Bap­tist in Haughton, La., received 587 (15.52 per­cent) of the votes cast. He was nom­i­nat­ed by Eric Thomas, pas­tor at First Bap­tist Nor­folk, Va.

...

———-

“Bar­ber leads slate of offi­cers elect­ed at SBC annu­al meet­ing” By Tim­o­thy Cock­es; Bap­tist Press; 06/14/2023

“Dusty Deev­ers, pas­tor of Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church of Elign, Okla., received 784 votes (20.73 per­cent). Deev­ers was nom­i­nat­ed by Allen Nel­son, an elder at Per­ryville Sec­ond Bap­tist Church in Per­ryville, Ark.”

Dusty Deev­ers clear­ly has a lot of allies in this move­ment, with Allen Nel­son being one of them. And as the fol­low­ing June 2021 NY Times arti­cle describes, Nel­son’s goals are a lot more ambi­tious than get­ting Deev­ers elect­ed as the SBC’s first vice pres­i­dent. Nel­son is part of what is described as an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive pop­ulist upris­ing of pas­tors across the US on a quest to take over the SBC’s lead­er­ship. Or as Nel­son put it, it’s time to “take the ship”. If that sounds like pirate talk, it’s because that’s exact­ly what it is in spir­it. Includ­ing the black skull & crossed swords pirate flag Nel­son has cho­sen to sym­bol­ize it:

The New York Times

‘Take the Ship’: Con­ser­v­a­tives Aim to Com­man­deer South­ern Bap­tists

The insur­gents, some adopt­ing a pirate motif, believe that the denom­i­na­tion has drift­ed too far to the left on issues of race, gen­der and the strict author­i­ty of the Bible.

By Ruth Gra­ham and Eliz­a­beth Dias
June 12, 2021

Allen Nel­son IV walked to the front of his small church in cen­tral Arkansas, stopped in front of the com­mu­nion table with three large cross­es behind him, and unfurled a giant black flag with a white skull and crossed swords.

For sev­er­al years, the pas­tor and father of five had felt that too many of his fel­low Chris­tians were drift­ing unmis­tak­ably left­ward on issues of race, gen­der and the strict author­i­ty of the Bible. The flag was a gift from a friend, ener­gized — like Mr. Nel­son — by the idea of hero­ical­ly reclaim­ing the faith.

It was time, he believed, to “take the ship.”

“We’re fight­ing for the very heart of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion,” Mr. Nel­son said in an inter­view. “For a long time what I thought a good South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor should do was to send mon­ey and trust the sys­tem. We can’t do that any­more.”

Mr. Nel­son is not alone. He is part of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive pop­ulist upris­ing of pas­tors from Louisiana to Cal­i­for­nia threat­en­ing to over­take the country’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion.

Next week more than 16,000 South­ern Bap­tist pas­tors and lead­ers will descend on Nashville for their first annu­al meet­ing of the post-Trump era. It is their most high-pro­file gath­er­ing in years, with atten­dance more than dou­ble the most recent meet­ing in 2019, after a pan­dem­ic can­cel­la­tion last year. It caps months of vicious infight­ing over every cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal divi­sion fac­ing the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly after the mur­der of George Floyd.

The out­come has the poten­tial to per­ma­nent­ly split an already divid­ed evan­gel­i­cal Amer­i­ca. Like the Trump move­ment with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty, a pop­ulist groundswell with­in the already con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal denom­i­na­tion is try­ing to install an anti-estab­lish­ment leader who could wrench the church even fur­ther to the right, while oppo­nents con­tend that the church must broad­en its reach to pre­serve its strength. For three days, thou­sands of del­e­gates known as “mes­sen­gers” — most of them white men — will fight over race, sex and ulti­mate­ly the future of evan­gel­i­cal pow­er in the Unit­ed States.

The large increase in atten­dance this year is “not an influx of the woke,” said Tom Buck, a pas­tor in Texas and a leader of the upstart con­ser­v­a­tive wing, who has been fund-rais­ing for like-mind­ed pas­tors to get to Nashville to vote. “It’s an influx of the awak­ened to what the woke have been advanc­ing.”

An event that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been com­pared to a fam­i­ly reunion may look more like a brawl. In the past sev­er­al weeks, Bap­tists have pored over leaked bomb­shell let­ters and whis­tle-blow­er record­ings, and trad­ed accu­sa­tions of racism, apos­ta­sy and sex­u­al abuse cov­er-ups. Lead­ers have tak­en barbed pot­shots at each oth­er. Oth­ers have head­ed for the door.

Rus­sell Moore, the denomination’s influ­en­tial head of ethics and pub­lic pol­i­cy, left on June 1. The pop­u­lar author and speak­er Beth Moore, who is not relat­ed to Mr. Moore, announced in March that she is no longer a South­ern Bap­tist, cit­ing the “stag­ger­ing” dis­ori­en­ta­tion of see­ing the denomination’s lead­ers sup­port Don­ald J. Trump, and lament­ing its treat­ment of women. Some con­ser­v­a­tives tri­umphant­ly cel­e­brat­ed both depar­tures.

...

Those hop­ing to “take the ship” main­tain that pira­cy is noth­ing more than a cheeky metaphor for a dry, demo­c­ra­t­ic process. Still, the swash­buck­ling imagery has tak­en hold. There are “Take the Ship” T‑shirts and pirate car flags, GIFs and memes; many sup­port­ers attach a pirate flag emo­ji to their Twit­ter han­dles.

In Alas­ka, the pas­tor Nathaniel Jol­ly post­ed pho­tographs to Twit­ter of a pirate-themed frozen yogurt shop he used to own with his wife. “Now, for the SBC!” he wrote, append­ing a flag emo­ji to the mes­sage.

Mr. Jol­ly, who will attend his first annu­al meet­ing, watched with alarm as pub­lic schools in his area have begun to teach what he describes as crit­i­cal race the­o­ry. And he was shocked when high-pro­file lead­ers in his own denom­i­na­tion endorsed aspects of the sprawl­ing racial protest move­ment last sum­mer. “I think C.R.T. is one of these destruc­tive here­sies that have snuck in,” he said, refer­ring to a pas­sage in the New Tes­ta­ment book of 2 Peter about false teach­ers who bring “swift destruc­tion on them­selves.”

...

The denom­i­na­tion has about 14.5 mil­lion mem­bers but has been steadi­ly shrink­ing for the past decade. In 2014, about 85 per­cent of South­ern Bap­tists were white, 6 per­cent were Black and 3 per­cent were Lati­no, accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter.

South­ern Bap­tists split from their north­ern coun­ter­parts in 1845 in sup­port of slav­ery. After the denom­i­na­tion repu­di­at­ed its role in slav­ery in the 1990s, a por­tion of its nation­al lead­ers have attempt­ed to diver­si­fy its church­es and sem­i­nar­ies. At its 2019 meet­ing, the con­ven­tion affirmed that crit­i­cal race the­o­ry could be an “ana­lyt­i­cal tool” use­ful to faith­ful Chris­tians, a move that many con­ser­v­a­tives describe as alarm­ing. Its cur­rent pres­i­dent, J.D. Greear, urged South­ern Bap­tists last sum­mer to declare that “Black lives mat­ter.”

Some high-pro­file South­ern Bap­tists have also pushed back on some stric­tures against female church lead­er­ship. One of the denomination’s largest con­gre­ga­tions, Sad­dle­back Church in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, qui­et­ly ordained three women as staff pas­tors in May, a move that out­raged con­ser­v­a­tives.

Con­ser­v­a­tives have spent months drum­ming up turnout. The Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, an increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial group found­ed last year, released a recent video urg­ing Bap­tists to “stop the drift” by com­ing to Nashville. Some Bap­tists planned to gath­er at ral­ly­ing sites before the big event. Out­side Dal­las, 1,600 peo­ple reg­is­tered for Wok­e­ness and the Gospel, a con­fer­ence that warned of the per­ils of what orga­niz­ers call “the new moral­ism.”

The most high-pro­file vote at the meet­ing will be the elec­tion of a new pres­i­dent, a race whose lead­ing can­di­dates are Mike Stone, a Geor­gia pas­tor who is the favorite of many con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing Mr. Nel­son and Mr. Jol­ly; Ed Lit­ton, an Alaba­ma pas­tor who has large­ly avoid­ed cul­ture war bat­tles and has the sup­port of the denomination’s first Black pres­i­dent; and Albert Mohler Jr., a lion of the denom­i­na­tion who helped ush­er in a con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion decades ago and is now in the awk­ward posi­tion of being labeled a mod­er­ate “com­pro­mise can­di­date.” Mr. Stone, a one­time under­dog, is con­sid­ered a seri­ous con­tender.

No mat­ter which side emerges tri­umphant from the meet­ing next week, a schism looms.

“A lot of us will know if this con­ven­tion is for us once it is over,” said Dwight McKissic, pas­tor of Cor­ner­stone Bap­tist Church in Arling­ton, Texas, who has been lead­ing antiracism efforts in the denom­i­na­tion. If Mr. Mohler or Mr. Stone wins the pres­i­den­cy, or if res­o­lu­tions are passed that affirm racism, in his view, he will leave. Sev­er­al oth­er Black pas­tors have announced their depar­tures with­in the past year.

Hos­til­i­ty over crit­i­cal race the­o­ry among the South­ern Bap­tists, which came to the fore­ground after Thanks­giv­ing when sem­i­nary pres­i­dents denounced it, is inter­wo­ven with its weaponiza­tion by the G.O.P., he said.

“The lit­mus test now for being a Bap­tist is you have to denounce C.R.T. as they do?” he said. “We would be com­plete­ly off our rock­ers to sub­mit, give that kind of pow­er to a white denom­i­na­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the sub­ject of race.”

The con­ven­tion has his­tor­i­cal­ly reflect­ed divi­sions in the coun­try. The most recent meet­ing, two years ago in Birm­ing­ham, Ala., focused on sex­u­al abuse in evan­gel­i­cal church­es. The year before, ten­sions were polit­i­cal. Mike Pence, then the country’s vice pres­i­dent, gave a keynote address to ral­ly evan­gel­i­cal sup­port for Mr. Trump ahead of the midterm elec­tions.

The denom­i­na­tion vowed at its con­ven­tion two years ago to address sex­u­al abuse in its con­gre­ga­tions, but many vic­tims’ advo­cates have warned that lit­tle has changed. South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers have also not pub­licly addressed an alle­ga­tion of abuse at one of its most promi­nent megachurch­es, the Vil­lage Church in Texas.

In one of two fiery let­ters that leaked after his depar­ture, Mr. Moore accused lead­ers includ­ing Mr. Stone of imped­ing the denomination’s attempts to root out abusers, and of “bul­ly­ing and intim­i­da­tion” toward sur­vivors of sex­u­al abuse. (Mr. Stone respond­ed in a video state­ment, call­ing the let­ter “as inflam­ma­to­ry as it is inac­cu­rate.”) Lat­er, an ally of Mr. Moore released audio record­ings of meet­ings that includ­ed Mr. Moore, Mr. Stone and oth­ers debat­ing how to han­dle abuse, with anoth­er high-placed leader, Ron­nie Floyd, say­ing his pri­or­i­ty was not to wor­ry about sur­vivor reac­tions but rather to “pre­serve the base.” (In a state­ment, Mr. Floyd apol­o­gized and said his remarks were mis­char­ac­ter­ized.)

Oppo­nents of the con­ser­v­a­tive cam­paign are not as cen­tral­ly orga­nized, with a less tar­get­ed vot­er turnout oper­a­tion. Last month, their pre­ferred can­di­date, Mr. Lit­ton, held ques­tion-and-answer ses­sions for about 30 pas­tors in West Vir­ginia over take­out Chick-fil‑A, and anoth­er for a sim­i­lar group in Baton Rouge, La.

No mat­ter what hap­pens in Nashville, the con­ser­v­a­tives are press­ing on to strength­en their insti­tu­tion­al and cul­tur­al pow­er. Tom Ascol, who leads Founders Min­istries, an influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive group, has been host­ing reg­u­lar calls with fel­low pas­tors who are new­ly engaged in the fight.

...

———-

“‘Take the Ship’: Con­ser­v­a­tives Aim to Com­man­deer South­ern Bap­tists” by Ruth Gra­ham and Eliz­a­beth Dias; The New York Times; 06/12/2021

“Mr. Nel­son is not alone. He is part of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive pop­ulist upris­ing of pas­tors from Louisiana to Cal­i­for­nia threat­en­ing to over­take the country’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion.”

It’s not just a move­ment. It’s a hos­tile takeover, as Nel­son’s black pirate flag should make clear. And while it’s a hos­tile takeover that’s, at this point, still reliant on the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to suc­ceed, the pirate themes under­score how deep the schism is inside the denom­i­na­tion. Not a schism between pro­gres­sive and con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tions, but instead between tra­di­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tives and ultra­con­ser­v­a­tives:

...
Allen Nel­son IV walked to the front of his small church in cen­tral Arkansas, stopped in front of the com­mu­nion table with three large cross­es behind him, and unfurled a giant black flag with a white skull and crossed swords.

For sev­er­al years, the pas­tor and father of five had felt that too many of his fel­low Chris­tians were drift­ing unmis­tak­ably left­ward on issues of race, gen­der and the strict author­i­ty of the Bible. The flag was a gift from a friend, ener­gized — like Mr. Nel­son — by the idea of hero­ical­ly reclaim­ing the faith.

It was time, he believed, to “take the ship.”

“We’re fight­ing for the very heart of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion,” Mr. Nel­son said in an inter­view. “For a long time what I thought a good South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor should do was to send mon­ey and trust the sys­tem. We can’t do that any­more.”

...

Those hop­ing to “take the ship” main­tain that pira­cy is noth­ing more than a cheeky metaphor for a dry, demo­c­ra­t­ic process. Still, the swash­buck­ling imagery has tak­en hold. There are “Take the Ship” T‑shirts and pirate car flags, GIFs and memes; many sup­port­ers attach a pirate flag emo­ji to their Twit­ter han­dles.

In Alas­ka, the pas­tor Nathaniel Jol­ly post­ed pho­tographs to Twit­ter of a pirate-themed frozen yogurt shop he used to own with his wife. “Now, for the SBC!” he wrote, append­ing a flag emo­ji to the mes­sage.
...

But also note a major ele­ment of con­text here: this 2021 SBC elec­tion was tak­ing place amid a string of bomb­shells relat­ed to the sex­u­al abuse coverups that con­tin­ue to rock the SBC to this day. This was fol­low­ing the depart­ment of Rus­sell Moore as the SBC’s head of ethics and pub­lic pol­i­cy over the denom­i­na­tions hard turn to the right and sup­port of fig­ures like Don­ald Trump. It effec­tive­ly came down to a race between Mike Stone — the can­di­date backed by the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tives like Nel­son and some­one accused of cov­er­ing up the sex­u­al abus­es — and Ed Lit­ton who was rep­re­sent­ing the more tra­di­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tion. Lit­ton even­tu­al­ly came out on top in the 2021 elec­tions for SBC pres­i­dent, but that did­n’t end this ide­o­log­i­cal bat­tle. It just pushed the bat­tle for SBC lead­er­ship off for anoth­er year:

...
The large increase in atten­dance this year is “not an influx of the woke,” said Tom Buck, a pas­tor in Texas and a leader of the upstart con­ser­v­a­tive wing, who has been fund-rais­ing for like-mind­ed pas­tors to get to Nashville to vote. “It’s an influx of the awak­ened to what the woke have been advanc­ing.”

An event that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been com­pared to a fam­i­ly reunion may look more like a brawl. In the past sev­er­al weeks, Bap­tists have pored over leaked bomb­shell let­ters and whis­tle-blow­er record­ings, and trad­ed accu­sa­tions of racism, apos­ta­sy and sex­u­al abuse cov­er-ups. Lead­ers have tak­en barbed pot­shots at each oth­er. Oth­ers have head­ed for the door.

Rus­sell Moore, the denomination’s influ­en­tial head of ethics and pub­lic pol­i­cy, left on June 1. The pop­u­lar author and speak­er Beth Moore, who is not relat­ed to Mr. Moore, announced in March that she is no longer a South­ern Bap­tist, cit­ing the “stag­ger­ing” dis­ori­en­ta­tion of see­ing the denomination’s lead­ers sup­port Don­ald J. Trump, and lament­ing its treat­ment of women. Some con­ser­v­a­tives tri­umphant­ly cel­e­brat­ed both depar­tures.

...

Con­ser­v­a­tives have spent months drum­ming up turnout. The Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, an increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial group found­ed last year, released a recent video urg­ing Bap­tists to “stop the drift” by com­ing to Nashville. Some Bap­tists planned to gath­er at ral­ly­ing sites before the big event. Out­side Dal­las, 1,600 peo­ple reg­is­tered for Wok­e­ness and the Gospel, a con­fer­ence that warned of the per­ils of what orga­niz­ers call “the new moral­ism.”

The most high-pro­file vote at the meet­ing will be the elec­tion of a new pres­i­dent, a race whose lead­ing can­di­dates are Mike Stone, a Geor­gia pas­tor who is the favorite of many con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing Mr. Nel­son and Mr. Jol­ly; Ed Lit­ton, an Alaba­ma pas­tor who has large­ly avoid­ed cul­ture war bat­tles and has the sup­port of the denomination’s first Black pres­i­dent; and Albert Mohler Jr., a lion of the denom­i­na­tion who helped ush­er in a con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion decades ago and is now in the awk­ward posi­tion of being labeled a mod­er­ate “com­pro­mise can­di­date.” Mr. Stone, a one­time under­dog, is con­sid­ered a seri­ous con­tender.

No mat­ter which side emerges tri­umphant from the meet­ing next week, a schism looms.

...

In one of two fiery let­ters that leaked after his depar­ture, Mr. Moore accused lead­ers includ­ing Mr. Stone of imped­ing the denomination’s attempts to root out abusers, and of “bul­ly­ing and intim­i­da­tion” toward sur­vivors of sex­u­al abuse.(Mr. Stone respond­ed in a video state­ment, call­ing the let­ter “as inflam­ma­to­ry as it is inac­cu­rate.”) Lat­er, an ally of Mr. Moore released audio record­ings of meet­ings that includ­ed Mr. Moore, Mr. Stone and oth­ers debat­ing how to han­dle abuse, with anoth­er high-placed leader, Ron­nie Floyd, say­ing his pri­or­i­ty was not to wor­ry about sur­vivor reac­tions but rather to “pre­serve the base.” (In a state­ment, Mr. Floyd apol­o­gized and said his remarks were mis­char­ac­ter­ized.)

Oppo­nents of the con­ser­v­a­tive cam­paign are not as cen­tral­ly orga­nized, with a less tar­get­ed vot­er turnout oper­a­tion. Last month, their pre­ferred can­di­date, Mr. Lit­ton, held ques­tion-and-answer ses­sions for about 30 pas­tors in West Vir­ginia over take­out Chick-fil‑A, and anoth­er for a sim­i­lar group in Baton Rouge, La.
...

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing arti­cle excerpt from sev­er­al months about that ongo­ing SBC lead­er­ship bat­tle, with the SBC’s cur­rent pres­i­dent, Bart Bar­ber, cur­rent­ly serv­ing his sec­ond and final term as SBC pres­i­dent. As we’ve seen, it was Bar­ber who recent­ly had to deal with the uproar caused by the SBC’s deci­sion to file an ami­cus brief legal in a Ken­tucky court case. The case seem­ing­ly had noth­ing to do with SBC busi­ness, but instead cen­tered around a woman who is suing the Louisville Police Depart­ment, argu­ing that they knew about the abus­es her father — a police offi­cer con­vict­ed of abus­ing her as a child in 2020 — was inflict­ing on her for years, and had a duty to report it. The SBC brief opposed the expan­sion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for law­suits against third par­ties, includ­ing reli­gious insti­tu­tions, and added that the SBC has a “strong inter­est in the statute-of-lim­i­ta­tions issue” in the case and that a 2021 state law allow­ing abuse vic­tims to sue third-par­ty “non-per­pe­tra­tors” was not intend­ed to be applied retroac­tive­ly. Bar­ber took respon­si­bil­i­ty approv­ing the ami­cus brief with­out giv­ing it the full atten­tion it deserved. At the same time, Bar­ber hedged on whether or not the statute of lim­i­ta­tions should indeed be applic­a­ble retroac­tive­ly, adding “I am not sure exact­ly what I think about statutes of lim­i­ta­tion. I think they are a mixed bag...I am uncom­fort­able with the harm statutes of lim­i­ta­tions can do, but I also think that they play a valid role in the law some­times.”.

It’s the kind of sto­ry that might make it sound like the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tion final­ly man­aged to get one of their own as SBC pres­i­dent. But that’s not the case. While Bar­ber was indeed aligned with the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tion at one point, he’s no longer in the club. That’s, in part, thanks to Bar­ber’s will­ing­ness to final­ly con­demn one of the SBC lead­ers who has become a focal point for out­rage over the coverup of sex­u­al abus­es: for­mer SBC pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son. Recall how Pat­ter­son was forced to resign from his posi­tion as the Pres­i­dent of the South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in May of 2018 after he after he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down,” accord­ing to a state­ment from sem­i­nary trustees. Pat­ter­son and his wife are both mem­bers of the CNP. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, Bar­ber was one of the sem­i­nary’s trustees at the time and also long one of Pat­ter­son­’s staunchest defend­ers. Bar­ber even ini­tial­ly vot­ed against an ini­tial res­o­lu­tion call­ing for Pat­ter­son­’s res­ig­na­tion. It was only after the rev­e­la­tions about Pat­ter­son­’s active role in try­ing to sup­press an alle­ga­tion of rape that Bar­ber dropped his sup­port for Pat­ter­son.

And as the arti­cle also reminds us, when we’re try­ing to under­stand this ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that’s try­ing to take the SBC in a more con­ser­v­a­tive direc­tion, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that this the same move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to ideals like Bib­li­cal inerran­cy and fun­da­men­tal­ism that Pat­ter­son has spent decades lead­ing. A “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence”, as sup­port­ers call it. Cur­rent SBC pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber was ful­ly on board with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence until the ongo­ing sex­u­al abuse scan­dal forced him to choose a dif­fer­ent path. And his for­mer allies have nev­er for­giv­en him:

The Ten­nessean

Bart Bar­ber defied the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence. How it is now shap­ing his SBC lead­er­ship.

Liam Adams
Nashville Ten­nessean
Pub­lished 5:02 a.m. CT Sept. 18, 2023 | Updat­ed 9:05 a.m. CT Sept. 18, 2023

Key Points
* SBC Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber, a Texas pas­tor, is enter­ing his sec­ond and final term amid a con­tentious moment in denom­i­na­tion over abuse reform and sta­tus of women pas­tors.
* As a blog­ger and then trustee at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, Bar­ber was a loy­al sup­port­er of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence move­ment and lead­ers.
* After sev­er­ing loy­al­ty with a Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence leader in a dra­mat­ic, pub­lic way, Bar­ber has wres­tled with how he propped up fig­ures who con­tributed to mess­es he’s deal­ing with as pres­i­dent.

Bart Bar­ber defied the top brass.

In May 2018, the Texas pas­tor and his fel­low trustees at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth fired sem­i­nary pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, the archi­tect of the fun­da­men­tal­ist takeover of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. Fol­low­ing years of finan­cial-relat­ed con­tro­ver­sies, rev­e­la­tions about Pat­ter­son mis­han­dling reports of sex­u­al abuse pushed Southwestern’s board past a point of no return.

Bar­ber, once a loy­al foot sol­dier in Patterson’s move­ment, was a deci­sive vote in Patterson’s dis­missal, there­by sev­er­ing his alle­giance. Two weeks lat­er, Bar­ber divulged the details of his defec­tion before thou­sands at the 2018 SBC annu­al meet­ing in Dal­las.

“After that, it felt to me that I had become the hero of 10,000 peo­ple I didn’t know, while 1,000 peo­ple I spent the last 10 years with wouldn’t talk to me,” Bar­ber said in a recent inter­view.

The break with Pat­ter­son is among the cen­tral moments that have shaped Bar­ber into the leader he is today with­in the nation’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion. Oth­er moments range from his unex­pect­ed deci­sion to run for SBC pres­i­dent to his elec­tion vic­to­ry at the 2022 SBC annu­al meet­ing and his reelec­tion this year just two days after his moth­er died.

But those events in 2018 were the first major turn­ing points.

Many South­ern Bap­tist del­e­gates, called mes­sen­gers, were embold­ened by Barber’s five-minute speech dur­ing the 2018 SBC annu­al meet­ing and respond­ed with a stand­ing ova­tion. Oth­ers who sup­port­ed Pat­ter­son were infu­ri­at­ed and some con­front­ed Bar­ber and his fam­i­ly in the lob­by of the con­ven­tion cen­ter.

...

Today, Bar­ber is best known for his folksy friend­li­ness and a geeky love of Bap­tist his­to­ry. He’s a small-town pas­tor and farmer on the side, who posts pop­u­lar Twit­ter videos from his ranch where view­ers get to meet his cows (with pun­ny names such as Bul­ly Gra­ham) and he pon­tif­i­cates on SBC par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures.

Bonus Bul­ly Gra­ham and Lot­tie Moooon footage at the end. pic.twitter.com/pn62RQBg65— Bart Bar­ber (@bartbarber) Novem­ber 3, 2022

But behind that cheery per­sona is a sto­ry of the bat­tles that Bar­ber waged with peo­ple who fanned the flames of fac­tion­al­ism and cov­ered up cler­gy sex­u­al abuse. It con­tributed to the mess that Bar­ber is now try­ing to clean up as SBC pres­i­dent.

Along with regret Bar­ber feels about his past actions and the alle­giances he held, he also sees learned lessons about what went wrong and how he could take a dif­fer­ent approach.

“Bart went against that polit­i­cal jug­ger­naut. He was with­in it and then he stood against it,” said South­west­ern pro­fes­sor Mal­com Yarnell, who’s known Bar­ber for 20-plus years. “The only way that’s explic­a­ble is he jet­ti­soned per­son­al loy­al­ty because of his sense of loy­al­ty to Jesus Christ and to his church.”

First respon­si­ble for lead­ing busi­ness at the convention’s two-day annu­al meet­ing, the SBC pres­i­dent is one of the most pub­lic faces for the Nashville-based denom­i­na­tion. Bar­ber has had addi­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties that revolve around sev­er­al task forces, one that’s imple­ment­ing abuse reform and anoth­er look­ing at the denomination’s stan­dards for affil­i­at­ing with church­es. The lat­ter group is a response to a debate about church­es with women pas­tors.

The SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee is gath­er­ing in Nashville this week and is expect­ed to dis­cuss busi­ness relat­ed to those task forces.

The com­bi­na­tion of scan­dals, divi­sion over issues like abuse reform and women pas­tors, and declin­ing church mem­ber­ship has fueled an iden­ti­ty cri­sis in the SBC. Many are wrestling with the ques­tion about the denomination’s abil­i­ty to main­tain con­ser­v­a­tive ideals with­out being over­ly exclu­sion­ary.

Bar­ber doesn’t have all the answers, but he knows what it’s like to read­just expec­ta­tions when old mod­els fail.

“You’re not going to fool this man. He has seen things he wished he had not seen,” Yarnell said. “He knows what a real cri­sis is as opposed to a bump in the road. He now knows the right ques­tions to ask.”

For­ay into the fun­da­men­tal­ist’s fight

When Bar­ber ven­tured from his small Arkansas home­town in 1988 to Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty, he didn’t expect to find the fun­da­men­tal­ist fight for the SBC.

Over time, it found him.

“Bay­lor made me more con­ser­v­a­tive,” Bar­ber said. “I heard a lot of things I knew I didn’t believe.”

For exam­ple, some Bay­lor pro­fes­sors didn’t affirm bib­li­cal inerran­cy, or the belief the Bible is with­out error. The crit­i­cism was shared by lead­ers of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, the move­ment try­ing to pull the SBC fur­ther right.

At the time, the move­ment was gain­ing momen­tum in its mis­sion of amass­ing South­ern Bap­tist vot­ing pow­er to gain con­trol of boards and com­mit­tees to change SBC gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments and edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum.

One of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resurgence’s most well-known vic­to­ries was at South­west­ern, when the coali­tion stacked enough sym­pa­thet­ic trustees on Southwestern’s board to vote to fire its pres­i­dent, Rus­sell Dil­day. Ken Hemphill was Dilday’s replace­ment. Pat­ter­son then suc­ceed­ed Hemphill.

At the time of Dilday’s ouster, Bar­ber was a stu­dent at the Fort Worth sem­i­nary, where he enrolled in a Mas­ter of Divin­i­ty pro­gram after grad­u­at­ing from Bay­lor. He embraced Southwestern’s new, more con­ser­v­a­tive tra­jec­to­ry and it inspired him to even­tu­al­ly pur­sue a Ph.D there in 2000. Around the same time, he start­ed pas­tor­ing First Bap­tist Church in Farm­ersville, Texas, where he still pas­tors today.

Barber’s aca­d­e­m­ic inter­ests and his emerg­ing polit­i­cal com­mit­ments played off each oth­er. Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence lead­ers were cham­pi­oning the same ideals he was study­ing, such as reli­gious lib­er­ty and local church auton­o­my.

“He (Bar­ber) is not a legal­ist. He’s dri­ven by prin­ci­ple, rather than law,” Yarnell said. “The prin­ci­ple of demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gre­ga­tion­al­ism and doing things in order and in a kind way is who Bart is.”

Bar­ber went from being just a pupil of those ideals to a pur­vey­or with the emer­gence of Bap­tist blog­ging.

A self-described “techy” who knows four cod­ing lan­guages, Bar­ber start­ed a blog in 2006 with low expec­ta­tions and a cool name: Praisegod Bare­bones. But that changed quick­ly as Bap­tist blog­ging increas­ing­ly influ­enced SBC pol­i­tics.

“I start­ed pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly writ­ing stuff, almost all of which was a point to be scored against some­body else’s point,” Bar­ber said.

Specif­i­cal­ly, his blog emerged as an antithe­sis to Okla­homa pas­tor Wade Burleson, who ran one of the most pop­u­lar Bap­tist blogs in a cru­sade against legal­ism and South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers mis­us­ing their author­i­ty.

“My friends today were my ene­mies 15 years ago,” Burleson, who’s now retired from the pas­torate, said in an inter­view. “Bart Bar­ber was my ene­my 15 years ago because he thought I was a pro­gres­sive.”

Burleson once sup­port­ed Pat­ter­son and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, but even­tu­al­ly became a vocal crit­ic of the move­ment and its lead­ers. Bar­ber took it upon him­self to fight back, writ­ing posts such as “Keep­ing Watch over the Estab­lish­ment” in 2007 and “Why I love Dr. Paige Pat­ter­son” in 2008.

“Among those who have blogged in defense of Dr. Pat­ter­son against these attacks, I know of few who have labored hard­er than I have,” Bar­ber said in a 2009 post.

To Bar­ber, an attack against Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence lead­ers was an attack against the ideas the move­ment stood for. He and oth­ers like him became col­lec­tive­ly known as the “Bap­tist Iden­ti­ty” blog­gers.

“I very quick­ly hand­ed out team jer­seys to peo­ple, one side or the oth­er,” Bar­ber said. “Quick to decide these peo­ple are against these ideas.”

It played out in-per­son, too. Bap­tist Iden­ti­ty blog­gers didn’t greet Burleson at SBC annu­al meet­ings, Burleson said. Burleson, mean­while, pub­licly opposed Barber’s nom­i­na­tion to Southwestern’s board at the 2009 SBC annu­al meet­ing.

Bar­ber felt it went too far, he said in an inter­view. “The tone of my blog­ging increased par­ti­san­ship and decreased coop­er­a­tion in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.”

Chal­leng­ing his com­mit­ment to the cause

Barber’s com­mit­ment to the cause faced chal­lenges when he joined Southwestern’s board and began work­ing direct­ly with those whom he laud­ed in his online posts.

“Bart had an awak­en­ing,” Burleson said. “I think he real­ized he had been fed a bill of goods.”

It hap­pened incre­men­tal­ly and due to mount­ing con­tro­ver­sies. Ear­ly exam­ples were the stained-glass win­dows installed in Southwestern’s chapel hon­or­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence lead­ers and a pro­posed retire­ment home for Pat­ter­son and his wife on the seminary’s cam­pus.

Donors des­ig­nat­ed funds for those projects, but it was bad optics at a time the sem­i­nary was cut­ting employ­ee ben­e­fits and lay­ing off staff.

At first, Bar­ber stood with Pat­ter­son. “I went on the board as some­one who want­ed to imple­ment Paige Patterson’s vision for South­west­ern Sem­i­nary,” he said.

One way he did that, like his blog, was pro­tect­ing Pat­ter­son from crit­i­cism.

But Pat­ter­son didn’t ask Bar­ber to defend him, nor did Pat­ter­son show much appre­ci­a­tion when Bar­ber did. Bar­ber grew dis­il­lu­sioned and felt con­cerned less for Patterson’s lega­cy and more for Southwestern’s rep­u­ta­tion. “I was think­ing I’m going to try to save the sem­i­nary by sav­ing Paige Pat­ter­son,” he said.

Bar­ber want­ed Patterson’s even­tu­al depar­ture to hap­pen with retire­ment, allow­ing him to leave on a pos­i­tive note and avoid ugly con­flict with the board.

That all changed with rev­e­la­tions about Patterson’s response to reports of rape on sem­i­nary grounds and a woman’s dis­clo­sure about domes­tic vio­lence. In each of the three sce­nar­ios, Pat­ter­son respond­ed with a seem­ing lack of com­pas­sion for the women report­ing the abuse and showed def­er­ence to the accused.

At that point, there was no ques­tion in Barber’s mind. “It got to the point where I was going to save the sem­i­nary by fir­ing Paige Pat­ter­son.”

Let­ting go of loy­al­ty

Southwestern’s board tried to fire Pat­ter­son dur­ing a marathon 13-hour meet­ing in May 22–23, 2018, but were unable due to two hold­outs. Bar­ber was one of them.

Instead, the board decid­ed in that meet­ing to change Patterson’s title to pres­i­dent emer­i­tus and asked him to retire soon.

After that May meet­ing, Pat­ter­son and his attor­ney fought back, which Bar­ber felt was “just plain insub­or­di­na­tion.” Also, a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle detailed one of the instances in which Pat­ter­son dis­missed a female sem­i­nar­i­an who report­ed being raped.

At that point, “there were two things I knew that shaped my vote to ter­mi­nate Paige Pat­ter­son,” Bar­ber said. “One was that I knew two peo­ple who had vot­ed against fir­ing him in the May 22–23 meet­ing whose opin­ion had changed.”

“The oth­er thing was I had seen him (Pat­ter­son) fire peo­ple for far less and with­out so much atten­tion to process,” he added. So, the board recon­vened on May 30 and unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to fire the pres­i­dent.

Pat­ter­son sup­port­ers retal­i­at­ed swift­ly. Donors penned a let­ter express­ing dis­dain, while oth­er allies devised a plan for the upcom­ing SBC annu­al meet­ing in Dal­las to intro­duce a mea­sure that sought to oust South­west­ern trustees from the board.

Bar­ber and his fel­low trustees knew they need­ed to find some­one to speak at the Dal­las meet­ing in the board’s defense. But those fel­low trustees, nor oth­er well-respect­ed South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers whom Bar­ber con­tact­ed, would vol­un­teer.

With time run­ning out, Bar­ber took it upon him­self. He hun­kered down in the mez­za­nine of the Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Dal­las and start­ed writ­ing.

“That was not some­thing I want­ed to do but it was some­thing that need­ed to be done,” Bar­ber said in an inter­view.

When he deliv­ered the speech, he looked uncom­fort­able at first. He most­ly looked down at his pre­pared remarks as he described Patterson’s lead­er­ship issues. But his coun­te­nance changed when he piv­ot­ed to talk­ing about account­abil­i­ty and democ­ra­cy in the SBC — top­ics he pre­sent­ed with author­i­ta­tive enthu­si­asm and an intent gaze on the audi­ence.

Barber’s two sis­ters watched the live stream. “We wept for him,” sis­ter Traci Smith said in an inter­view. “Because we knew this was a moment where he had to choose if he was going to do the thing that hon­ored God or hon­ored a per­son.”

Min­i­miz­ing hurt, cul­ti­vat­ing health

Five years after that Dal­las meet­ing, Bar­ber found him­self yet again prepar­ing anoth­er con­se­quen­tial speech with few­er than 48 hours to spare.

This time, it was his pres­i­den­tial address for this year’s SBC annu­al meet­ing in New Orleans and he was writ­ing about his mom, who had died that morn­ing. It wasn’t a hard speech to write or deliv­er.

...

The SBC annu­al meet­ing was con­tentious and emo­tion­al­ly charged, yet Bar­ber felt ground­ed.

“It ratch­eted down the sense of how con­se­quen­tial the things I was doing there,” Bar­ber said in an inter­view. “I prob­a­bly would have had quite a bit of anx­i­ety and instead, my mem­o­ry of that week is just a sense of calm and sta­bil­i­ty.”

It’s emblem­at­ic of his larg­er goals as SBC pres­i­dent, to low­er the tem­per­a­ture of debate and pro­mote com­pro­mise.

Some feel he’s already done that, for exam­ple, with the divide between megachurch­es ver­sus small, rur­al con­gre­ga­tions. The dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of megachurch pas­tors in SBC lead­er­ship has caused small-town pas­tors to feel under­rep­re­sent­ed. Barber’s job as a small-town pas­tor has chal­lenged that, Smith and Yarnell said.

For oth­ers, Barber’s mes­sag­ing has its lim­its.

“Bar­ber is good at talk­ing the talk on abuse reform,” said Christa Brown, an abuse sur­vivor and long­time advo­cate for reform, in a state­ment. “But I don’t see much dif­fer­ence in terms of walk­ing the walk.”

As pres­i­dent, Bar­ber appoints the SBC Abuse Reform Imple­men­ta­tion Task Force, which is start­ing its sec­ond year of work. After deal­ing with some turnover and the appoint­ment of a new chair, the task force is still work­ing on projects that many expect­ed to be com­plete by now.

“No mat­ter how sin­cere­ly spo­ken, emp­ty promis­es with­out sub­stan­tive actions fur­ther wound sur­vivors,” Brown said.

Bar­ber agrees he has his work cut out for him.

A new SBC Coop­er­a­tion Group that Bar­ber recent­ly appoint­ed has until June to find a com­pro­mise that con­vinces the SBC not to rat­i­fy a mea­sure that would enshrine a ban on women pas­tors.

Among the sup­port­ers of that mea­sure and who want to see the SBC Coop­er­a­tion Group fail are peo­ple who Bar­ber once fought along­side.

“I had done some things that con­tributed to the SBC being less healthy,” Bar­ber said. “And feel I have some oblig­a­tion to make the SBC health­i­er as a sort of penance.”

————

“Bart Bar­ber defied the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence. How it is now shap­ing his SBC lead­er­ship.” by Liam Adams; The Ten­nessean; 09/18/2023

“In May 2018, the Texas pas­tor and his fel­low trustees at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth fired sem­i­nary pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, the archi­tect of the fun­da­men­tal­ist takeover of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. Fol­low­ing years of finan­cial-relat­ed con­tro­ver­sies, rev­e­la­tions about Pat­ter­son mis­han­dling reports of sex­u­al abuse pushed Southwestern’s board past a point of no return.”

It was 2018 when Bart Bar­ber effec­tive broke with the “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence”, after years of being one of Paige Pat­ter­son­’s biggest fans and even pen­ning a “Why I love Dr. Paige Pat­ter­son” blog post in 2008. But Bar­ber is no pro­gres­sive. He was a long-time fel­low fun­da­men­tal­ist and believ­er in the inerran­cy of the Bible:

...
Bar­ber, once a loy­al foot sol­dier in Patterson’s move­ment, was a deci­sive vote in Patterson’s dis­missal, there­by sev­er­ing his alle­giance. Two weeks lat­er, Bar­ber divulged the details of his defec­tion before thou­sands at the 2018 SBC annu­al meet­ing in Dal­las.

...

But behind that cheery per­sona is a sto­ry of the bat­tles that Bar­ber waged with peo­ple who fanned the flames of fac­tion­al­ism and cov­ered up cler­gy sex­u­al abuse. It con­tributed to the mess that Bar­ber is now try­ing to clean up as SBC pres­i­dent.

...

When Bar­ber ven­tured from his small Arkansas home­town in 1988 to Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty, he didn’t expect to find the fun­da­men­tal­ist fight for the SBC.

Over time, it found him.

“Bay­lor made me more con­ser­v­a­tive,” Bar­ber said. “I heard a lot of things I knew I didn’t believe.”

For exam­ple, some Bay­lor pro­fes­sors didn’t affirm bib­li­cal inerran­cy, or the belief the Bible is with­out error. The crit­i­cism was shared by lead­ers of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, the move­ment try­ing to pull the SBC fur­ther right.

At the time, the move­ment was gain­ing momen­tum in its mis­sion of amass­ing South­ern Bap­tist vot­ing pow­er to gain con­trol of boards and com­mit­tees to change SBC gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments and edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum.

...

A self-described “techy” who knows four cod­ing lan­guages, Bar­ber start­ed a blog in 2006 with low expec­ta­tions and a cool name: Praisegod Bare­bones. But that changed quick­ly as Bap­tist blog­ging increas­ing­ly influ­enced SBC pol­i­tics.

“I start­ed pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly writ­ing stuff, almost all of which was a point to be scored against some­body else’s point,” Bar­ber said.

Specif­i­cal­ly, his blog emerged as an antithe­sis to Okla­homa pas­tor Wade Burleson, who ran one of the most pop­u­lar Bap­tist blogs in a cru­sade against legal­ism and South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers mis­us­ing their author­i­ty.

“My friends today were my ene­mies 15 years ago,” Burleson, who’s now retired from the pas­torate, said in an inter­view. “Bart Bar­ber was my ene­my 15 years ago because he thought I was a pro­gres­sive.”

Burleson once sup­port­ed Pat­ter­son and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, but even­tu­al­ly became a vocal crit­ic of the move­ment and its lead­ers. Bar­ber took it upon him­self to fight back, writ­ing posts such as “Keep­ing Watch over the Estab­lish­ment” in 2007 and “Why I love Dr. Paige Pat­ter­son” in 2008.

“Among those who have blogged in defense of Dr. Pat­ter­son against these attacks, I know of few who have labored hard­er than I have,” Bar­ber said in a 2009 post.
...

But in 2018, Bar­ber, as a trustee of the South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, could no longer ignore Pat­ter­son­’s role in the sex­u­al abuse scan­dal that con­tin­ues to rock the SBC. Well, ini­tial­ly Bar­ber seemed to be will­ing to defend Pat­ter­son from the charges. But then the Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lished an arti­cle detail­ing an inci­dent where Pat­ter­son took a direct role in dis­miss­ing a rape alle­ga­tion and Pat­ter­son was sim­ply too tox­ic to con­tin­ue to defend:

...
Barber’s com­mit­ment to the cause faced chal­lenges when he joined Southwestern’s board and began work­ing direct­ly with those whom he laud­ed in his online posts.

“Bart had an awak­en­ing,” Burleson said. “I think he real­ized he had been fed a bill of goods.”

It hap­pened incre­men­tal­ly and due to mount­ing con­tro­ver­sies. Ear­ly exam­ples were the stained-glass win­dows installed in Southwestern’s chapel hon­or­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence lead­ers and a pro­posed retire­ment home for Pat­ter­son and his wife on the seminary’s cam­pus.

...

Bar­ber want­ed Patterson’s even­tu­al depar­ture to hap­pen with retire­ment, allow­ing him to leave on a pos­i­tive note and avoid ugly con­flict with the board.

That all changed with rev­e­la­tions about Patterson’s response to reports of rape on sem­i­nary grounds and a woman’s dis­clo­sure about domes­tic vio­lence. In each of the three sce­nar­ios, Pat­ter­son respond­ed with a seem­ing lack of com­pas­sion for the women report­ing the abuse and showed def­er­ence to the accused.

At that point, there was no ques­tion in Barber’s mind. “It got to the point where I was going to save the sem­i­nary by fir­ing Paige Pat­ter­son.”

Let­ting go of loy­al­ty

Southwestern’s board tried to fire Pat­ter­son dur­ing a marathon 13-hour meet­ing in May 22–23, 2018, but were unable due to two hold­outs. Bar­ber was one of them.

Instead, the board decid­ed in that meet­ing to change Patterson’s title to pres­i­dent emer­i­tus and asked him to retire soon.

After that May meet­ing, Pat­ter­son and his attor­ney fought back, which Bar­ber felt was “just plain insub­or­di­na­tion.” Also, a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle detailed one of the instances in which Pat­ter­son dis­missed a female sem­i­nar­i­an who report­ed being raped.

At that point, “there were two things I knew that shaped my vote to ter­mi­nate Paige Pat­ter­son,” Bar­ber said. “One was that I knew two peo­ple who had vot­ed against fir­ing him in the May 22–23 meet­ing whose opin­ion had changed.”

“The oth­er thing was I had seen him (Pat­ter­son) fire peo­ple for far less and with­out so much atten­tion to process,” he added. So, the board recon­vened on May 30 and unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to fire the pres­i­dent.
...

Would Bar­ber still be a full fledged mem­ber of the Con­ser­v­a­tives Resur­gence today had he not been serv­ing as a trustee of the South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in 2018 and had the Wash­ing­ton Post not pub­lished that embar­rass­ing arti­cle? Who knows, but it sure looks like cir­cum­stances forced Bar­ber into split­ting with his old allies. And here we are today, five years lat­er, with Bar­ber now the pres­i­dent of the SBC, try­ing to find a com­pro­mise that can avoid the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of a mea­sure that would enshrine a ban on women pas­tors. A ban many of his old allies cur­rent­ly sup­port:

...
A new SBC Coop­er­a­tion Group that Bar­ber recent­ly appoint­ed has until June to find a com­pro­mise that con­vinces the SBC not to rat­i­fy a mea­sure that would enshrine a ban on women pas­tors.

Among the sup­port­ers of that mea­sure and who want to see the SBC Coop­er­a­tion Group fail are peo­ple who Bar­ber once fought along­side.

“I had done some things that con­tributed to the SBC being less healthy,” Bar­ber said. “And feel I have some oblig­a­tion to make the SBC health­i­er as a sort of penance.”
...

At the same time, also note the inter­est­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion here: the Chris­t­ian Resur­gence is hav­ing bet­ter elec­toral suc­cess at the bal­lot box than they do in the SBC’s own lead­er­ship elec­tions. Dusty Deev­ers could­n’t win the first vice pres­i­dent elec­tion but he’s an Okla­homa state sen­a­tor now. And this fac­tion has lost the SBC pres­i­den­cy three years in a row now. But in a way that’s not sur­pris­ing. The elec­torate for the SBC’s elec­tion con­sist of rough­ly thir­teen thou­sand vot­ing del­e­gates, who are sure­ly a lot more famil­iar with the agen­da of this ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tion than the pub­lic at large. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, the agen­da of this fac­tion — also called the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work (CBN) — for these recent SBC elec­tions real­ly does seem to large­ly be all about a desire to not turn over too many more rocks in rela­tion to the SBC’s ongo­ing sex­u­al abuse scan­dal. When Bart Bar­ber was run­ning for his sec­ond term as SBC pres­i­dent back in June against CBN/Conservative Resur­gence can­di­date Mike Stone, you could­n’t real­ly find any the­o­log­i­cal dis­agree­ment between the two. The only real dis­agree­ment was how to pro­ceed on sex abuse reforms:

Reli­gion News Ser­vice

Bart Bar­ber, Mike Stone — two con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors — to square off for SBC pres­i­dent

The two can­di­dates for SBC pres­i­dent hold many of the same beliefs but dis­agree sharply over how to han­dle the issue of sex­u­al abuse and over the direc­tion of the nation’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion.

June 7, 2023
By Bob Smi­etana

(RNS) — Two years ago, Geor­gia pas­tor Mike Stone received near­ly 6,300 votes for pres­i­dent dur­ing the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s annu­al meet­ing in Nashville, Ten­nessee — more than any can­di­date in a con­test­ed elec­tion in near­ly two decades.

Except for one.

His oppo­nent, Alaba­ma pas­tor Ed Lit­ton, got more than 6,800 votes, win­ning by a nar­row mar­gin of 4%.

The loss was dif­fi­cult for Stone. Not long after the SBC’s annu­al meet­ing, Lit­ton got in hot water after crit­ics dis­cov­ered he’d used parts of anoth­er pastor’s ser­mons with­out attri­bu­tion, in a con­tro­ver­sy that became known as “Ser­mon­gate.” He’d lat­er apol­o­gize and decide not to run for a sec­ond year in office. Stone also end­ed up suing for­mer SBC ethi­cist Rus­sell Moore, a long­time rival, for alleged­ly ruin­ing his rep­u­ta­tion and cost­ing Stone the elec­tion. That suit was lat­er dropped.

Next week, at the SBC’s annu­al meet­ing in New Orleans, set for Tues­day and Wednes­day (June 13–14), Stone will be nom­i­nat­ed for pres­i­dent again. He told Reli­gion News Ser­vice ear­li­er this year that he’d had no inten­tion of run­ning again but was asked to do so by sup­port­ers, despite the prece­dent of cur­rent SBC pres­i­dents run­ning unop­posed for their sec­ond terms.

With his church’s approval, he agreed to jump in the race.

...

The SBC pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, set for about 3 in the after­noon on Tues­day, will pit Stone against incum­bent Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber, a Texas pas­tor known for his exper­tise on denom­i­na­tion­al gov­er­nance and his folksy videos filmed from his cat­tle ranch, fea­tur­ing a cow named for famed SBC mis­sion­ary Lot­tie Moon.

At first glance, lit­tle sep­a­rates the two can­di­dates. Bar­ber, pas­tor of First Bap­tist Church in Farm­ersville, Texas, believes the Bible is inerrant, cham­pi­ons the SBC’s mis­sion­ar­ies and defends the long-held Bap­tist beliefs that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin, abor­tion is evil and only men should be pas­tor. He prefers to dress in a suit while preach­ing.

Stone, pas­tor of Emmanuel Bap­tist Church in Black­s­hear, Geor­gia, has the same view on the Bible and the­o­log­i­cal issues as Bar­ber, also sup­ports mis­sions — his daugh­ter is over­seas on a short-term mis­sion to Madrid — and, like Bar­ber, prefers a for­mal look when preach­ing.

Despite their sim­i­lar­i­ties in doc­trine and prac­tice, the two pas­tors rep­re­sent an ongo­ing dis­pute over the SBC’s cur­rent direc­tion and future. That dis­pute has been fueled by the rise of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work — a group with close ties to dis­graced for­mer SBC leader Paige Pat­ter­son — along with allies such as Flori­da-based Founders Min­istries. This fac­tion, which helped ignite the nation­al debate over crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, argues the SBC has become too lib­er­al, in par­tic­u­lar on issues of race and sex­u­al­i­ty — and for a while, had referred to itself as a group of pirates striv­ing to take con­trol of the denom­i­na­tion. Lead­ers allied with the CBN have also resist­ed sex­u­al abuse reforms.

Can­di­dates backed by the CBN have lost the last two SBC elec­tions.

Their oppo­si­tion, which lacks a brand name, large­ly believes the SBC, which has expe­ri­enced tur­moil and mem­ber­ship decline in recent years, is gen­er­al­ly head­ed in the right direc­tion on issues of doc­trine and mis­sion.

The sharpest dis­agree­ment between the two can­di­dates is seen in their views of abuse reform. Bar­ber, in his role as pres­i­dent, appoint­ed a task force charged with imple­ment­ing a series of reforms, includ­ing set­ting up the “Min­istry Check” web­site that will include the names of abu­sive pas­tors, pro­vid­ing more staffing to help the com­mit­tee that deals with church­es accused of mis­han­dling abuse and cre­at­ing resources to help church­es bet­ter deal with the issue of abuse.

Those reforms came on the heels of a major 2022 report on an inves­ti­ga­tion done by the con­sult­ing firm Guide­post Solu­tions, which found that Bap­tist lead­ers had mis­treat­ed abuse sur­vivors for years and tried to down­play the issue of abuse in the SBC. That inves­ti­ga­tion and report had been autho­rized a year ear­li­er by a vote of local church rep­re­sen­ta­tives, known as mes­sen­gers, dur­ing the SBC annu­al meet­ing.

Among the lead­ers named in the report was John­ny Hunt, a for­mer SBC pres­i­dent and megachurch pas­tor, who alleged­ly assault­ed anoth­er pastor’s wife about a decade ago, accord­ing to Guide­post. Inves­ti­ga­tors from Guide­post inter­viewed Hunt as well as oth­er wit­ness­es and found the alle­ga­tions cred­i­ble. Hunt took time off from min­istry and then made a come­back ear­li­er this year, which Bar­ber denounced.

...

Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters, Stone’s feud with Moore played a role in the cre­ation of the Guide­post report. Local church pas­tors began call­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion of SBC lead­ers after a let­ter from Moore, which detailed behind-the-scenes con­flicts between those lead­ers, includ­ing Stone, over issues of race and abuse, became pub­lic.

Stone, a for­mer chair­man of the denomination’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, has argued that the Guide­post inves­ti­ga­tion was a mis­take and the report flawed and unbib­li­cal. The report, which men­tions his name in con­nec­tion to Moore’s let­ter, also includes com­plaints that Stone did not respond appro­pri­ate­ly when made aware of anoth­er pastor’s alleged mis­con­duct. Stone argues the report opened up the SBC to law­suits and includes false infor­ma­tion and argues the SBC should help church­es han­dle cas­es of abuse instead of tak­ing nation­al action.

Stone has also denied any wrong­do­ing in regard to how he respond­ed to alleged mis­con­duct by his friend, who pas­tored at a dif­fer­ent con­gre­ga­tion.

...

If elect­ed pres­i­dent, Stone has said he would appoint a new task force to address the issue of abuse that would focus more on empow­er­ing local church­es.

Bar­ber has said on sev­er­al occa­sions that he asked the imple­men­ta­tion task force not to choose Guide­post, giv­en the con­cerns of some South­ern Bap­tists. He recent­ly told a Geor­gia Bap­tist news­pa­per that he want­ed to find solu­tions every­one could sup­port.

“It is my prayer that, through all of these twists and turns, God will lead us to the best solu­tions to assist our church­es in pre­vent­ing abuse,” he said.

...

While the role of SBC pres­i­dent is large­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al — the posi­tion is unpaid and the job requires the pres­i­dent to spend a great deal of time pro­mot­ing the SBC’s mis­sion and mes­sage — the role does have some pow­er. In the SBC, the pres­i­dent can influ­ence which lead­ers get nom­i­nat­ed to key com­mit­tees and the pres­i­dent mod­er­ates the denomination’s annu­al meet­ing.

———-

“Bart Bar­ber, Mike Stone — two con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors — to square off for SBC pres­i­dent” By Bob Smi­etana; Reli­gion News Ser­vice; 06/07/2023

“Despite their sim­i­lar­i­ties in doc­trine and prac­tice, the two pas­tors rep­re­sent an ongo­ing dis­pute over the SBC’s cur­rent direc­tion and future. That dis­pute has been fueled by the rise of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work — a group with close ties to dis­graced for­mer SBC leader Paige Pat­ter­son — along with allies such as Flori­da-based Founders Min­istries. This fac­tion, which helped ignite the nation­al debate over crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, argues the SBC has become too lib­er­al, in par­tic­u­lar on issues of race and sex­u­al­i­ty — and for a while, had referred to itself as a group of pirates striv­ing to take con­trol of the denom­i­na­tion. Lead­ers allied with the CBN have also resist­ed sex­u­al abuse reforms.”

Yes, it can be rather dif­fi­cult to see what dis­tin­guish­es the lead­er­ship of Bart Bar­ber and his oppo­nent Mike Stone, who hails from the “Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work”, which looks like a new label for the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence. Bar­ton and Stone more or less have the same the­ol­o­gy. The only real dif­fer­ence appears to be loy­al­ty to Paige Pat­ter­son and the han­dling of the sex­u­al abuse scan­dals:

...
At first glance, lit­tle sep­a­rates the two can­di­dates. Bar­ber, pas­tor of First Bap­tist Church in Farm­ersville, Texas, believes the Bible is inerrant, cham­pi­ons the SBC’s mis­sion­ar­ies and defends the long-held Bap­tist beliefs that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin, abor­tion is evil and only men should be pas­tor. He prefers to dress in a suit while preach­ing.

Stone, pas­tor of Emmanuel Bap­tist Church in Black­s­hear, Geor­gia, has the same view on the Bible and the­o­log­i­cal issues as Bar­ber, also sup­ports mis­sions — his daugh­ter is over­seas on a short-term mis­sion to Madrid — and, like Bar­ber, prefers a for­mal look when preach­ing.

...

The sharpest dis­agree­ment between the two can­di­dates is seen in their views of abuse reform. Bar­ber, in his role as pres­i­dent, appoint­ed a task force charged with imple­ment­ing a series of reforms, includ­ing set­ting up the “Min­istry Check” web­site that will include the names of abu­sive pas­tors, pro­vid­ing more staffing to help the com­mit­tee that deals with church­es accused of mis­han­dling abuse and cre­at­ing resources to help church­es bet­ter deal with the issue of abuse.

Those reforms came on the heels of a major 2022 report on an inves­ti­ga­tion done by the con­sult­ing firm Guide­post Solu­tions, which found that Bap­tist lead­ers had mis­treat­ed abuse sur­vivors for years and tried to down­play the issue of abuse in the SBC. That inves­ti­ga­tion and report had been autho­rized a year ear­li­er by a vote of local church rep­re­sen­ta­tives, known as mes­sen­gers, dur­ing the SBC annu­al meet­ing.
...

And note how Stone was chal­leng­ing Bar­ton, who was run­ning for his sec­ond term, despite the prece­dent of cur­rent SBC pres­i­dents run­ning unop­posed for their sec­ond terms. It’s a sign of just how earnest this fac­tion is about win­ning back in SBC lead­er­ship. It’s the kind of urgency that begs the ques­tion as to just many yet-to-be dis­closed sex abuse scan­dals there real­ly are wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered:

...
Next week, at the SBC’s annu­al meet­ing in New Orleans, set for Tues­day and Wednes­day (June 13–14), Stone will be nom­i­nat­ed for pres­i­dent again. He told Reli­gion News Ser­vice ear­li­er this year that he’d had no inten­tion of run­ning again but was asked to do so by sup­port­ers, despite the prece­dent of cur­rent SBC pres­i­dents run­ning unop­posed for their sec­ond terms.

With his church’s approval, he agreed to jump in the race.

...

Can­di­dates backed by the CBN have lost the last two SBC elec­tions.
...

And that’s all why, when we see news about Dusty Deev­ers’ elec­tion as an open and aggres­sive Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Deev­ers isn’t some ran­dom fire­brand pas­tor who decid­ed to run for office. He’s a mem­ber of the “Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence” exe­cut­ing the “take the ship!” plot to cap­ture the lead­er­ship of insti­tu­tions and dri­ve them even fur­ther to the right. A plot that has­n’t suc­ceed­ed quite yet when it comes to the SBC’s lead­er­ship, although time will tell if the ban on women pas­tors sticks. But as now-sen­a­tor Deev­ers’ elec­toral vic­to­ry reminds us, the SBC isn’t the only insti­tu­tion this move­ment has in its sights.

At the same time, it’s not like anti-abor­tion extrem­ism has grown more pop­u­lar with the Amer­i­can elec­torate in gen­er­al. If any­thing it’s the oppo­site. That’s also part of the con­text of Deev­ers’ elec­toral win. He won a state sen­ate seat, but on a plat­form that is increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar with the evan­gel­i­cal fringe but increas­ing­ly unpop­u­lar with the rest of the elec­torate. So should the US once again find itself fac­ing a Don­ald Trump-led insur­rec­tionary force next year, intent on gain­ing polit­i­cal pow­er through any means nec­es­sary, don’t be sur­prise if Deev­ers and his many fel­low trav­el­ers on this grow­ing fringe are stand­ing there right beside him, fram­ing the insur­rec­tion in Bib­li­cal terms. While pre­sum­ably waiv­ing some sort of pirate flag. Because it can always get worse. Espe­cial­ly when pow­er­ful net­works are earnest­ly work­ing to make it worse in God’s name.

There’s a bat­tle for the soul of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. The Nazis are unfor­tu­nate­ly gain­ing the clear upper hand. So clear they aren’t real­ly both­er­ing to hide it any­more in a strat­e­gy that’s part infil­tra­tion, part recruit­ment, and part assim­i­la­tion. That’s the dis­turb­ing real­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics we got anoth­er reminder of in a recent stunt pulled off by a group affil­i­at­ed with the Defend Texas Free­dom net­work of polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions and non-prof­its large­ly fund­ed by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist oil bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn:

Cary Cheshire, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, sent Christ­mas card mail­ers to the con­stituents of Repub­li­can Texas House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan ‘jok­ing’ about Phe­lan wish­ing “Hap­py Ramadan” and accus­ing Phe­lan of being pro-Mus­lim. The pri­ma­ry fun­der for Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders is Defend Texas Free­dom. Mak­ing it the lat­est in a grow­ing feud between Dun­n’s Defend Texas Free­dom net­work and Phe­lan.

Recall the recent blowup, with Phe­lan attack­ing the Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee for its 32–29 vote to reject a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing asso­ci­a­tions with indi­vid­u­als or groups “known to espouse or tol­er­ate anti­semitism, pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies or Holo­caust denial.” That reject­ed res­o­lu­tion was actu­al­ly watered down from an ear­li­er res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a break from Defend Texas Free­dom in response to the fact that its pres­i­dent, Jonathan Stick­land, also ran the Pale Horse Strate­gies con­sult­ing group that held that sev­en hour meet­ing with Nick Fuentes on Octo­ber 6. Also recall how Dunn is a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist who once told Joe Straus, then the Jew­ish Repub­li­can Speak­er of the Texas House, to resign because Dunn believed only Chris­tians should be in lead­er­ship posi­tions. Dunn is also deeply involved with both the CNP-backed push to rewrite the US Con­sti­tu­tion and the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion where he serves as vice chair­man. He formed Empow­er Tex­ans in 2006, even­tu­al­ly replac­ing it with Defend Texas Free­dom which has become one of the most impor­tant enti­ties in Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics today, close­ly allied with Ken Pax­ton and Dan Patrick. In fact, a major­i­ty of Texas Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus tak­ing mon­ey from Defend Texas Free­dom. The Texas GOP could­n’t imag­ine hav­ing to part ways with that Dunn mon­ey.

But, of course, as this mail­er stunt also com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Texas Repub­li­cans in elect­ed office, if you mess with the Defend Texas Free­dom net­work it will come after you. On Christ­mas. Even if you are the Speak­er.

This ongo­ing intra-GOP pow­er strug­gle is one part of the nasty Christ­mas mail­er attack ad sto­ry. There’s a nas­ti­er side. The kind of nasty we should expect at this point. For starters, Cary Cheshire and oth­er lead­ing fig­ures in Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders appear to be Nazis. Or at least fel­low trav­el­ers. Yep. In fact, the group’s founder and pres­i­dent, Chris Rus­so, was seen chauf­feur­ing Fuentes to and from the Pale Horse offices on the day of that sev­en hour meet­ing.

In addi­tion to Cary Cheshire, we find fig­ures like Ella Mauld­ing and Shel­by Griesinger. Mauld­ing, a social media coor­di­na­tor for Pale Horse Strate­gies, has praised Fuentes as the “great­est civ­il rights leader in his­to­ry.” Griesinger, the trea­sur­er of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, used social media to call Jews the ene­my of Repub­li­cans.

Griesing also sits on the board of a new pro-Sec­ond Amend­ment pact launched by Kyle Rit­ten­house back in August. Rit­ten­house appears to have grown been embraced by this net­work as he’s become a right-wing media star. It turns out Rit­ten­house was at Pale Horse Strate­gies dur­ing the sev­en hour meet­ing with Fuentes. Rit­ten­house claims to have left the office after learn­ing of Fuentes’s pres­ence. Mauld­ing was also seen at the Pale Horse offices on the day of Fuentes’s vis­it, help­ing to film a video for Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders

And then there’s Julie McCar­ty, founder of the True Texas Project, anoth­er group that has Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. McCar­ty open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives Patrick Cru­sius in the wake of the El Paso Wal­mart attack. Three weeks before Fuentes’s meet­ing at Pale Horse Strate­gies, the True Texas Project co-host­ed a “pass­ing the torch” event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side 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 — 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. A strat­e­gy that more or less describes what Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is doing right now.

But attack­ing Repub­li­cans from the right on issues like immi­gra­tion was just part of this over­all strat­e­gy for pulling the GOP to the right. Back in 2018, Patrick Casey of Iden­ti­ty Evropa (since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment”) was open­ly telling NBC News about the oth­er part of his plan: infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans.

So when we read about what might be passed off as a taste­less polit­i­cal attack ad in the form of a Christ­mas Card mail­er, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind all that con­text. Con­text like the fact that this attack was part of a “attack and befriend” strat­e­gy designed to push the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to right. And con­text like the fact the founder and leader of the group that sent out these Christ­mas cards was chauf­feur­ing Nick Fuentes for his meet­ing with Pale Horse Strate­gies, the most influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive con­sult­ing group in Texas. A scan­dalous meet­ing that prompt­ed an ini­tial failed attempt by the Texas GOP exec­u­tive com­mit­tee to call for the par­ty to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves with Defend Texas Free­dom, and then a fol­lowup failed attempt to sim­ply pass a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing asso­ci­a­tions with indi­vid­u­als or groups “known to espouse or tol­er­ate anti­semitism, pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies or Holo­caust denial.” Defend Texas Free­dom won the bat­tle over the polit­i­cal fall­out of that meet­ing with Fuentes and now it’s in ‘pay back’ mode:

The Texas Tri­bune

Far-right activist blasts Speak­er Phe­lan for being “pro-Mus­lim” in polit­i­cal mail­er

The card insin­u­ates that Phe­lan wants to wish his con­stituents a hap­py Ramadan instead of a mer­ry Christ­mas. Mus­lim Tex­ans say it’s Islam­o­pho­bic and some Repub­li­cans say it does­n’t reflect Chris­t­ian val­ues.

by Poo­ja Sal­ho­tra and Robert Dow­nen
Dec. 24, 2023
3 PM Cen­tral

A long­time Texas con­ser­v­a­tive activist mailed what appeared to be a bla­tant­ly anti-Mus­lim hol­i­day card to vot­ers in state House Speak­er Dade Phelan’s leg­isla­tive dis­trict, the lat­est polit­i­cal vol­ley in an ongo­ing feud between the Texas Repub­li­can Party’s far-right fac­tion and its more mod­er­ate wing.

Pho­tos of the mail­ers cir­cu­lat­ed on social media plat­form X two days before Christ­mas. The mail­ers sar­cas­ti­cal­ly wish con­stituents a “Hap­py Ramadan,” even though the Mus­lim hol­i­day fell dur­ing the spring this year. It includes pho­tos of Phe­lan, who is Catholic, at an event cel­e­brat­ing Ramadan with Mus­lims in the state Capi­tol ear­li­er this year.

The card insin­u­ates that the speak­er is Mus­lim. The event was host­ed by state Rep. Sule­man Lalani, D‑Sugar Land, who was one of the first two Mus­lims elect­ed to the Texas Leg­is­la­ture along with state Rep. Salman Bho­jani last year.

“It’s prey­ing on Islam­o­pho­bic sen­ti­ments that exist in some people’s minds,” said Bho­jani, a Euless Demo­c­rat. “But in Texas we should cel­e­brate and pro­tect reli­gious prac­tices.”

The cards were paid for by Cary Cheshire, a long­time right-wing activist who was pre­vi­ous­ly the vice pres­i­dent of Empow­er Tex­ans. Cheshire is cur­rent­ly the exec­u­tive direc­tor for Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders, a right-wing group that has been increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial in push­ing law­mak­ers to crack down on legal and ille­gal immi­gra­tion. Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders is led by Chris Rus­so, who the Tri­bune recent­ly report­ed was behind numer­ous, anony­mous social media accounts that were full of racist posts. Rus­so is also an ally of white suprema­cist and Adolf Hitler admir­er Nick Fuentes.

“This is obvi­ous­ly a satir­i­cal card, but unfor­tu­nate­ly Dade Phelan’s pro-Mus­lim record is real,” the card states. “The only path to heav­en is through Jesus Christ. Mer­ry Christ­mas!”

Cheshire con­firmed to the Tri­bune via text mes­sage Sun­day that he mailed out the cards. They include a dis­claimer say­ing they were paid for by the Texas Anti-Com­mu­nist League, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that was reg­is­tered last year but has not report­ed any dona­tions or con­tri­bu­tions. Cheshire is the group’s trea­sur­er, but told the Tri­bune he per­son­al­ly paid for the mail­er.

“Dade Phe­lan is respon­si­ble for the most pro-Mus­lim ses­sion in the his­to­ry of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture,” Cheshire said.

His rea­son­ing for that por­tray­al: The low­er chamber’s pas­sage of House Res­o­lu­tions 1069 and 1168, which both sim­ply rec­og­nized Eid al-fitr, a reli­gious hol­i­day mark­ing the end of Ramadan.

“Texas is home to more than 400,000 Mus­lims, who con­tribute in myr­i­ad ways to the eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, and social fab­ric of our state, and it is indeed fit­ting to acknowl­edge the pro­found impor­tance of Ramadan to the mem­bers of this vibrant com­mu­ni­ty as they cel­e­brate with friends, fam­i­lies, and fel­low wor­ship­pers,” the res­o­lu­tions state.

The House over­whelm­ing­ly passed the res­o­lu­tions, and it’s unclear why Cheshire sin­gled out Phe­lan for their pas­sage. Phelan’s office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment about the polit­i­cal adver­tise­ments.

Cheshire ques­tioned how the mail­er could be per­ceived as anti-Mus­lim, but did not say why acknowl­edg­ing a Mus­lim hol­i­day should be cause for con­cern.

“My card ridicules Dade Phe­lan and his pro-Mus­lim record,” he said. “I think Tex­ans should be informed about the actions of their elect­ed offi­cials.”

Bho­jani said he appre­ci­at­ed that Phe­lan par­tic­i­pat­ed in an iftar, or the break­ing of the dai­ly fast dur­ing Ramadan, and regret­ted that the action was being politi­cized months lat­er.

Rep. Tom Oliv­er­son, a Cypress Repub­li­can, con­demned the cards on social media Sun­day, call­ing them both “stu­pid” and “bizarre.”

...

The card comes as the speak­er faces sev­er­al attacks from with­in his own par­ty and months after The Texas Tri­bune report­ed that Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee with which Cheshire has ties, host­ed a meet­ing with Fuentes.

In Octo­ber, Defend Texas Liberty’s for­mer leader, Jonathan Stick­land, was seen meet­ing with Fuentes for near­ly sev­en hours at the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a con­sult­ing firm for far-right groups. Cheshire was seen at the office while Fuentes was on-site.

The meet­ing unleashed a wave of infight­ing among Texas Repub­li­cans. Phe­lan demand­ed that elect­ed offi­cials who received dona­tions from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty — includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — donate that mon­ey to char­i­ty, a demand echoed by 60 mem­bers of the Texas House Repub­li­can Cau­cus.

Patrick then accused Phe­lan of exploit­ing the con­flict “for his own polit­i­cal gain” and called on Phe­lan to resign as speak­er before the Texas House was sched­uled to meet for a spe­cial ses­sion on edu­ca­tion vouch­ers and oth­er leg­is­la­tion.

Cheshire’s cards also come months after a fam­i­ly copy of the Quran that Bho­jani placed in the Capi­tol’s chapel went miss­ing. State police inves­ti­gat­ed that mat­ter and recov­ered the reli­gious text, but wouldn’t pub­licly say who took it.

...

———

“Far-right activist blasts Speak­er Phe­lan for being “pro-Mus­lim” in polit­i­cal mail­er” by Poo­ja Sal­ho­tra and Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 12/24/2023

“The cards were paid for by Cary Cheshire, a long­time right-wing activist who was pre­vi­ous­ly the vice pres­i­dent of Empow­er Tex­ans. Cheshire is cur­rent­ly the exec­u­tive direc­tor for Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders, a right-wing group that has been increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial in push­ing law­mak­ers to crack down on legal and ille­gal immi­gra­tion. Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders is led by Chris Rus­so, who the Tri­bune recent­ly report­ed was behind numer­ous, anony­mous social media accounts that were full of racist posts. Rus­so is also an ally of white suprema­cist and Adolf Hitler admir­er Nick Fuentes.”

Well look at that: Cary Cheshire, the for­mer vice pres­i­dent of Empow­er Tex­ans and cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor for Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders, sent out ‘Christ­mas Cards’ attack­ing Tex­as­’s Repub­li­can House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan. Part of the ongo­ing spat between Phe­lan and the extreme far right fac­tion of Texas Repub­li­cans aligned with Empow­er Tex­ans. A fac­tion that, as we’ve seen, now includes a major­i­ty of the Repub­li­cans in the Texas sen­ate. It’s key con­text to keep in mind in this sto­ry. This isn’t a spat between the Texas Speak­er and some obscure group. Empow­er Tex­ans is one of the most influ­en­tial enti­ties in Texas pol­i­tics today. Or at least was, before it was dis­solved and reformed as Defend Texas Free­dom, with which Cheshire is also affil­i­at­ed.

And it was, of course, the now-for­mer head of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, Jonathan Stick­land, who host­ed Nick Fuentes dur­ing a sev­en hour meet­ing at Pale Horse Strate­gies back in Octo­ber, prompt­ing Phe­lan’s demands that elect­ed offi­cials return dona­tions from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and all of polit­i­cal bick­er­ing that fol­lowed, includ­ing the calls by Lt Gov. Dan Patrick for Phe­lan’s res­ig­na­tion. Cary Cheshire appears to have a lot more friends in Texas GOP cir­cles than the Speak­er Phe­lan at this point:

...
The card comes as the speak­er faces sev­er­al attacks from with­in his own par­ty and months after The Texas Tri­bune report­ed that Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee with which Cheshire has ties, host­ed a meet­ing with Fuentes.

In Octo­ber, Defend Texas Liberty’s for­mer leader, Jonathan Stick­land, was seen meet­ing with Fuentes for near­ly sev­en hours at the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a con­sult­ing firm for far-right groups. Cheshire was seen at the office while Fuentes was on-site.

The meet­ing unleashed a wave of infight­ing among Texas Repub­li­cans. Phe­lan demand­ed that elect­ed offi­cials who received dona­tions from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty — includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — donate that mon­ey to char­i­ty, a demand echoed by 60 mem­bers of the Texas House Repub­li­can Cau­cus.

Patrick then accused Phe­lan of exploit­ing the con­flict “for his own polit­i­cal gain” and called on Phe­lan to resign as speak­er before the Texas House was sched­uled to meet for a spe­cial ses­sion on edu­ca­tion vouch­ers and oth­er leg­is­la­tion.

Cheshire’s cards also come months after a fam­i­ly copy of the Quran that Bho­jani placed in the Capi­tol’s chapel went miss­ing. State police inves­ti­gat­ed that mat­ter and recov­ered the reli­gious text, but wouldn’t pub­licly say who took it.
...

We have a fig­ure asso­ci­at­ed with Empow­er Texas/Defend Texas Lib­er­ty launch­ing a Christ­mas attack on the Repub­li­can House speak­er. Which rais­es the ques­tion: so who will Texas Repub­li­cans sym­pa­thize with the most as this attack plays out? Speak­er Phe­lan or Cary Cheshire and Defend Texas Free­dom? Well, again, a major­i­ty of the Repub­li­cans in the Texas sen­ate has now tak­en mon­ey from the Defend Texas Free­dom net­work. That’s one clue as to who would win this pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test.

But in case it’s not obvi­ous after the whole Nick Fuentes/Pale Horse Strate­gies fias­co that the pol­i­tics embraced by Nick Fuentes are the same pol­i­tics Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is cham­pi­oning, here’s a Texas Tri­bune arti­cle from back in Octo­ber describ­ing how Fuentes’s pol­i­tics are very much at home at the Defend Texas Lib­er­ty net­work. In addi­tion to Cary Cheshire, we find fig­ures like Ella Mauld­ing and Shel­by Griesinger. Mauld­ing, a social media coor­di­na­tor for Pale Horse Strate­gies, has praised Fuentes as the “great­est civ­il rights leader in his­to­ry.” Griesinger, the trea­sur­er of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, used social media to call Jews the ene­my of Repub­li­cans.

Griesing also sits on the board of a new pro-Sec­ond Amend­ment pact launched by Kyle Rit­ten­house back in August. Rit­ten­house appears to have grown been embraced by this net­work as he’s become a right-wing media star. It turns out Rit­ten­house was at Pale Horse Strate­gies dur­ing the sev­en hour meet­ing with Fuentes. Rit­ten­house claims to have left the office after learn­ing of Fuentes’s pres­ence. Mauld­ing was also seen at the Pale Horse offices on the day of Fuentes’s vis­it, help­ing to film a video for Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, anoth­er Defend Texas Lib­er­ty spin-off which, as we just saw, has Cary Cheshire as its exec­u­tive direc­to­ry and Chris Rus­so as its founder and leader. As we’re going to see, Rus­so was seen chauf­feur­ing Fuentes to and from the Pale Horse offices. So the founder and leader of the group that sent out these Christ­mas cards was chauf­feur­ing Fuentes for his meet­ing with Pale Horse Strate­gies, the most influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive con­sult­ing group in Texas.

There’s also Julie McCar­ty, founder of the True Texas Project, anoth­er group that has Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. McCar­ty open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives Patrick Cru­sius in the wake of the El Paso Wal­mart attack. Three weeks before Fuentes’s meet­ing at Pale Horse Strate­gies, the True Texas Project co-host­ed a “pass­ing the torch” event in Dal­las that fea­tures John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side 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 — 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. A strat­e­gy that more or less describes what Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is doing right now.

It’s all key con­text for Cary Cheshire’s Christ­mas post­card attack on the Repub­li­can House Speak­er for being weak in immi­gra­tion: it was a polit­i­cal attack ad in the form of a Christ­mas card car­ried out by Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, a Defend Texas Lib­er­ty spin off run by open Nazis and close asso­ciates of Nick Fuentes, exe­cut­ing a strat­e­gy to fur­ther rad­i­cal­ize the Repub­li­can Par­ty that Fuentes has been advo­cat­ing for years:

The Texas Tri­bune

Nick Fuentes is just the lat­est white suprema­cist embraced by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty

While Fuentes’ unapolo­getic hate mon­ger­ing has made him one of the nation’s best-known white suprema­cists, he was mere­ly the lat­est in a long line of peo­ple who have been embraced by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its close allies.

by Robert Dow­nen
Oct. 23, 2023
Updat­ed: Oct. 24, 2023

In recent weeks, allies of the deep-pock­et­ed con­ser­v­a­tive PAC Defend Texas Lib­er­ty have sought to down­play a meet­ing between the group’s for­mer leader, Jonathan Stick­land, and promi­nent white suprema­cist Nick Fuentes. They’ve cast the vis­it as a one-off mis­take — and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he accept­ed an expla­na­tion that it was a “seri­ous blun­der.”

Respond­ing to calls for him to return the $3 mil­lion he received from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty this sum­mer, Patrick ini­tial­ly said he would not do so because there was “no hint of any links” between the group and any “anti­se­mit­ic orga­ni­za­tions or oth­er hate groups” when he took the funds in June.

There were, how­ev­er, ample links.

While Fuentes’ unapolo­getic hate mon­ger­ing has made him per­haps the nation’s best-known white suprema­cist, he was mere­ly the lat­est in a line of peo­ple who have been embraced by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its close allies despite pub­licly espous­ing anti­se­mit­ic views or part­ner­ing with extrem­ists. That includes, among oth­ers, Ella Mauld­ing, a social media coor­di­na­tor for Stickland’s con­sult­ing firm who has praised Fuentes as the “great­est civ­il rights leader in his­to­ry”; and Shel­by Griesinger, the trea­sur­er for Defend Texas Lib­er­ty who has claimed on social media that Jews wor­ship a false god and shared memes that depict them as the ene­my of Repub­li­cans..

Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee and one of the state’s most influ­en­tial donors to con­ser­v­a­tive groups and can­di­dates, includ­ing Patrick and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton. It is a key part of a sprawl­ing net­work of non­prof­its, dark mon­ey groups, polit­i­cal cam­paigns and media com­pa­nies that have received more than $100 mil­lion from three West Texas oil bil­lion­aires, Tim Dunn and broth­ers Far­ris and Dan Wilks, as part of a decades­long project to push Texas to the far right.

Ear­li­er this month, The Texas Tri­bune report­ed that Fuentes, an admir­er of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, recent­ly met with Stick­land for near­ly sev­en hours at the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a con­sult­ing firm for far-right groups that is owned by Stick­land and based just out­side of Fort Worth.

While Defend Texas Lib­er­ty issued a brief state­ment denounc­ing Fuentes, the PAC has not offered any details about the meet­ing. Last week, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty also qui­et­ly updat­ed its web­site to note that Luke Macias, a long­time con­ser­v­a­tive con­sul­tant, had replaced Stick­land as pres­i­dent. But the clos­est thing to an expla­na­tion for the Fuentes vis­it has come from Patrick who said ear­li­er this month that he spoke to Dunn, who told him “mis­takes were made” but were being cor­rect­ed.

Patrick did not respond to a request for com­ment for this sto­ry about the myr­i­ad Fuentes acolytes pre­vi­ous­ly and present­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Defend Texas Lib­er­ty. But on Mon­day, a day after his office was con­tact­ed by the Tri­bune, he issued a press release announc­ing that he is invest­ing $3 mil­lion — the same amount that he received from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty this sum­mer — in bonds for Israel.

Patrick also said he has been appalled to learn “about the anti-Semit­ic activ­i­ties among some in Texas who call them­selves con­ser­v­a­tives and Repub­li­cans.”

“Every Repub­li­can group in the state, no mat­ter how small or how large, includ­ing our State Par­ty, needs to root out this can­cer. Before any­one is hired or appoint­ed to a posi­tion of lead­er­ship, in addi­tion to their resume and work record, their social media needs to be reviewed,” Patrick said. “Those who are anti-Semit­ic are not wel­come in our par­ty.”

...

Fuentes’ acolytes

Led until last week by Stick­land, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Bed­ford whose polit­i­cal life was bankrolled by the West Texas oil bil­lion­aires, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty has in recent years emerged as a key play­er in an ongo­ing civ­il war between the Texas GOP’s far right and its more mod­er­ate, but still deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, wing.

Fall­out from the Fuentes vis­it comes as Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its allies gear up for a pri­ma­ry sea­son in which they’ve promised to spend big against those who sup­port­ed the impeach­ment of Pax­ton, a close ally who has received mil­lions of dol­lars from the group and its bil­lion­aire back­ers.

But Fuentes wasn’t the only anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist on site at Pale Horse Strate­gies this month. Among the atten­dees was Mauld­ing, a Mis­sis­sip­pi native who recent­ly moved to Texas to coor­di­nate social media for Pale Horse clients.

Mauld­ing is a well-known fol­low­er of Fuentes who has shared pho­tos on social media of the two togeth­er. She has post­ed tenets of the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry and, almost dai­ly, del­uges her tens of thou­sands of fol­low­ers with screeds about a “white geno­cide” that she claims is being coor­di­nat­ed by Jews through immi­gra­tion — a foun­da­tion­al neo-Nazi belief that has for years been used as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for racist ter­ror­ism and vio­lence, includ­ing by the gun­man who mas­sa­cred 22 peo­ple at an El Paso Wal­mart in 2019.

“For­eign­ers are anti-Amer­i­can by default,” Mauld­ing wrote on Oct. 10. “Why are we let­ting them replace us?”

Ear­li­er this month, after a Tri­bune reporter drew atten­tion to some of her posts on social media, Mauld­ing respond­ed direct­ly to accu­sa­tions by oth­ers that she was being anti­se­mit­ic.

“If anti­semitism means not want­i­ng my race geno­cid­ed and over­run by third worlders, hap­pi­ly,” she wrote on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, before again blast­ing the Unit­ed States’ finan­cial sup­port for Israel.

Dur­ing the meet­ing with Fuentes, Mauld­ing spent some time out­side the Pale Horse office record­ing a video for anoth­er Defend Texas Lib­er­ty-fund­ed group, Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders. In the video, she called on law­mak­ers to crack down on immi­gra­tion dur­ing the ongo­ing spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion.

Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders has emerged as an influ­en­tial voice in ongo­ing debates over immi­gra­tion, includ­ing around the Colony Ridge devel­op­ment near Hous­ton that law­mak­ers were asked by the gov­er­nor to address in the spe­cial ses­sion.

The group’s founder and pres­i­dent, Chris Rus­so, was seen chauf­feur­ing Fuentes to and from the meet­ing at Pale Horse Strate­gies this month. Mul­ti­ple peo­ple, who asked not to be named to avoid draw­ing the atten­tion of white nation­al­ists, told the Tri­bune that Rus­so has ties to Fuentes’ so-called “groyper” move­ment. Cary Cheshire, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders and a long­time employ­ee of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty-linked groups, was also at the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was on-site.

Also spot­ted out­side the meet­ing with Fuentes: Kyle Rit­ten­house, who has con­tin­ued to step up his engage­ment in far-right Texas pol­i­tics since he was acquit­ted of homi­cide after fatal­ly shoot­ing two peo­ple at a 2020 Black Lives Mat­ter protest in Wis­con­sin.

Rit­ten­house released a state­ment in response to the Tribune’s report­ing in which he said that he left the Pale Horse offices as soon as he learned Fuentes was present. Cit­ing his Jew­ish fam­i­ly mem­bers who he said were vic­tims of the Holo­caust, Rit­ten­house also strong­ly denounced Fuentes’ “hideous views.”

Rit­ten­house did not, how­ev­er, say any­thing about his con­nec­tion to Griesinger, the Defend Texas Lib­er­ty trea­sur­er who has said Jews wor­ship a false god, praised Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and shared QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that bor­row heav­i­ly from cen­turies-old tropes that have fre­quent­ly led to Jew­ish blood­shed, includ­ing in the Holo­caust..

In August, the Tri­bune report­ed that Rit­ten­house had launched a pro-Sec­ond Amend­ment non­prof­it, for which Griesinger is one of three board mem­bers, as he con­tin­ues to ramp up his involve­ment in Texas pol­i­tics.

The reg­is­tered agent for the Rit­ten­house Foun­da­tion is Tony McDon­ald, a long­time lawyer for groups con­nect­ed to Defend Texas Lib­er­ty. McDon­ald also rep­re­sent­ed Jim Watkins before a U.S. House com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol. Wakins and his son, Ron Watkins, are the own­ers and oper­a­tors of 8Chan, an online forum that has been cru­cial to the spread of QAnon and has been cit­ed by numer­ous mass shoot­ers and neo-Nazis as key to their rad­i­cal­iza­tion.

...

Ahead of Fuentes’ arrival at Pale Horse, Rit­ten­house was spot­ted help­ing a group of young men, some wear­ing t‑shirts for Stickland’s last reelec­tion cam­paign, load and unload fur­ni­ture from a U‑Haul into the back of the office build­ing.

Among them was Kon­ner Earnest, who has quick­ly made a name for him­self in far-right Texas pol­i­tics. Earnest was still in high school when he found­ed a stu­dent group that host­ed Fuentes col­lab­o­ra­tor Car­son Wolf, as well as Vince Dao, the co-founder of a spin-off group from Fuentes’ “Amer­i­ca First” move­ment.

Since grad­u­at­ing, Earnest has stepped up his engage­ment in right-wing pol­i­tics. Ear­li­er this month, an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist pub­lished pho­tos of Earnest at a meet­ing for the Hous­ton chap­ter of the Euro­pean Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty, a new group that claims Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship should be based on Euro­pean ances­try, among oth­er white nation­al­ist ideas.

In an inter­view he gave last year to the right-wing web­site Cur­rent Revolt, Earnest said he fre­quent­ly watch­es Fuentes’ show, praised oth­er far-right fig­ures and said he was work­ing for the 2022 cam­paign of Don Huffines. Huffines is a far-right for­mer state sen­a­tor whose unsuc­cess­ful chal­lenge to Gov. Greg Abbott last year received mil­lions of dol­lars from Defend Texas Lib­er­ty.

Earnest has also writ­ten anti-immi­gra­tion arti­cles for Texas Score­card, the media web­site that has for years been financed by Defend Texas Liberty’s bil­lion­aire fun­ders. And this year he’s made sev­er­al videos for Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders.

“Texas is for Tex­ans, and we won’t back down,” Earnest said in one August video for Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders that was record­ed out­side of the Pale Horse Strate­gies office.

True Texas Project

Oth­ers with direct ties to Defend Texas Lib­er­ty have been open about their extreme views for years, includ­ing Julie McCar­ty, the founder of True Texas Project. The Fort Worth-based orga­ni­za­tion is a cen­tral part of the Defend Texas Lib­er­ty net­work, orga­niz­ing vot­er dri­ves, fundrais­ers and oth­er events to mobi­lize Tea Par­ty activists and pres­sure law­mak­ers from the right. True Texas Project is also labeled as an extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, in part because of state­ments that McCar­ty and her hus­band and co-leader, Fred McCar­ty, have made about immi­grants.

In a Face­book post in the after­math of the El Paso Wal­mart mas­sacre, she seemed to express sym­pa­thy for shooter’s belief in the “great replace­ment the­o­ry,” a foun­da­tion­al white suprema­cist belief that there is an inten­tion­al, often Jew­ish-dri­ven, effort to replace white peo­ple through immi­gra­tion, inter­ra­cial mar­riage and the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty.

“I don’t con­done the actions, but I cer­tain­ly under­stand where they came from,” she wrote.

“You’re not going to demo­graph­i­cal­ly replace a once proud, strong peo­ple with­out get­ting blow-back,” respond­ed Fred McCar­ty.

True Texas Project’s largest fun­der is Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, fol­lowed by Dunn and then Empow­er Tex­ans, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that was one of the state’s most pro­lif­ic Repub­li­can donors until three years ago, when it was dis­solved and replaced by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty.

Bare­ly three weeks before Fuentes’ Pale Horse vis­it, True Texas Project co-host­ed a “pass­ing the torch” event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle, promi­nent far-right pod­cast host who has appeared at events along­side Fuentes, as well as Jake Lloyd Col­glazier, the leader of a Dal­las-based group that advo­cates for harsh anti-home­less poli­cies.

For years, Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent fig­ures in Fuentes’ fledg­ling army, using his job as a reporter and fill-in host on Alex Jones’ InfoWars to inter­view white nation­al­ists and ele­vate dan­ger­ous anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. On his YouTube show, Col­glazier dis­cussed his desire to “spit on George Floyd” and cheered at videos of Black peo­ple being killed by police, accord­ing to Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates, which exten­sive­ly tracked his involve­ment in the far right.

In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes and the leader of the neo-Nazi group Iden­ti­ty Evropa were the sole head­lin­ers of an explic­it­ly white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence, where they advo­cat­ed for pulling the nation­al GOP toward their most extreme views by con­stant­ly attack­ing con­ser­v­a­tives from the right on immi­gra­tion, sup­port for Israel and oth­er issues — a strat­e­gy that mir­rors Defend Texas Liberty’s.

Colglazier’s ties to Fuentes appear to have end­ed some time after the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, after which Fuentes said Col­glazier “desert­ed dis­si­dent pol­i­tics.”

In a Mon­day state­ment, Col­glazier decried what he called an attempt to “revive an old and clear­ly debunked nar­ra­tive.”

“I have not had any asso­ci­a­tion with Nick Fuentes in near­ly 3 years,” he added. “Any sug­ges­tion to the con­trary is sim­ply false.”

Like Earnest, Col­glazier worked for Huffines, serv­ing as deputy com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for his Defend Texas Lib­er­ty-backed cam­paign. After Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates report­ed on Colglazier’s past, Huffines said he would not bend to “can­cel cul­ture” by fir­ing him, and argued that it would be impos­si­ble to mon­i­tor the social media his­to­ry of every per­son in his employ. (Months pri­or, Huffines’ son and cam­paign staffer, Rus­sell Huffines, told a con­ser­v­a­tive web­site that Col­glazier was “with­out doubt” his “favorite right-wing e‑celeb.”)

True Texas Project also host­ed Col­glazier while he was work­ing for the Huffines cam­paign, and has repeat­ed­ly held events that fea­tured Stick­land, Huffines and Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Matt Rinal­di, whose career in the Texas House was bankrolled by Defend Texas Liberty’s main fun­ders. Next month, the group is host­ing Sen. Rand Paul, R‑Kentucky and U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R‑Irving, in sep­a­rate events.

Asked about the ongo­ing Fuentes scan­dal, Fred McCar­ty said in a Mon­day email that the con­tro­ver­sy is being pushed by “estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans in Austin” and a Repub­li­can con­sul­tant who wants Stick­land and Defend Texas Lib­er­ty “out of the way.”

“Defend Texas Lib­er­ty does­n’t embrace white suprema­cists, and every­one knows it,” he said. “Stick­land’s biggest crime, if any­thing, is being too trust­ing and hav­ing too big of a heart.”

————–

“Nick Fuentes is just the lat­est white suprema­cist embraced by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 10/23/2023

“While Fuentes’ unapolo­getic hate mon­ger­ing has made him per­haps the nation’s best-known white suprema­cist, he was mere­ly the lat­est in a line of peo­ple who have been embraced by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its close allies despite pub­licly espous­ing anti­se­mit­ic views or part­ner­ing with extrem­ists. That includes, among oth­ers, Ella Mauld­ing, a social media coor­di­na­tor for Stickland’s con­sult­ing firm who has praised Fuentes as the “great­est civ­il rights leader in his­to­ry”; and Shel­by Griesinger, the trea­sur­er for Defend Texas Lib­er­ty who has claimed on social media that Jews wor­ship a false god and shared memes that depict them as the ene­my of Repub­li­cans.”

It was always obvi­ous that the ‘whoops!’ expla­na­tion for Nick Fuentes’s sev­en hour meet­ing at Pale Horse Strate­gies was laugh­able on its face. You don’t ran­dom­ly have sev­en hour meet­ings. Espe­cial­ly not with noto­ri­ous neo-Nazis. But it’s when we see the string of open extrem­ists asso­ci­at­ed with Stick­land and Defend Texas Lib­er­ty that the absur­di­ty of the ‘we did­n’t know who he was’ excuse becomes glar­ing. Defend Texas Lib­er­ty’s social media coor­di­na­tor, Ella Mauld­ing, even praised Fuentes as the “great­est civ­il rights leader in his­to­ry,” while the group’s trea­sur­er, Shel­by Griesinger, called Jews the ene­my of Repub­li­cans on social media. Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is a nest of Nazis. And also one of the most influ­en­tial PACs in Texas. The clos­est the group has come to pro­vid­ing an expla­na­tion for the Fuentes meet is a state­ment from the Lt Gov. explain­ing how Tim Dunn told him “mis­takes were made”. Which is undoubt­ed­ly true. Allow­ing the world to catch wind of this meet­ing was indeed a mis­take. It was sup­posed to be a secret neo-Nazi gath­er­ing:

...
Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee and one of the state’s most influ­en­tial donors to con­ser­v­a­tive groups and can­di­dates, includ­ing Patrick and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton. It is a key part of a sprawl­ing net­work of non­prof­its, dark mon­ey groups, polit­i­cal cam­paigns and media com­pa­nies that have received more than $100 mil­lion from three West Texas oil bil­lion­aires, Tim Dunn and broth­ers Far­ris and Dan Wilks, as part of a decades­long project to push Texas to the far right.

Ear­li­er this month, The Texas Tri­bune report­ed that Fuentes, an admir­er of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, recent­ly met with Stick­land for near­ly sev­en hours at the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a con­sult­ing firm for far-right groups that is owned by Stick­land and based just out­side of Fort Worth.

While Defend Texas Lib­er­ty issued a brief state­ment denounc­ing Fuentes, the PAC has not offered any details about the meet­ing. Last week, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty also qui­et­ly updat­ed its web­site to note that Luke Macias, a long­time con­ser­v­a­tive con­sul­tant, had replaced Stick­land as pres­i­dent. But the clos­est thing to an expla­na­tion for the Fuentes vis­it has come from Patrick who said ear­li­er this month that he spoke to Dunn, who told him “mis­takes were made” but were being cor­rect­ed.
...

But anoth­er part of the con­text here is the fact that Defend Texas Lib­er­ty is gear­ing up to pri­ma­ry the Repub­li­cans who aren’t already part of this fac­tion of the Texas GOP. In oth­er words, this Christ­mas card attack on Dade Phe­lan was part of an ongo­ing pow­er play. An intim­i­da­tion tac­tic, by the looks of it. Defend Texas Lib­er­ty was mak­ing an exam­ple out of Dade Phe­lan:

...
Led until last week by Stick­land, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Bed­ford whose polit­i­cal life was bankrolled by the West Texas oil bil­lion­aires, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty has in recent years emerged as a key play­er in an ongo­ing civ­il war between the Texas GOP’s far right and its more mod­er­ate, but still deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, wing.

Fall­out from the Fuentes vis­it comes as Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and its allies gear up for a pri­ma­ry sea­son in which they’ve promised to spend big against those who sup­port­ed the impeach­ment of Pax­ton, a close ally who has received mil­lions of dol­lars from the group and its bil­lion­aire back­ers.
...

And then there’s the fact that Ella Mauld­ing was on site dur­ing Fuentes’s sev­en hour vis­it. This is the same per­son who pub­licly push­es ‘white geno­cide’ nar­ra­tives almost dai­ly to tens of thou­sands of fol­low­ers online. So what was Mauld­ing doing dur­ing Fuentes’s vis­it? Record­ing a video for Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, a group found­ed by Chris Rus­so, the per­son seen chauf­feur­ing Fuentes to and from the Pale Horse Strate­gies meet­ing. Cary Cheshire just hap­pens to be the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders. So the per­son who sent the attack Christ­mas cards is the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the group whose co-founder was chauf­feur­ing Fuentes to that now noto­ri­ous meet­ing:

...
But Fuentes wasn’t the only anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist on site at Pale Horse Strate­gies this month. Among the atten­dees was Mauld­ing, a Mis­sis­sip­pi native who recent­ly moved to Texas to coor­di­nate social media for Pale Horse clients.

Mauld­ing is a well-known fol­low­er of Fuentes who has shared pho­tos on social media of the two togeth­er. She has post­ed tenets of the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry and, almost dai­ly, del­uges her tens of thou­sands of fol­low­ers with screeds about a “white geno­cide” that she claims is being coor­di­nat­ed by Jews through immi­gra­tion — a foun­da­tion­al neo-Nazi belief that has for years been used as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for racist ter­ror­ism and vio­lence, includ­ing by the gun­man who mas­sa­cred 22 peo­ple at an El Paso Wal­mart in 2019.

“For­eign­ers are anti-Amer­i­can by default,” Mauld­ing wrote on Oct. 10. “Why are we let­ting them replace us?”

Ear­li­er this month, after a Tri­bune reporter drew atten­tion to some of her posts on social media, Mauld­ing respond­ed direct­ly to accu­sa­tions by oth­ers that she was being anti­se­mit­ic.

“If anti­semitism means not want­i­ng my race geno­cid­ed and over­run by third worlders, hap­pi­ly,” she wrote on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, before again blast­ing the Unit­ed States’ finan­cial sup­port for Israel.

Dur­ing the meet­ing with Fuentes, Mauld­ing spent some time out­side the Pale Horse office record­ing a video for anoth­er Defend Texas Lib­er­ty-fund­ed group, Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders. In the video, she called on law­mak­ers to crack down on immi­gra­tion dur­ing the ongo­ing spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion.

Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders has emerged as an influ­en­tial voice in ongo­ing debates over immi­gra­tion, includ­ing around the Colony Ridge devel­op­ment near Hous­ton that law­mak­ers were asked by the gov­er­nor to address in the spe­cial ses­sion.

The group’s founder and pres­i­dent, Chris Rus­so, was seen chauf­feur­ing Fuentes to and from the meet­ing at Pale Horse Strate­gies this month. Mul­ti­ple peo­ple, who asked not to be named to avoid draw­ing the atten­tion of white nation­al­ists, told the Tri­bune that Rus­so has ties to Fuentes’ so-called “groyper” move­ment. Cary Cheshire, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Tex­ans For Strong Bor­ders and a long­time employ­ee of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty-linked groups, was also at the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was on-site.
...

And as an exam­ple of how influ­en­tial this net­work has become, we find none oth­er than Kyle Rit­ten­house, now a right-wing media star, also present at Pale Horse Strate­gies dur­ing Fuentes’s vis­it. And it turns out Shel­by Griesinger is one of three board mem­bers for a new pro-Sec­ond Amend­ment non­prof­it Rit­ten­house launched back in August. In addi­tion, the reg­is­tered agent for the Rit­ten­house Foun­da­tion is Tony McDon­ald, a lawyer for a num­ber of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty affil­i­ates, along with Jim Watkins. Recall the evi­dence sug­gest­ing Jim and Ron Watkins are the fig­ures behind QAnon. Yes, one of the Defend Texas Lib­er­ty lawyer might be Q’s lawyer too:

...
Also spot­ted out­side the meet­ing with Fuentes: Kyle Rit­ten­house, who has con­tin­ued to step up his engage­ment in far-right Texas pol­i­tics since he was acquit­ted of homi­cide after fatal­ly shoot­ing two peo­ple at a 2020 Black Lives Mat­ter protest in Wis­con­sin.

Rit­ten­house released a state­ment in response to the Tribune’s report­ing in which he said that he left the Pale Horse offices as soon as he learned Fuentes was present. Cit­ing his Jew­ish fam­i­ly mem­bers who he said were vic­tims of the Holo­caust, Rit­ten­house also strong­ly denounced Fuentes’ “hideous views.”

Rit­ten­house did not, how­ev­er, say any­thing about his con­nec­tion to Griesinger, the Defend Texas Lib­er­ty trea­sur­er who has said Jews wor­ship a false god, praised Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and shared QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that bor­row heav­i­ly from cen­turies-old tropes that have fre­quent­ly led to Jew­ish blood­shed, includ­ing in the Holo­caust..

In August, the Tri­bune report­ed that Rit­ten­house had launched a pro-Sec­ond Amend­ment non­prof­it, for which Griesinger is one of three board mem­bers, as he con­tin­ues to ramp up his involve­ment in Texas pol­i­tics.

The reg­is­tered agent for the Rit­ten­house Foun­da­tion is Tony McDon­ald, a long­time lawyer for groups con­nect­ed to Defend Texas Lib­er­ty. McDon­ald also rep­re­sent­ed Jim Watkins before a U.S. House com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol. Wakins and his son, Ron Watkins, are the own­ers and oper­a­tors of 8Chan, an online forum that has been cru­cial to the spread of QAnon and has been cit­ed by numer­ous mass shoot­ers and neo-Nazis as key to their rad­i­cal­iza­tion.
...

Anoth­er exam­ple of how this group direct­ly pro­motes a ‘white geno­cide’ nar­ra­tive, there’s Julie McCar­ty, founder of anoth­er Defend Texas Lib­er­ty spin-off group, the True Texas Project. McCar­ty open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of the El Paso ter­ror attack:

...
Oth­ers with direct ties to Defend Texas Lib­er­ty have been open about their extreme views for years, includ­ing Julie McCar­ty, the founder of True Texas Project. The Fort Worth-based orga­ni­za­tion is a cen­tral part of the Defend Texas Lib­er­ty net­work, orga­niz­ing vot­er dri­ves, fundrais­ers and oth­er events to mobi­lize Tea Par­ty activists and pres­sure law­mak­ers from the right. True Texas Project is also labeled as an extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, in part because of state­ments that McCar­ty and her hus­band and co-leader, Fred McCar­ty, have made about immi­grants.

In a Face­book post in the after­math of the El Paso Wal­mart mas­sacre, she seemed to express sym­pa­thy for shooter’s belief in the “great replace­ment the­o­ry,” a foun­da­tion­al white suprema­cist belief that there is an inten­tion­al, often Jew­ish-dri­ven, effort to replace white peo­ple through immi­gra­tion, inter­ra­cial mar­riage and the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty.

“I don’t con­done the actions, but I cer­tain­ly under­stand where they came from,” she wrote.

“You’re not going to demo­graph­i­cal­ly replace a once proud, strong peo­ple with­out get­ting blow-back,” respond­ed Fred McCar­ty.

True Texas Project’s largest fun­der is Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, fol­lowed by Dunn and then Empow­er Tex­ans, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that was one of the state’s most pro­lif­ic Repub­li­can donors until three years ago, when it was dis­solved and replaced by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty.
...

But per­haps the best exam­ple how close­ly Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and Pale Horse Strate­gies are work­ing togeth­er was the 2019 white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where Nick Fuentes was one of the head­lin­ers along side Jake Lloyd Col­glazier and Patrick Casey the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa. It was there where they advo­cat­ed for effec­tive­ly car­ry­ing out the exact same strat­e­gy cur­rent­ly pur­sued by Defend Texas Lib­er­ty:

...
Bare­ly three weeks before Fuentes’ Pale Horse vis­it, True Texas Project co-host­ed a “pass­ing the torch” event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle, promi­nent far-right pod­cast host who has appeared at events along­side Fuentes, as well as Jake Lloyd Col­glazier, the leader of a Dal­las-based group that advo­cates for harsh anti-home­less poli­cies.

For years, Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent fig­ures in Fuentes’ fledg­ling army, using his job as a reporter and fill-in host on Alex Jones’ InfoWars to inter­view white nation­al­ists and ele­vate dan­ger­ous anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. On his YouTube show, Col­glazier dis­cussed his desire to “spit on George Floyd” and cheered at videos of Black peo­ple being killed by police, accord­ing to Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates, which exten­sive­ly tracked his involve­ment in the far right.

In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes and the leader of the neo-Nazi group Iden­ti­ty Evropa were the sole head­lin­ers of an explic­it­ly white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence, where they advo­cat­ed for pulling the nation­al GOP toward their most extreme views by con­stant­ly attack­ing con­ser­v­a­tives from the right on immi­gra­tion, sup­port for Israel and oth­er issues — a strat­e­gy that mir­rors Defend Texas Liberty’s.
...

As we can see, Fuentes was pub­licly advo­cat­ing a strat­e­gy of pub­licly attack­ing con­ser­v­a­tives for not being con­ser­v­a­tive enough back in 2019. The strat­e­gy that Defend Texas Free­dom is now using to rad­i­cal­ize the Texas Repub­li­can cau­cus. A strat­e­gy that appears to have been used to great suc­cess. So great a suc­cess that we now of Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders — found­ed and led by Nazis while oper­at­ing as a Defend Texas Free­dom front — send­ing Christ­mas card polit­i­cal attacks against the Repub­li­can House Speak­er. The same strat­e­gy Fuentes, Col­glazier, and Iden­ti­ty Evropa leader Patrick Casey were advo­cat­ing in 2019.

But pub­licly attack­ing Repub­li­cans is only one of the strate­gies these groups are deploy­ing to rad­i­cal­ize the Repub­li­can Par­ty. As the fol­low­ing Octo­ber 2018 NBC News report makes clear, Patrick Casey had no inten­tion of hid­ing his oth­er plan to move the par­ty fur­ther to the right. A plan to have Iden­ti­ty Evropa mem­bers secret­ly infil­trate the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And in par­tic­u­lar tar­get young col­lege Repub­li­cans for rad­i­cal­iza­tion. This is a good time to recall how women who left Iden­ti­ty Evropa describe jokes about impos­ing ‘white sharia’ to force white women to breed. As one girl put it, her boyfriend’s view was, “ ‘Women deserve to be sub­ju­gat­ed. Women deserve to be humil­i­at­ed. Women deserve to be raped. Women deserve to be impreg­nat­ed.’ It wasn’t a joke. ... I can’t believe I sup­port­ed that stuff.” That’s a big part of the rad­i­cal­iza­tion Iden­ti­ty Evropa has in mind. “White sharia” and vir­u­lent open white nation­al­ism real­ly is on the agen­da and they want to get as many Repub­li­cans in on it as pos­si­ble:

NBC News

White nation­al­ist leader is plot­ting to ‘take over the GOP’

Iden­ti­ty Evropa is push­ing its mem­bers to stealth­ily infil­trate Repub­li­can pol­i­tics to move the par­ty toward its agen­da of ban­ning non­white immi­gra­tion.

Oct. 17, 2018, 6:53 AM CDT
By Anna Schecter

Patrick Casey blend­ed in eas­i­ly with the but­toned-up crowd at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence held out­side Wash­ing­ton, D.C., ear­li­er this year.

His boy­ish face was clean-shaven. His brown hair was close-cropped. And he shuf­fled between the net­work­ing break­fasts and pan­el dis­cus­sions wear­ing a maroon sweater, match­ing col­lared shirt and crisp kha­ki pants.

But despite all out­ward appear­ances, Casey, 29, was­n’t like all of the oth­er Repub­li­cans at CPAC, the largest annu­al gath­er­ing of con­ser­v­a­tive activists in the U.S.

He was­n’t there only to cham­pi­on con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. Casey had ulte­ri­or motives: to covert­ly spread the mes­sage of the white nation­al­ist group he leads.

As the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, Casey is on a bold mis­sion. “To take over the GOP as much as pos­si­ble,” he told NBC News.

Casey and his rough­ly 800 fel­low mem­bers believe eth­nic diver­si­ty dam­ages the coun­try. Embold­ened by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s rhetoric on race and immi­gra­tion, they advo­cate for allow­ing only Cau­casians to immi­grate to the U.S. in order to main­tain a “white super­ma­jor­i­ty.”

In Casey’s per­fect world, whites would live among whites in North Amer­i­ca, West­ern Europe, Aus­tralia, and South Africa, blacks would live among blacks in Africa, Asians in Asia, and His­pan­ics in Latin Amer­i­ca. “Eth­nic diver­si­ty has been proven time and time again in many stud­ies to be very detri­men­tal for social cohe­sion, social cap­i­tal, and it’s just not a good mod­el for soci­ety,” he said.

Iden­ti­ty Evropa gained noto­ri­ety last year when it helped orga­nize the Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia. The gath­er­ing of white suprema­cists end­ed with a white nation­al­ist plow­ing his car into a group of coun­ter­pro­test­ers, killing 32-year-old Heather Hey­er.

Casey now sees pol­i­tics rather than protests as the prime vehi­cle to car­ry his brand of white iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics into the main­stream.

He knows that his extreme racial views are unwel­come in many cor­ners of the coun­try. So Casey takes pains to present him­self as a clean-cut, upstand­ing young pro­fes­sion­al.

His group fol­lows strict appear­ance rules: no vis­i­ble tat­toos, good groom­ing, only con­ser­v­a­tive cloth­ing. When chat­ting up young peo­ple at events like CPAC, Casey knows it’s cru­cial that he looks the part of your typ­i­cal Repub­li­can boost­er.

“I did­n’t walk in there with, you know, an Iden­ti­ty Evropa fly­er past­ed on my fore­head or any­thing,” Casey said. “But I did have many great con­ver­sa­tions with par­tic­u­lar­ly the younger atten­dees, col­lege Repub­li­can types.”

Casey’s strat­e­gy is focused on that very demo­graph­ic.

He has direct­ed his mem­bers to blan­ket col­lege cam­pus­es with recruit­ing fliers as part of a nation­wide effort span­ning schools from San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty to New York Uni­ver­si­ty. The goal: seed Col­lege Repub­li­can groups with Iden­ti­ty Evropa mem­bers as a step­ping stone to careers into pol­i­tics.

In oth­er words, fol­low the path of James All­sup.

Two years ago, All­sup was the head of the Col­lege Repub­li­cans at Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty where he gained atten­tion for his online rants against minori­ties and the “Trump Wall” he built on cam­pus.

In June, the out­spo­ken Iden­ti­ty Evropa mem­ber took a step in mov­ing up the GOP lad­der, land­ing a posi­tion as an elect­ed precinct coun­ty offi­cer in Whit­man Coun­ty, Wash­ing­ton.

The 23-year-old ran for the posi­tion unop­posed, but all that mat­ters to Casey is that he secured the GOP posi­tion at all. Though in Casey’s eyes, All­sup made a cru­cial mis­take along the way: He expressed his views too open­ly.

All­sup’s appoint­ment prompt­ed strong rebukes by some local Repub­li­can lead­ers and led to the res­ig­na­tion of the Spokane Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty’s chair­woman after a video sur­faced show­ing her defend­ing him at a group meet­ing.

“He should not be allowed to speak to any­body that could be asso­ci­at­ed with the Repub­li­can Par­ty,” Spokane Coun­ty Sher­iff Ozzie Kne­zovich said at an August news con­fer­ence, accord­ing to local NBC affil­i­ate KHQ.

For Casey, the sharp crit­i­cism only val­i­dates his strat­e­gy.

His phi­los­o­phy calls for iden­ti­tar­i­ans, the term he and his ilk use to describe them­selves, to infil­trate the Repub­li­can par­ty with­out broad­cast­ing their polar­iz­ing views on immi­grants and non­whites.

“All­sup is a capa­ble and intel­li­gent man, but ide­al­ly our mem­bers inter­est­ed in get­ting involved in pol­i­tics will do so covert­ly — that is, with­out open­ly iden­ti­fy­ing as iden­ti­tar­i­ans, at least not upfront,” Casey said.

...

A spokesman for the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee declined to com­ment on Iden­ti­ty Evropa itself, say­ing he did­n’t want to ele­vate the group. Instead, he referred to a res­o­lu­tion that the par­ty passed in the wake of the vio­lence in Char­lottesville.

“The racist beliefs of Nazis, the KKK, white suprema­cists and oth­er like-mind­ed groups are com­plete­ly incon­sis­tent with the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s plat­form that states ‘all Amer­i­cans stand equal before the law’ and their racist agen­da has no place in the Unit­ed States,” it said.

Experts say groups like Iden­ti­ty Evropa rep­re­sent a new wave of white suprema­cists who are more sophis­ti­cat­ed and strate­gic than their pre­de­ces­sors. “These are very smart, very savvy groups and that’s one of the things that dif­fer­en­ti­ates them from groups of the past,” said Cyn­thia Miller-Idriss, a pro­fes­sor of edu­ca­tion and soci­ol­o­gy at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty. “You can’t just write them off as igno­rant thugs.”

Hei­di Beirich, direc­tor of the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter’s Intel­li­gence Report, described Iden­ti­ty Evropa as one of the “most active of the new hate groups” and “one of the fore­most pur­vey­ors of white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da in the U.S.”

Iden­ti­ty Evropa was found­ed by Marine vet­er­an Nathan Dami­go. Dami­go was serv­ing six years in prison for armed rob­bery when he joined a white suprema­cist gang and dis­cov­ered books by a for­mer grand wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.

Dami­go was released in 2014. Two years lat­er, he formed the group with the help of now well-known white nation­al­ist Richard Spencer. But Dami­go stepped down in the fall of 2017 after a video sur­faced online show­ing him punch­ing a female Antifa pro­test­er in the face dur­ing a protest at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

Casey took the reins in ear­ly 2018 and con­tin­ued the push to infil­trate the GOP ranks in order to influ­ence pol­i­tics and cul­ture.

The orga­ni­za­tion only accepts whites of Euro­pean descent who are non-Jews. Mem­bers are banned from dat­ing any­one out­side of their race.

Casey runs Iden­ti­ty Evropa from a lap­top in his home a few hours out­side Wash­ing­ton. Much of the work involves post­ing pod­casts online from mem­bers around the coun­try, as well as dis­sem­i­nat­ing pho­tos of pro­pa­gan­da fly­ers post­ed to the group’s 30,000-plus fol­low­ers on Twit­ter.

Casey also leads the group in what he describes as “actions.” Over the sum­mer, Casey and two dozen of his mem­bers unfurled a giant ban­ner on a 50-foot arch­way over Fort Try­on Park in upper Man­hat­tan. “Stop the Inva­sion. End Immi­gra­tion,” it read.

In July, more than a dozen Iden­ti­ty Evropa mem­bers and sup­port­ers gath­ered out­side the Mex­i­can Con­sulate in New York City and held up giant green and white cut-out let­ters that spelled out “BUILD THE WALL.”

Casey, with a mega­phone in hand and a “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” hat on his head, marched up and down the block revving up the group of young men.

...

————-

“White nation­al­ist leader is plot­ting to ‘take over the GOP’ ” By Anna Schecter; NBC News; 10/17/2018

“As the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, Casey is on a bold mis­sion. “To take over the GOP as much as pos­si­ble,” he told NBC News.”

Patrick Casey was­n’t even try­ing to hide it when talk­ing to reporters in 2018. Which is rather remark­able giv­en that he was talk­ing about a covert cam­paign to take over the GOP. But here he was, in Octo­ber of 2018, mak­ing it clear to the world, and espe­cial­ly the GOP, that he was exe­cut­ing a plan to get as many of his Iden­ti­ty Evropa mem­bers into the GOP as pos­si­ble:

...
Casey now sees pol­i­tics rather than protests as the prime vehi­cle to car­ry his brand of white iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics into the main­stream.

He knows that his extreme racial views are unwel­come in many cor­ners of the coun­try. So Casey takes pains to present him­self as a clean-cut, upstand­ing young pro­fes­sion­al.

His group fol­lows strict appear­ance rules: no vis­i­ble tat­toos, good groom­ing, only con­ser­v­a­tive cloth­ing. When chat­ting up young peo­ple at events like CPAC, Casey knows it’s cru­cial that he looks the part of your typ­i­cal Repub­li­can boost­er.

“I did­n’t walk in there with, you know, an Iden­ti­ty Evropa fly­er past­ed on my fore­head or any­thing,” Casey said. “But I did have many great con­ver­sa­tions with par­tic­u­lar­ly the younger atten­dees, col­lege Repub­li­can types.”

Casey’s strat­e­gy is focused on that very demo­graph­ic.

He has direct­ed his mem­bers to blan­ket col­lege cam­pus­es with recruit­ing fliers as part of a nation­wide effort span­ning schools from San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty to New York Uni­ver­si­ty. The goal: seed Col­lege Repub­li­can groups with Iden­ti­ty Evropa mem­bers as a step­ping stone to careers into pol­i­tics.

...

His phi­los­o­phy calls for iden­ti­tar­i­ans, the term he and his ilk use to describe them­selves, to infil­trate the Repub­li­can par­ty with­out broad­cast­ing their polar­iz­ing views on immi­grants and non­whites.

...

Casey took the reins in ear­ly 2018 and con­tin­ued the push to infil­trate the GOP ranks in order to influ­ence pol­i­tics and cul­ture.
...

How suc­cess­ful has Iden­ti­ty Evropa been over the past five years in its quest to infil­trate the GOP? They aren’t going to list all their suc­cess­ful infil­tra­tors. But as the fall­out over the now noto­ri­ous Pale Horse Strate­gies meet­ing with Nick Fuentes should make clear, the merg­er of the Texas GOP with the white Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist far right is effec­tive­ly a done deal. Pre­sum­ably with plen­ty of con­verts. Sure, fig­ures not on board with this merg­er still exist in the Texas GOP, includ­ing Speak­er Phe­lan. But there’s no deny­ing that Phe­lan’s fac­tion of the Texas GOP is los­ing this bat­tle for the hearts and minds of the Texas GOP. Just as the coali­tion of Nick Fuentes, Iden­ti­ty Evropa, and white Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists work­ing for Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Free­dom is unde­ni­ably win­ning. Time will tell. Like­ly in the form of more nasty Christ­mas card next year. And a lot more unof­fi­cial ‘oops!’ meet­ings between top Texas GOP offi­cials and the kind of Nazis the par­ty just held a 32–29 vote to ensure it can con­tin­ue merg­ing with.

What’s in store for the Texas GOP in 2024? We’re about to find out. But we prob­a­bly aren’t going to like the answer. At least assum­ing cur­rent trends con­tin­ue. Trends like the grow­ing con­sol­i­da­tion of the fac­tion of the par­ty loy­al to Tim Dunn, the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist oil bil­lion­aire who has spent the last cou­ple of decades build­ing a polit­i­cal finance machine that now has a major­i­ty of the Texas Repub­li­cans in the state sen­ate on the take. But also trends like the qui­et embrace of Nazis like Nick Fuentes, who attend­ed a sev­en hour meet­ing back on Octo­ber 6 at the offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, one of the most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal con­sult­ing groups in the state and close­ly con­nect­ed to Dun­n’s influ­ence net­work. As we saw, oth­er fig­ures who just hap­pened to be at the Pale Horse offices at the time includ­ing Kyle Rit­ten­house and Matt Rinal­di, chair­man of the Repub­li­can exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. The same exec­u­tive com­mit­tee that vot­ed down, in a 32–29 vote, a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for the par­ty to dis­as­so­ci­ate with known Nazis and Holo­caust deniers in the wake of the con­tro­ver­sy over the meet­ing with Fuentes. Oh, and the Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton — one of the high­est rank­ing state offi­cials to be part of Dun­n’s polit­i­cal empire — was impeached for cor­rup­tion and bribery by the GOP-con­trolled Texas House but ulti­mate­ly acquit­ted by the GOP-con­trolled Texas Sen­ate. Again, a major­i­ty of the Texas GOP­ers in the state sen­ate took mon­ey from Dun­n’s polit­i­cal machine. So it has­n’t just been a rough year for the Texas GOP from a pub­lic rela­tions per­spec­tive. The par­ty is in the mid­dle of a very real civ­il war, with Dun­n’s Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist polit­i­cal machine on one side and the rest of the Texas GOP on the oth­er.

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing fas­ci­nat­ing Texas Month­ly arti­cle excerpt about the rise of Matt Rinal­di, the par­ty’s chair who hap­pened to be at Pale Horse Strate­gies dur­ing that sev­en hour meet­ing with Nick Fuentes. As the arti­cle describes, Rinal­di isn’t exact­ly your tra­di­tion­al par­ty chair. Instead of work­ing to keep all the var­i­ous fac­tions of the par­ty work­ing togeth­er, Rinal­di is serv­ing in a more Trumpian mold: exact­ing revenge on GOP­ers who have yet to align them­selves with the Dunn agen­da.

Rinal­di did­n’t start off as one of Dun­n’s polit­i­cal min­ions. Instead, he was a min­ion of Dal­las bil­lion­aire hote­lier Mon­ty Ben­nett, who financed Rinaldi’s ini­tial run for judge in 2010 before mak­ing Rinal­di a direc­tor of one of his real estate invest­ment trusts in 2013. From that posi­tion, Rinal­di got to know Tex­as­’s politi­cians on a much friend­lier lev­el thanks to the incred­i­ble state laws that allow com­pa­nies to hire state leg­is­la­tors.

In 2014, he again ran for office as an anti-RINO Repub­li­can and some­one who will try to oust then-Repub­li­can House Speak­er Joe Straus. Recall how Tim Dunn per­son­al­ly told Straus, who is Jew­ish, to step down because only Chris­tians should hold pow­er in Dun­n’s view. Rinal­di was by this point aligned with the Dunn fac­tion intent on push­ing the par­ty fur­ther to the right. And boy did they suc­ceed. In 2018, Rinal­di was first elect­ed by the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee to par­ty chair with 34 votes. The “nor­mal guy” can­di­date got 6 votes. Since then, Rinal­di has been oper­at­ing as Dun­n’s polit­i­cal ham­mer, with plans are accru­ing even more pow­er over the par­ty, includ­ing the pro­pos­al that the par­ty chair have the right to veto can­di­dates select­ed by vot­ers in the pri­ma­ry. Which is, of course, a recipe for an ide­o­log­i­cal purge of the par­ty, poten­tial­ly per­ma­nent­ly. And all indi­ca­tions are Rinal­di is going to keep his job in 2024, prob­a­bly unop­posed.

Now, the Texas GOP has­n’t been cap­tured entire­ly yet. The House is still led by Speak­er Dade Phalen, one of the top tar­get of Dun­n’s net­work. And the fact that the House vot­ed to impeach Ken Pax­ton is a sign of just how unpop­u­lar the Dunn wing is with the rest of the Texas GOP. Inter­est­ing­ly, it sounds like this par­ty divide fol­lows region­al lines, with rep­re­sen­ta­tives for sub­ur­ban areas tend­ing to be aligned with Dunn while rur­al con­ser­v­a­tives have become the rel­a­tive mod­er­ates in the par­ty. The sub­ur­ban con­ser­v­a­tives also tend more to be peo­ple who weren’t born in Texas and only moved there more recent­ly and don’t have a mem­o­ry of the state’s more bipar­ti­san eras of the past. Tex­as­’s sub­urb are also, of course, the home base of the SBC mega-church­es that play an increas­ing­ly impor­tant orga­niz­ing role in Tex­as­’s polit­i­cal sphere. So the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty’s civ­il war could end up with the state offi­cials rep­re­sent­ing the com­mu­ni­ties that are home to the pow­er­ful SBC mega-church­es exe­cut­ing a par­ty pow­er grab. Which is more or less what we should expect from a pow­er grab orches­trat­ed by Tim Dunn. He’s a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist. Any pow­er grab he finances is going to be a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pow­er grab.

But as we should also expect, this pow­er play isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pop­u­lar with the rest of the Texas GOP estab­lish­ment. Which pre­sum­ably explain, in part, why Rinal­di report­ed­ly has­n’t had much suc­cess in fundrais­ing as the par­ty chair, out­side of the mon­ey he’s able to raise from Dunn. So Dunn is increas­ing­ly the financier of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty’s oper­a­tions. And that brings us to the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt below: Tim Dunn just sold his oil com­pa­ny for $12 bil­lion, which is expect­ed to earn Dunn $2 bil­lion per­son­al­ly. In oth­er words, Dunn has a lot more mon­ey to throw into this pow­er grab.

Final­ly, giv­en the real­i­ty that this is a pow­er grab being exe­cut­ed by allies of Nick Fuentes, it’s worth not­ing what Fuentes recent­ly called for after con­ser­v­a­tive take pow­er: the exe­cu­tion of ‘occul­tic Jews’. It’s the grim real­i­ty of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty today. The par­ty chair, Matt Rinal­di, uses his posi­tion to expand the influ­ence of Tim Dun­n’s polit­i­cal empire. An empire that has a grow­ing alliance with Fuentes’s Groyper Army. And Rinal­di just hap­pened to ‘acci­den­tal­ly’ be in the build­ing dur­ing the sev­en hour meet­ing with Fuentes as Pale Horse Strate­gies almost three months ago. The more we learn, the grim­mer it gets.

Ok, first, here’s that Texas Month­ly arti­cle about the rise of Matt Rinal­di, the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty chair with the grand idea of giv­ing the par­ty chair the pow­er to decide who can run as a Repub­li­can:

Texas Month­ly

Sin­ners in the Hands of an Angry GOP

For a long time, Texas Repub­li­can chair­man Matt Rinal­di couldn’t win elec­tions. Now he wants to decide them—by exact­ing revenge on oppo­nents with­in his par­ty.

By Christo­pher Hooks
Decem­ber 2023

Why are Texas Repub­li­cans “so ter­ri­ble”? Why do they abet tyran­ny and per­se­cute the vul­ner­a­ble? That was the sub­ject of a Jan­u­ary episode of the pod­cast Con­ser­v­a­tive Review, host­ed by Daniel Horowitz of Blaze News. Horowitz is no bleed­ing-heart lib­er­al: this crit­i­cism was com­ing from the right. The state GOP, Horowitz said, had left Tex­ans defense­less against “tran­nies” and the “Fourth Reich exec­u­tive branch” of Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott, whose jack­boot­ed state agen­cies were oppress­ing Tex­ans in unprece­dent­ed ways.

Such dis­course is increas­ing­ly com­mon on the right. But Horowitz had a guest to give expert tes­ti­mo­ny: Matt Rinal­di, the chair­man of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas. Rinal­di laughed at Horowitz’s ques­tion and for a half hour gave his diag­noses of why the par­ty he runs had gone ran­cid in the sun. Elect­ed offi­cials were par­a­lyzed by inde­ci­sion and cow­ardice, he said. “A whole lot of noth­ing is hap­pen­ing while this huge cul­ture war is engulf­ing the coun­try, and we have a chance to lose it.”

In sub­ur­ban areas, true con­ser­v­a­tives can be elect­ed, but Repub­li­cans in rur­al areas are too often “swayed by the cham­ber of com­merce and cor­po­ra­tions” and spe­cial inter­est groups. Go to many parts of East Texas, he said, and “the school will be the most majes­tic build­ing you see with­in six­ty miles.” He meant this to be an indict­ment.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the chair­man of the Texas GOP has served as the party’s top cheer­leader. Chair­men are elect­ed not by the pub­lic but by a small num­ber of par­ty del­e­gates, and they have no real man­date to pur­sue polit­i­cal change. Instead, they his­tor­i­cal­ly have main­tained a kind of ecu­meni­cal approach to the many dif­fer­ing Repub­li­can fac­tions among vot­ers, activists, elect­ed offi­cials, and donors. Part of the rea­son the GOP took pow­er in Texas is that it was flex­i­ble enough to appeal to every­one from John Bircher preach­ers to Rotary Club pres­i­dents: the par­ty was a big tent.

Rinal­di has a dif­fer­ent vision. Instead of tying the fac­tions togeth­er, the par­ty orga­ni­za­tion should be a cud­gel with which to bring Repub­li­cans in line. With the sup­port of his long­time friends—a right-wing crew that includes bil­lion­aire oil­men Tim Dunn, who is a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist, and Dan and Far­ris Wilks—Rinaldi believes he should be the one to do the blud­geon­ing. For many Tex­ans it has been a mat­ter of some con­cern that the most-con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry voters—some 3 per­cent of the state’s pop­u­la­tion—wield so much polit­i­cal pow­er. Rinal­di wants to ensure they have even more.

On the pod­cast Horowitz asked Rinal­di if the solu­tion to the prob­lem of RINOs—Republicans in name only—might involve doing away entire­ly with pri­maries decid­ed by pop­u­lar vote. Per­haps the par­ty should pick which can­di­dates can run as Repub­li­cans, Horowitz said. “Your par­ty is your brand,” Rinal­di replied. Texas’s open-pri­ma­ry sys­tem gives hard-lin­ers less influ­ence over who holds office, he added, and that has to stop. It should be “par­ty activists, Repub­li­cans, who choose who goes on the bal­lot.”

In oth­er red states, such as Alaba­ma and Ten­nessee, Rinal­di not­ed, “the par­ty has the abil­i­ty to deny bal­lot access to can­di­dates they don’t believe rep­re­sent them.” In Ida­ho the GOP began hold­ing closed pri­maries, in con­tra­ven­tion of exist­ing state law—and the courts allowed it. There were many ways, he said, that the state GOP could start to lim­it the num­ber of Tex­ans who have a say in its busi­ness.

...

There’s a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence between Repub­li­cans who grew up in Texas and those who moved here as adults. Con­verts to Texas believe in it with the zeal that many neo­phytes express toward their faith—or they believe in their ver­sion of Texas, a sim­pli­fied, politi­cized inter­pre­ta­tion that’s often lack­ing in con­text and his­to­ry. Folks who came of age in Texas are more immersed in the state’s nuances. They remem­ber pol­i­tics here when Democ­rats still had some pow­er, and they are more cau­tious about what the GOP can and should do. And sub­ur­ban Repub­li­cans are often more ide­o­log­i­cal and uncom­pro­mis­ing than rur­al Repub­li­cans, who look a bit like the con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats of yore.

To pick two exam­ples, Dan Patrick, a Bal­ti­more native, was born Dan­nie Goeb and rebuilt his life in the Hous­ton sub­urbs as a con­ser­v­a­tive talk show host. He first ran for office in 2006. State rep­re­sen­ta­tive Andrew Murr, who led the impeach­ment charge against Repub­li­can attor­ney gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, was reared on a ranch in the Hill Coun­try near Junc­tion. His pol­i­tics are more root­ed in the state’s his­to­ry, in part because he grew up hear­ing sto­ries about his grand­fa­ther, Gov­er­nor Coke Steven­son, a con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­rat.

Matt Rinaldi’s ori­gin sto­ry is more like Patrick’s than Murr’s. Born in Bridge­port, Con­necti­cut, in 1975, Rinal­di attend­ed schools in Vir­ginia and Mass­a­chu­setts before com­ing to Dal­las to work at a law firm at about the time when Texas Democ­rats were slid­ing into occul­ta­tion. He didn’t win office until after the tea par­ty wave in 2010, when Repub­li­can infight­ing became the order of the day. And he emerged from one of those fer­tile places in the state for reac­tionary politics—the north­ern sub­urbs in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metro­plex. In the 2010s, men and women with back­grounds like Rinaldi’s reshaped the state.

Rinaldi’s path to pow­er was cir­cuitous. With a law degree from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, he held jobs at a series of pres­ti­gious firms for most of his first two decades in Texas. He didn’t last at any of them for more than five years, nev­er mak­ing part­ner, and he picked up a string of part-time gigs—representing a doc­tor here, an insur­ance com­pa­ny there. But even­tu­al­ly he caught a lucky break: he met Mon­ty Ben­nett, a bump­tious Dal­las hote­lier and bil­lion­aire polit­i­cal donor.

Ben­nett helped fund Rinaldi’s ten­ta­tive first steps into elect­ed pol­i­tics. In 2010 Rinal­di ran for judge of a civ­il dis­trict court in Dal­las Coun­ty. He lost by five points. In 2012 he took a shot at a state House seat: he placed third in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry. One chal­lenger ran as a mod­er­ate and drew estab­lish­ment sup­port; anoth­er ran as a far-right-winger. They qual­i­fied for a runoff against each oth­er. Rinal­di couldn’t find a lane.

Then, in 2013, Ben­nett made Rinal­di a direc­tor of one of his real estate invest­ment trusts, a com­pa­ny then named Ash­ford Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Prime (now Brae­mer Hotels and Resorts), which owns prop­er­ties across the Unit­ed States. This was a dra­mat­ic depar­ture from Rinaldi’s pre­vi­ous work expe­ri­ence. There are many ways to gain influ­ence in the Leg­is­la­ture. The most straight­for­ward is to pro­vide cam­paign cash to can­di­dates. But in Texas, it’s also per­fect­ly legal to put a state law­mak­er, or a future state law­mak­er, on your pay­roll. State leg­is­la­tors have an annu­al base salary of $7,200—they need full-time jobs. You can acquire one for less than you might think.

To observers, it was clear what had hap­pened, if only in ret­ro­spect. The ambi­tious Rinal­di, in need of friends, had been made an asset of the Ben­nett empire. (“What the f— does [he] know about run­ning high-end hotels?” asked a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant from Dal­las who knew Rinal­di at the time.) Rinal­di was not the only future state rep­re­sen­ta­tive that Ben­nett acquired—Republican Ste­fani Carter, who rep­re­sent­ed a Dal­las-area dis­trict in the House from 2011 to 2015, also served as a direc­tor at Ash­ford.

At that time, Rinal­di and Ben­nett had more in com­mon with the Bush era of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics than with what was com­ing down the road. But Ben­nett start­ed to rad­i­cal­ize, in part, observers thought, because of a pro­tract­ed and expen­sive fight he waged with the Tar­rant Region­al Water Dis­trict board, which sought to lay a pipeline across his ranch. Ben­nett spent mil­lions of dol­lars to suc­cess­ful­ly stop it—even plant­i­ng a ceme­tery in the pipeline’s path that includ­ed the remains of one Black World War II veteran—and seemed to emerge from the fight with a much more strin­gent and uncom­pro­mis­ing view of pol­i­tics.

Hav­ing lost elec­tions twice already, Rinal­di seemed to adjust his pol­i­tics. In 2014, as an employ­ee of Bennett’s, Rinal­di ran for a state House seat against Ben­nett Ratliff, the same can­di­date he’d lost to before. This time he chose a clear lane. He smeared his oppo­nent as a slave to the teach­ers’ unions and a RINO. Rinal­di made clear dur­ing the race that he would work to unseat the Speak­er of the Texas House, Joe Straus, which gave him access to the mon­ey of Tim Dunn, who’d told the Speak­er he didn’t believe Jews should hold lead­er­ship posi­tions. Rinal­di beat Ratliff by just 92 votes.

Rinal­di would accom­plish lit­tle with the pow­er he attained. His oppo­si­tion to Straus guar­an­teed he had weak­ened influ­ence in the cham­ber. He fell in with a group of Dunn-fund­ed, ostra­cized law­mak­ers, espe­cial­ly Jonathan Stick­land, from Bed­ford, between Fort Worth and the DFW Air­port. Like Islamists in prison, shorn of con­nec­tions to the out­side world and forced togeth­er, they rad­i­cal­ized.

Rinal­di rep­re­sent­ed a red­dish but poten­tial­ly swing-vot­ing sub­ur­ban dis­trict that encom­passed parts of Cop­pell and Irv­ing. But in the Leg­is­la­ture, he act­ed as if he rep­re­sent­ed a much more right-wing elec­torate, join­ing the House Free­dom Cau­cus and some­times going to war against local offi­cials from his dis­trict. His polit­i­cal instincts, in oth­er words, were not always ter­rif­ic: he pre­ferred strong feel­ings to strate­gic think­ing.

That deficit became most appar­ent on the last day of the 2017 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, which fea­tured an ugly debate over a “show your papers” immi­gra­tion law, which would allow cops to ask motorists and oth­ers for proof of legal res­i­den­cy. In the gallery, Rinal­di saw pro-immi­gra­tion pro­test­ers. So he called U.S. Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment on them and then, unwise­ly, crossed to a hud­dle of Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers to tell them he had done so. This was online log­ic in real life: Rinal­di pre­sum­ably felt impo­tent, and he was trolling.

A scuf­fle broke out. Demo­c­ra­t­ic state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pon­cho Nevárez told Rinal­di he would find him in the park­ing lot lat­er, to which Rinal­di report­ed­ly replied that he would “put a bul­let in your head.” It was one of the nas­ti­est moments at the Leg­is­la­ture in mod­ern times.

Rinaldi’s sub­ur­ban con­stituents didn’t love it. The 2018 elec­tion was a bad year for Repub­li­cans, but Rinaldi’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, Julie John­son, was a conservative’s fan­ta­sy: a pro­gres­sive tri­al lawyer. Rinal­di tried to posi­tion him­self more like Ratliff, tak­ing cred­it for increas­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion fund­ing, but it was too late. A Repub­li­can strate­gist recalls Rinal­di com­ing up to him at an elec­tion-night watch par­ty to ask: “Do you think I’m gonna be okay?” By a mar­gin of 43 to 57 per­cent, he was not.

In the next few years Rinal­di loi­tered on the periph­ery of the par­ty as a com­men­ta­tor, most notably speak­ing at protests against Greg Abbott’s pan­dem­ic restric­tions in 2020. Then Rinal­di caught anoth­er break: after a dis­as­trous state GOP con­ven­tion host­ed on Zoom and plagued by tech­ni­cal prob­lems, for­mer Flori­da con­gress­man Allen West was elect­ed chair­man of the state GOP. West was a tea par­ty hero who left the U.S. Army in dis­grace after order­ing the mock exe­cu­tion of an Iraqi pris­on­er.

West clear­ly want­ed to run for high­er office—he quit his post with­in eleven months and ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly for governor—but his reign sent many par­ty reg­u­lars run­ning for the hills. Derek Ryan, a data expert who had been help­ing to main­tain the party’s vot­er file for twen­ty years under sev­en chair­per­sons, said West imme­di­ate­ly moved to shut down some of the party’s core func­tions. Among them was the Vot­er Engage­ment Project, a high-pro­file effort advised by Karl Rove and well-regard­ed for­mer par­ty chair Steve Munis­teri, to reg­is­ter new Repub­li­can vot­ers.

West dis­trust­ed the moti­va­tions of Rove and Munis­teri, but he also seemed to wor­ry about the effects of bring­ing new, less stri­dent Repub­li­can vot­ers into the par­ty. The Vot­er Engage­ment Project was even­tu­al­ly saved, thanks in part to the inter­ven­tion of Abbott polit­i­cal advis­er Dave Car­ney. But “that was the writ­ing on wall,” Ryan said, that “told me that the state par­ty was prob­a­bly lean­ing away from [a focus on] get­ting Repub­li­cans elect­ed in Novem­ber.”

When West stepped down to chal­lenge Abbott from his right, the par­ty had to elect an inter­im replace­ment. The “nor­mal guy” fac­tion of the par­ty offered as its can­di­date for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor Chad Wilbanks. He got six votes and came in third place. Rinal­di, aligned with West and bol­stered by a year of activism against COVID-19 restric­tions, received 34.

At first Rinal­di sound­ed the right notes. In August 2021, short­ly after he was elect­ed, he indi­cat­ed he was ready to make peace with the gov­er­nor and oth­er par­ty mates he’d antag­o­nized. But the big tent deflat­ed quick­ly. Instead of rep­re­sent­ing “every Repub­li­can,” Rinal­di set­tled into long-term trench war­fare against Speak­er Dade Phe­lan and House con­ser­v­a­tives.

...

Repub­li­cans aligned with Phe­lan see Rinal­di as bel­liger­ent. “Matt has been cap­tured and is a full par­tic­i­pant in and part of his group of folks that just live off Tim Dunn and Far­ris Wilks’s mon­ey,” said one Repub­li­can strate­gist. “Rinal­di has tak­en this oper­a­tion that they’ve been run­ning for years and moved it into the offi­cial appa­ra­tus of the Repub­li­can par­ty.”

Phe­lan is not alone as a tar­get: Many politi­cians have earned Rinaldi’s ire. He fought with Abbott dur­ing an impasse over a prop­er­ty tax cut plan ear­li­er this year and argued that the gov­er­nor was not “seri­ous about elim­i­nat­ing prop­er­ty tax­es.” (Abbott strong­ly insist­ed oth­er­wise.)

The Sen­ate caught flak too. In April, law­mak­ers debat­ed a bill that would ban hor­mone ther­a­pies for trans­gen­der chil­dren. The goal was osten­si­bly to pro­tect kids. But when doc­tors tes­ti­fied that it would be harm­ful to cut off treat­ments for chil­dren who had already begun them, the Sen­ate unan­i­mous­ly adopt­ed an amend­ment to allow those who’d already start­ed treat­ments to con­tin­ue them. Rinal­di and the state par­ty raised hell. After bare­ly a week­end of pres­sure, the Sen­ate returned on Mon­day and stripped out the mea­sure.

When it comes to elect­ed offi­cials, Rinal­di seeks to pro­tect friends and pun­ish ene­mies. This ses­sion, when Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bryan Sla­ton, of Royse City, a crit­ic of Phelan’s who belongs to Rinaldi’s pre­ferred fac­tion of the par­ty, plied a nine­teen-year-old staffer with alco­hol and had sex with her, Rinal­di urged the State Repub­li­can Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee to stay qui­et about the mat­ter and to “let the process play out,” accord­ing to leaked texts. (At the same time, Slaton’s back­ers, among them Dunn and Stick­land, donat­ed $135,000 to the state par­ty.)

When the same House com­mit­tee that was inves­ti­gat­ing Sla­ton revealed that it had also been inves­ti­gat­ing Ken Pax­ton over accu­sa­tions that he had tak­en bribes from a real estate devel­op­er seek­ing fed­er­al pro­tec­tion, Rinal­di aban­doned the pre­tense of neu­tral­i­ty and redou­bled his war against the House. The SREC issued an extra­or­di­nary state­ment that expressed the “sin­cere desire of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas that the State of Texas not become a banana repub­lic” and made the wild claim that the House impeach­ment, which pre­ced­ed a tri­al in the Sen­ate, was “ille­gal” and vio­lat­ed Paxton’s “pre­sump­tion of inno­cence.” The par­ty moved to cen­sure House Repub­li­cans who had led the dri­ve for impeach­ment, promised ret­ri­bu­tion in the next pri­ma­ry, and blast­ed out a video it said showed Phe­lan drunk on the floor of the House.

...

While some Repub­li­cans might fear what will hap­pen if the par­ty takes a more active role in select­ing can­di­dates and influ­enc­ing the GOP pri­ma­ry, there’s a use­ful coun­ter­point: what Rinal­di and the par­ty has actu­al­ly been doing. That’s most­ly a whole lot of noth­ing, apart from irri­tat­ing Dade Phe­lan.

Rinaldi’s GOP can count on rais­ing mil­lions from the likes of Dunn and the Wilks broth­ers. But that’s not enough to run a state par­ty. Rinaldi’s orga­ni­za­tion, premised on the sup­port of a few local king­mak­ers, has been rot­ten at fund-rais­ing: its fed­er­al accounts are near­ly dry, and most of the mon­ey it’s got­ten in the past few years has been “passed through” from the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and con­gres­sion­al cam­paigns.

Nonethe­less, Rinal­di is ostra­ciz­ing those nation­al bene­fac­tors. He strong­ly sup­port­ed Harmeet Dhillon’s los­ing cam­paign for chair of the RNC against incum­bent Ron­na McDaniel ear­li­er this year. The real ele­phant in the room is the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Rinal­di is a Ron DeSan­tis sup­port­er. But the Don­ald seems like­ly to win the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, and he is famous­ly sen­si­tive to slights.

Rinal­di is stuck with a small set of allies, some of whom are dis­cred­itable. In Octo­ber he was pho­tographed by the Texas Tri­bune enter­ing the office of Pale Horse Strate­gies, Stickland’s con­sult­ing firm in Fort Worth. In the build­ing at the same time was Nick Fuentes, the young, anti­se­mit­ic, white-suprema­cist influ­encer. Rinal­di insist­ed that he was there for a meet­ing with some­one else. But it placed an uncom­fort­able spot­light on the views and ethics of his clos­est allies. In a state­ment, Rinal­di briefly con­demned Fuentes and then accused Phe­lan (who had con­demned Stick­land) of “drink­ing again.” Stick­land was even­tu­al­ly forced out of the PAC; Rinaldi’s ene­mies demand­ed he resign too.

But if Rinal­di faces chal­lenges on his path to build­ing an all-pow­er­ful state par­ty, his oppo­nents face a cliff. Rinal­di will be up for reelec­tion at the state GOP con­ven­tion next sum­mer. There is not yet any orga­nized Repub­li­can effort to replace him, and no one I inter­viewed thought the party’s base would oust him from office. A few have fan­ta­sized about an expen­sive and labo­ri­ous cam­paign to elect new del­e­gates to the state par­ty con­ven­tion from all over the state, who would bring a new, respon­si­ble, and prag­mat­ic style of pol­i­tics to the par­ty. They dreamed, to para­phrase Bertolt Brecht, of dis­solv­ing their base and elect­ing anoth­er.

———-

“Sin­ners in the Hands of an Angry GOP” By Christo­pher Hooks; Texas Month­ly; 12/2023

“Rinal­di has a dif­fer­ent vision. Instead of tying the fac­tions togeth­er, the par­ty orga­ni­za­tion should be a cud­gel with which to bring Repub­li­cans in line. With the sup­port of his long­time friends—a right-wing crew that includes bil­lion­aire oil­men Tim Dunn, who is a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist, and Dan and Far­ris Wilks—Rinaldi believes he should be the one to do the blud­geon­ing. For many Tex­ans it has been a mat­ter of some con­cern that the most-con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry voters—some 3 per­cent of the state’s pop­u­la­tion—wield so much polit­i­cal pow­er. Rinal­di wants to ensure they have even more.”

The chair­man of the Texas GOP, Matt Rinal­di, isn’t your typ­i­cal par­ty chair who on keep­ing the Texas Repub­li­can ‘big tent’ liv­ing togeth­er har­mo­nious­ly. He’s there to rep­re­sent the inter­ests of the Tim Dunn and the grow­ing fac­tion of the Texas GOP loy­al to Dun­n’s Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da. An agen­da that would appear to include giv­ing the par­ty chair the abil­i­ty to select the can­di­dates, or at least veto them. And as Rinal­di has made clear with his fac­tion­al style of lead­er­ship, he’s more than ready to use such pow­er to purge the Texas GOP of the remain­ing non-loy­al­ists, start­ing with the House speak­er Dade Phe­lan. Matt Rinal­di is using his par­ty chair­man­ship to not just exe­cute Dun­n’s ongo­ing pow­er play but deep­en it and make it per­ma­nent:

...
Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the chair­man of the Texas GOP has served as the party’s top cheer­leader. Chair­men are elect­ed not by the pub­lic but by a small num­ber of par­ty del­e­gates, and they have no real man­date to pur­sue polit­i­cal change. Instead, they his­tor­i­cal­ly have main­tained a kind of ecu­meni­cal approach to the many dif­fer­ing Repub­li­can fac­tions among vot­ers, activists, elect­ed offi­cials, and donors. Part of the rea­son the GOP took pow­er in Texas is that it was flex­i­ble enough to appeal to every­one from John Bircher preach­ers to Rotary Club pres­i­dents: the par­ty was a big tent.

...

On the pod­cast Horowitz asked Rinal­di if the solu­tion to the prob­lem of RINOs—Republicans in name only—might involve doing away entire­ly with pri­maries decid­ed by pop­u­lar vote. Per­haps the par­ty should pick which can­di­dates can run as Repub­li­cans, Horowitz said. “Your par­ty is your brand,” Rinal­di replied. Texas’s open-pri­ma­ry sys­tem gives hard-lin­ers less influ­ence over who holds office, he added, and that has to stop. It should be “par­ty activists, Repub­li­cans, who choose who goes on the bal­lot.”

In oth­er red states, such as Alaba­ma and Ten­nessee, Rinal­di not­ed, “the par­ty has the abil­i­ty to deny bal­lot access to can­di­dates they don’t believe rep­re­sent them.” In Ida­ho the GOP began hold­ing closed pri­maries, in con­tra­ven­tion of exist­ing state law—and the courts allowed it. There were many ways, he said, that the state GOP could start to lim­it the num­ber of Tex­ans who have a say in its busi­ness.

...

While some Repub­li­cans might fear what will hap­pen if the par­ty takes a more active role in select­ing can­di­dates and influ­enc­ing the GOP pri­ma­ry, there’s a use­ful coun­ter­point: what Rinal­di and the par­ty has actu­al­ly been doing. That’s most­ly a whole lot of noth­ing, apart from irri­tat­ing Dade Phe­lan.
...

Rinaldi’s for­ay into pol­i­tics was­n’t through Dun­n’s polit­i­cal machine. Instead, Mon­ty Ben­nett, a Dal­las bil­lion­aire hote­lier, who financed Rinaldi’s ini­tial run for judge in 2010 before mak­ing Rinal­di a direc­tor of one of his real estate invest­ment trusts in 2013. From that posi­tion, Rinal­di got to know Tex­as­’s politi­cians on a much friend­lier lev­el thanks to the incred­i­ble laws that allow com­pa­nies to hire state leg­is­la­tors. In 2014, he again ran for office as an anti-RINO Repub­li­can and some­one who will try to oust then-Repub­li­can House Speak­er Joe Straus, who Tim Dunn per­son­al­ly told to step down because only Chris­tians should hold pow­er in Dun­n’s view. By 2014, Rinal­di was a fel­low trav­el­er of Dun­n’s push to cap­ture and rad­i­cal­ize the Texas GOP:

...
Rinaldi’s path to pow­er was cir­cuitous. With a law degree from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, he held jobs at a series of pres­ti­gious firms for most of his first two decades in Texas. He didn’t last at any of them for more than five years, nev­er mak­ing part­ner, and he picked up a string of part-time gigs—representing a doc­tor here, an insur­ance com­pa­ny there. But even­tu­al­ly he caught a lucky break: he met Mon­ty Ben­nett, a bump­tious Dal­las hote­lier and bil­lion­aire polit­i­cal donor.

Ben­nett helped fund Rinaldi’s ten­ta­tive first steps into elect­ed pol­i­tics. In 2010 Rinal­di ran for judge of a civ­il dis­trict court in Dal­las Coun­ty. He lost by five points. In 2012 he took a shot at a state House seat: he placed third in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry. One chal­lenger ran as a mod­er­ate and drew estab­lish­ment sup­port; anoth­er ran as a far-right-winger. They qual­i­fied for a runoff against each oth­er. Rinal­di couldn’t find a lane.

Then, in 2013, Ben­nett made Rinal­di a direc­tor of one of his real estate invest­ment trusts, a com­pa­ny then named Ash­ford Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Prime (now Brae­mer Hotels and Resorts), which owns prop­er­ties across the Unit­ed States. This was a dra­mat­ic depar­ture from Rinaldi’s pre­vi­ous work expe­ri­ence. There are many ways to gain influ­ence in the Leg­is­la­ture. The most straight­for­ward is to pro­vide cam­paign cash to can­di­dates. But in Texas, it’s also per­fect­ly legal to put a state law­mak­er, or a future state law­mak­er, on your pay­roll. State leg­is­la­tors have an annu­al base salary of $7,200—they need full-time jobs. You can acquire one for less than you might think.

To observers, it was clear what had hap­pened, if only in ret­ro­spect. The ambi­tious Rinal­di, in need of friends, had been made an asset of the Ben­nett empire. (“What the f— does [he] know about run­ning high-end hotels?” asked a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant from Dal­las who knew Rinal­di at the time.) Rinal­di was not the only future state rep­re­sen­ta­tive that Ben­nett acquired—Republican Ste­fani Carter, who rep­re­sent­ed a Dal­las-area dis­trict in the House from 2011 to 2015, also served as a direc­tor at Ash­ford.

At that time, Rinal­di and Ben­nett had more in com­mon with the Bush era of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics than with what was com­ing down the road. But Ben­nett start­ed to rad­i­cal­ize, in part, observers thought, because of a pro­tract­ed and expen­sive fight he waged with the Tar­rant Region­al Water Dis­trict board, which sought to lay a pipeline across his ranch. Ben­nett spent mil­lions of dol­lars to suc­cess­ful­ly stop it—even plant­i­ng a ceme­tery in the pipeline’s path that includ­ed the remains of one Black World War II veteran—and seemed to emerge from the fight with a much more strin­gent and uncom­pro­mis­ing view of pol­i­tics.

Hav­ing lost elec­tions twice already, Rinal­di seemed to adjust his pol­i­tics. In 2014, as an employ­ee of Bennett’s, Rinal­di ran for a state House seat against Ben­nett Ratliff, the same can­di­date he’d lost to before. This time he chose a clear lane. He smeared his oppo­nent as a slave to the teach­ers’ unions and a RINO. Rinal­di made clear dur­ing the race that he would work to unseat the Speak­er of the Texas House, Joe Straus, which gave him access to the mon­ey of Tim Dunn, who’d told the Speak­er he didn’t believe Jews should hold lead­er­ship posi­tions. Rinal­di beat Ratliff by just 92 votes.

Rinal­di would accom­plish lit­tle with the pow­er he attained. His oppo­si­tion to Straus guar­an­teed he had weak­ened influ­ence in the cham­ber. He fell in with a group of Dunn-fund­ed, ostra­cized law­mak­ers, espe­cial­ly Jonathan Stick­land, from Bed­ford, between Fort Worth and the DFW Air­port. Like Islamists in prison, shorn of con­nec­tions to the out­side world and forced togeth­er, they rad­i­cal­ized.
...

And by 2018, that rad­i­cal­iza­tion was on full dis­play with Rinaldi’s lop­sided vic­to­ry in the vote for Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty chair. The guy rep­re­sent­ing the “nor­mal guy” fac­tion got 6 votes. Rinal­di got 34 votes, and pro­ceed­ed to wage polit­i­cal war­fare against con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans deemed not con­ser­v­a­tive enough. And all indi­ca­tions are Rinal­di is going to keep his job in 2024, prob­a­bly unop­posed:

...
When West stepped down to chal­lenge Abbott from his right, the par­ty had to elect an inter­im replace­ment. The “nor­mal guy” fac­tion of the par­ty offered as its can­di­date for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor Chad Wilbanks. He got six votes and came in third place. Rinal­di, aligned with West and bol­stered by a year of activism against COVID-19 restric­tions, received 34.

At first Rinal­di sound­ed the right notes. In August 2021, short­ly after he was elect­ed, he indi­cat­ed he was ready to make peace with the gov­er­nor and oth­er par­ty mates he’d antag­o­nized. But the big tent deflat­ed quick­ly. Instead of rep­re­sent­ing “every Repub­li­can,” Rinal­di set­tled into long-term trench war­fare against Speak­er Dade Phe­lan and House con­ser­v­a­tives.

...

Repub­li­cans aligned with Phe­lan see Rinal­di as bel­liger­ent. “Matt has been cap­tured and is a full par­tic­i­pant in and part of his group of folks that just live off Tim Dunn and Far­ris Wilks’s mon­ey,” said one Repub­li­can strate­gist. “Rinal­di has tak­en this oper­a­tion that they’ve been run­ning for years and moved it into the offi­cial appa­ra­tus of the Repub­li­can par­ty.”

...

But if Rinal­di faces chal­lenges on his path to build­ing an all-pow­er­ful state par­ty, his oppo­nents face a cliff. Rinal­di will be up for reelec­tion at the state GOP con­ven­tion next sum­mer. There is not yet any orga­nized Repub­li­can effort to replace him, and no one I inter­viewed thought the party’s base would oust him from office. A few have fan­ta­sized about an expen­sive and labo­ri­ous cam­paign to elect new del­e­gates to the state par­ty con­ven­tion from all over the state, who would bring a new, respon­si­ble, and prag­mat­ic style of pol­i­tics to the par­ty. They dreamed, to para­phrase Bertolt Brecht, of dis­solv­ing their base and elect­ing anoth­er.
...

And as we should prob­a­bly expect by now, Rinaldi’s hyper­par­ti­san ‘us or them’ style of par­ty lead­er­ship has him run­ning cov­er for a can­di­date accused of get­ting a 19 year old staffer drunk to have sex with her. At the same time Rinal­di was pres­sur­ing the State Repub­li­can Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee to stay qui­et about the mat­ter, Tim Dunn and Jonathan Stick­land donat­ed $135,000 to the state par­ty. This is a good time to recall the State Repub­li­can Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee is the same com­mit­tee that reject­ed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for Texas Repub­li­cans to avoid asso­ci­a­tions with indi­vid­u­als or groups “known to espouse or tol­er­ate anti­semitism, pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies or Holo­caust denial.” This is the state of affairs of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty:

...
When it comes to elect­ed offi­cials, Rinal­di seeks to pro­tect friends and pun­ish ene­mies. This ses­sion, when Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bryan Sla­ton, of Royse City, a crit­ic of Phelan’s who belongs to Rinaldi’s pre­ferred fac­tion of the par­ty, plied a nine­teen-year-old staffer with alco­hol and had sex with her, Rinal­di urged the State Repub­li­can Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee to stay qui­et about the mat­ter and to “let the process play out,” accord­ing to leaked texts. (At the same time, Slaton’s back­ers, among them Dunn and Stick­land, donat­ed $135,000 to the state par­ty.)

When the same House com­mit­tee that was inves­ti­gat­ing Sla­ton revealed that it had also been inves­ti­gat­ing Ken Pax­ton over accu­sa­tions that he had tak­en bribes from a real estate devel­op­er seek­ing fed­er­al pro­tec­tion, Rinal­di aban­doned the pre­tense of neu­tral­i­ty and redou­bled his war against the House. The SREC issued an extra­or­di­nary state­ment that expressed the “sin­cere desire of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas that the State of Texas not become a banana repub­lic” and made the wild claim that the House impeach­ment, which pre­ced­ed a tri­al in the Sen­ate, was “ille­gal” and vio­lat­ed Paxton’s “pre­sump­tion of inno­cence.” The par­ty moved to cen­sure House Repub­li­cans who had led the dri­ve for impeach­ment, promised ret­ri­bu­tion in the next pri­ma­ry, and blast­ed out a video it said showed Phe­lan drunk on the floor of the House.
...

So is Rinaldi’s lead­er­ship at least suc­ceed­ing in the area of fundrais­ing? Nope. Rinal­di can fundraise from Dunn and a few oth­er affil­i­at­ed local king­mak­ers, but that appears to large­ly be it. And that was the case before the pub­lic rela­tions melt­down for the par­ty thanks to the sev­en hour meet­ing at with Nick Fuentes at Pale Horse Strate­gies back on Octo­ber 6. A meet­ing that under­scored just how close­ly this Dunn-cen­tric fac­tion of the Texas GOP real­ly is to a grow­ing con­stel­la­tion of overt Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers. Rinal­di was at Pale Horse Strate­gies dur­ing Fuentes’s sev­en hour meet­ing. Sure, he claims he was there for com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed rea­sons, but the real­i­ty is he is now part of this grow­ing pub­lic image prob­lem for the Texas GOP. And yet, his posi­tion is more or less secure as par­ty chair­man for now:

...
Rinaldi’s GOP can count on rais­ing mil­lions from the likes of Dunn and the Wilks broth­ers. But that’s not enough to run a state par­ty. Rinaldi’s orga­ni­za­tion, premised on the sup­port of a few local king­mak­ers, has been rot­ten at fund-rais­ing: its fed­er­al accounts are near­ly dry, and most of the mon­ey it’s got­ten in the past few years has been “passed through” from the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and con­gres­sion­al cam­paigns.

Nonethe­less, Rinal­di is ostra­ciz­ing those nation­al bene­fac­tors. He strong­ly sup­port­ed Harmeet Dhillon’s los­ing cam­paign for chair of the RNC against incum­bent Ron­na McDaniel ear­li­er this year. The real ele­phant in the room is the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Rinal­di is a Ron DeSan­tis sup­port­er. But the Don­ald seems like­ly to win the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, and he is famous­ly sen­si­tive to slights.

Rinal­di is stuck with a small set of allies, some of whom are dis­cred­itable. In Octo­ber he was pho­tographed by the Texas Tri­bune enter­ing the office of Pale Horse Strate­gies, Stickland’s con­sult­ing firm in Fort Worth. In the build­ing at the same time was Nick Fuentes, the young, anti­se­mit­ic, white-suprema­cist influ­encer. Rinal­di insist­ed that he was there for a meet­ing with some­one else. But it placed an uncom­fort­able spot­light on the views and ethics of his clos­est allies. In a state­ment, Rinal­di briefly con­demned Fuentes and then accused Phe­lan (who had con­demned Stick­land) of “drink­ing again.” Stick­land was even­tu­al­ly forced out of the PAC; Rinaldi’s ene­mies demand­ed he resign too.
...

Donors are hold­ing back at the same time Dun­n’s fac­tion con­tin­ues to grow in num­bers. Which is a recipe for turn­ing the Texas GOP into even more or a Dunn-con­trolled enti­ty. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing piece of poten­tial­ly very relat­ed news: it turns out Dunn just sold his oil firm in a deal expect­ed to earn Dunn a $2 bil­lion pay­day. So while the Texas GOP’s hard turn to the far right might be scar­ing away most of its donors these days, the few remain­ing donors are set to have more mon­ey than even:

The Texas Tri­bune

Tim Dunn, the pow­er­house GOP donor, to sell his West Texas oil com­pa­ny for $12 bil­lion

Tim Dunn has used his wealth to estab­lish a net­work of orga­ni­za­tions that push his ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive views across Texas. The deal comes amid a time of con­sol­i­da­tion in the Per­mi­an Basin.

by Jayme Lozano Carv­er and Robert Dow­nen
Dec. 11, 2023
3 PM Cen­tral

Tim Dunn, a West Texas bil­lion­aire who has used his oil for­tune to tur­bocharge the state’s far-right polit­i­cal move­ment, sold his oil com­pa­ny Mon­day in a deal val­ued at about $12 bil­lion.

In a state­ment, Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um Corp. said the com­pa­ny entered into a pur­chase agree­ment to acquire the Mid­land-based Crown­Rock L.P., a joint busi­ness held by Crown­quest Oper­at­ing LLC, Dunn’s com­pa­ny, and Lime Rock Part­ners. The $12 bil­lion trans­ac­tion, which includes cash and stock, is expect­ed to close in ear­ly 2024.

...

Bran­don Rot­ting­haus, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, said the wealth­i­est peo­ple in the state have a sig­nif­i­cant say in how poli­cies are shaped. Dunn is a prime exam­ple.

“Mon­ey is pow­er in Texas pol­i­tics,” said Rot­ting­haus. “Dunn’s already shown will­ing­ness to spend big to imprint his ide­o­log­i­cal reli­gious beliefs on the GOP. With more mon­ey, he’s like­ly to pour gas on the fire.”

Dunn is one of the most pro­lif­ic and influ­en­tial GOP megadonors in the state, hav­ing poured tens of mil­lions of dol­lars into a sprawl­ing net­work of polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees, insti­tu­tions, cam­paigns and media web­sites. Since the mid-2000s, he has been the main financier of groups such as Tex­ans For Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Empow­er Tex­ans, using them to push his Lib­er­tar­i­an eco­nom­ic agen­da and tur­bocharge the state’s nascent Tea Par­ty move­ment.

Since then, Dunn-fund­ed groups have been increas­ing­ly aggres­sive in push­ing his ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive social and reli­gious views. Com­bined, they have pulled the state fur­ther to the right by blast­ing fel­low Repub­li­cans as insuf­fi­cient­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and, in some cas­es, bankrolling pri­ma­ry chal­lengers who attack incum­bents as too soft on immi­gra­tion, LGBTQ+ rights and oth­er far-right stances.

Key to that effort has been Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that has giv­en near­ly $15 mil­lion to right-wing can­di­dates since 2021, and has rou­tine­ly made head­lines this year: In Octo­ber, the Texas Tri­bune report­ed that well-known white suprema­cist and Adolf Hitler admir­er Nick Fuentes met with Defend Texas Liberty’s then-pres­i­dent Jonathan Stick­land, set­ting off a polit­i­cal firestorm in the state.

Dunn report­ed­ly said host­ing Fuentes was a “seri­ous blun­der,” but nei­ther he nor his groups have explained the meet­ing or respond­ed to sub­se­quent Tri­bune report­ing that uncov­ered deep­er ties between Defend Texas Lib­er­ty and oth­er anti­se­mit­ic or white suprema­cist fig­ures.

And this sum­mer, Defend Texas Lib­er­ty again sparked con­tro­ver­sy after giv­ing $3 mil­lion to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick before Patrick presided over Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Paxton’s impeach­ment tri­al and acquit­tal in the Texas Sen­ate. Pax­ton is a long­time ally of the state’s far right whose polit­i­cal life has been heav­i­ly sub­si­dized by Dunn and two oth­er West Texas oil­men; he’s received near­ly twice as much from the trio and their fam­i­lies than he has from his sec­ond-largest donor, Tex­ans For Law­suit Reform.

While it’s unclear what role Dunn might play in the 2024 elec­tions, Rot­ting­haus said Dunn is in a bet­ter posi­tion than most wealthy bene­fac­tors in Texas.

“His influ­ence has mutat­ed in var­i­ous ways and tak­en dif­fer­ent forms, but the end result is the same,” Rot­ting­haus said. “And that is his brand of pol­i­tics becom­ing the dom­i­nant strain of the GOP.”

...

———-

“Tim Dunn, the pow­er­house GOP donor, to sell his West Texas oil com­pa­ny for $12 bil­lion” by Jayme Lozano Carv­er and Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 12/11/2023

““His influ­ence has mutat­ed in var­i­ous ways and tak­en dif­fer­ent forms, but the end result is the same,” Rot­ting­haus said. “And that is his brand of pol­i­tics becom­ing the dom­i­nant strain of the GOP.””

The pay­mas­ter behind the now dom­i­nant strain of the GOP just got anoth­er $2 bil­lion. Just in time to help fill in the donor gap cre­at­ed by all the bad press around the par­ty’s grow­ing Nazi embrace.

So what can we expect from the Texas GOP going for­ward. Well, pre­sum­ably more cozy­ing up to Nazis. Which brings us to the fol­low­ing arti­cle about the lat­est pol­i­cy pro­pos­al from Nick Fuentes: the death penal­ty for ‘the occult ele­ment’ among Jews:

The Jerusalem Post

Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes: ‘Occult ele­ment’ among Jews must be exe­cut­ed

“I’m far more con­cerned,” Fuentes said, about “these peo­ple that are com­muning with demons and engag­ing in this sort of witch­craft and stuff” than “I am [con­cerned about] even non-white peo­ple.”

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
DECEMBER 26, 2023 19:20

The white suprema­cist fig­ure Nick Fuentes said ear­li­er this month that “there is an occult ele­ment at the high lev­els of soci­ety, and specif­i­cal­ly among the Jews,” and that “when we take pow­er, they need to be giv­en the death penal­ty.”

Fuentes, 25, who denies the Holo­caust, came to promi­nence with an online far-right broad­cast called “Amer­i­ca First,” draw­ing its name from the 2016 cam­paign slo­gan of for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. It was on this show, banned from most major plat­forms, that Fuentes made these most recent state­ments on Decem­ber 8.

“I’m far more con­cerned,” Fuentes said, about “these peo­ple that are com­muning with demons and engag­ing in this sort of witch­craft and stuff” than “I am [con­cerned about] even non-white peo­ple or mass migra­tion.”

Fuentes has links to GOP elect­ed offi­cials

Fuentes became more influ­en­tial in main­stream media as a key fig­ure in Don­ald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” cam­paign to over­turn the results of the 2020 elec­tion, accord­ing to a report in the Texas Tri­bune. On Jan­u­ary 4, 2021– two days before the infa­mous Capi­tol riot for which the for­mer Pres­i­dent, along with hun­dreds of oth­ers, is now fac­ing crim­i­nal charges, Fuentes told his audi­ence they “must be pre­pared” to “take this coun­try back by force.”

...

———–

“Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes: ‘Occult ele­ment’ among Jews must be exe­cut­ed” By JERUSALEM POST STAFF; The Jerusalem Post; 12/26/2023

““I’m far more con­cerned,” Fuentes said, about “these peo­ple that are com­muning with demons and engag­ing in this sort of witch­craft and stuff” than “I am [con­cerned about] even non-white peo­ple or mass migra­tion.””

Nick Fuentes isn’t a racist, he just hates demons. At least that’s the spin he was putting on his pro­pos­al for the mass exe­cu­tion of the “occult ele­ment at the high lev­els of soci­ety”, an obvi­ous ref­er­ence to ‘Illu­mi­nati’ style nar­ra­tive, which is the kind of nar­ra­tive that can be poten­tial­ly applied to a lot more than just ‘occul­tic Jews’. Mass exe­cu­tions for the peo­ple Nick Fuentes does­n’t like, more or less. That’s what Nick Fuentes, ally of the dom­i­nant fac­tion of the Texas GOP, decid­ed to share back on Decem­ber 8, 2023. This was also just a lit­tle over two months after the sev­en hour meet­ing at Pale Horse Strate­gies, when Rinal­di was also known to be in the build­ing. Rinal­di insist he was­n’t there for that meet­ing with Fuentes. Who knows if that’s true. But there’s no deny­ing Pale Horse Strate­gies rep­re­sents the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of Rinaldi’s polit­i­cal fac­tion. Don’t for­get that Pale Horse is led by Jonathan Stick­land, the leader of Defend Texas Free­dom before this Fuentes scan­dal, the pri­ma­ry polit­i­cal vehi­cle for wield­ing Tim Dun­n’s influ­ence. It’s not a sur­prise to find Rinal­di at those offices. He’s an impor­tant play­er in Dun­n’s polit­i­cal machine. But that’s also why we don’t real­ly have to ask whether or Rinal­di met with Fuentes per­son­al­ly or not. Some­one with­in Dun­n’s polit­i­cal empire was meet­ing with Fuentes that day. We don’t know who, but some­one was. And that makes Rinal­di and Fuentes fel­low trav­el­ers whether they’ve per­son­al­ly met or not. Fel­low trav­el­ers with anoth­er $2 bil­lion in cash to finance their jour­ney.

We got a recent update to one of those sto­ries that has to be a wak­ing night­mare for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC): the sex­u­al abuse law­suit against Paul Pressler has report­ed­ly been set­tled.

This would be the law­suit brought by Duane Rollins, brought against not just Pressler but a num­ber of fig­ures accused of enabling Pressler’s pre­da­tions, includ­ing the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, CNP mem­ber Paige Pat­ter­son, and Jared Wood­fill. Recall how Pat­ter­son report­ed­ly set­tled with Rollins for an undis­closed amount back in April of 2023.

Notably, Rollins man­aged to score a major vic­to­ry for sex­u­al abuse sur­vivors in bring­ing this suit in the first place. That’s because many of the abus­es hap­pened decades ago start­ing when Rollins was 14, mean­ing the statute of lim­i­ta­tions is long passed. But Rollins argued that, while the abus­es hap­pened decades ago, he did­n’t actu­al­ly rec­og­nize it as abuse until much more recent­ly while Rollins was serv­ing time in prison. Instead, Rollins asserts that he devel­oped a Stock­holm Syn­drome-like men­tal state that did­n’t allow him to rec­og­nize the abuse Pressler began inflict­ing upon him at a young age. Rollins, in turn, argues that the statute of lim­i­ta­tion should­n’t apply to the time the abuse took place but, instead, when he rec­og­nized it as abuse decades lat­er while sit­ting in prison. The Texas Supreme Court accept­ed Rollins’s argu­ment, allow­ing the case case to pro­ceed.

But, of course, the Texas Supreme Court hypo­thet­i­cal­ly allowed for a lot more abuse cas­es where the statute of lim­i­ta­tions seem­ing­ly already passed by mak­ing that rul­ing. Recall that extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion by the SBC last year to file an ami­cus brief in a case that had noth­ing to do with the SBC but instead involved a woman who is suing the Louisville Police Depart­ment, argu­ing that they knew about the abus­es her father — a police offi­cer con­vict­ed of abus­ing her as a child in 2020 — was inflict­ing on her for years, and had a duty to report it. The SBC argued in the brief that the SBC denom­i­na­tion has a “strong inter­est in the statute-of-lim­i­ta­tions issue” in the case, and that a 2021 state law allow­ing abuse vic­tims to sue third-par­ty “non-per­pe­tra­tors” was not intend­ed to be applied retroac­tive­ly. The SBC knows it’s pro­tect­ed a lot more abusers than just Paul Pressler over the decades. It’s all part of the mys­tery regard­ing the details of the set­tle­ment that was appar­ent­ly reached with the rest of the par­ties in the suit. Recall how Pat­ter­son­’s set­tle­ment details were also kept pri­vate.

Inter­est­ing­ly, one of the par­ties, Jared Wood­fill, is telling reporters that he was not part of any set­tle­ment while also deny­ing any wrong­do­ing. This is despite the fact that a Har­ris Coun­ty judge signed off on a motion say­ing “all claims, coun­ter­claims and con­tro­ver­sies” in the suit were resolved. Keep in mind Wood­fil­l’s odi­ous role in this whole affair. For starters, it was Wood­fill who actu­al­ly served as Pressler’s attor­ney dur­ing Rollins’s ear­li­er law­suit back in 2004 and nego­ti­at­ed the $450,000 set­tle­ment which includ­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. That law­suit was­n’t over sex­u­al abuse but instead some sort of inci­dent Rollins suf­fered 2003 while serv­ing as Pressler’s “spe­cial office assis­tant” at the law firm Pressler and Wood­fill ran at the time. Wood­fill pub­licly denied for years that the 2004 set­tle­ment for $450,000 ever hap­pened until he was forced to reveal it dur­ing tes­ti­mo­ny back in Feb­ru­ary of 2023. Rollins was appar­ent­ly just one of many “per­son­al assis­tants” Pressler abused at the law firm Wood­fill ran with Pressler from 2002–2014. So Wood­fill, who denied the secret 2004 set­tle­ment for near­ly two decades, is again deny­ing there was a set­tle­ment. But this time the set­tle­ment isn’t a secret. It’s a lit­tle puz­zling.

But there’s anoth­er angle to this sto­ry and Wood­fil­l’s denials: he’s run­ning for office. Specif­i­cal­ly, a Texas House seat cur­rent­ly held by con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can Lacey Hull. Wood­fill is pri­ma­ry­ing Hull by cas­ti­gat­ing her as a ‘Repub­li­can in Name Only’ (RINO) who con­spired with House Speak­er Dade Phalen in last year’s impeach­ment of Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton. In oth­er words, Jared Wood­fill is play­ing a very direct role in the ongo­ing intra-par­ty pow­er strug­gle between the ‘normie’ Texas Repub­li­cans (who are, in fact, incred­i­bly con­ser­v­a­tive by any objec­tive stan­dard) and the grow­ing fac­tion loy­al to Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn and his Nazi fel­low trav­el­ers.

That’s all part of the broad­er con­text of this sto­ry about the mys­tery set­tle­ment in the case against Paul Pressler, one of the archi­tects of the cur­rent fun­da­men­tal­ist SBC the­ol­o­gy. It was a set­tle­ment that did­n’t just help put a lid on a law­suit that threat­ens to expose the depth of the insti­tu­tion’s sys­temic coverup efforts, but also kind of cleared the way for Jared Wood­fil­l’s run for office. A run that, itself, is part of the ongo­ing bat­tle for the soul of the Texas GOP. What was the SBC, or Wood­fill for that mat­ter, will­ing to pay to make this issue go away? We don’t know. But it was pre­sum­ably a lot more than the $450,000 set­tle­ment Wood­fill secret­ly helped nego­ti­ate for Rollins back in 2004:

The Texas Tri­bune

South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion set­tles high-pro­file law­suit that accused for­mer leader of sex­u­al abuse

The suit prompt­ed a major news­pa­per inves­ti­ga­tion into South­ern Bap­tist sex­u­al abuse and sev­en oth­er men to come for­ward with alle­ga­tions against Paul Pressler, an influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive activist and for­mer Texas judge.

by Robert Dow­nen
Dec. 29, 2023
9 AM Cen­tral

The South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and oth­ers have reached a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment in a high-pro­file law­suit that accused a for­mer leader of sex­u­al assault, end­ing a six-year legal dra­ma that helped prompt a broad­er reck­on­ing over child sex­u­al abuse in evan­gel­i­cal church­es, expand­ed vic­tims’ rights in Texas and showed that a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive activist and Texas House can­di­date repeat­ed­ly down­played abuse alle­ga­tions.

In 2017, Duane Rollins filed the law­suit accus­ing Paul Pressler, a long­time South­ern Bap­tist fig­ure and for­mer Texas judge, of decades of rape begin­ning when Rollins was a 14-year-old mem­ber of Pressler’s church youth group in Hous­ton.

Rollins claimed in court doc­u­ments that the alleged attacks pushed him into drug and alco­hol addic­tions that kept him in prison through­out much of his adult life. After dis­clos­ing the alleged rapes to a prison psy­chi­a­trist, Rollins filed the suit in Har­ris Coun­ty against Pressler along with oth­er defen­dants who he accused of enabling or con­ceal­ing Pressler’s behav­ior — includ­ing the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and Jared Wood­fill, the for­mer chair of the Har­ris Coun­ty GOP and Pressler’s long­time law part­ner.

Rollins’ claims were a key impe­tus for “Abuse of Faith,” a 2019 inves­ti­ga­tion by the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and San Anto­nio Express-News into sex­u­al abuse in the SBC, the nation’s sec­ond-largest faith group. The series led to major reforms in the SBC, rev­e­la­tions that top lead­ers had rou­tine­ly ignored or down­played warn­ings about a sex­u­al abuse cri­sis, and an ongo­ing Depart­ment of Jus­tice inves­ti­ga­tion.

As part of Rollins’ suit, at least sev­en oth­er men came for­ward with their own alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct by Pressler in inci­dents span­ning four decades. The suit also showed that Wood­fill, a promi­nent anti-LGBTQ+ activist, was aware of alle­ga­tions that Pressler was a sex­u­al preda­tor but con­tin­ued to pro­vide him with young, male per­son­al assis­tants who worked out of Pressler’s Riv­er Oaks home. Three of the men have alleged sex­u­al abuse or mis­con­duct.

Wood­fill is cur­rent­ly run­ning for a Texas House seat against incum­bent Rep. Lacey Hull, R‑Houston, and has been endorsed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton and Agri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er Sid Miller.

Pressler, 93, is one of the most influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cal fig­ures of the last half-cen­tu­ry, and is con­sid­ered the co-archi­tect of the SBC’s “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” that began in the late 1970s and prompt­ed the faith group to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible, align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty, ban women from preach­ing and strong­ly con­demn homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

Pressler — who for­mer­ly rep­re­sent­ed Hous­ton in the Texas House and served for 14 years as a state appeals court judge — is also an influ­en­tial fig­ure in GOP pol­i­tics. His endorse­ment has for years been sought by con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal politi­cians, includ­ing U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas. In 1989, Pressler was nom­i­nat­ed to lead the Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics under Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush, though the bid was lat­er with­drawn; and Pressler is a found­ing mem­ber of Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, a secre­tive net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, politi­cians, media fig­ures, megadonors and wealthy busi­ness own­ers that is cur­rent­ly led by Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ+ Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil.

...

In a state­ment, legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and its exec­u­tive com­mit­tee con­firmed that they had “entered into a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment agree­ment” despite being “ful­ly pre­pared” to pro­ceed to a tri­al that was sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary after being post­poned twice this year.

“How­ev­er, sev­er­al fac­tors ulti­mate­ly made set­tle­ment the more pru­dent choice,” they wrote. “Chief among those fac­tors was the hor­ren­dous nature of the abuse alle­ga­tions, the like­li­hood that coun­sel for the SBC and Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would have to con­front and cross-exam­ine abuse sur­vivors, the Exec­u­tive Committee’s cur­rent finan­cial con­di­tion, and the will­ing­ness of mul­ti­ple insur­ance car­ri­ers to con­tribute to the terms of the set­tle­ment.”

Michael Gold­berg, who rep­re­sent­ed Rollins along with a team of lawyers from Bak­er Botts, said Fri­day that they had resolved the mat­ter with Pressler on “mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry terms,” and added that his team was “very proud of the set­tle­ment we reached against the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and Jared Wood­fill.”

Wood­fill has denied wrong­do­ing and said this week that he has not set­tled the case, though a Har­ris Coun­ty judge signed off on a motion last week that said “all claims, coun­ter­claims and con­tro­ver­sies” in the suit were resolved.

“We are fight­ing the insur­ance com­pa­ny and oppose any pay­ment,” Wood­fill said in a text mes­sage on Thurs­day.

A pat­tern

The set­tle­ment almost nev­er hap­pened.

By the time that Rollins dis­closed the alleged abus­es to a prison psy­chi­a­trist in 2016 and was diag­nosed with post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der as a “direct result of the child­hood sex­u­al trau­ma he suf­fered,” the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for fil­ing a law­suit against Pressler had long passed.

Nev­er­the­less, Rollins pushed for­ward with the suit, argu­ing that the alleged rapes by Pressler — a spir­i­tu­al men­tor who Rollins said weaponized reli­gious lan­guage to jus­ti­fy his pre­da­tions — were so trau­ma­tiz­ing that he uncon­scious­ly devel­oped a sort of Stock­holm syn­drome that, cou­pled with the drug and alco­hol addic­tions he blamed on the trau­ma, made it impos­si­ble to rec­og­nize him­self as a vic­tim until decades had passed.

Thus, Rollins argued, his statute of lim­i­ta­tions should have begun when he real­ized he had been abused, rather than when the last assault occurred. His law­suit was ini­tial­ly dis­missed on statute grounds. But Rollins appealed and, even­tu­al­ly, had the dis­missal over­turned by the Texas Supreme Court, which agreed with Rollins’ argu­ments. The court’s opin­ion was a major vic­to­ry for sex­u­al abuse vic­tims and their advo­cates, who have for years point­ed to research that shows child sex­u­al trau­ma can remap devel­op­ing brains and make it dif­fi­cult for many sur­vivors to come for­ward until after their 50th birth­day, and after their stand­ing to file law­suits has elapsed.

Rollins’ law­suit also uncov­ered a 40-year pat­tern of alleged abus­es by Pressler. As part of the suit, a for­mer mem­ber of Pressler’s youth group said in a sworn affi­davit that Pressler molest­ed him in 1977 while the two were in a sauna at the coun­try club in Houston’s tony Riv­er Oaks neigh­bor­hood. The man was enter­ing his sopho­more year in col­lege at the time; Pressler, mean­while, was a youth pas­tor at a Pres­by­ter­ian church in Hous­ton. He was oust­ed from that posi­tion in 1978 after church offi­cials received infor­ma­tion about “an alleged inci­dent,” accord­ing to a let­ter intro­duced into the court file. Soon after, Pressler ramped up his involve­ment in South­ern Bap­tist life.

Rollins said Pressler began sex­u­al­ly abus­ing him not long after. He said the rapes con­tin­ued on and off for near­ly a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, often while he was work­ing as Pressler’s aide.

In 2004, court records show that a small group of lead­ers at the mas­sive First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton were made aware of alle­ga­tions that Pressler, a pow­er­ful dea­con at the megachurch, had undressed and groped a young man at his home. In a let­ter to Pressler that was unearthed as part of Rollins’ law­suit, the church lead­ers con­demned Pressler’s “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior. They also feared that pub­li­ciz­ing the alle­ga­tions would dam­age Pressler’s rep­u­ta­tion in their church and the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.

...

The same year that First Bap­tist was made aware of those alle­ga­tions, Rollins filed a law­suit for non-sex­u­al assault against Pressler that was quick­ly set­tled for $450,000. Wood­fill, who rep­re­sent­ed Pressler in the mat­ter, said under oath last year that he was told by Rollins’ attor­ney at the time that Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused Rollins as a child. Despite that, Wood­fill con­tin­ued to lean on Pressler’s con­ser­v­a­tive rep­u­ta­tion, con­nec­tions and influ­ence to bol­ster their law firm, pro­vid­ing him with young, male per­son­al assis­tants despite Pressler doing almost no work.

“I can think of one or two cas­es that he brought in,” Wood­fill tes­ti­fied as part of Rollins’ new law­suit last year. “He may have gone to one hear­ing in his entire time with us, two at the most. Real­ly, it was his name. … He got an employ­ee that worked for him. So he didn’t get a salary. He didn’t get a draw. He didn’t get a bonus. We paid for some­one to come and assist him. That’s how he got com­pen­sat­ed.”

Wood­fill sim­i­lar­ly down­played sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions in 2016, after a 25-year-old lawyer at his firm alert­ed Wood­fill that Pressler had told him “lewd sto­ries about being naked on beach­es with young men” and then invit­ed him to skin­ny-dip at his ranch, court records show. The attor­ney said he addressed the inci­dent with a long­time employ­ee of Woodfill’s law firm, who made it clear that this was not the first time he’d heard such alle­ga­tions.

“I dis­cov­ered that this was not unusu­al behav­ior for Pressler, and that he had a long his­to­ry of lech­er­ous behav­ior towards young men. Even going as far as bring­ing scant­i­ly clad men and parad­ing them through the office,” the attor­ney wrote in an affi­davit that was filed as part of Rollins’ law­suit.

Wood­fill — who’d just played a key role defeat­ing an equal rights ordi­nance for LGBTQ Hous­to­ni­ans — respond­ed to the young man’s request for help with shock. “This 85-year-old man has nev­er made any inap­pro­pri­ate com­ments or actions toward me or any one I know of,” he respond­ed, court records show.

The young attorney’s claims are sim­i­lar in detail to those from oth­er Pressler accusers, who said he leaned on his stature and con­nec­tions in con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious and polit­i­cal cir­cles to try and coerce them into lewd mas­sages, naked swim­ming ses­sions or sex. One accuser — a young Hous­ton Bap­tist Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent — said in a sworn affi­davit that he stopped pur­su­ing a career in min­istry, fre­quent­ly had pan­ic attacks and attempt­ed sui­cide as a result of Pressler’s alleged behav­ior.

Court fil­ings also show that Pressler’s fam­i­ly was alert­ed about his behav­ior in 2017, when an aide claimed in a let­ter that he had “both heard sto­ries of and per­son­al­ly wit­nessed” Pressler get­ting nude mas­sages from “young men who work for him.” He also claimed that Pressler had recent­ly bragged about skin­ny-dip­ping with three boys who were younger than 10, and that he had seen Pressler “manip­u­late” a 20-year-old into giv­ing him a mas­sage and then repeat­ed­ly kiss him.

“He talks way more about nudi­ty, the male body, being naked in spas in Europe, being naked in gen­er­al than God, or his Bap­tist back­ground,” the aide wrote before announc­ing his res­ig­na­tion.

...

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“South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion set­tles high-pro­file law­suit that accused for­mer leader of sex­u­al abuse” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 12/29/2023

“Rollins claimed in court doc­u­ments that the alleged attacks pushed him into drug and alco­hol addic­tions that kept him in prison through­out much of his adult life. After dis­clos­ing the alleged rapes to a prison psy­chi­a­trist, Rollins filed the suit in Har­ris Coun­ty against Pressler along with oth­er defen­dants who he accused of enabling or con­ceal­ing Pressler’s behav­ior — includ­ing the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and Jared Wood­fill, the for­mer chair of the Har­ris Coun­ty GOP and Pressler’s long­time law part­ner.”

This is the kind of set­tle­ment that has to have A LOT of SBC offi­cials breath­ing a sigh of relief. And then there’s Jared Wood­fill, Paul Pressler’s long-time law part­ners who appears to have oper­at­ed as a kind of co-con­spir­a­tor in Pressler’s sex­u­al pre­da­tions for years. Although, curi­ous­ly, Wood­fill con­tin­ues to insist that he has­n’t actu­al­ly set­tled, despite the judge in the case stat­ing the oppo­site. It’s a denial by Wood­fill that only serves as a reminder that it was Wood­fill who actu­al­ly helped nego­ti­ate an ear­li­er set­tle­ment between Rollins and Pressler back in 2004:

...
As part of Rollins’ suit, at least sev­en oth­er men came for­ward with their own alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct by Pressler in inci­dents span­ning four decades. The suit also showed that Wood­fill, a promi­nent anti-LGBTQ+ activist, was aware of alle­ga­tions that Pressler was a sex­u­al preda­tor but con­tin­ued to pro­vide him with young, male per­son­al assis­tants who worked out of Pressler’s Riv­er Oaks home. Three of the men have alleged sex­u­al abuse or mis­con­duct.

...

Michael Gold­berg, who rep­re­sent­ed Rollins along with a team of lawyers from Bak­er Botts, said Fri­day that they had resolved the mat­ter with Pressler on “mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry terms,” and added that his team was “very proud of the set­tle­ment we reached against the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and Jared Wood­fill.”

Wood­fill has denied wrong­do­ing and said this week that he has not set­tled the case, though a Har­ris Coun­ty judge signed off on a motion last week that said “all claims, coun­ter­claims and con­tro­ver­sies” in the suit were resolved.

“We are fight­ing the insur­ance com­pa­ny and oppose any pay­ment,” Wood­fill said in a text mes­sage on Thurs­day.

...

In 2004, court records show that a small group of lead­ers at the mas­sive First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton were made aware of alle­ga­tions that Pressler, a pow­er­ful dea­con at the megachurch, had undressed and groped a young man at his home. In a let­ter to Pressler that was unearthed as part of Rollins’ law­suit, the church lead­ers con­demned Pressler’s “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior. They also feared that pub­li­ciz­ing the alle­ga­tions would dam­age Pressler’s rep­u­ta­tion in their church and the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.

...

The same year that First Bap­tist was made aware of those alle­ga­tions, Rollins filed a law­suit for non-sex­u­al assault against Pressler that was quick­ly set­tled for $450,000. Wood­fill, who rep­re­sent­ed Pressler in the mat­ter, said under oath last year that he was told by Rollins’ attor­ney at the time that Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused Rollins as a child. Despite that, Wood­fill con­tin­ued to lean on Pressler’s con­ser­v­a­tive rep­u­ta­tion, con­nec­tions and influ­ence to bol­ster their law firm, pro­vid­ing him with young, male per­son­al assis­tants despite Pressler doing almost no work.

“I can think of one or two cas­es that he brought in,” Wood­fill tes­ti­fied as part of Rollins’ new law­suit last year. “He may have gone to one hear­ing in his entire time with us, two at the most. Real­ly, it was his name. … He got an employ­ee that worked for him. So he didn’t get a salary. He didn’t get a draw. He didn’t get a bonus. We paid for some­one to come and assist him. That’s how he got com­pen­sat­ed.”

Wood­fill sim­i­lar­ly down­played sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions in 2016, after a 25-year-old lawyer at his firm alert­ed Wood­fill that Pressler had told him “lewd sto­ries about being naked on beach­es with young men” and then invit­ed him to skin­ny-dip at his ranch, court records show. The attor­ney said he addressed the inci­dent with a long­time employ­ee of Woodfill’s law firm, who made it clear that this was not the first time he’d heard such alle­ga­tions.
...

And note the sig­nif­i­cance of this case that goes well beyond the sto­ry of Paul Pressler and could impact sex­u­al abuse cas­es in gen­er­al going for­ward: Duane Rollins suc­cess­ful­ly argued that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions should have begun not when the abus­es took place but instead when Rollins real­ized he was abused decades lat­er. The Texas Supreme Court agreed with that argu­ment, allow­ing a case to move for­ward that would oth­er­wise have been tossed on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty. It’s a poten­tial­ly very big deal. Espe­cial­ly for all of the oth­er vic­tims of abuse at an SBC-affil­i­at­ed insti­tu­tion. Again, recall that extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion by the SBC last year to file an ami­cus brief in a case that had noth­ing to do with the SBC but instead involved a woman who is suing the Louisville Police Depart­ment, argu­ing that they knew about the abus­es her father — a police offi­cer con­vict­ed of abus­ing her as a child in 2020 — was inflict­ing on her for years, and had a duty to report it. The SBC argued in the brief that the SBC denom­i­na­tion has a “strong inter­est in the statute-of-lim­i­ta­tions issue” in the case, and that a 2021 state law allow­ing abuse vic­tims to sue third-par­ty “non-per­pe­tra­tors” was not intend­ed to be applied retroac­tive­ly. The SBC real­ly does have a strong inter­est in cas­es involv­ing the statute of lim­i­ta­tions around abuse cas­es. It’s not a great inter­est, but it’s a strong inter­est:

...
The set­tle­ment almost nev­er hap­pened.

By the time that Rollins dis­closed the alleged abus­es to a prison psy­chi­a­trist in 2016 and was diag­nosed with post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der as a “direct result of the child­hood sex­u­al trau­ma he suf­fered,” the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for fil­ing a law­suit against Pressler had long passed.

Nev­er­the­less, Rollins pushed for­ward with the suit, argu­ing that the alleged rapes by Pressler — a spir­i­tu­al men­tor who Rollins said weaponized reli­gious lan­guage to jus­ti­fy his pre­da­tions — were so trau­ma­tiz­ing that he uncon­scious­ly devel­oped a sort of Stock­holm syn­drome that, cou­pled with the drug and alco­hol addic­tions he blamed on the trau­ma, made it impos­si­ble to rec­og­nize him­self as a vic­tim until decades had passed.

Thus, Rollins argued, his statute of lim­i­ta­tions should have begun when he real­ized he had been abused, rather than when the last assault occurred. His law­suit was ini­tial­ly dis­missed on statute grounds. But Rollins appealed and, even­tu­al­ly, had the dis­missal over­turned by the Texas Supreme Court, which agreed with Rollins’ argu­ments. The court’s opin­ion was a major vic­to­ry for sex­u­al abuse vic­tims and their advo­cates, who have for years point­ed to research that shows child sex­u­al trau­ma can remap devel­op­ing brains and make it dif­fi­cult for many sur­vivors to come for­ward until after their 50th birth­day, and after their stand­ing to file law­suits has elapsed.
...

Also note this dis­turb­ing detail: Pressler recent­ly bragged about skin­ny-dip­ping with three boys who were younger than 10. How much abuse is Pressler still be allowed to per­pe­trate and how young are his vic­tims? These are some of the ques­tions still loom­ing over this sto­ry

...
Court fil­ings also show that Pressler’s fam­i­ly was alert­ed about his behav­ior in 2017, when an aide claimed in a let­ter that he had “both heard sto­ries of and per­son­al­ly wit­nessed” Pressler get­ting nude mas­sages from “young men who work for him.” He also claimed that Pressler had recent­ly bragged about skin­ny-dip­ping with three boys who were younger than 10, and that he had seen Pressler “manip­u­late” a 20-year-old into giv­ing him a mas­sage and then repeat­ed­ly kiss him.

“He talks way more about nudi­ty, the male body, being naked in spas in Europe, being naked in gen­er­al than God, or his Bap­tist back­ground,” the aide wrote before announc­ing his res­ig­na­tion.
...

Then we get to this very salient detail: Jared Wood­fill is run­ning for a Texas House seat. But he’s not run­ning in an open dis­trict with no incum­bent Repub­li­can. He’s run­ning against incum­bent Repub­li­can Lacey Hull. And already has the endorse­ment of Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton:

...
Wood­fill is cur­rent­ly run­ning for a Texas House seat against incum­bent Rep. Lacey Hull, R‑Houston, and has been endorsed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton and Agri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er Sid Miller.
...

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle from back in Novem­ber describes, Wood­fill wast­ed no time in not just attack­ing Hull as a Repub­li­can in Name Only (RINO) but also accus­ing her of con­spir­ing with Texas House Repub­li­can Speak­er, Dade Phalen, in the impeach­ment of Pax­ton. Which is a reminder that Jared Wood­fill is run­ning as a mem­ber of the fac­tion of the Texas GOP loy­al to bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn and his quest to turn the Texas GOP into an overt­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist par­ty:

The Texas Tri­bune

Promi­nent anti-LGBTQ+ activist Jared Wood­fill run­ning for Texas House

If elect­ed next year, Wood­fill also plans to run for House speak­er. His cam­paign accus­es his 2024 oppo­nent, con­ser­v­a­tive state Rep. Lacey Hull, of con­spir­ing with incum­bent Speak­er Dade Phe­lan to work against con­ser­v­a­tives.

by Robert Dow­nen
Nov. 17, 2023
11 AM Cen­tral

Promi­nent anti-LGBTQ+ attor­ney and for­mer Har­ris Coun­ty GOP chair Jared Wood­fill is run­ning for the Texas House and to replace House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan.

Wood­fill announced his can­di­da­cy for House Dis­trict 138 this week, tout­ing his legal chal­lenges to COVID-19 man­dates and LGBTQ+ leg­is­la­tion, and the four “Repub­li­can sweeps” that Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­cans saw dur­ing his tenure as the local GOP’s leader from 2002 to 2014.

He’s run­ning against incum­bent Repub­li­can Rep. Lacey Hull, who was first elect­ed to rep­re­sent the north­west Hous­ton dis­trict in 2020 with back­ing from Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Rep. Dan Cren­shaw, R‑Houston. Hull was ranked as one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the Texas House this year based on an analy­sis of vot­ing records by Rice Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Mark Jones.

Woodfill’s cam­paign has already tried to frame Hull as a Repub­li­can in Name Only — RINO — by cit­ing D rat­ings from two con­ser­v­a­tive activist groups. His cam­paign also accus­es her of con­spir­ing with Phe­lan — a long­time neme­sis of Wood­fill and oth­er ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive Texas Repub­li­cans — to “under­mine” con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tion and impeach Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton.

“The entire episode was an exam­ple of why ‘RINOs’ in Austin must be vot­ed out of office,” Woodfill’s cam­paign web­site states. “Wood­fill will be ready on Day 1 to bring decen­cy back to HD 138, and return our con­ser­v­a­tive grass­roots val­ues back to the Texas House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

...

Wood­fill has for years been at the helm of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian and anti-LGBTQ+ move­ments in Hous­ton and Texas. In 2015, he and well-known Hous­ton GOP power­bro­ker and anti-gay activist Dr. Steven Hotze played key roles in the defeat of an ordi­nance that would have extend­ed equal rights pro­tec­tions to LGBTQ+ Hous­to­ni­ans, dur­ing which they com­pared gay peo­ple to Nazis and helped pop­u­lar­ize “groomer” rhetoric.

The two have remained close, lead­ing a pro-Pax­ton fundrais­ing group dur­ing the attor­ney general’s impeach­ment this sum­mer and spear­head­ing legal chal­lenges to COVID-19 clo­sure man­dates and elec­tion results in Har­ris Coun­ty. Wood­fill is also rep­re­sent­ing Hotze in a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion stem­ming from a 2020 inci­dent in which a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, alleged­ly act­ing at Hotze’s behest, held at gun­point an air-con­di­tion­ing repair­man who he believed was trans­port­ing fake bal­lots.

Wood­fill has faced his own legal issues: He has for years been at the cen­ter of an ongo­ing law­suit in which a man accus­es Woodfill’s for­mer law part­ner and South­ern Bap­tist leader Paul Pressler of decades of sex­u­al abuse. In March, The Texas Tri­bune report­ed that Wood­fill tes­ti­fied under oath that he was alert­ed in 2004 about child sex­u­al abuse alle­ga­tions against Pressler, who Wood­fill was rep­re­sent­ing at the time in an assault law­suit that was set­tled for $450,000. Despite that, Wood­fill con­tin­ued to work with Pressler, pro­vid­ing him with a string of young, male per­son­al assis­tants who worked out of Pressler’s home. The law­suit is set for tri­al ear­ly next year.

In 2018, Wood­fill was also inves­ti­gat­ed for mon­ey laun­der­ing by the Har­ris Coun­ty Dis­trict Attorney’s Office after being accused of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing funds from two clients of his law firm, though no charges were filed.

...

———–

“Promi­nent anti-LGBTQ+ activist Jared Wood­fill run­ning for Texas House” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 11/17/2023

“Wood­fill announced his can­di­da­cy for House Dis­trict 138 this week, tout­ing his legal chal­lenges to COVID-19 man­dates and LGBTQ+ leg­is­la­tion, and the four “Repub­li­can sweeps” that Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­cans saw dur­ing his tenure as the local GOP’s leader from 2002 to 2014.”

Yes, Jared Wood­fill is no stranger to pol­i­tics. On top of serv­ing as the head of the Har­ris Coun­ty GOP from 2002 to 2014 (which includes 2004, when he nego­ti­at­ed Pressler’s first set­tle­ment with Rollins), Wood­fill has been one of the lead­ing fig­ures push­ing anti-LGBTQ poli­cies in the state. And here his, char­ac­ter­iz­ing his Repub­li­can oppo­nent Lacey Hull — who was ranked as one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the Texas House this year — as RINO. But beyond that, he’s attack­ing her for con­spir­ing with Repub­li­can House Speak­er Dade Phalen to impeach Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton. In oth­er words, this race between Wood­fill and Hull is part of the larg­er bat­tle for the con­trol of the Texas GOP between the fac­tion loy­al to Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn vs Dade Phalen and the rest of the non-Dunn-loy­al­ist fac­tion of the Texas GOP. It’s one of the rea­sons this is a race to watch:

...
He’s run­ning against incum­bent Repub­li­can Rep. Lacey Hull, who was first elect­ed to rep­re­sent the north­west Hous­ton dis­trict in 2020 with back­ing from Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Rep. Dan Cren­shaw, R‑Houston. Hull was ranked as one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the Texas House this year based on an analy­sis of vot­ing records by Rice Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Mark Jones.

Woodfill’s cam­paign has already tried to frame Hull as a Repub­li­can in Name Only — RINO — by cit­ing D rat­ings from two con­ser­v­a­tive activist groups. His cam­paign also accus­es her of con­spir­ing with Phe­lan — a long­time neme­sis of Wood­fill and oth­er ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive Texas Repub­li­cans — to “under­mine” con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tion and impeach Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton.

“The entire episode was an exam­ple of why ‘RINOs’ in Austin must be vot­ed out of office,” Woodfill’s cam­paign web­site states. “Wood­fill will be ready on Day 1 to bring decen­cy back to HD 138, and return our con­ser­v­a­tive grass­roots val­ues back to the Texas House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”
...

So how might this secret set­tle­ment play in Wood­fil­l’s run for office? Will Hull go on the attack over Wood­fil­l’s sor­did his­to­ry of enabling and coverup Pressler’s sex abuse? We’ll see, but the fact that Wood­fill jumped into this race before the set­tle­ment was even reached sug­gests he’s not feel­ing over­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the sto­ry, which is pret­ty amaz­ing con­sid­er­ing how bad he ulti­mate­ly looks with the avail­able facts. Jump­ing into this race is kind of the last thing we might expect from Wood­fill giv­en the cir­cum­stances. But he did it, and here we are, with Wood­fill fight­ing for the Groyper-friend­ly Dunn fac­tion of the Texas GOP and poten­tial­ly head­ing to the Texas House next year. It’s all part of the ongo­ing bat­tle for the heart and soul of both the Texas GOP and the SBC. Jared Wood­fill is an impor­tant man in Texas pol­i­tics today, elec­toral an denom­i­na­tion­al pol­i­tics. Scan­dalous­ly so, it would seem. More scan­dalous­ly should he get elect­ed. It’s a race to watch. For rea­sons tru­ly trag­ic for Texas.

What are they hid­ing? That’s prob­a­bly not the ques­tion SBC lead­ers were hop­ing would be left lin­ger­ing in the air fol­low­ing the sur­prise deci­sion to set­tle the abuse claims against for­mer SBC leader Paul Pressler. But that’s clear­ly the ques­tion that abuse sur­vivors and SBC mem­bers are left won­der­ing about now that the case is no longer going to tri­al.

Of course, part of what made the entire case against Pressler so remark­able and his­toric — set­tle­ment or not — was the fact that the case was allowed to go for­ward at all. As we saw, the plain­tiff in this case, Duane Rollins, suf­fered abuse by Pressler decades ago, start­ing when he was teen in the late 1970s. But he was able to argue that the statute of lim­i­ta­tion should­n’t lim­it his abil­i­ty to take Pressler to court because Rollins did­n’t actu­al­ly inter­nal­ize the real­i­ty of the abuse he suf­fered until much more recent­ly while Rollins was lan­guish­ing in prison. By suc­cess­ful­ly argu­ing that the statute of lim­i­ta­tion should only start after he real­ized what he expe­ri­enced was abuse, Rollins estab­lished a pow­er­ful legal prece­dent that can poten­tial­ly be applied to the numer­ous oth­er cas­es the SBC lead­er­ship has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cov­er­ing up over the decades. Paul Pressler was­n’t the SBC’s only ser­i­al abuser. He was just the most promi­nent of them.

So with the set­tle­ment of Rollins’s case — a set­tle­ment that ulti­mate­ly includ­ed Pressler, South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, Jared Wood­fill, First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee — the ques­tion of “what are they hid­ing?” implic­it­ly looms large. But so does the ques­tion of “what’s next?” Because it’s hard to imag­ine the set­tling of this case sud­den­ly set­tled this scan­dal. Espe­cial­ly since the set­tle­ment has the con­se­quence of keep­ing hid­den from the pub­lic many of the dark secrets that would have come for­ward had the case pro­ceed­ed to tri­al. Hence ongo­ing ques­tions of “what are they hid­ing?” Because there’s most cer­tain­ly still a lot being hid­den. That’s pre­sum­ably the whole point of set­tling in the first place. To keep stuff hid­den.

But there’s anoth­er rea­son we have to ask “what are they hid­ing?”: there’s been an ongo­ing Depart­ment of Jus­tice inves­ti­ga­tion since 2022 into the sex­u­al abuse under the SBC’s lead­er­ship. That inves­ti­ga­tion fol­lowed the shock­ing inde­pen­dent report put out by Guide­post Solu­tions, a con­sult­ing firm hired by the SBC to inves­ti­gate the abuse claims. Recall how the 2023 SBC lead­er­ship elec­tion hinged on a debate over whether or not the hir­ing of Glob­al Solu­tions was a good idea, with the more con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date, Mike Stone, com­ing out against the deci­sion.

Inter­est­ing­ly, as we’re going to see, the lawyers for Rollins actu­al­ly decid­ed to include the SBC exec­u­tive com­mit­tee in the law­suit after they attempt­ed to get doc­u­ments from the SBC dur­ing the dis­cov­ery phase of the case and real­ized that the rea­son they nev­er received the doc­u­ments is because they were in the pos­ses­sion of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. Final­ly, a week before the tri­al was sched­uled to start, the SBC turned over 1.5 mil­lion doc­u­ments. Days lat­er, they decid­ed to set­tle. And based on some com­ments from Rollins’s attor­neys it was­n’t hard to see why they might be inter­est­ed in set­tling since the turned over doc­u­ments includ­ed let­ters from the SBC’s lawyers lay­ing out how they weren’t plan­ning on cross exam­in­ing the wit­ness­es because that would prove the plain­tiff’s case.

Also of note if the fact that the plain­tiffs were plan­ning on bring­ing three new wit­ness­es to tes­ti­fy at the tri­al, includ­ing Dis­trict Judge Jaclanel McFar­land, who cur­rent­ly pre­sides in the court where Pressler once presided. mcFar­land was also an oppo­nent of Pressler’s push to takeover the SBC and steer it in an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive direc­tion. McFar­land was report­ed­ly ready to state at tri­al that it was com­mon knowl­edge Pressler act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly with young men.

That tes­ti­mo­ny nev­er got to hap­pen, but the fact that McFar­land was will­ing to do so only under­scores the giant ques­tions of what are they hid­ing, but also how have they kept this hid­den all these years? Some­how the SBC has man­aged to keep a lid on ram­pant ser­i­al abuse for decades. Abuse per­pe­trat­ed by far more than just Paul Pressler. And it’s obvi­ous at this point that the deci­sion to set­tle was made, in part, to keep that sys­tem of silence under wraps. Will they suc­ceed? Per­haps, but only if they can man­age to keep “what are they hid­ing?” pure­ly in the realm of ques­tions to be asked and nev­er answered:

Chron

‘What are they hid­ing’: For­mer SBC mem­bers react to sex abuse set­tle­ment

Despite a fast declin­ing mem­ber­ship, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion remains the coun­try’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion.

By Eric Kil­le­lea
Jan 5, 2024

As a South­ern Bap­tist, Rus­sell Minick strug­gled to bal­ance his respect for church atten­dees with his con­tempt for lead­ers in the coun­try’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion.

It was in the ear­ly 1980s, after serv­ing in the U.S. Marine Corps, when Minick said he first got “tan­gled up” with the Nashville-based South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC) and its then pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son. Minick plant­ed church­es over­seas and oper­at­ed “on the fringe of inner cir­cles” led by Pat­ter­son and ex-Hous­ton judge Paul Pressler, two archi­tects of the con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence, an in-house strat­e­gy meant to focus on the “inerran­cy of Scrip­ture” that ulti­mate­ly aligned with GOP beliefs.

In 2012, Minick took a job at First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton to help its pas­tor, Gregg Mat­te, expand church­es city­wide. But Minick end­ed up leav­ing First Bap­tist just before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion as right-wing fac­tions of the church backed Don­ald Trump. Minick then led Crown World Heart, in Hous­ton, a small South­ern Bap­tist church where he watched mem­bers wres­tle with hard­en­ing con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. Atten­dees also began ques­tion­ing Paige and Pressler as SBC lead­ers were accused of sex­u­al crimes. Minick offi­cial­ly broke from the SBC and retired from min­istry in Jan­u­ary 2022.

Last week, Minick read arti­cles cov­er­ing how SBC and oth­ers reached a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment in a six-year suit accus­ing Pressler of sex abuse and alleg­ing that oth­ers includ­ing First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton were respon­si­ble for cov­er­ing up crimes.

“It just left me won­der­ing who all knew and what else are they hid­ing,” Minick said Mon­day, express­ing frus­tra­tion that the case would nev­er reach its Feb­ru­ary tri­al date. It was his belief that SBC had “cal­cu­lat­ed the cost of the cost of set­tle­ment ver­sus tri­al and did what they had to do to pro­tect them­selves and there was no con­cern for vic­tims or integri­ty. It was all just self-preser­va­tion. No ques­tion.”

In the New Year, cur­rent and for­mer South­ern Bap­tists have held debates on social media about a sharp­en­ing divi­sion among mem­bers amid the ongo­ing scan­dal. The focus of online con­ver­sa­tion sur­rounds Gareld Duane Rollins Jr., Pressler’s for­mer aide, who in 2017 sued the SBC and promi­nent insti­tu­tions and lead­ers in Har­ris Coun­ty dis­trict court. Rollins, once a 14-year-old mem­ber of the SBC in the late 1970s, alleged that Pressler, then a church youth group leader in his 40s, began rap­ing him dur­ing his teen years. Rollins alleged Pressler abused him off and on until 2003.

Rollins also accused the SBC, its exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, the First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton and Jared Wood­fill, the ex-Har­ris Coun­ty GOP chair and Pressler’s law part­ner who is now vying for the House Dis­trict 138 seat, of keep­ing the alleged abus­es secret. The SBC, its lead­ers and insti­tu­tions have denied alle­ga­tions stem­ming from Rollins’ law­suit and despite los­ing near­ly half a mil­lion members—dropping to 13.2 mil­lion in 2022—the con­ven­tion and its Hous­ton church­es still man­age to attract thou­sands of atten­dees for week­ly ser­vices.

After six years of court pro­ceed­ings and delays, Texas Tri­bune reporter Robert Dow­nen broke the sto­ry on Fri­day that the SBC and its exec­u­tive com­mit­tee had reached a set­tle­ment in the suit despite being “ful­ly pre­pared to pro­ceed to tri­al.” (Dow­nen was part of the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle team that wrote the “Abuse of Faith” inves­ti­ga­tion that led to reforms in the SBC and an ongo­ing Depart­ment of Jus­tice inves­ti­ga­tion.)

“How­ev­er, sev­er­al fac­tors ulti­mate­ly made set­tle­ment the more pru­dent choice,” a spe­cial coun­sel for the SBC and its Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee said in a state­ment. “Chief among those fac­tors was the hor­ren­dous nature of the abuse alle­ga­tions, the like­li­hood that coun­sel for the SBC and Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would have to con­front and cross-exam­ine abuse sur­vivors, the Exec­u­tive Committee’s cur­rent finan­cial con­di­tion, and the will­ing­ness of mul­ti­ple insur­ance car­ri­ers to con­tribute to the terms of the set­tle­ment.”

Reached Tues­day, Bar­ry Fly­nn, who rep­re­sent­ed First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton in the suit, said that “when we were pre­sent­ed with a rea­son­able set­tle­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty, we agreed and our insur­ance com­pa­nies agreed to pay it.” Fly­nn declined to dis­close how the amount paid.

...

Among South­ern Bap­tists voic­ing their con­cerns was Steve Bezn­er, a senior pas­tor of SBC-affil­i­at­ed Hous­ton North­west Church, who post­ed on X that he could not “speak for ‘SBC folk’ at large” but he felt “per­son­al­ly a) angry, b) try­ing to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with vic­tims, c) work for reforms, and d) wel­come any judge­ment that may come.” Bezn­er and sev­er­al oth­er South­ern Bap­tists in Hous­ton did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Anne Marie Miller, who pre­vi­ous­ly told the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle her sto­ry of being abused by a top SBC mis­sion­ary while she was a teen, said in direct mes­sages on X that she was “glad there is finan­cial reper­cus­sions” and that she believed the vic­tims were deserv­ing of a set­tle­ment. “I’m also left bro­ken as many will nev­er expe­ri­ence any­thing like that, and the fact it had to come to this to begin with rein­forces such sor­row I feel,” added Miller, who is now a hos­pice reg­is­tered nurse in Dal­las-Fort Worth.

Anoth­er advo­cate, Christa Brown, who said she began alert­ing SBC lead­ers of sex abuse alle­ga­tions decades ago after she was sex­u­al­ly abused by a youth min­is­ter at her South­ern Bap­tist church in Texas when she was a teen, said Mon­day that she felt “so hap­py” for Rollins.

...

How does Brown think the SBC han­dled the set­tle­ment? “They will hope that this will dis­ap­pear,” Brown alleged, say­ing she believed “they want it to qui­et down as fast as pos­si­ble, put it in the rear-view mir­ror and move on with­out say­ing any­thing about it.”

Minick, the for­mer First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton employ­ee, sug­gest­ed that the law­suit set­tle­ment would mean con­tin­ued silence, and feared that South­ern Bap­tists might remain clue­less to what he believed was the con­ven­tion’s “modus operan­di of keep­ing things qui­et” for the cause of the king­dom. “When you see a case like this it’s so obvi­ous that there is no greater good. It’s just abuse, rape, ” Minick said.

On Sun­day morn­ing, South­ern Bap­tists gath­ered at First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton to bring in the 2024 New Year. Hun­dreds of them, most­ly gray-haired and white, bought cof­fees at the megachurch’s Loop cam­pus off Katy Free­way and sat in the movie the­ater-style seats where they joined in song with Chris­t­ian musi­cians and raised their hands to Pas­tor Leon Brooks III, who was fill­ing in for Mat­te.

“We are to have high regard for lead­ers,” Brooks said, refer­ring to Hebrews vers­es in the Bible. “We real­ly have to regard Pas­tor Gregg high­ly because he labors in the Scrip­tures, the vision. We regard him high­ly and also our oth­er lead­ers, dea­cons, staff, Life Bible Stud­ies and small group lead­ers, those who labor for us in the faith.”

The ser­vice end­ed with­out the pas­tor direct­ly men­tion­ing the law­suit set­tle­ment.

———–

“ ‘What are they hid­ing’: For­mer SBC mem­bers react to sex abuse set­tle­ment” By Eric Kil­le­lea; Chron­i­cle; 01/05/2024

““It just left me won­der­ing who all knew and what else are they hid­ing,” Minick said Mon­day, express­ing frus­tra­tion that the case would nev­er reach its Feb­ru­ary tri­al date. It was his belief that SBC had “cal­cu­lat­ed the cost of the cost of set­tle­ment ver­sus tri­al and did what they had to do to pro­tect them­selves and there was no con­cern for vic­tims or integri­ty. It was all just self-preser­va­tion. No ques­tion.””

The set­tle­ment was pure­ly an act of self-preser­va­tion on the part of the SBC, accord­ing to Rus­sell Minick, a for­mer employ­ee of First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton. The kind of self-pre­serv­ing act that left Minick won­der­ing what else are they hid­ing. It’s a sen­ti­ment seem­ing­ly shared by a num­ber observers, and espe­cial­ly abuse sur­vivors, fol­low­ing the news of the set­tle­ment. Abuse sur­vivors who weren’t all Paul Pressler’s vic­tims. As we’ve seen, the SBC’s abuse scan­dal involves hun­dreds of abusers going back decades. This is far from a Paul Pressler-spe­cif­ic prob­lem. Pressler is just the most senior fig­ure to be impli­cat­ed. So what’s going to hap­pen with all of those oth­er cas­es as a result of this set­tle­ment? Well they be suc­cess­ful­ly swept under the rug? That’s the fear we’re hear­ing expressed at this point:

...
Among South­ern Bap­tists voic­ing their con­cerns was Steve Bezn­er, a senior pas­tor of SBC-affil­i­at­ed Hous­ton North­west Church, who post­ed on X that he could not “speak for ‘SBC folk’ at large” but he felt “per­son­al­ly a) angry, b) try­ing to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with vic­tims, c) work for reforms, and d) wel­come any judge­ment that may come.” Bezn­er and sev­er­al oth­er South­ern Bap­tists in Hous­ton did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Anne Marie Miller, who pre­vi­ous­ly told the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle her sto­ry of being abused by a top SBC mis­sion­ary while she was a teen, said in direct mes­sages on X that she was “glad there is finan­cial reper­cus­sions” and that she believed the vic­tims were deserv­ing of a set­tle­ment. “I’m also left bro­ken as many will nev­er expe­ri­ence any­thing like that, and the fact it had to come to this to begin with rein­forces such sor­row I feel,” added Miller, who is now a hos­pice reg­is­tered nurse in Dal­las-Fort Worth.

Anoth­er advo­cate, Christa Brown, who said she began alert­ing SBC lead­ers of sex abuse alle­ga­tions decades ago after she was sex­u­al­ly abused by a youth min­is­ter at her South­ern Bap­tist church in Texas when she was a teen, said Mon­day that she felt “so hap­py” for Rollins.

...

How does Brown think the SBC han­dled the set­tle­ment? “They will hope that this will dis­ap­pear,” Brown alleged, say­ing she believed “they want it to qui­et down as fast as pos­si­ble, put it in the rear-view mir­ror and move on with­out say­ing any­thing about it.”

Minick, the for­mer First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton employ­ee, sug­gest­ed that the law­suit set­tle­ment would mean con­tin­ued silence, and feared that South­ern Bap­tists might remain clue­less to what he believed was the con­ven­tion’s “modus operan­di of keep­ing things qui­et” for the cause of the king­dom. “When you see a case like this it’s so obvi­ous that there is no greater good. It’s just abuse, rape, ” Minick said.
...

And note the rather laugh­able claims on the of the SBC exec­u­tive com­mit­tee that they reached this set­tle­ment despite being “ful­ly pre­pared to pro­ceed to tri­al.” Set­tling was mere­ly the “pru­dent choice”, accord­ing to the nar­ra­tive we’re get­ting from the SBC:

...
Rollins also accused the SBC, its exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, the First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton and Jared Wood­fill, the ex-Har­ris Coun­ty GOP chair and Pressler’s law part­ner who is now vying for the House Dis­trict 138 seat, of keep­ing the alleged abus­es secret. The SBC, its lead­ers and insti­tu­tions have denied alle­ga­tions stem­ming from Rollins’ law­suit and despite los­ing near­ly half a mil­lion members—dropping to 13.2 mil­lion in 2022—the con­ven­tion and its Hous­ton church­es still man­age to attract thou­sands of atten­dees for week­ly ser­vices.

After six years of court pro­ceed­ings and delays, Texas Tri­bune reporter Robert Dow­nen broke he sto­ry on Fri­day that the SBC and its exec­u­tive com­mit­tee had reached a set­tle­ment in the suit despite being “ful­ly pre­pared to pro­ceed to tri­al.” (Dow­nen was part of the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle team that wrote the “Abuse of Faith” inves­ti­ga­tion that led to reforms in the SBC and an ongo­ing Depart­ment of Jus­tice inves­ti­ga­tion.)

“How­ev­er, sev­er­al fac­tors ulti­mate­ly made set­tle­ment the more pru­dent choice,” a spe­cial coun­sel for the SBC and its Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee said in a state­ment. “Chief among those fac­tors was the hor­ren­dous nature of the abuse alle­ga­tions, the like­li­hood that coun­sel for the SBC and Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would have to con­front and cross-exam­ine abuse sur­vivors, the Exec­u­tive Committee’s cur­rent finan­cial con­di­tion, and the will­ing­ness of mul­ti­ple insur­ance car­ri­ers to con­tribute to the terms of the set­tle­ment.”
...

And that claim by the SBC exec­u­tive com­mit­tee about being “ful­ly pre­pared to pro­ceed to tri­al” brings us to the fol­low­ing report in the Bap­tist News with more details about what the Rollins’s lawyers dis­cov­ered dur­ing the case. The plain­tiffs had three new wit­ness­es that they were ready to bring for­ward, includ­ing Dis­trict Judge Jaclanel McFar­land, who cur­rent­ly pre­sides in the court where Pressler once presided. McFar­land was report­ed­ly “pre­pared to state it was com­mon knowl­edge Pressler act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly with young men.” Notably, it sounds like McFar­land, a Bap­tist, was an oppo­nent of Pressler in the SBC’s “Bat­tle for the Bible.” It’s one of those details that hints at a much larg­er scan­dal by also hint­ing as a remark­able con­trol mech­a­nism in place for keep­ing all these sto­ries of abuse under con­trol and out of the pub­lic light. Here was McFar­land, a long-time oppo­nent of Pressler’s ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive push inside the SBC, only now reveal­ing what was com­mon knowl­edge about Pressler’s abus­es. Some­thing was keep­ing McFar­land qui­et all these years but not just him. All the peo­ple with that “com­mon knowl­edge” were stay­ing qui­et some­how. It’s hard not to won­der “what else are they hid­ing” when that’s the case.

Accord­ing to the Rollins’s attor­neys, at first they were get­ting com­plete­ly stonewalled by the SBC when request­ing doc­u­ments. The lawyers then pro­ceed­ed to include the SBC exec­u­tive com­mit­tee in the law­suit under the premise that the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee was in con­trol of the doc­u­ments that weren’t being hand­ed over. One week before the tri­al, the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee turned over 1.5 mil­lion doc­u­ments. As we might imag­ine, there was what the lawyers described as “smok­ing gun doc­u­ments” turned over, includ­ing doc­u­ments describ­ing a legal defense phi­los­o­phy of delay, fil­ing lots of motions and blam­ing the vic­tim. Along with doc­u­ments where SBC lawyers stat­ed that the defen­dants would not depose the plain­tiff’s wit­ness­es because they believed it would only prove up the plaintiff’s case:

Bap­tist News

Law firm rep­re­sent­ing Rollins against Pressler com­ments on the abuse case

Mark Wing­field | Jan­u­ary 10, 2024

The Texas law firm Bak­er Botts devot­ed more than $6 mil­lion in bill­able hours on the set of inter­con­nect­ed law­suits based upon Paul Pressler’s alleged abuse of minor boys and young men, accord­ing to an arti­cle pub­lished by Law.com.

The Jan. 5 arti­cle also named the six defen­dants who set­tled out of court in the course of 2023: Pressler, South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, Hous­ton attor­ney Jared Wood­fill, First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

Accord­ing to the legal jour­nal arti­cle, which main­ly high­lights the suc­cess of the Bak­er Botts team, Pressler was the last to agree to a set­tle­ment with Duane Rollins.

Accord­ing to a legal brief in the case, Rollins claims after he enrolled in Pressler’s Bible study at First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, Pressler lured the 14-year-old to Pressler’s home and a pri­vate club for fondling and anal sex. He con­vinced Rollins to keep “our secret,” the brief says, by telling the boy he was “spe­cial” and “no one but God would under­stand” their rela­tion­ship.

Pressler has denied the alle­ga­tions but Bak­er Botts says it had wit­ness­es lined up to tes­ti­fy against the for­mer appel­late court judge who was co-archi­tect of the SBC’s “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence.”

...

Bak­er Botts iden­ti­fied three new wit­ness­es who would have tes­ti­fied against Pressler, in addi­tion to oth­ers who have come for­ward with their own sto­ries of being abused by the judge, the arti­cle said.

One wit­ness would have been an unnamed assis­tant to Pressler “who had had enough and told the Pressler fam­i­ly about the sex­u­al abuse he wit­nessed,” Bak­er Botts report­ed. “He also advised the fam­i­ly to not allow Pressler to have any assis­tants who were young white males.”

Anoth­er would have been state pros­e­cu­tor Brooks Schott, who is a for­mer asso­ciate at the law firm where Pressler and Wood­fill were part­ners, “after he was propo­si­tioned by Pressler to par­tic­i­pate in ‘naked hot tub­bing’ in a pri­vate ranch.”

A third wit­ness who would have tes­ti­fied is Dis­trict Judge Jaclanel McFar­land, who cur­rent­ly pre­sides in the court where Pressler once presided. Bak­er Botts said McFar­land — also a Bap­tist — “was pre­pared to state it was com­mon knowl­edge Pressler act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly with young men.”

McFar­land had Pressler’s court­room por­trait tak­en down.

Pressler and McFar­land years ago were on oppo­site sides of the SBC’s “Bat­tle for the Bible,” with McFar­land being a well-known oppo­nent of Pressler’s effort to gain con­trol of the SBC and all its insti­tu­tions.

The Law.com arti­cle also details what Bak­er Botts attor­neys say was stonewalling by SBC attor­neys.

“Dur­ing dis­cov­ery, Bak­er Botts sent its requests for pro­duc­tion but the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion pro­duced zero doc­u­ments. Bak­er Botts pushed on a motion to com­pel and SBC respond­ed say­ing it was not pro­duc­ing doc­u­ments because they were under the con­trol of their Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

“As a result, Bak­er Botts brought the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee into the law­suit and one week before tri­al it pro­duced about 1.5 mil­lion doc­u­ments. Bak­er Botts moved for a con­tin­u­ance and put a whole team of asso­ciates on the doc­u­ment search.”

As a result, “some inter­est­ing smok­ing gun doc­u­ments were found,” said Michael Gold­berg, lead attor­ney on the case and senior coun­sel in the Hous­ton office of Bak­er Botts.

The arti­cle explains: “Among the more incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments were those of SBC lawyers stat­ing that the defen­dants would not depose Bak­er Botts’ wit­ness­es because they believed it would only prove up the plaintiff’s case. Oth­er doc­u­ments spelled out the SBC defense phi­los­o­phy of delay, fil­ing a mul­ti­tude of motions and blam­ing the vic­tim.”

Although the full case nev­er made it to tri­al before set­tle­ment, it changed Texas law to allow an expand­ed time for abuse claims to be filed. “Rollins argued that his child­hood trau­ma ren­dered him of an unsound mind and there­fore pre­vent­ed him from assert­ing his claims with­in the typ­i­cal statute of lim­i­ta­tions,” the arti­cle not­ed.

...

———–

“Law firm rep­re­sent­ing Rollins against Pressler com­ments on the abuse case” by Mark Wing­field; Bap­tist News; 01/10/2024

“Bak­er Botts iden­ti­fied three new wit­ness­es who would have tes­ti­fied against Pressler, in addi­tion to oth­ers who have come for­ward with their own sto­ries of being abused by the judge, the arti­cle said.”

We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er get to hear from these wit­ness­es, at least not under oath. But at least we are learn­ing some of the details they would have shared had this case gone to tri­al. Details like Dis­trict Judge Jaclanel McFar­land’s asser­tion that “it was com­mon knowl­edge Pressler act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly with young men”. It would have been a damn­ing form of tes­ti­mo­ny had it hap­pened. Damn­ing not just for Paul Pressler but the entire SBC lead­er­ship:

...
One wit­ness would have been an unnamed assis­tant to Pressler “who had had enough and told the Pressler fam­i­ly about the sex­u­al abuse he wit­nessed,” Bak­er Botts report­ed. “He also advised the fam­i­ly to not allow Pressler to have any assis­tants who were young white males.”

Anoth­er would have been state pros­e­cu­tor Brooks Schott, who is a for­mer asso­ciate at the law firm where Pressler and Wood­fill were part­ners, “after he was propo­si­tioned by Pressler to par­tic­i­pate in ‘naked hot tub­bing’ in a pri­vate ranch.”

A third wit­ness who would have tes­ti­fied is Dis­trict Judge Jaclanel McFar­land, who cur­rent­ly pre­sides in the court where Pressler once presided. Bak­er Botts said McFar­land — also a Bap­tist — “was pre­pared to state it was com­mon knowl­edge Pressler act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly with young men.”

McFar­land had Pressler’s court­room por­trait tak­en down.

Pressler and McFar­land years ago were on oppo­site sides of the SBC’s “Bat­tle for the Bible,” with McFar­land being a well-known oppo­nent of Pressler’s effort to gain con­trol of the SBC and all its insti­tu­tions.
...

And then we get to the tru­ly incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments found in the cache of 1.5 mil­lion doc­u­ments been belat­ed­ly turned over to Rollins’s attor­neys only a week before the tri­al was sup­posed to hap­pen. Smok­ing gun doc­u­ments like those of SBC lawyers say­ing they would not be depos­ing wit­ness­es due to fears that it would only prove Rollins’s case. It’s part of the con­text of the deci­sion to offer a set­tle­ment: the SBC had just turned over troves of damn­ing doc­u­ments:

...
The Law.com arti­cle also details what Bak­er Botts attor­neys say was stonewalling by SBC attor­neys.

“Dur­ing dis­cov­ery, Bak­er Botts sent its requests for pro­duc­tion but the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion pro­duced zero doc­u­ments. Bak­er Botts pushed on a motion to com­pel and SBC respond­ed say­ing it was not pro­duc­ing doc­u­ments because they were under the con­trol of their Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

“As a result, Bak­er Botts brought the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee into the law­suit and one week before tri­al it pro­duced about 1.5 mil­lion doc­u­ments. Bak­er Botts moved for a con­tin­u­ance and put a whole team of asso­ciates on the doc­u­ment search.”

As a result, “some inter­est­ing smok­ing gun doc­u­ments were found,” said Michael Gold­berg, lead attor­ney on the case and senior coun­sel in the Hous­ton office of Bak­er Botts.

The arti­cle explains: “Among the more incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments were those of SBC lawyers stat­ing that the defen­dants would not depose Bak­er Botts’ wit­ness­es because they believed it would only prove up the plaintiff’s case. Oth­er doc­u­ments spelled out the SBC defense phi­los­o­phy of delay, fil­ing a mul­ti­tude of motions and blam­ing the vic­tim.”
...

And don’t for­get the tru­ly remark­able out­come of this entire legal saga: while the case may not have gone to tri­al, it did at least set the prece­dent that the statute of lim­i­ta­tion for abuse cas­es should­n’t depend on when the abuse took place but rather when the vic­tim real­ized what hap­pened, pos­si­bly years lat­er. It’s the kind of prece­dent that could allow for a lot more of these cas­es to come for­ward in the future. Which was, in turn, all the more incen­tive for the SBC to set­tle and try to con­tain this scan­dal as much as pos­si­ble:

...
Although the full case nev­er made it to tri­al before set­tle­ment, it changed Texas law to allow an expand­ed time for abuse claims to be filed. “Rollins argued that his child­hood trau­ma ren­dered him of an unsound mind and there­fore pre­vent­ed him from assert­ing his claims with­in the typ­i­cal statute of lim­i­ta­tions,” the arti­cle not­ed.
...

So as a reminder of what’s at stake here for the SBC, here’s an arti­cle from August of 2022 about some­thing that pre­sum­ably weighed heav­i­ly on the SBC’s deci­sion to set­tle: the ongo­ing fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion by the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice into the SBC’s ram­pant sex­u­al abuse:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

South­ern Bap­tists say denom­i­na­tion faces DOJ inves­ti­ga­tion

By HOLLY MEYER and DAVID CRARY
Pub­lished 6:31 PM CST, August 12, 2022

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion said Fri­day that sev­er­al of the denomination’s major enti­ties are under inves­ti­ga­tion by the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice in the wake of its mul­ti­ple prob­lems relat­ed to cler­gy sex abuse.

The SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee has received a sub­poe­na, but no indi­vid­u­als have been sub­poe­naed at this point, accord­ing to the committee’s lawyers.

“This is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and we are not com­ment­ing on our dis­cus­sions with DOJ,” they said.

The state­ment from SBC lead­ers — includ­ing Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers, sem­i­nary pres­i­dents and heads of mis­sion orga­ni­za­tions — gave few details about the inves­ti­ga­tion, but indi­cat­ed it dealt with wide­spread sex­u­al abuse prob­lems that have rocked the largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion in the U.S.

“Indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly each SBC enti­ty is resolved to ful­ly and com­plete­ly coop­er­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tion,” the state­ment said. “While we con­tin­ue to grieve and lament past mis­takes relat­ed to sex­u­al abuse, cur­rent lead­ers across the SBC have demon­strat­ed a firm con­vic­tion to address those issues of the past and are imple­ment­ing mea­sures to ensure they are nev­er repeat­ed in the future.”

...

Ear­li­er this year, an SBC sex abuse task force released a blis­ter­ing 288-page report from out­side con­sul­tant, Guide­post Solu­tions. The firm’s sev­en-month inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion found dis­turb­ing details about how denom­i­na­tion­al lead­ers mis­han­dled sex abuse claims and mis­treat­ed vic­tims.

The report focused specif­i­cal­ly on how the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee respond­ed to abuse cas­es, reveal­ing that it had secret­ly main­tained a list of cler­gy and oth­er church work­ers accused of abuse. The com­mit­tee lat­er apol­o­gized and released the list, which had hun­dreds of accused work­ers on it.

...

Fol­low­ing the release of the Guide­post report, the SBC vot­ed dur­ing its annu­al meet­ing in June to cre­at­ed a way to track pas­tors and oth­er church work­ers cred­i­bly accused of sex abuse and launch a new task force to over­see fur­ther reforms. Ear­li­er this week, SBC Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber, who also signed Friday’s state­ment, announced the names of the South­ern Bap­tist pas­tors and church mem­bers who will serve on the task force.

...

Okla­homa pas­tor Mike Keah­bone, who serves on the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee and is the vice chair of the new abuse task force, said on Twit­ter that the inves­ti­ga­tion “is not some­thing to fear ... If there is more work to do, we will do it.”

———-

“South­ern Bap­tists say denom­i­na­tion faces DOJ inves­ti­ga­tion” By HOLLY MEYER and DAVID CRARY; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 08/12/2022

“The state­ment from SBC lead­ers — includ­ing Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers, sem­i­nary pres­i­dents and heads of mis­sion orga­ni­za­tions — gave few details about the inves­ti­ga­tion, but indi­cat­ed it dealt with wide­spread sex­u­al abuse prob­lems that have rocked the largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion in the U.S.”

As we can see, the case against Paul Pressler was­n’t the only sex­u­al abuse coverup legal night­mare the SBC has been deal­ing with. This inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing, and fol­lows a high­ly dis­turb­ing 288 page report by inde­pen­dent con­sult­ing firm Guide­post Solu­tions. Recall how oppo­si­tion to the cre­ation of that Guide­post inves­ti­ga­tion became one of the focal points in the 2023 race for the SBC’s lead­er­ship. It’s a reminder that the SBC lead­er­ship fac­tion that wants to keep this as cov­ered up as pos­si­ble remains very influ­en­tial:

...
Ear­li­er this year, an SBC sex abuse task force released a blis­ter­ing 288-page report from out­side con­sul­tant, Guide­post Solu­tions. The firm’s sev­en-month inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion found dis­turb­ing details about how denom­i­na­tion­al lead­ers mis­han­dled sex abuse claims and mis­treat­ed vic­tims.

The report focused specif­i­cal­ly on how the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee respond­ed to abuse cas­es, reveal­ing that it had secret­ly main­tained a list of cler­gy and oth­er church work­ers accused of abuse. The com­mit­tee lat­er apol­o­gized and released the list, which had hun­dreds of accused work­ers on it.

...

Fol­low­ing the release of the Guide­post report, the SBC vot­ed dur­ing its annu­al meet­ing in June to cre­at­ed a way to track pas­tors and oth­er church work­ers cred­i­bly accused of sex abuse and launch a new task force to over­see fur­ther reforms. Ear­li­er this week, SBC Pres­i­dent Bart Bar­ber, who also signed Friday’s state­ment, announced the names of the South­ern Bap­tist pas­tors and church mem­bers who will serve on the task force.
...

What impact will the deci­sion to set­tle have on that ongo­ing DOJ inves­ti­ga­tion? It’s hard to say, but it pre­sum­ably did­n’t help the inves­ti­ga­tors.

Still, it’s not as if the DOJ is lack­ing in com­pelling evi­dence. Includ­ing now the evi­dence of the SBC exec­u­tive com­mit­tee’s extreme desire to put an end to the Pressler case. It’s cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, but for pret­ty awful cir­cum­stances. The kind of cir­cum­stances that get more awful the more we learn. The kind of cir­cum­stances that calls for some very dif­fi­cult lead­er­ship at the SBC. Or very exten­sive hid­ing.

It was a land­slide vic­to­ry. Don­ald Trump dom­i­nat­ed the Iowa cau­cus­es as large­ly expect­ed. At least that’s what observers expect­ed in the days lead­ing up to the vote. It was­n’t obvi­ous it was going to be a go this way a year ago. But it’s been obvi­ous for months now that Trump was­n’t just going to win but trounce his com­pe­ti­tion. Ron DeSan­tis and Nik­ki Haley nev­er stood a chance.

Not for lack of try­ing. In fact, as we’re going to see, it was less than two months ago when DeSan­tis scored what, in years past, would have been a major boost to his flag­ging pres­i­den­tial cam­paign: the endorse­ment of Iowan evan­gel­i­cal leader Bob Van­der Plaats, head of The Fam­i­ly Leader, an Iowa-based con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian non-prof­it with ties to Tony Perkin­s’s Focus on the Fam­i­ly. Van­der Plaats endorsed the win­ners of Iowa’s Repub­li­can cau­cus­es in 2008, 2012, and 2016. And as of a week before Iowa’s cau­cus­es, Van­der Plaats was pre­dict­ing a last-minute break to DeSan­tis by Iowa’s vot­ers. 2024 was the year Van­der Plaats was dethroned as Iowa’s polit­i­cal king-mak­er.

It’s that vic­to­ry by Trump despite Van­der Plaat­s’s endorse­ment of DeSan­tis that we’re going to take a clos­er look at in the arti­cles below. As we’re going to see, Trump’s fight with Van­der Plaats did­n’t start two months ago after DeSan­tis got that endorse­ment. It it was just over a year ago, in Novem­ber of 2022, fol­low­ing the GOP’s rel­a­tive­ly dis­ap­point­ing midterm results, when Trump start­ed fac­ing grow­ing crit­i­cism from evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. Includ­ing Van­der Plaats, who tweet­ed out on Novem­ber 10, 2022, a call for Trump to depart from pol­i­tics: “Regard­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s big announce­ment next Tues­day, I rec­om­mend a HUGE thank you for the priv­i­lege of serv­ing the great­est coun­try. How­ev­er, now it’s time to turn the page. Amer­i­ca must move on. Walk off the stage with class.” Three days lat­er, Dr Everett Piper, the ex-pres­i­dent of Okla­homa Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty, wrote an op-ed enti­tled “It’s time for the GOP to say it: Don­ald Trump is hurt­ing us, not help­ing us.”

Less than two weeks after that pair of promi­nent rebukes, we got news about Trump’s Mar-a-Lago din­ner with Catholic Nazi online leader Nick Fuentes and Kanye West. It real­ly was a moment when it looked like Trump’s star might be fad­ing.

Then, on Decem­ber 7, 2022, we saw the launch of a new group: Pas­tors for Trump. The launch was announced by Tul­sa pas­tor Jack­son Lah­mey­er dur­ing an appear­ance on Roger Stone’s “Stone Zone” pod­cast. And as we’re going to see, while tech­ni­cal­ly sep­a­rate from the Trump cam­paign, Pas­tors for Trump has become inter­wo­ven with the Trump cam­paign, oper­at­ing as a kind of cam­paign sur­ro­gate. A role that became par­tic­u­lar­ly heat­ed when it came to respond­ing to oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers like Van­der Plaats. In fact, it was Novem­ber of 2023 when Lah­mey­er called Van­der Plaats a “street whore” over his endorse­ment of Ron DeSan­tis.

In Jan­u­ary of 2023, Trump pub­licly accused Van­der Plaats and oth­er evan­gel­i­cals who had then-recent­ly become crit­i­cal of him of “dis­loy­al­ty”. So fol­low­ing the GOP’s dis­ap­point­ing 2022 mid-term results, Trump start­ed fac­ing crit­i­cism from key evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and, with­in two months, he respond­ed by first hav­ing a Nazi din­ner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, then cre­at­ing a new Pas­tors for Trump Group, and final­ly by decry­ing these evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers as dis­loy­al. That’s all part of the con­text of Trump’s Iowa vic­to­ry. It real­ly was a kind of bat­tle inside the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty over since the 2022 midterms, and Trump’s side won.

Beyond the ties to the Trump cam­paign, Lah­mey­er has very close ties to anoth­er evan­gel­i­cal pro-Trump out­fit that we’ve seen before: the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour. Recall how Clay Clark’s ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca has events with speak­ers so extreme that Chris­t­ian Zion­ist John Hagee had to release a face-sav­ing state­ment about not endors­ing the group’s views after his Cor­ner­stone Church host­ed one of their events back in Novem­ber of 2021. An event where Michael Fly­nn made the open Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist dec­la­ra­tion: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one reli­gion. One nation under God, and one reli­gion under God.”. And as we also saw, Fly­nn isn’t even the most extreme fig­ure to attend these ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events. There’s also Scott McK­ay, who has been invit­ed to speak about how a cabal of fake Jew” Satan­ic child-sac­ri­fic­ing Khaz­ar­i­ans have been secret­ly con­trol­ling the world for mil­len­nia. Also, Hitler was mis­un­der­stood and fought the evil Jews. And along with fig­ures like McK­ay, we also find key Trump World fig­ures Kash Patel and Eric Trump speak­ing at these events.

As we’re going to see, Lah­mey­er appar­ent­ly is the per­son who first intro­duced Clay Clark, a mem­ber of Lah­mey­er’s church, to Michael Fly­nn, in ear­ly 2021. Fly­nn and Clark went on to host dozens of these ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events and Lah­mey­er claims to have attend­ed every sin­gle one of them. One of these ReAwak­en events was even host­ed a the Trump-owned Doral resort in May of 2023. Lah­mey­er and Stone were both sched­uled to speak at the event.

So we have an explic­it­ly pro-Trump evan­gel­i­cal move­ment co-led by the open­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist pro-insur­rec­tion­ist Michael Fly­nn. And it’s close­ly aligned with Pas­tors for Trump, a group that was start­ed less than a month after Trump start­ed receiv­ing open crit­i­cism for key evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers like Bob Van­der Plaats.

And yet, while Trump did ulti­mate­ly win a major­i­ty of Iowa cau­cus votes, it was still a bare major­i­ty at just 51%. A sub­stan­tial num­ber of Iowa Repub­li­cans — noto­ri­ous for being heav­i­ly dom­i­nat­ed by evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers — reject­ed Trump. At the same time, as we’re going to see, the grow­ing align­ment of evan­gel­i­cals with Trumpian pol­i­tics has coin­cid­ed with anoth­er pro­found change in the Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty: far few­er self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals go to church any­more, with many choos­ing to get their reli­gious teach­ers from obscure online fig­ures. More and more self-described evan­gel­i­cals are pri­mar­i­ly evan­gel­i­cal in terms of per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion but not so much in lifestyle. That’s the demo­graph­ic Trump appears to have heav­i­ly won over. A demo­graph­ic that is increas­ing­ly replac­ing orga­nized reli­gion with choose-your-own-adven­ture online reli­gion and Trumpian pol­i­tics, often cast­ing pol­i­tics in the frame of “spir­i­tu­al war­fare”. Led by fig­ures like Michael Fly­nn and Roger Stone.

There’s been an unde­ni­able evan­gel­i­cal love affair with Trump going back to 2016. A love affair that cul­mi­nat­ed in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, an event effec­tive­ly planned and exe­cut­ed by the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP). But then, fol­low­ing the 2022 midterms, that love affair began to fade, at least in the eyes of some evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. A fight for the hearts and minds of the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty was on. Pas­tors for Trump was launched. Trump attacked his crit­ics as dis­loy­al. And, in the end. Trump won. Albeit only a slim major­i­ty.

The polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions from the out­come of the Iowa cau­cus­es are fair­ly easy to dis­cern. Trump is the estab­lished unam­bigu­ous front run­ner who has a clear path to the nom­i­na­tion. The results make that clear. What’s far less clear is what this fight means for the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. A com­mu­ni­ty that, itself, appears to have spent much of last decade mov­ing away from the church­es and clos­er to Trump and Trump-style pol­i­tics.

Ok, first, here’s a quick look at a fas­ci­nat­ing piece by McK­ay Cop­pins in The Atlantic, com­par­ing the Trump ral­lies are today to those of yes­ter­year. Cop­pins decid­ed to attend a Trump ral­ly in Mason City, Iowa. In oth­er words, a ral­ly filled with Iowa’s con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals. And as Cop­pins eeri­ly notes, while Trump ral­lies these days have much of the same form as ral­lies of the past, there real­ly is some­thing dif­fer­ent. There’s a stale qual­i­ty to much of antics. The over-the-top state­ments about vengeance and stolen elec­tions are still there. But it’s now deliv­ered with an unnerv­ing rote qual­i­ty. Trump’s dark apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric is no longer tit­il­lat­ing. It’s just expect­ed now:

The Atlantic

You Should Go to a Trump Ral­ly

For many Amer­i­cans, the for­mer pres­i­dent has become an abstrac­tion. They should see for them­selves what his cam­paign is real­ly about.

By McK­ay Cop­pins
Jan­u­ary 15, 2024, 6 AM ET

If Don­ald Trump has ben­e­fit­ed from one under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed advan­tage this cam­paign sea­son, it might be that no one seems to be lis­ten­ing to him very close­ly any­more.

This is a strange devel­op­ment for a man whose sig­na­ture polit­i­cal tal­ent is attract­ing and hold­ing atten­tion. Con­sid­er Trump’s rise to pow­er in 2016—how all-con­sum­ing his cam­paign was that year, how one @realDonaldTrump tweet could dom­i­nate news cov­er­age for days, how watch­ing his tele­vised stump speech­es in a sus­pend­ed state of fas­ci­na­tion or hor­ror or delight became a kind of per­verse nation­al pas­time.

Now con­sid­er the fact that it’s been 14 months since Trump announced his entry into the 2024 pres­i­den­tial race. Can you quote a sin­gle thing he’s said on the cam­paign trail? How much of his pol­i­cy agen­da could you describe? Be hon­est: When was the last time you watched him speak­ing live, not just in a short, edit­ed clip?

It’s not that Trump has been for­got­ten. He remains an omnipresent fact of Amer­i­can life, like cap­i­tal­ism or COVID-19. Every­one is aware of him; every­one has an opin­ion. Most peo­ple would just rather not devote too much men­tal ener­gy to the sub­ject. This dynam­ic has shaped Trump’s third bid for the pres­i­den­cy. As Kather­ine Miller recent­ly observed in The New York Times, “The path toward his like­ly renom­i­na­tion feels rel­a­tive­ly mut­ed, as if the coun­try were wan­der­ing through a mist, only to find our­selves back where we start­ed, except old­er and wea­ri­er, and the can­di­dates the same.”

Per­haps we over­learned the lessons of that first Trump cam­paign. After he won, a con­sen­sus formed among his detrac­tors that the news media had giv­en him too much air­time, allow­ing him to set the terms of the debate and help­ing to “nor­mal­ize” his rhetoric and behav­ior.

...

But with the com­mence­ment of a new elec­tion year, it occurred to me that I hadn’t been to a ral­ly since 2019. The pan­dem­ic, fol­lowed by a book project and a series of sto­ry assign­ments unre­lat­ed to Trump, had kept me large­ly off the cam­paign trail. I was curi­ous what it would be like to go back. Had any­thing changed? Was my impres­sion of Trump still up-to-date? So, one night ear­li­er this month, I parked my rental car on a scrap of frozen grass near the North Iowa Events Cen­ter in Mason City and made my way inside.

...

I found the whole­some, church-bar­be­cue vibe a lit­tle jar­ring. For months, my impres­sion of the 2024 Trump cam­paign had been shaped by the apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric of the can­di­date himself—the stuff about Marx­ist “ver­min” destroy­ing Amer­i­ca, and immi­grants “poi­son­ing the blood of our coun­try.” The peo­ple here didn’t look like they were brac­ing for an exis­ten­tial cat­a­stro­phe. Had I over­es­ti­mat­ed the rad­i­cal­iz­ing effect of Trump’s rhetoric?

Only once I start­ed talk­ing to atten­dees did I detect the dark­er under­cur­rent I remem­bered from past ral­lies.

I met Kris, a 71-year-old retired nurse in ortho­pe­dic sneak­ers, stand­ing near the press ris­ers. (She declined to share her last name.) She was smi­ley and spoke in a sweet, grand­moth­er­ly voice as she told me how she’d watched dozens of Trump ral­lies, stream­ing them on Rum­ble or FrankSpeech, a plat­form launched by the right-wing MyP­il­low founder Mike Lin­dell. (She wait­ed until Lin­dell, who hap­pened to be loi­ter­ing near us, was out of earshot to con­fide that she pre­ferred Rum­ble.) The con­ver­sa­tion was friend­ly and unremarkable—until it turned to the 2020 elec­tion, which Kris told me she believes was “most def­i­nite­ly” stolen.

“You think Trump should still be pres­i­dent?” I asked.

“By all means,” she said. “And I think behind the scenes he maybe is doing a lit­tle more than what we know about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mil­i­tary-wise,” she said. “The mil­i­tary is sup­posed to be for the peo­ple, against tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ments,” she went on to explain. “I hope he’s guid­ing the mil­i­tary to be able to step in and do what they need to do. Because right now, I’d say government’s very tyran­ni­cal.” If the Democ­rats try to steal the elec­tion again in 2024, she told me, the Trump-sym­pa­thet­ic ele­ments of the mil­i­tary might need to seize con­trol.

Around 8 p.m., Trump took the stage and launched into his remarks, tog­gling back and forth between what he called “teleprompter stuff” (his pre­pared stump speech) and the unscript­ed riffs that he’s famous for. See­ing him speak in this set­ting after so many years was strange—both instant­ly famil­iar and still some­how shock­ing, like rewatch­ing an old movie you saw a hun­dred times as a kid but whose most offen­sive jokes you’d for­got­ten.

When he talked about mem­bers of the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, he referred to them as “idiots” and “lunatics” and “bad peo­ple.” When he talked about the “inva­sion” of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants at the south­ern bor­der, he punc­tu­at­ed the riff with omi­nous warn­ings for his most­ly white audi­ence: “They’re occu­py­ing schools …They’re sit­ting with your chil­dren.” When he men­tioned Barack Oba­ma, he made a point of using the for­mer president’s mid­dle name—“Barack Hus­sein Obama”—and then veered off into an appre­ci­a­tion of Rush Lim­baugh, the late con­ser­v­a­tive talk-radio host who taught him this trick. “We miss Rush,” Trump said to enthu­si­as­tic cheers. “We need you, Rush!”

...

If one thing has notice­ably changed since 2016, it’s how the audi­ence reacts to Trump. Dur­ing his first cam­paign, the impro­vised mate­r­i­al was what every­one looked for­ward to, while the writ­ten sec­tions felt large­ly like box-check­ing. But in Mason City, the off-script riffs—many of which revolved around the 2020 elec­tion being stolen from him, and his per­son­al sense of martyrdom—often turned ram­bly, and the crowd seemed to lose inter­est. At one point, a woman in front of me rolled her eyes and mut­tered, “He’s just bab­bling now.” She left a few min­utes lat­er, join­ing a steady stream of ear­ly exiters, and I won­dered then whether even the most loy­al Trump sup­port­ers might be sur­prised if they were to see their leader speak in per­son.

My own take­away from the event was that there’s a rea­son Trump is no longer the cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non he was in 2016. Yes, the nov­el­ty has worn off. But he also seems to have lost the instinct for enter­tain­ment that once made him so inter­est­ing to audi­ences. He relies on a short­hand leg­i­ble only to his most ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers, and his ten­den­cy to get lost in rhetor­i­cal cul-de-sacs of self-pity and anger wears thin. This doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make him less dan­ger­ous. There is a rote qual­i­ty now to his dark­est rhetoric that I found more unnerv­ing than when it used to com­mand wall-to-wall news cov­er­age.

These were my own impres­sions of the ral­ly I attend­ed; yours may very well be dif­fer­ent. The only way to know is to see for your­self. Every four years, pun­dits try to iden­ti­fy the medi­um that will shape the pres­i­den­tial race—the “Twit­ter elec­tion,” the “cable-news elec­tion.” In 2024, with both par­ties warn­ing of exis­ten­tial stakes for Amer­i­ca, per­haps the best approach is to sim­ply show up in real life.

...

———–

“You Should Go to a Trump Ral­ly” by McK­ay Cop­pins; The Atlantic; 01/15/2024

“My own take­away from the event was that there’s a rea­son Trump is no longer the cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non he was in 2016. Yes, the nov­el­ty has worn off. But he also seems to have lost the instinct for enter­tain­ment that once made him so inter­est­ing to audi­ences. He relies on a short­hand leg­i­ble only to his most ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers, and his ten­den­cy to get lost in rhetor­i­cal cul-de-sacs of self-pity and anger wears thin. This doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make him less dan­ger­ous. There is a rote qual­i­ty now to his dark­est rhetoric that I found more unnerv­ing than when it used to com­mand wall-to-wall news cov­er­age.”

McK­ay Cop­pins was­n’t sure what to expect when he attend­ed his first Trump ral­ly since 2019. And it does­n’t sound like he found a more cir­cus-like atmos­phere than the ral­lies of 2016. Instead, Cop­pins found some­thing arguably more unnerv­ing: apoc­a­lyp­tic Trump rhetoric is now deliv­ered with a rote qual­i­ty. It’s just expect­ed now. Because that’s what is ulti­mate­ly ani­mat­ing his base. Trump’s revenge agen­da is his base’s agen­da too. At least that’s how they see. Trump is run­ning an “I will be your ret­ri­bu­tion” cam­paign and it’s res­onat­ing, like the 71 year old sweet grand­ma who was hop­ing Trump is plot­ting a mil­i­tary coup:

...
I found the whole­some, church-bar­be­cue vibe a lit­tle jar­ring. For months, my impres­sion of the 2024 Trump cam­paign had been shaped by the apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric of the can­di­date himself—the stuff about Marx­ist “ver­min” destroy­ing Amer­i­ca, and immi­grants “poi­son­ing the blood of our coun­try.” The peo­ple here didn’t look like they were brac­ing for an exis­ten­tial cat­a­stro­phe. Had I over­es­ti­mat­ed the rad­i­cal­iz­ing effect of Trump’s rhetoric?

Only once I start­ed talk­ing to atten­dees did I detect the dark­er under­cur­rent I remem­bered from past ral­lies.

I met Kris, a 71-year-old retired nurse in ortho­pe­dic sneak­ers, stand­ing near the press ris­ers. (She declined to share her last name.) She was smi­ley and spoke in a sweet, grand­moth­er­ly voice as she told me how she’d watched dozens of Trump ral­lies, stream­ing them on Rum­ble or FrankSpeech, a plat­form launched by the right-wing MyP­il­low founder Mike Lin­dell. (She wait­ed until Lin­dell, who hap­pened to be loi­ter­ing near us, was out of earshot to con­fide that she pre­ferred Rum­ble.) The con­ver­sa­tion was friend­ly and unremarkable—until it turned to the 2020 elec­tion, which Kris told me she believes was “most def­i­nite­ly” stolen.

“You think Trump should still be pres­i­dent?” I asked.

“By all means,” she said. “And I think behind the scenes he maybe is doing a lit­tle more than what we know about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mil­i­tary-wise,” she said. “The mil­i­tary is sup­posed to be for the peo­ple, against tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ments,” she went on to explain. “I hope he’s guid­ing the mil­i­tary to be able to step in and do what they need to do. Because right now, I’d say government’s very tyran­ni­cal.” If the Democ­rats try to steal the elec­tion again in 2024, she told me, the Trump-sym­pa­thet­ic ele­ments of the mil­i­tary might need to seize con­trol.
...

But, of course, when we’re talk­ing about the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of Trump’s base, we’re not talk­ing about a ran­dom sam­pling of the Amer­i­can elec­torate. This is a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white evan­gel­i­cal base. In oth­er words, that was a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white evan­gel­i­cal Trump ral­ly attend­ed by McK­ay Cop­pins. The lat­est exam­ple of a sto­ry of Trumpi­fied evan­gel­i­cals that we’ve been hear­ing since 2016. But as the fol­low­ing NY Times piece describes, the Trumpi­fi­ca­tion of the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty in the US has­n’t been the only foun­da­tion break­ing trans­for­ma­tion that’s tak­en place in recent year. Today’s self-iden­ti­fied Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal vot­er is far less like­ly to attend church than in the past and far more like­ly to fol­low fringe online preach­ers and pod­cast­ers as their pri­ma­ry source of reli­gious con­tent.

At the same time, Trump has been ele­vat­ing obscure evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors who demon­strate their devo­tion, like Tul­sa pas­tor Jack­son Lah­mey­er, the founder of Pas­tors for Trump. As we’re going to see, Pas­tors for Trump is basi­cal­ly inter­wo­ven with the Trump cam­paign and close­ly affil­i­at­ed worth Roger Stone and Michael Fly­nn. Impor­tant­ly, Pas­tors for Trump is also doing bat­tle with far more main­stream evan­gel­i­cal fig­ures like Bob Van­der Plaats who opt­ed to endorse Ron DeSan­tis. It’s all part of fas­ci­nat­ing, but per­ilous, trans­for­ma­tion hap­pen­ing inside Amer­i­ca’s evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty: the hard right evan­gel­i­cal main­stream lead­er­ship is either already open­ly loy­al to Trump or under attack by those who are:

The New York Times

Trump Is Con­nect­ing With a Dif­fer­ent Type of Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­er

They are not just the church­go­ing, con­ser­v­a­tive activists who once dom­i­nat­ed the G.O.P.

By Ruth Gra­ham and Charles Homans
Ruth Gra­ham, a Times reli­gion reporter, and Charles Homans, who cov­ers grass-roots pol­i­tics, spoke to vot­ers and pas­tors in nine towns and cities across Iowa.

Pub­lished Jan. 8, 2024
Updat­ed Jan. 10, 2024

Karen John­son went to her Luther­an church so reg­u­lar­ly as a child that she won a per­fect atten­dance award. As an adult, she taught Sun­day school. But these days, Ms. John­son, a 67-year-old counter atten­dant at a slot-machine par­lor, no longer goes to church.

She still iden­ti­fies as an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, but she doesn’t believe going to church is nec­es­sary to com­mune with God. “I have my own lit­tle thing with the Lord,” she says.

Ms. Johnson’s thing includes fre­quent prayer, she said, as well as pod­casts and YouTube chan­nels that dis­cuss pol­i­tics and “what’s going on in the world” from a right-wing, and some­times Chris­t­ian, world­view. No one plays a more cen­tral role in her per­spec­tive than Don­ald J. Trump, the man she believes can defeat the Democ­rats who, she is cer­tain, are destroy­ing the coun­try and bound for hell.

“Trump is our David and our Goliath,” Ms. John­son said recent­ly as she wait­ed out­side a hotel in east­ern Iowa to hear the for­mer pres­i­dent speak.

...

The twice-divorced casi­no mag­nate made lit­tle pre­tense of being par­tic­u­lar­ly reli­gious before his pres­i­den­cy. The ardent sup­port he received from evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in 2016 and 2020 is often described as large­ly trans­ac­tion­al: an invest­ment in his appoint­ment of Supreme Court jus­tices who would abol­ish the fed­er­al right to abor­tion and advance the group’s oth­er top pri­or­i­ties. Evan­gel­i­cal sup­port­ers them­selves often com­pare Mr. Trump to the ancient Per­sian king Cyrus the Great, who freed a pop­u­la­tion of Jews even though he was not one of them.

But reli­gion schol­ars, draw­ing on a grow­ing body of data, sug­gest anoth­er expla­na­tion: Evan­gel­i­cals are not exact­ly who they used to be.

Being evan­gel­i­cal once sug­gest­ed reg­u­lar church atten­dance, a focus on sal­va­tion and con­ver­sion and strong­ly held views on spe­cif­ic issues such as abor­tion. Today, it is as often used to describe a cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty: one in which Chris­tians are con­sid­ered a per­se­cut­ed minor­i­ty, tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tions are viewed skep­ti­cal­ly and Mr. Trump looms large.

“Pol­i­tics has become the mas­ter iden­ti­ty,” said Ryan Burge, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at East­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty and a Bap­tist pas­tor. “Every­thing else lines up behind par­ti­san­ship.”

This is most true among white Amer­i­cans, who over the course of Mr. Trump’s pres­i­den­cy became more like­ly to iden­ti­fy as “evan­gel­i­cal,” even as over­all rates of church atten­dance declined. The trend was par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced among sup­port­ers of Mr. Trump: A 2021 Pew Research Cen­ter analy­sis found that white Amer­i­cans who expressed “warm views” of him were more like­ly to have begun iden­ti­fy­ing as evan­gel­i­cal dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy than those who did not.

The Repub­li­can cau­cus­es in Iowa next week will be a test of how ful­ly Mr. Trump con­tin­ues to own that iden­ti­ty. Among his rivals, Gov. Ron DeSan­tis has invest­ed most heav­i­ly in court­ing Iowa evan­gel­i­cals, using a tra­di­tion­al play­book. He has secured the sup­port of promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal fig­ures and attest­ed to his hard-line bona fides on abor­tion, an issue on which he has crit­i­cized Mr. Trump for being incon­sis­tent, and in cul­ture-war fights in Flori­da, his home state.

“In Iowa, these things mat­ter,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSan­tis cam­paign.

But Mr. Trump’s track record and recent polling sug­gest that is not cer­tain. In ear­ly Decem­ber, Mr. Trump had a 25-point lead over Mr. DeSan­tis among evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, accord­ing to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

What may mat­ter more than endorse­ments and pol­i­cy plans are Mr. Trump’s embrace of Chris­tian­i­ty as a cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty — and his promis­es to defend it.

At a recent ral­ly in Water­loo, Iowa, Mr. Trump cast Chris­tians as a broad­ly per­se­cut­ed group fac­ing down a gov­ern­ment weaponized against them. Catholics are the cur­rent tar­get of “the com­mu­nists, Marx­ists and fas­cists,” he said, cit­ing a recent con­tro­ver­sy about a retract­ed F.B.I. memo, and adding that “evan­gel­i­cals will not be far behind.”

Emp­ty­ing Pews

Ms. Johnson’s Sun­day morn­ing rou­tine changed well before Mr. Trump arrived on the polit­i­cal scene. In her ear­ly 20s, she was mar­ried to a man who didn’t believe, so she “dropped off going to the build­ing.” She didn’t lose her faith, but life, includ­ing chil­dren and a few moves, pulled her in oth­er direc­tions.

In this she was typ­i­cal. Church mem­ber­ship in the Unit­ed States has been slip­ping for decades, along with the share of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian — and par­tic­u­lar­ly as Protes­tants, the branch that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been the grav­i­ta­tion­al cen­ter of Amer­i­can reli­gion. In the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tu­ry, 68 per­cent of Amer­i­cans described them­selves as Protes­tant. By 2022, 34 per­cent did, accord­ing to Gallup. (A fur­ther 11 per­cent described them­selves as sim­ply “Chris­t­ian,” a cat­e­go­ry Gallup did not include until the late 1990s.)

At first, declines most­ly affect­ed the more lib­er­al main­line Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions. But in recent years, self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cal church atten­dance has dropped as well, and a larg­er share of con­ser­v­a­tives than lib­er­als report leav­ing church. In 2021, for the first time on record, less than 50 per­cent of Amer­i­cans were mem­bers of a church.

“It’s the largest and fastest reli­gious shift in our nation’s his­to­ry,” said Michael Gra­ham, the for­mer exec­u­tive pas­tor of a non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al church in Orlan­do, Fla., and the co-author of the recent book “The Great Dechurch­ing.”

The trans­for­ma­tion has been par­tic­u­lar­ly vis­i­ble in Iowa, where self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals, who make up about a quar­ter of the state’s pop­u­la­tion, are influ­en­tial bell­wethers in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics — but where reli­gious prac­tice has changed more stark­ly than almost any­where else in the coun­try.

From 2010 to 2020, the state’s pop­u­la­tion of church adher­ents — peo­ple with some lev­el of involve­ment in a con­gre­ga­tion — fell almost 13 per­cent, a sharp­er decline than in any state except New Hamp­shire, accord­ing to the U.S. Reli­gion Cen­sus, a com­pre­hen­sive decen­ni­al sur­vey of con­gre­ga­tions.

In inter­views, con­gre­gants and cler­gy described church­es and church­go­ing as trans­formed by an array of forces, includ­ing aging pop­u­la­tions and youth activ­i­ties.

...

The ear­ly months of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, when church­es sus­pend­ed in-per­son wor­ship under quar­an­tine orders and in many cas­es began livestream­ing ser­vices on Face­book and YouTube, pro­duced last­ing trans­for­ma­tions in habits. Some once-faith­ful atten­dees now join ser­vices online, in some cas­es sam­pling the streamed offer­ings of church­es far from home. Oth­ers sim­ply nev­er got back in the habit of attend­ing at all.

And the sched­ules of blue-col­lar jobs and youth sports no longer con­sid­er Sun­day morn­ings sacro­sanct, mak­ing reg­u­lar atten­dance more dif­fi­cult for work­ing peo­ple and fam­i­lies.

...

Cler­gy and reli­gion experts are quick to note that peo­ple who have left church, or did not attend in the first place, have not nec­es­sar­i­ly aban­doned reli­gion. Evan­gel­i­cal­ism has long had an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic strain that resists the idea that per­son­al faith requires church atten­dance. Many peo­ple whose con­nec­tion to orga­nized reli­gion has erod­ed con­tin­ue to strong­ly iden­ti­fy as Chris­tians.

But the drop-off has had impacts far beyond indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. As ties to church com­mu­ni­ties have weak­ened, the church lead­ers who once ral­lied the faith­ful behind caus­es and can­di­dates have lost influ­ence. A new class of thought lead­ers has filled the gap: social media per­son­al­i­ties and pod­cast­ers, once-fringe prophet­ic preach­ers and politi­cians.

‘The Only Sav­ior I Can See’

There was lit­tle sign at the out­set of the 2016 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry sea­son that evan­gel­i­cals would take to Mr. Trump as enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly as they even­tu­al­ly did. When World mag­a­zine, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian pub­li­ca­tion, sur­veyed about 100 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers in Decem­ber 2015, none of them named Mr. Trump as their pre­ferred can­di­date.

But as Mr. Trump gained ground in the ear­ly pri­maries, his grow­ing strength among white evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers became clear. Polls showed that the future nom­i­nee was most pop­u­lar among one group in par­tic­u­lar: white evan­gel­i­cals who sel­dom or nev­er went to church.

He would also win over white reg­u­lar church­go­ers, a group that leans Repub­li­can. But Mr. Trump’s rela­tion­ship with evan­gel­i­cals tracked his rela­tion­ship with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. He cap­i­tal­ized on erod­ing trust and par­tic­i­pa­tion in civic insti­tu­tions and then, as pres­i­dent, remade the insti­tu­tions in his own image.

Mr. Trump ele­vat­ed a cohort of obscure evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors and media fig­ures, who were often out­side the the­o­log­i­cal main­stream but unwa­ver­ing in their devo­tion to him. He increas­ing­ly cham­pi­oned Chris­tians as a con­stituen­cy, rather than nod­ding to their val­ues, as pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents had. His ral­lies took on a a tent-revival atmos­phere.

“Peo­ple who love their coun­try and believe in God, but haven’t been typ­i­cal church­go­ers — he’s brought those peo­ple into the fold,” said Jack­son Lah­mey­er, the founder of Pas­tors for Trump, a nation­al group of church lead­ers back­ing the for­mer pres­i­dent.

In 2008, over half of Repub­li­cans report­ed attend­ing church at least once a month, accord­ing to data Mr. Burge com­piled from the Coop­er­a­tive Elec­tion Study at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. In 2022, over half report­ed attend­ing church once a year or less.

Mr. Trump him­self has become a mod­el for embrac­ing evan­gel­i­cal­ism as an iden­ti­ty, not a reli­gious prac­tice. In 2020, he announced he no longer iden­ti­fied as a Pres­by­ter­ian but as a “non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al Chris­t­ian,” a tra­di­tion close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with evan­gel­i­cal­ism. He is rarely seen in church, but a poll this fall by Har­risX for The Deseret News found that more than half of Repub­li­cans see Mr. Trump as a “per­son of faith.” That’s more than any oth­er 2024 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and sub­stan­tial­ly more than Pres­i­dent Biden, a life­long Catholic who attends Mass fre­quent­ly.

An increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple in many of the most zeal­ous­ly Trump-sup­port­ing parts of Iowa fit a reli­gious pro­file sim­i­lar to the for­mer president’s. “Iowa is cul­tur­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, non-prac­tic­ing Chris­tians at this point,” Mr. Burge said. “That’s exact­ly Trump’s base.”

In the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Cal­houn Coun­ty, for instance, church adher­ence fell 31 per­cent from 2010 to 2020 — the steep­est decline in the state — even as 80 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ued to iden­ti­fy in sur­veys as white Chris­tians. More than 70 per­cent of the county’s vot­ers cast bal­lots for Trump in 2020.

...

New Caus­es, New Lead­ers

The evolv­ing evan­gel­i­cal iden­ti­ty is already scram­bling how politi­cians appeal to these vot­ers. Mr. Burge’s research has found that “cul­tur­al Chris­tians” care rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle about bedrock reli­gious-right caus­es like abor­tion and pornog­ra­phy.

In inter­views across Iowa, non-church­go­ing Chris­tians who sup­port­ed Repub­li­can can­di­dates, even those who said they believed in gov­ern­ing the coun­try by Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples, cit­ed immi­gra­tion and the econ­o­my most often as their top issues in this year’s elec­tion.

While they almost uni­ver­sal­ly opposed abor­tion, they were also often skep­ti­cal of the more uncom­pro­mis­ing poli­cies that can­di­dates like Mr. DeSan­tis have cham­pi­oned.

Abor­tion pol­i­cy is “one thing I don’t real­ly stress,” said JoAnn Sweet­ing, who pulled her eighth-grade son out of school to attend a ral­ly for Mr. Trump last month in Coralville, Iowa. Refer­ring to the over­turn­ing of Roe v. Wade, she said: “I feel like the poli­cies set for us now seem to be work­ing.”

Ms. Sweet­ing described her­self as an evan­gel­i­cal but does not attend church any­more. She sees Mr. Trump as a man who believes in God and prays. But the rea­sons she sup­ports him, she said, are his approach to the econ­o­my and his progress on build­ing a wall along the south­ern bor­der.

She also likes his blunt­ness. “He doesn’t try to sug­ar­coat things,” she said.

Shifts in evan­gel­i­cal iden­ti­ty have also threat­ened the influ­ence of the evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers whose posts at large church­es, Chris­t­ian media com­pa­nies and faith-based orga­ni­za­tions for decades made them pow­er bro­kers in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics.

In recent months, Repub­li­can can­di­dates com­pet­ed for the endorse­ment of Bob Van­der Plaats, a pow­er bro­ker in Iowa’s evan­gel­i­cal pol­i­tics. But polls show his endorse­ment of Mr. DeSan­tis in Novem­ber hav­ing lit­tle effect on the loy­al­ties of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, who con­tin­ue to favor Mr. Trump broad­ly. Mr. Van­der Plaats said he thought “there’s a lot more wig­gle room” than the polls sug­gest.

At Mr. Trump’s ral­ly in Coralville, it was Joel Ten­ney, a 27-year-old local evan­ge­list who does not lead a church, who deliv­ered the open­ing prayer.

The crowd respond­ed tepid­ly to his impas­sioned recita­tion of sev­er­al Bible vers­es. But the ral­ly­go­ers roared to life when he set aside the Scrip­ture and told them what they had come to hear.

“This elec­tion is part of a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Mr. Ten­ney said. “When Don­ald Trump becomes the 47th pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, there will be ret­ri­bu­tion against all those who have pro­mot­ed evil in this coun­try.”

————-

“Trump Is Con­nect­ing With a Dif­fer­ent Type of Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­er” By Ruth Gra­ham and Charles Homans; The New York Times; 01/08/2024

“Being evan­gel­i­cal once sug­gest­ed reg­u­lar church atten­dance, a focus on sal­va­tion and con­ver­sion and strong­ly held views on spe­cif­ic issues such as abor­tion. Today, it is as often used to describe a cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty: one in which Chris­tians are con­sid­ered a per­se­cut­ed minor­i­ty, tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tions are viewed skep­ti­cal­ly and Mr. Trump looms large.”

Amer­i­ca’s evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty has under­gone a num­ber of pro­found shifts over the last decade or so and it’s a shift towards Trump: less church atten­dance and more inter­twin­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty with Trumpian pol­i­tics. And a new gen­er­a­tion of Trump-backed obscure online reli­gious per­son­al­i­ties are on the ascen­dance. Per­son­al­i­ties like Jack­son Lah­mey­er, the founder of Pas­tors for Trump. The Book of Trump is replac­ing the Bible:

...
The twice-divorced casi­no mag­nate made lit­tle pre­tense of being par­tic­u­lar­ly reli­gious before his pres­i­den­cy. The ardent sup­port he received from evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in 2016 and 2020 is often described as large­ly trans­ac­tion­al: an invest­ment in his appoint­ment of Supreme Court jus­tices who would abol­ish the fed­er­al right to abor­tion and advance the group’s oth­er top pri­or­i­ties. Evan­gel­i­cal sup­port­ers them­selves often com­pare Mr. Trump to the ancient Per­sian king Cyrus the Great, who freed a pop­u­la­tion of Jews even though he was not one of them.

But reli­gion schol­ars, draw­ing on a grow­ing body of data, sug­gest anoth­er expla­na­tion: Evan­gel­i­cals are not exact­ly who they used to be.

...

“Pol­i­tics has become the mas­ter iden­ti­ty,” said Ryan Burge, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at East­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty and a Bap­tist pas­tor. “Every­thing else lines up behind par­ti­san­ship.”

This is most true among white Amer­i­cans, who over the course of Mr. Trump’s pres­i­den­cy became more like­ly to iden­ti­fy as “evan­gel­i­cal,” even as over­all rates of church atten­dance declined. The trend was par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced among sup­port­ers of Mr. Trump: A 2021 Pew Research Cen­ter analy­sis found that white Amer­i­cans who expressed “warm views” of him were more like­ly to have begun iden­ti­fy­ing as evan­gel­i­cal dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy than those who did not.

...

At first, declines most­ly affect­ed the more lib­er­al main­line Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions. But in recent years, self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cal church atten­dance has dropped as well, and a larg­er share of con­ser­v­a­tives than lib­er­als report leav­ing church. In 2021, for the first time on record, less than 50 per­cent of Amer­i­cans were mem­bers of a church.

“It’s the largest and fastest reli­gious shift in our nation’s his­to­ry,” said Michael Gra­ham, the for­mer exec­u­tive pas­tor of a non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al church in Orlan­do, Fla., and the co-author of the recent book “The Great Dechurch­ing.”

The trans­for­ma­tion has been par­tic­u­lar­ly vis­i­ble in Iowa, where self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals, who make up about a quar­ter of the state’s pop­u­la­tion, are influ­en­tial bell­wethers in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics — but where reli­gious prac­tice has changed more stark­ly than almost any­where else in the coun­try.

From 2010 to 2020, the state’s pop­u­la­tion of church adher­ents — peo­ple with some lev­el of involve­ment in a con­gre­ga­tion — fell almost 13 per­cent, a sharp­er decline than in any state except New Hamp­shire, accord­ing to the U.S. Reli­gion Cen­sus, a com­pre­hen­sive decen­ni­al sur­vey of con­gre­ga­tions.

...

Cler­gy and reli­gion experts are quick to note that peo­ple who have left church, or did not attend in the first place, have not nec­es­sar­i­ly aban­doned reli­gion. Evan­gel­i­cal­ism has long had an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic strain that resists the idea that per­son­al faith requires church atten­dance. Many peo­ple whose con­nec­tion to orga­nized reli­gion has erod­ed con­tin­ue to strong­ly iden­ti­fy as Chris­tians.

But the drop-off has had impacts far beyond indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. As ties to church com­mu­ni­ties have weak­ened, the church lead­ers who once ral­lied the faith­ful behind caus­es and can­di­dates have lost influ­ence. A new class of thought lead­ers has filled the gap: social media per­son­al­i­ties and pod­cast­ers, once-fringe prophet­ic preach­ers and politi­cians.

...

Mr. Trump ele­vat­ed a cohort of obscure evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors and media fig­ures, who were often out­side the the­o­log­i­cal main­stream but unwa­ver­ing in their devo­tion to him. He increas­ing­ly cham­pi­oned Chris­tians as a con­stituen­cy, rather than nod­ding to their val­ues, as pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents had. His ral­lies took on a a tent-revival atmos­phere.

“Peo­ple who love their coun­try and believe in God, but haven’t been typ­i­cal church­go­ers — he’s brought those peo­ple into the fold,” said Jack­son Lah­mey­er, the founder of Pas­tors for Trump, a nation­al group of church lead­ers back­ing the for­mer pres­i­dent.

...

At Mr. Trump’s ral­ly in Coralville, it was Joel Ten­ney, a 27-year-old local evan­ge­list who does not lead a church, who deliv­ered the open­ing prayer.

The crowd respond­ed tepid­ly to his impas­sioned recita­tion of sev­er­al Bible vers­es. But the ral­ly­go­ers roared to life when he set aside the Scrip­ture and told them what they had come to hear.

“This elec­tion is part of a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Mr. Ten­ney said. “When Don­ald Trump becomes the 47th pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, there will be ret­ri­bu­tion against all those who have pro­mot­ed evil in this coun­try.”
...

But also note that when we are digest­ing Trump’s trounc­ing of all his rivals in the Iowa cau­cus­es, this is trounc­ing that hap­pened despite Ron DeSan­tis hav­ing the back­ing of major evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers in Iowa who have tra­di­tion­al­ly played pow­er­ful roles in the Iowa pri­ma­ry like Bob Van­der Plaats. It’s not like the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal estab­lish­ment has­n’t tried to lim­it Trump’s influ­ence. But it failed. Loy­al­ty to Trump is win­ning out over tra­di­tion­al loy­al­ties. It’s not just a sign of Trump’s suc­cess in win­ning over this audi­ence but also the pro­found fail­ure of that tra­di­tion­al lead­er­ship. The evan­gel­i­cal base pre­ferred Trump’s mes­sage:

...
The Repub­li­can cau­cus­es in Iowa next week will be a test of how ful­ly Mr. Trump con­tin­ues to own that iden­ti­ty. Among his rivals, Gov. Ron DeSan­tis has invest­ed most heav­i­ly in court­ing Iowa evan­gel­i­cals, using a tra­di­tion­al play­book. He has secured the sup­port of promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal fig­ures and attest­ed to his hard-line bona fides on abor­tion, an issue on which he has crit­i­cized Mr. Trump for being incon­sis­tent, and in cul­ture-war fights in Flori­da, his home state.

“In Iowa, these things mat­ter,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSan­tis cam­paign.

But Mr. Trump’s track record and recent polling sug­gest that is not cer­tain. In ear­ly Decem­ber, Mr. Trump had a 25-point lead over Mr. DeSan­tis among evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, accord­ing to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

What may mat­ter more than endorse­ments and pol­i­cy plans are Mr. Trump’s embrace of Chris­tian­i­ty as a cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty — and his promis­es to defend it.

At a recent ral­ly in Water­loo, Iowa, Mr. Trump cast Chris­tians as a broad­ly per­se­cut­ed group fac­ing down a gov­ern­ment weaponized against them. Catholics are the cur­rent tar­get of “the com­mu­nists, Marx­ists and fas­cists,” he said, cit­ing a recent con­tro­ver­sy about a retract­ed F.B.I. memo, and adding that “evan­gel­i­cals will not be far behind.”

...

Shifts in evan­gel­i­cal iden­ti­ty have also threat­ened the influ­ence of the evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers whose posts at large church­es, Chris­t­ian media com­pa­nies and faith-based orga­ni­za­tions for decades made them pow­er bro­kers in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics.

In recent months, Repub­li­can can­di­dates com­pet­ed for the endorse­ment of Bob Van­der Plaats, a pow­er bro­ker in Iowa’s evan­gel­i­cal pol­i­tics. But polls show his endorse­ment of Mr. DeSan­tis in Novem­ber hav­ing lit­tle effect on the loy­al­ties of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, who con­tin­ue to favor Mr. Trump broad­ly. Mr. Van­der Plaats said he thought “there’s a lot more wig­gle room” than the polls sug­gest.
...

But it’s not just extreme loy­al­ty to Trump that defines the extrem­ism of the groups like Pas­tors for Trump that have assumed new lead­er­ship roles in Trumpi­fied evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. As we’ve seen, Pas­tors for Trump has been work­ing close­ly with the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca Tour. Recall how Clay Clark’s ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca has events with speak­ers so extreme that Chris­t­ian Zion­ist John Hagee had to release a face-sav­ing state­ment about not endors­ing the group’s views after his Cor­ner­stone Church host­ed one of their events back in Novem­ber of 2021. An event where Michael Fly­nn made the open Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist dec­la­ra­tion: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one reli­gion. One nation under God, and one reli­gion under God.”.

And as we also saw, Fly­nn isn’t even the most extreme fig­ure to attend these ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events. There’s also Scott McK­ay, who has been invit­ed to speak about how a cabal of fake Jew” Satan­ic child-sac­ri­fic­ing Khaz­ar­i­ans have been secret­ly con­trol­ling the world for mil­len­nia. Also, Hitler was mis­un­der­stood and fought the evil Jews. And along with fig­ures like McK­ay, we also find key Trump World fig­ures Kash Patel and Eric Trump speak­ing at these events.

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing Guardian arti­cle from back in May of 2023 about the grow­ing influ­ence of Pas­tors for Trump, which was launched in late 2022 with an announce­ment by Jack­son Lah­mey­er on Roger Stone’s “Stone Zone” pod­cast. As Lah­mey­er told reporters, he was plan­ning on speak­ing at a then-upcom­ing ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca event sched­uled for lat­er that month at Trump’s Doral resort, along­side Roger Stone. But as the arti­cle describes, Lah­mey­er ties to ReAwak­en go far deep­er. In fact, ReAwak­en’s founder, Clay Clark, was first intro­duced to Michael Fly­nn by Lah­mey­er back in ear­ly 2021. It turns out Clark is a mem­ber of Lah­mey­er’s church. Clark and Fly­nn went on to host dozens of ReAwak­en events and Lah­mey­er said he has attend­ed each one.

Anoth­er rather notable detail in this arti­cle is the fact that Pas­tors for Trump appears to have formed at point when it was look­ing like Trump’s sup­port in the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty was wan­ing. In fact, it was Iowa evan­gel­i­cal king-mak­er Bob Van­der Plaats who tweet­ed about Trump: “It’s time to turn the page. Amer­i­ca must move on. Walk off the stage with class.” Trump was get­ting so much crit­ic­sm from evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers he accused them of “dis­loy­al­ty” in Jan­u­ary of 2023. This was about a month after Lah­mey­er launched Pas­tors for Trump.

That’s all part of the cru­cial con­text of groups like Pas­tor for Trump: it was a group formed at a point when it seemed like the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal lead­er­ship that ral­lied around Trump in 2016 and helped craft his attempts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion tried to break free of Trump’s grip. And clear­ly failed as Iowa’s vot­ers just proved:

The Guardian

Pro-Trump pas­tors rebuked for ‘overt embrace of white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism’

Main­stream Chris­t­ian lead­ers crit­i­cize Pas­tors for Trump for dis­tort­ing reli­gious teach­ings and endan­ger­ing democ­ra­cy

Peter Stone in Wash­ing­ton
Mon 1 May 2023 04.00 EDT
Last mod­i­fied on Mon 1 May 2023 11.39 EDT

A far-right reli­gious group with ties to Don­ald Trump loy­al­ists Roger Stone and retired Army Lt Gen Michael Fly­nn is plan­ning events with pas­tors in swing-state church­es in Ari­zona, Geor­gia, North Car­oli­na, Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia and else­where to spur more evan­gel­i­cal back­ing for the for­mer US president’s 2024 cam­paign.

But the group, Pas­tors for Trump, is draw­ing sharp rebukes from main­stream Chris­t­ian lead­ers for being extrem­ist, dis­tort­ing Chris­t­ian teach­ings and endan­ger­ing Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy by fuel­ing the spread of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism.

The Okla­homa-based evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor and busi­ness­man Jack­son Lah­mey­er leads the fledg­ling Pas­tors for Trump orga­ni­za­tion. Lah­mey­er told the Guardian it boasts over 7,000 pas­tors as mem­bers and that he will unveil details about its plans on 11 May at the Trump Nation­al Doral in Mia­mi, an event Trump will be invit­ed to attend.

Stone, a self-styled “dirty trick­ster” whom Trump par­doned after he was con­vict­ed of lying to Con­gress, is slat­ed to join Lah­mey­er in speak­ing on 11 May, accord­ing to the pas­tor. Lah­mey­er added he will talk more about his pro Trump group at a ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca evan­gel­i­cal gath­er­ing on 12 and 13 May at the Doral.

Lah­mey­er said the pas­tors group intends to spon­sor a “free­dom tour” with evening church meet­ings in key swing states this sum­mer, an effort that could help Trump win more back­ing from this key Repub­li­can vot­ing bloc, which could prove cru­cial to his win­ning the GOP nom­i­na­tion again.

Lah­mey­er described the gen­e­sis of Pas­tors for Trump in dark and apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric that has echoes of Trump’s own bom­bast.

“We’re going down a very evil path in this coun­try,” he said. “Our econ­o­my is being destroyed. It’s Chi­na, the deep state and glob­al­ists.

“Chi­na inter­fered in our 2020 elec­tions,” he added. “This is bib­li­cal, what’s hap­pen­ing. This is a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle.’

...

“This kind of overt embrace of white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism con­tin­ues to pose a grow­ing threat to the wit­ness of the church and the health of our democ­ra­cy,” said Adam Rus­sell Tay­lor, the pres­i­dent of the Chris­t­ian social jus­tice group Sojourn­ers.

“This pas­tor and this effort are try­ing to impose a Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy. It’s imper­a­tive that Chris­t­ian lead­ers of all back­grounds, includ­ing con­ser­v­a­tive ones, speak out about this effort as a threat to our democ­ra­cy and to the church.”

...

“For years, Trump has tried to co-opt reli­gious lead­ers to serve his cam­paign, even attempt­ing to change long-stand­ing tax law to allow dark mon­ey to flow through hous­es of wor­ship,” said Aman­da Tyler, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Bap­tist Joint Com­mit­tee for Reli­gious Lib­er­ty.

“Trag­i­cal­ly, far too many pas­tors have con­fused polit­i­cal pow­er with reli­gious author­i­ty, and have thrown their lot in with Trump, no mat­ter the cost to their min­istry. Pas­tors for Trump is the next step in this unholy alliance, mix­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, elec­tion lies and vit­ri­olic lan­guage in a gross dis­tor­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty.”

...

Lah­mey­er has pre­vi­ous­ly attacked for­mer House speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi as a “demon”, and for­mer Covid advis­er Antho­ny Fau­ci “a mass-mur­der­ing Lucifer­ian”. To Lah­mey­er, the attack on the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6 by a mob of pro-Trump sup­port­ers was an “FBI inside job”.

Besides his apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric, Lahmeyer’s effort has echoes of the two-year-old ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour, which has com­bined elec­tion denial­ism with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and reg­u­lar­ly fea­tured Fly­nn at its two-day revival-style meet­ings.

In 2021, Fly­nn pro­vid­ed strong and ear­ly back­ing for Lah­mey­er in an abortive pri­ma­ry cam­paign by the pas­tor to gain the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for a Sen­ate seat from Okla­homa.

Fly­nn, who worked to over­turn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden by push­ing bogus claims of elec­tion fraud, and who Trump par­doned after he plead­ed guilty twice to lying to the FBI about con­tacts he had with Rus­sians before briefly serv­ing as Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, is a real hero in Lahmeyer’s eyes.

“Fly­nn is a leader and gen­er­al,” Lah­mey­er told the Guardian. “I trust him, and I have come to love him. He’s been like a father to me.”

Those bonds were rein­forced in ear­ly 2021 when Lah­mey­er intro­duced Fly­nn to Clay Clark, an Okla­homa entre­pre­neur and a mem­ber of his church, who teamed up with Fly­nn to host20 ReAwak­en revival-like gath­er­ings over the last two years nation­wide, all of which Lah­mey­er said he’s attend­ed.

Late last year, Lah­mey­er unveiled Pas­tors for Trump on Stone’s epony­mous Stone Zone pod­cast, a rela­tion­ship that was forged in 2021 when Stone served as a key paid con­sul­tant to Lahmeyer’s pri­ma­ry cam­paign.

Pas­tors for Trump is “inter­wo­ven” with the Trump cam­paign, “but we’re a sep­a­rate grass­roots group”, Lah­mey­er said, indi­cat­ing it is a 501(c)(4) non-prof­it social wel­fare, which is await­ing IRS tax sta­tus approval.

To date, the pas­tors group has cre­at­ed a two per­son board that includes South Car­oli­na pas­tor Mark Burns, a key Trump cam­paign reli­gious advis­er who backed Trump’s 2016 run and who told the Guardian he is a “spir­i­tu­al advis­er” to Trump.

Lah­mey­er said his group hopes to arrange an event in Las Vegas in August to coin­cide with a ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca gath­er­ing that is sched­uled there, and that he expects to start fundrais­ing to increase his group’s mem­ber­ship and activism.

...

To push the group’s pro-Trump mes­sages, Lah­mey­er has arranged prayer calls in recent months that have includ­ed Stone, Fly­nn and ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giu­liani, all of whom pro­mot­ed bogus claims of elec­tion fraud in 2020 and tried to help Trump over­turn his loss to Joe Biden.

One call that includ­ed a seg­ment with Trump in late March, which Lah­mey­er host­ed and that Stone and Fly­nn par­tic­i­pat­ed in, went bad­ly awry when the sound qual­i­ty was inter­rupt­ed for sev­er­al min­utes with Trump on the line.

Lah­mey­er told the Stone Zone the next day that trolls had infil­trat­ed the “back stage” of the plat­form they were using, while Trump fin­gered the “rad­i­cal left” for hack­ing his phone when he tried to join the call.

The launch of Pas­tors for Trump came not long after a rise in pub­lic crit­i­cism of Trump from some evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers that sug­gest­ed wan­ing sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals.

Dr Everett Piper, the ex-pres­i­dent of Okla­homa Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty, a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ty, in Novem­ber wrote an op-ed enti­tled “It’s time for the GOP to say it: Don­ald Trump is hurt­ing us, not help­ing us.” Piper wrote that in the 2022 midterms Trump “hin­dered rather than helped the much-antic­i­pat­ed ‘red wave’”.

Like­wise, Bob Van­der Plaats, the Iowa-based pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of the Fam­i­ly Leader, a con­ser­v­a­tive social group, has tweet­ed about Trump: “It’s time to turn the page. Amer­i­ca must move on. Walk off the stage with class.”

Lit­tle won­der that in Jan­u­ary Trump con­demned evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers who pub­licly crit­i­cized his new cam­paign for their “dis­loy­al­ty”.

Some schol­ars and recent polls, how­ev­er, sug­gest Trump still has sig­nif­i­cant sup­port in the evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, and that he should gar­ner hefty sup­port again from evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in the pri­maries if he is to be the nom­i­nee.

“Trump’s endur­ing appeal to evan­gel­i­cals is the great­est sin­gle tri­umph of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” David Hollinger, an emer­i­tus his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Berke­ley and the author of Christianity’s Amer­i­can Fate, told the Guardian.

“The evan­gel­i­cals who flocked to Trump have good rea­son to stay with him.”

...

———-

“Pro-Trump pas­tors rebuked for ‘overt embrace of white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism’” by Peter Stone; The Guardian; 05/01/2023

“But the group, Pas­tors for Trump, is draw­ing sharp rebukes from main­stream Chris­t­ian lead­ers for being extrem­ist, dis­tort­ing Chris­t­ian teach­ings and endan­ger­ing Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy by fuel­ing the spread of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism.”

Yes, back in May of 2023, less than a year ago, Pas­tors for Trump was get­ting crit­i­cized by evan­gel­i­cal lead­er­ship for being extrem­ists. Which they most undoubt­ed­ly are by tra­di­tion­al stan­dards. But as Iowa’s evan­gel­i­cal-heavy Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers showed the world, today’s con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals have a Trump-ori­ent­ed reli­gios­i­ty, where Bib­li­cal bat­tles are play­ing out today with God as Trump’s avatar. And that’s exact­ly the kind of extrem­ism Jack­son Lah­mey­er is ped­dling, where the­ol­o­gy and extreme pol­i­tics merge. Pol­i­tics as spir­i­tu­al war­fare:

...
The Okla­homa-based evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor and busi­ness­man Jack­son Lah­mey­er leads the fledg­ling Pas­tors for Trump orga­ni­za­tion. Lah­mey­er told the Guardian it boasts over 7,000 pas­tors as mem­bers and that he will unveil details about its plans on 11 May at the Trump Nation­al Doral in Mia­mi, an event Trump will be invit­ed to attend.

...

Lah­mey­er said the pas­tors group intends to spon­sor a “free­dom tour” with evening church meet­ings in key swing states this sum­mer, an effort that could help Trump win more back­ing from this key Repub­li­can vot­ing bloc, which could prove cru­cial to his win­ning the GOP nom­i­na­tion again.

Lah­mey­er described the gen­e­sis of Pas­tors for Trump in dark and apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric that has echoes of Trump’s own bom­bast.

“We’re going down a very evil path in this coun­try,” he said. “Our econ­o­my is being destroyed. It’s Chi­na, the deep state and glob­al­ists.

“Chi­na inter­fered in our 2020 elec­tions,” he added. “This is bib­li­cal, what’s hap­pen­ing. This is a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle.’
...

And as we can see, Lah­mey­er has been inte­gral to the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tours from the begin­ning. It was Lah­mey­er who intro­duced Michael Fly­nn to Clay Clark, a mem­ber of Lah­mey­er’s church, back in ear­ly 2021. Fly­nn and Clark went on to host ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events around the nation. Lah­mey­er called Fly­nn a father fig­ure. ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca and Pas­tors for Trump are close­ly aligned enti­ties at a lead­er­ship lev­el:

...
Lah­mey­er has pre­vi­ous­ly attacked for­mer House speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi as a “demon”, and for­mer Covid advis­er Antho­ny Fau­ci “a mass-mur­der­ing Lucifer­ian”. To Lah­mey­er, the attack on the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6 by a mob of pro-Trump sup­port­ers was an “FBI inside job”.

Besides his apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric, Lahmeyer’s effort has echoes of the two-year-old ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour, which has com­bined elec­tion denial­ism with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and reg­u­lar­ly fea­tured Fly­nn at its two-day revival-style meet­ings.

In 2021, Fly­nn pro­vid­ed strong and ear­ly back­ing for Lah­mey­er in an abortive pri­ma­ry cam­paign by the pas­tor to gain the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for a Sen­ate seat from Okla­homa.

Fly­nn, who worked to over­turn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden by push­ing bogus claims of elec­tion fraud, and who Trump par­doned after he plead­ed guilty twice to lying to the FBI about con­tacts he had with Rus­sians before briefly serv­ing as Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, is a real hero in Lahmeyer’s eyes.

“Fly­nn is a leader and gen­er­al,” Lah­mey­er told the Guardian. “I trust him, and I have come to love him. He’s been like a father to me.”

Those bonds were rein­forced in ear­ly 2021 when Lah­mey­er intro­duced Fly­nn to Clay Clark, an Okla­homa entre­pre­neur and a mem­ber of his church, who teamed up with Fly­nn to host20 ReAwak­en revival-like gath­er­ings over the last two years nation­wide, all of which Lah­mey­er said he’s attend­ed.

...

Lah­mey­er said his group hopes to arrange an event in Las Vegas in August to coin­cide with a ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca gath­er­ing that is sched­uled there, and that he expects to start fundrais­ing to increase his group’s mem­ber­ship and activism.
...

And then there’s Roger Stone’s role in all this. It was Stone’s “Stone Zone” pod­cast where Lah­mey­er first announced the for­ma­tion of Pas­tors for Trump on Decem­ber 7, 2022. But Stone isn’t the only fig­ure close to Trump direct­ly inter­act­ing with Pas­tors for Trump. Rudy Giu­liani and Trump him­self have both par­tic­i­pat­ed in calls arranged by Lah­mey­er. Lah­mey­er was­n’t exag­ger­at­ing when he char­ac­ter­ized his group as being “inter­wo­ven” with the Trump cam­paign:

...
Stone, a self-styled “dirty trick­ster” whom Trump par­doned after he was con­vict­ed of lying to Con­gress, is slat­ed to join Lah­mey­er in speak­ing on 11 May, accord­ing to the pas­tor. Lah­mey­er added he will talk more about his pro Trump group at a ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca evan­gel­i­cal gath­er­ing on 12 and 13 May at the Doral.

...

Late last year, Lah­mey­er unveiled Pas­tors for Trump on Stone’s epony­mous Stone Zone pod­cast, a rela­tion­ship that was forged in 2021 when Stone served as a key paid con­sul­tant to Lahmeyer’s pri­ma­ry cam­paign.

Pas­tors for Trump is “inter­wo­ven” with the Trump cam­paign, “but we’re a sep­a­rate grass­roots group”, Lah­mey­er said, indi­cat­ing it is a 501(c)(4) non-prof­it social wel­fare, which is await­ing IRS tax sta­tus approval.

To date, the pas­tors group has cre­at­ed a two per­son board that includes South Car­oli­na pas­tor Mark Burns, a key Trump cam­paign reli­gious advis­er who backed Trump’s 2016 run and who told the Guardian he is a “spir­i­tu­al advis­er” to Trump.

...

To push the group’s pro-Trump mes­sages, Lah­mey­er has arranged prayer calls in recent months that have includ­ed Stone, Fly­nn and ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giu­liani, all of whom pro­mot­ed bogus claims of elec­tion fraud in 2020 and tried to help Trump over­turn his loss to Joe Biden.

One call that includ­ed a seg­ment with Trump in late March, which Lah­mey­er host­ed and that Stone and Fly­nn par­tic­i­pat­ed in, went bad­ly awry when the sound qual­i­ty was inter­rupt­ed for sev­er­al min­utes with Trump on the line.

Lah­mey­er told the Stone Zone the next day that trolls had infil­trat­ed the “back stage” of the plat­form they were using, while Trump fin­gered the “rad­i­cal left” for hack­ing his phone when he tried to join the call.
...

And as we can see, the cre­ation of Pas­tors for Trump took place not long after a num­ber of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers start­ed crit­i­ciz­ing him, prompt­ing that Jan­u­ary 2023 pub­lic grous­ing by Trump about the “dis­loy­al­ty” of these lead­ers, who hap­pen to include Bob Van­der Plaats, the Iowan king-mak­er who ulti­mate­ly backed Ron DeSan­tis in the 2024 cau­cus­es. This is a good time to keep in mind that the Decem­ber 7 launch of Pas­tors for Trump came days after the report­ing on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago din­ner with Catholic Nazi online leader Nick Fuentes and Kanye West. But note the tim­ing: the crit­i­cism Trump endured from Van­der Plaats as well as Dr. Everett Piper was on Novem­ber 10, 2022, and Novem­ber 13, 2022. Trump’s din­ner with Fuentes and West took place in late Novem­ber 2022. So when we see the arc of Trump’s tri­umph over way­ward evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers, keep in mind the evan­gel­i­cal lead­er­ship start­ed pub­licly turn­ing on him in ear­ly Novem­ber of 2022 and then Trump had his Nazi din­ner at Mar-a-Lago a cou­ple weeks lat­er, with Pas­tors for Trump soon launch­ing. Flash for­ward to 2024, and Trump has absolute­ly crushed the Van­der Plaat­s’s endorsed can­di­date of Ron DeSan­tis. Trump won over the evan­gel­i­cals while grow­ing more extreme in the face of crit­i­cism by major evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. It’s quite a trend:

...
The launch of Pas­tors for Trump came not long after a rise in pub­lic crit­i­cism of Trump from some evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers that sug­gest­ed wan­ing sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals.

Dr Everett Piper, the ex-pres­i­dent of Okla­homa Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty, a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ty, in Novem­ber wrote an op-ed enti­tled “It’s time for the GOP to say it: Don­ald Trump is hurt­ing us, not help­ing us.” Piper wrote that in the 2022 midterms Trump “hin­dered rather than helped the much-antic­i­pat­ed ‘red wave’”.

Like­wise, Bob Van­der Plaats, the Iowa-based pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of the Fam­i­ly Leader, a con­ser­v­a­tive social group, has tweet­ed about Trump: “It’s time to turn the page. Amer­i­ca must move on. Walk off the stage with class.”

Lit­tle won­der that in Jan­u­ary Trump con­demned evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers who pub­licly crit­i­cized his new cam­paign for their “dis­loy­al­ty”.

Some schol­ars and recent polls, how­ev­er, sug­gest Trump still has sig­nif­i­cant sup­port in the evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, and that he should gar­ner hefty sup­port again from evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in the pri­maries if he is to be the nom­i­nee.

“Trump’s endur­ing appeal to evan­gel­i­cals is the great­est sin­gle tri­umph of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” David Hollinger, an emer­i­tus his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Berke­ley and the author of Christianity’s Amer­i­can Fate, told the Guardian.

“The evan­gel­i­cals who flocked to Trump have good rea­son to stay with him.”
...

So what does Trump’s polit­i­cal dom­i­nance tell use about what to expect in terms of the lead­er­ship of the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty? Well, here’s a hint: in Novem­ber of 2023, Jack­son Lah­mey­er was cas­ti­gat­ing Bob Van­der Plaats as being a “street whore” for accept­ing $95k con­tri­bu­tion from the DeSan­tis cam­paign. The pay­ments were appar­ent­ly in exchange for DeSan­tis and sup­port­ing groups receiv­ing adver­tise­ments in a book­let dis­trib­uted at a forum as well as atten­dance to the sum­mit, lunch, and an after-din­ner event. The attacks came short­ly after Van­der Plaats endorsed the DeSan­tis cam­paign, a nor­mal­ly cru­cial endorse­ment for Repub­li­can Iowa cau­cus con­tenders. This is the state of affairs in the Trumpi­fi­ca­tion of the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty in the Unit­ed States. Bob Van­der Plaats did­n’t just see his pre­ferred can­di­date lose by a his­toric mar­gin. He was called a “street whore” too in the process:

Newsweek

Pro-Trump Pas­tor Calls Evan­gel­i­cal DeSan­tis Sup­port­er a ‘Street Whore’

By Rachel Dobkin
Week­end Reporter
Nov 23, 2023 at 10:51 AM EST

The founder of Pas­tors for Trump, Jack­son Lah­mey­er, called an evan­gel­i­cal leader a “street whore” for accept­ing mon­ey from Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis’ cam­paign.

Bob Van­der Plaats, the pres­i­dent and CEO of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa-based non­prof­it The FAM­i­LY Leader, endorsed DeSan­tis for pres­i­dent on Fox News on Tues­day. Lah­mey­er, who heads the coali­tion of pas­tors sup­port­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial run, took mul­ti­ple jabs at Van­der Plaats the next night.

...

Lah­mey­er attacked Van­der Plaats’ integri­ty in a reply to a post by Trump’s for­mer lawyer Jen­na Ellis, who accept­ed a plea deal in the crim­i­nal case against Trump and 18 co-defen­dants who are accused of con­spir­ing to over­turn 2020 elec­tion results in Geor­gia.

Ellis wrote on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter: “Trump Camp says every­one who endors­es any­one else is a ‘fraud.’ They’re active­ly lying about @bobvanderplaats and impugn­ing the integri­ty of evan­gel­i­cals. So no one is allowed to have a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal view­point any­more? Sounds a lot like the pet­ty tyrant Democ­rats.”

Lah­mey­er respond­ed: “I’d say @bobvanderplaats has dam­aged the integri­ty of evan­gel­i­cals by pros­ti­tut­ing out his endorse­ment for $95k... not good.”

The pas­tor was refer­ring to the $95,000 that the DeSan­tis cam­paign, a super PAC linked to the gov­er­nor, and a non­prof­it group sup­port­ing him paid to Van­der Plaat­s’s foun­da­tion, accord­ing to cam­paign finance reports and a doc­u­ment pre­pared by an Iowa state law­mak­er who aid­ed The FAM­i­LY Leader in rais­ing mon­ey for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date forum this past July.

In exchange for the mon­ey, DeSan­tis and sup­port­ing groups received adver­tise­ments in a book­let dis­trib­uted at the July forum as well as atten­dance to the sum­mit, lunch, and an after-din­ner event.

Lah­mey­er wrote in anoth­er X post on Wednes­day night: “As the founder of Pas­tors For Trump, I can con­fi­dent­ly state that I did­n’t receive $95k from the Trump cam­paign. Real faith lead­ers sup­port @realDonaldTrump. Shame on @bobvanderplaats.”

Dr. Patrick McGuin­ness, a sup­port­er of Ron DeSan­tis, replied to Lah­mey­er’s post: “You are repeat­ing a slan­der. Your false wit­ness is unbe­com­ing any pas­tor. Shame on YOU. You endorse a nar­cis­sis­tic liar who cheat­ed on all 3 of his wives, was found liable of mali­cious lying, and has 91 indict­ments on charges, most relat­ed to var­i­ous lies and dis­hon­esty,” refer­ring to Trump.

Lah­mey­er replied: “The behav­ior of @bobvanderplaats is indis­tin­guish­able from a com­mon street whore.”

Respond­ing to the mon­ey DeSan­tis’ team made to Van­der Plaats’ foun­da­tion, Trump, who is the front-run­ner among his fel­low GOP can­di­dates in the 2024 race, said on Truth Social: “Ron DeDeSanc­ti­mo­nious, in an act of sheer des­per­a­tion, paid Iowa preach­er Bob Van­der Plaats $100,000, and then got his Endorse­ment? We did not seek it. What is going on here?”

———-

“Pro-Trump Pas­tor Calls Evan­gel­i­cal DeSan­tis Sup­port­er a ‘Street Whore’ ” By Rachel Dobkin; Newsweek; 11/23/2023

“Bob Van­der Plaats, the pres­i­dent and CEO of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa-based non­prof­it The FAM­i­LY Leader, endorsed DeSan­tis for pres­i­dent on Fox News on Tues­day. Lah­mey­er, who heads the coali­tion of pas­tors sup­port­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial run, took mul­ti­ple jabs at Van­der Plaats the next night.”

It was less than two months ago when Bob Van­der Plaats endorsed Ron DeSan­tis in the Iowa cau­cus­es. And there’s Lah­mey­er, the leader of Pas­tors for Trump, call­ing him a “street whore”. And as we saw above, Lah­mey­er isn’t just the leader of a group that has declared its sup­port for Trump. Pas­tors for Trump has been oper­at­ing as a kind of cam­paign sur­ro­gate. This was like the Trump cam­paign call­ing Van­der Plaats a street whore:

...
Ellis wrote on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter: “Trump Camp says every­one who endors­es any­one else is a ‘fraud.’ They’re active­ly lying about @bobvanderplaats and impugn­ing the integri­ty of evan­gel­i­cals. So no one is allowed to have a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal view­point any­more? Sounds a lot like the pet­ty tyrant Democ­rats.”

Lah­mey­er respond­ed: “I’d say @bobvanderplaats has dam­aged the integri­ty of evan­gel­i­cals by pros­ti­tut­ing out his endorse­ment for $95k... not good.”

...

Lah­mey­er wrote in anoth­er X post on Wednes­day night: “As the founder of Pas­tors For Trump, I can con­fi­dent­ly state that I did­n’t receive $95k from the Trump cam­paign. Real faith lead­ers sup­port @realDonaldTrump. Shame on @bobvanderplaats.”

Dr. Patrick McGuin­ness, a sup­port­er of Ron DeSan­tis, replied to Lah­mey­er’s post: “You are repeat­ing a slan­der. Your false wit­ness is unbe­com­ing any pas­tor. Shame on YOU. You endorse a nar­cis­sis­tic liar who cheat­ed on all 3 of his wives, was found liable of mali­cious lying, and has 91 indict­ments on charges, most relat­ed to var­i­ous lies and dis­hon­esty,” refer­ring to Trump.

Lah­mey­er replied: “The behav­ior of @bobvanderplaats is indis­tin­guish­able from a com­mon street whore.”
...

So we have an answer to the ques­tion of whether or not a cam­paign can score a his­toric vic­to­ry in the Iowa cacus­es even after its pas­tor-proxy calls Bob Van­der Plaats a street whore. That may not have been a ques­tion we were we expect­ing to get an answer on in this elec­tion cycle, but we have that answer. The Trumpian forces dethroned Iowa’s polit­i­cal king-mak­er.

It was obvi­ous­ly a big vic­to­ry in the polit­i­cal area. But what does this tell us about the direc­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals? A qui­et bat­tle for the heart and soul of that com­mu­ni­ty has been qui­et­ly play­ing out for over a year now and loy­al­ty to Trump won.

Is it too soon to pre­dict a spe­cial “Book of Trump” addi­tion to the Bible? Because that’s where this is head­ing. “The New New Tes­ta­ment”? “Trump’s Tes­ta­ment” has a nice ring to it. Either way, the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty’s lead­er­ship is fac­ing a num­ber of pro­found ques­tions. Includ­ing whether or not they want their names show­ing up in the Trump’s Tes­ta­ment inevitable sec­tion on dis­loy­al street whores.

It’s not just a ques­tion of fed­er­al­ism and bal­ance of state vs fed­er­al pow­er. It’s the ral­ly cry for a new civ­il war. Or at least one might jump to that con­clu­sion based on the rhetoric com­ing from Repub­li­cans regard­ing the Supreme Court’s 5–4 rul­ing last week about the Texas bor­der. A rul­ing that the nation­al GOP is heav­i­ly invest­ed in ral­ly­ing against and turn­ing into a nation­al issue, with 25 Repub­li­can gov­er­nors hav­ing already sent state nation­al guard troops to Tex­as­’s bor­der as part of this show­down with the Biden admin­is­tra­tion. Okla­homa Gov­er­nor Kevin Stitt even pub­licly enter­tained “force-on-force” sce­nar­ios involv­ing troops refus­ing to fol­low Pres­i­dent Bidens orders ‘in defense of the home­land’ and fir­ing on fed­er­al troops. And this is, of course, all hap­pen­ing in the con­text of 2024 pres­i­den­tial show­down that is promis­ing to be some sort of hor­ri­ble sequel to Jan­u­ary 6, with Don­ald Trump basi­cal­ly run­ning on a plat­form of win­ning back the White House through any means nec­es­sary. The polit­i­cal con­flict play­ing out over the Texas bor­der cri­sis is a sto­ry that could both sym­bol­ize and ampli­fy this broad­er polit­i­cal cri­sis threat­en­ing already roil­ing the Unit­ed States.

But for all the nation­al impli­ca­tions of this sto­ry, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind we’re talk­ing about a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis orig­i­nat­ing from the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. And when we’re talk­ing about the con­tem­po­rary Texas Repub­li­can par­ty, we’re talk­ing about a par­ty in the mid­dle of pow­er strug­gle, with Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist oil-bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn emerg­ing as the orga­niz­ing force push­ing the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther and fur­ther to the right, espe­cial­ly on issues of immi­gra­tion. As we’ve seen, Dun­n’s polit­i­cal influ­ence was dis­pensed, in part, through his polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, which has set up addi­tion­al front groups like Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders. It was the pres­i­dent of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, Jonathan Stick­land, who ran the polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy offices of Pale Horse Strate­gies, which gained infamy after report­ing on the sev­en hours of meet­ings held at the Pale Horse offices with none oth­er than Catholic neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes back on Octo­ber 6. As we’ve also seen, the con­nec­tions between Dun­n’s polit­i­cal net­work and white suprema­cists goes far beyond that one meet­ing, with the Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders spin­off being a prime exam­ple. Tex­as­’s GOP is in the process of being rad­i­cal­ized with alarms about immi­gra­tion oper­at­ing as one of the key points of rad­i­cal­iza­tion.

That brings us to Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant fig­ures in the Dunn camp of Texas GOP pol­i­tics. Recall how Defend Texas Lib­er­ty pledged to run cam­paigns against GOP­ers who vot­ed to impeach Pax­ton last year. And while it’s gov­er­nor Greg Abbott who is lead­ing the polit­i­cal aspects of this show­down with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, it’s Ken Pax­ton who is exe­cut­ing the legal strat­e­gy. And as we’re going to see, Pax­ton has been quite open about his legal strat­e­gy on this issue for years. A strat­e­gy designed to win the right Texas to enforce fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws as it deems fit. He was even telling audi­ences back in 2022 how he was specif­i­cal­ly seek­ing legal cas­es designed to chal­lenge the 2012 Supreme Court rul­ing Ari­zona v. Unit­ed States, a 5–3 rul­ing explic­it­ly assert­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ments exclu­sive right to exe­cute fed­er­al bor­der poli­cies. That 2012 rul­ing was in response to the 2010 Ari­zona that become known as the ‘Papers Please!’ law, because it would force any­one in the state to be able to prove their immigration/citizenship sta­tus to any law enforce­ment offi­cial at any time, cre­at­ing a cul­ture of fear and intim­i­da­tion. Pax­ton has been feel­ing con­fi­dent about his prospects of over­turn­ing the rul­ing giv­en the new make­up of the high court.

Now, as we just saw last week, Pax­ton did­n’t get his wish. Bare­ly. The Supreme Court find­ing that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment had the right to cut or remove the barbed wire was only a a 5–4 rul­ing, after all. Pax­ton almost won. And, as such, we can be con­fi­dent that he isn’t going to give up any time soon.

But there’s anoth­er key piece of con­text to keep in mind in this sto­ry: the recent pas­sage of new Texas immi­gra­tion bill that makes cross­ing the US-Mex­i­co bor­der out­side ports of entry a mis­de­meanor. Beyond that, the new law gives state offi­cials the pow­er to seek depor­ta­tions of indi­vid­u­als. In effect, the new law puts Texas law enforce­ment in the busi­ness of immi­gra­tion enforce­ment, pre­sum­ably set­ting the state for anoth­er Supreme Court fight. The law is set to come into effect in March.

It’s not just the expan­sion of bor­der enforce­ment pow­ers to Texas law enforce­ment that has Tex­as­’s immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties on edge. It’s also the fact that this new law is going to result the kind of “Papers Please!” regime of offi­cial intim­i­da­tion Ari­zona was forced to par­tial­ly repeal with that 2012 Supreme Court rul­ing.

But there are much big­ger stakes in play here. Because what hap­pens in Texas isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly going to stay in Texas, espe­cial­ly when it comes to the legal con­se­quences of the kind of Supreme Court vic­to­ry Ken Pax­ton is seek­ing out on this mat­ter. If Texas wins the right to impose its own ver­sion of fed­er­al immi­gra­tion law, includ­ing the right to seek depor­ta­tions, what’s to stop every oth­er state from doing the same? We could see dozens of Repub­li­can-con­trolled states pass­ing laws designed to tar­get the state’s non-white pop­u­la­tions with exact­ly the kind of “papers please” threats we’re see­ing unfold in Texas.

And, of course, if Trump los­es again and decides to wage a civ­il war in response, it’s hard to think of a more ani­mat­ing issue these days than some sort of immi­gra­tion show­down between Texas and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. There’s a nasty caul­dron cook­ing right now in Texas. The Texas GOP is danc­ing to the tune of Tim Dun­n’s Nazi-friend­ly fac­tion and it’s the kind of tune that could become very pop­u­lar in Repub­li­can-con­trolled states around the US if Ken Pax­ton is grant­ed his Supreme Court wish. A state-lev­el asser­tion of the pow­er to enforce immi­gra­tion laws is almost in their grasp and in the mean time they have an excuse to have a show­down with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. It’s the polit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of crack cocaine to today’s immi­gra­tion-obsessed white nation­al­ist GOP. And it’s prob­a­bly just a mat­ter of time before they find the right legal case that wins them — and the rest of GOP-con­trolled states — these immi­gra­tion pow­ers from the Supreme Court. That’s their plan. And while it has­n’t come to fruition yet, it’s a work in progress.

And in the mean time, there’s a show­down with the feds at Eagle Pass that still has to play out. The kind of show­down that also has the ‘usu­al sus­pects’ call­ing for a show of defi­ance. Usu­al sus­pects like the Clare­mont Insti­tute, which recent­ly warned Abbott that if he has any nation­al polit­i­cal ambi­tions he has bet­ter defy the Supreme Court:

Hous­ton Chron­i­cle

Some Repub­li­cans call for Texas to ignore Supreme Court bor­der rul­ing: ‘Let’s see them enforce it’

By Jasper Scher­er, Ben­jamin Wer­mund, Staff writ­ers
Jan 23, 2024

After the Supreme Court on Mon­day cleared the way for fed­er­al agents to remove Texas-owned razor wire along the Rio Grande, some con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers and com­men­ta­tors sug­gest­ed a dras­tic response from the state: defy the court’s rul­ing.

The 5–4 deci­sion allows Bor­der Patrol to cut or move the miles of razor wire deployed under Gov. Greg Abbott’s bor­der crack­down. In doing so, the high court tem­porar­i­ly set­tled the state’s dis­pute with the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, which says the bar­ri­ers endan­ger migrants and impede fed­er­al immi­gra­tion enforce­ment.

...

“This opin­ion is uncon­scionable and Texas should ignore it on behalf of the (Bor­der Patrol) agents who will be put in a worse posi­tion by the opin­ion and the Biden administration’s poli­cies,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R‑Austin, post­ed on X.

U.S. Rep. Clay Hig­gins of Louisiana offered sim­i­lar advice: “My thoughts are that the feds are stag­ing a civ­il war, and Texas should stand their ground.” And Jere­my Carl, a senior fel­low at the Clare­mont Insti­tute, a right-wing think tank, said that if Abbott “wants to have a future on a nation­al tick­et he will defy this law­less Supreme Court and pro­tect the Texas bor­der from inva­sion.”

...

On Tues­day, Texas author­i­ties were still restrict­ing Bor­der Patrol’s access to key a 2.5‑mile stretch near Eagle Pass, part of an unprece­dent­ed state bor­der takeover that became cen­tral to argu­ments before the Supreme Court as it was con­sid­er­ing the razor wire case.

Fed­er­al offi­cials say it is a crit­i­cal stretch of the bor­der, where agents often need to respond quick­ly to emer­gen­cies, but Texas sol­diers have stopped fed­er­al agents from patrolling the stretch and appre­hend­ing migrants there, instead hav­ing state troop­ers arrest migrants for tres­pass­ing.

Three migrants, a moth­er and two chil­dren, drowned near the stretch ear­li­er this month, and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion point­ed to the drown­ings as it urged the Supreme Court to force Texas to let Bor­der Patrol back in.

The five-jus­tice major­i­ty did not explain their deci­sion and did not weigh in on the takeover.

Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty Lt. Chris Oli­varez said the high court’s rul­ing applies only to the razor wire issue. State police are still restrict­ing fed­er­al access to Shel­by Park, he said Tues­day, though they are now allow­ing Bor­der Patrol to use the park’s boat ramp — the only one for miles along the Rio Grande, Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials not­ed in court fil­ings.

Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty offi­cials took anoth­er crack at gain­ing access to the park on Tues­day, demand­ing in a let­ter to Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton that state offi­cials remove “any and all obstruc­tions” on fed­er­al­ly-owned land around the park, includ­ing at sev­er­al park entrances.

Texas test­ing the lim­its

The extra­or­di­nary stand­off is only the lat­est exam­ple of how Abbott and the GOP-con­trolled Leg­is­la­ture have pushed the lim­its of state immi­gra­tion enforce­ment through­out much of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s first term. Under the third-term governor’s wide-rang­ing bor­der crack­down known as Oper­a­tion Lone Star, the state also has arrest­ed migrants on state tres­pass charges and put float­ing bar­ri­ers in the Rio Grande, mea­sures that Abbott says are need­ed to counter the record lev­els of migrants cross­ing the U.S.-Mexico bor­der.

Ear­li­er this month, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion sued to block a new Texas law, Sen­ate Bill 4, that empow­ers state offi­cials to essen­tial­ly deport peo­ple who are sus­pect­ed of cross­ing the bor­der ille­gal­ly.

But Abbott also has resist­ed some of the most dras­tic calls for action. More than a year before he signed SB 4 into law, the gov­er­nor faced pres­sure from the right to declare that Texas was under “inva­sion” and start uni­lat­er­al­ly enforc­ing fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws. Some con­ser­v­a­tive offi­cials and activists con­tend­ed it would be per­mit­ted under states’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tect them­selves from “immi­nent dan­ger” or inva­sion.

Legal experts said the “bor­der inva­sion” strat­e­gy like­ly would run afoul of U.S. asy­lum laws, along with legal prece­dent that gives the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment broad dis­cre­tion in set­ting and enforc­ing immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. And Abbott said he would first want Con­gress to change fed­er­al laws to ensure state author­i­ties were shield­ed from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

In the razor wire case, Abbott has appeared more focused on the ongo­ing court bat­tle, rather than chal­leng­ing the will of the Supreme Court. He not­ed on social media that the high court had issued a tem­po­rary rul­ing that applies only while the case makes its way through the courts. The appeals court had sided with Texas in its own tem­po­rary order, the one dis­solved by the high court on Mon­day.

But pres­sure from the party’s right flank to defy the rul­ing was grow­ing. A few GOP state law­mak­ers implic­it­ly called for Texas to ignore it on Mon­day.

“Some­times dis­obe­di­ence is the best way to show lead­er­ship,” tweet­ed state Rep. Tom Oliv­er­sion, R‑Houston, which drew agree­ment from state Rep. Steve Toth, R‑Conroe.

Repub­li­can state Rep. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park was more explic­it, writ­ing, “As Pres­i­dent Jack­son famous­ly said: ‘the Supreme Court has made their deci­sion, now let’s see them enforce it.’ ”

The Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty post­ed a fundrais­ing appeal accom­pa­nied by a graph­ic depict­ing a seg­ment of razor wire above the state’s “Come and take it” mantra, in which “take” was crossed out and replaced with “cut.”

Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, a group that push­es for hard-line immi­gra­tion poli­cies, said Abbott “should con­tin­ue to place bar­ri­ers and block the Biden admin­is­tra­tion from remov­ing them,” adding that Tex­ans “do not wish to see our coun­try over­run with mil­lions of ille­gal aliens.” (The group is linked to Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, the group bankrolled by right-wing oil­men Tim Dunn and Far­ris Wilks. Both groups have been the sub­ject of report­ing by the Texas Tri­bune high­light­ing their ties to white suprema­cists.)

DHS, which includes Bor­der Patrol, praised the Supreme Court order for affirm­ing that “(e)nforcement of immi­gra­tion law is a fed­er­al respon­si­bil­i­ty.”

“Rather than help­ing to reduce irreg­u­lar migra­tion, the state of Texas has only made it hard­er for front-line per­son­nel to do their jobs and to apply con­se­quences under the law,” a DHS spokesper­son said. “We can enforce our laws and admin­is­ter them safe­ly, humane­ly, and in an order­ly way.”

Some Democ­rats also lashed out at Repub­li­cans for open­ly advo­cat­ing defi­ance of a Supreme Court rul­ing. Refer­ring to Roy and his new com­mit­tee post, the account of the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee Democ­rats tweet­ed, “The new chair of the House Judi­cia­ry Con­sti­tu­tion Sub­com­mit­tee says to… *checks notes* ignore the con­sti­tu­tion.”

———

“Some Repub­li­cans call for Texas to ignore Supreme Court bor­der rul­ing: ‘Let’s see them enforce it’” By Jasper Scher­er, Ben­jamin Wer­mund; Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; 01/23/2024

“The 5–4 deci­sion allows Bor­der Patrol to cut or move the miles of razor wire deployed under Gov. Greg Abbott’s bor­der crack­down. In doing so, the high court tem­porar­i­ly set­tled the state’s dis­pute with the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, which says the bar­ri­ers endan­ger migrants and impede fed­er­al immi­gra­tion enforce­ment.”

The issue has been set­tle. Tem­porar­i­ly. But it’s as tem­porar­i­ly set­tled as the US con­sti­tu­tion allows thanks to the Supreme Court’s rul­ing. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has the right to remove the barbed wire put up by the state of Texas at the US bor­der. But despite that rul­ing, Texas author­i­ties were con­tin­ue to restrict the move­ments of fed­er­al Bor­der Patrol agents along the bor­der in the area of Eagle Pass where the state is still car­ry­ing out an unprece­dent­ed state bor­der takeover. This is appar­ent­ly be done under the log­ic that the rul­ing only allows for fed­er­al agents to remove fenc­ing but does­n’t pre­vent the state from con­tin­u­ing to block fed­er­al access to the bor­der. It’s a bit of a catch 22 legal inter­pre­ta­tion. A bad faith catch 22 inter­pre­ta­tion that Abbot­t’s admin­is­tra­tion will con­tin­ue to fall back on a pol­i­cy of block­ing fed­er­al agents and instead hav­ing state agents arrest the migrants for tres­pass­ing. Or at least the migrants who don’t drown in riv­er. In oth­er words, drown­ers will be still be allowed to drown under Tex­as­’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Supreme Court rul­ing:

...
On Tues­day, Texas author­i­ties were still restrict­ing Bor­der Patrol’s access to key a 2.5‑mile stretch near Eagle Pass, part of an unprece­dent­ed state bor­der takeover that became cen­tral to argu­ments before the Supreme Court as it was con­sid­er­ing the razor wire case.

Fed­er­al offi­cials say it is a crit­i­cal stretch of the bor­der, where agents often need to respond quick­ly to emer­gen­cies, but Texas sol­diers have stopped fed­er­al agents from patrolling the stretch and appre­hend­ing migrants there, instead hav­ing state troop­ers arrest migrants for tres­pass­ing.

Three migrants, a moth­er and two chil­dren, drowned near the stretch ear­li­er this month, and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion point­ed to the drown­ings as it urged the Supreme Court to force Texas to let Bor­der Patrol back in.

...

Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty Lt. Chris Oli­varez said the high court’s rul­ing applies only to the razor wire issue. State police are still restrict­ing fed­er­al access to Shel­by Park, he said Tues­day, though they are now allow­ing Bor­der Patrol to use the park’s boat ramp — the only one for miles along the Rio Grande, Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials not­ed in court fil­ings.
...

And this is all play­ing out as Abbot just signed into law the new Sen­ate Bill 4 that empow­ers state offi­cials to deport those sus­pect­ed of cross­ing the bor­der ille­gal­ly, some­thing that is pre­sum­ably going to make its way to the Supreme Court any month now as the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has already sued to block the enforce­ment of the law:

...
The extra­or­di­nary stand­off is only the lat­est exam­ple of how Abbott and the GOP-con­trolled Leg­is­la­ture have pushed the lim­its of state immi­gra­tion enforce­ment through­out much of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s first term. Under the third-term governor’s wide-rang­ing bor­der crack­down known as Oper­a­tion Lone Star, the state also has arrest­ed migrants on state tres­pass charges and put float­ing bar­ri­ers in the Rio Grande, mea­sures that Abbott says are need­ed to counter the record lev­els of migrants cross­ing the U.S.-Mexico bor­der.

Ear­li­er this month, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion sued to block a new Texas law, Sen­ate Bill 4, that empow­ers state offi­cials to essen­tial­ly deport peo­ple who are sus­pect­ed of cross­ing the bor­der ille­gal­ly.
...

And also note the signs of where this cri­sis is head­ing: Abbott as so far resist­ed calls to declare the migrant cri­sis an “inva­sion” with the uni­lat­er­al enforce­ment of Tex­as­’s own ver­sion of fed­er­al immi­gra­tion law. It’s the kind of prece­dent that, if estab­lished, could result in a state-lev­el polit­i­cal free-for-all on all issues involv­ing immi­gra­tion. The kind of sit­u­a­tion the far right would obvi­ous­ly love. But, of course, that’s more or less what the new­ly passed Sen­ate Bill 4 will do with the state attempt­ing to effec­tive­ly usurp the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s bor­der enforce­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties. That’s part of the dynam­ic at work here. If the new­ly passed law is allowed to be enforced, it’s a recipe for the kind of con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis that can spread to every oth­er state:

...
But Abbott also has resist­ed some of the most dras­tic calls for action. More than a year before he signed SB 4 into law, the gov­er­nor faced pres­sure from the right to declare that Texas was under “inva­sion” and start uni­lat­er­al­ly enforc­ing fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws. Some con­ser­v­a­tive offi­cials and activists con­tend­ed it would be per­mit­ted under states’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tect them­selves from “immi­nent dan­ger” or inva­sion.

Legal experts said the “bor­der inva­sion” strat­e­gy like­ly would run afoul of U.S. asy­lum laws, along with legal prece­dent that gives the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment broad dis­cre­tion in set­ting and enforc­ing immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. And Abbott said he would first want Con­gress to change fed­er­al laws to ensure state author­i­ties were shield­ed from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.
...

And as we should expect at this point, the Supreme Court’s rul­ing isn’t the final say on the mat­ter, even if only tem­porar­i­ly. Instead, we’re see­ing calls to defy the Supreme Court for the now-usu­al sus­pects, like the Clare­mont Insti­tute and Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, one of front groups for Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Free­dom. Recall the sig­nif­i­cant role played by the Clare­mont Insti­tute in the plan­ning and legal ratio­nal­iz­ing for the Trump White House­’s post 2020 elec­tion moves that led up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, with John East­man play­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial role. The Clare­mont Insti­tute seems to exist to chal­lenge a con­sti­tu­tion­al order at this point. So of course we’re find­ing them cheer­ing on defi­ance of the courts and a show­down with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

Sim­i­lar­ly, recall how the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, Cary Chesire, was respon­si­ble for Christ­mas mail­ers to Texas Repub­li­can House Speak­er Dade Phalen’s con­stituents, accus­ing him of har­bor­ing pro-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments. As we saw, the mail­ers were just the lat­est in the long-stand­ing, and so far suc­cess­ful, pow­er play going on inside the Texas GOP, with Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders oper­at­ing as one of the many front groups for bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn in his quest to push the Texas GOP fur­ther and fur­ther to the right. But as we also saw, Chesire’s mail­ers were emblem­at­ic of the kind of extrem­ist increas­ing­ly embraced by the Dunn fac­tion of the Texas GOP. It was Chris Rus­so, the founder and pres­i­dent of of Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, a spin-off of Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, who was the fig­ure seen chauf­feur­ing Catholic Nazi Nick Fuentes dur­ing the day Fuentes of the now infa­mous­ly held meet­ings at Pale Horse Strate­gies, the polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty’s now-for­mer pres­i­dent Jonathan Stick­land. It’s cru­cial con­text for the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment Abbott is oper­at­ing in dur­ing this show­down. He’s fac­ing a kind of per­ma­nent polit­i­cal insur­gency of his own in the form of Tim Dun­n’s ongo­ing cap­ture of the Texas GOP. A cap­ture that, itself, is a local exam­ple of the kind of cap­ture of the GOP at the nation­al lev­el by rad­i­cal unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic forces like the Clare­mont Insti­tute. It’s the kind of hor­ri­ble con­text that does­n’t excuse Abbot­t’s deci­sions but does help explain them:

...
“This opin­ion is uncon­scionable and Texas should ignore it on behalf of the (Bor­der Patrol) agents who will be put in a worse posi­tion by the opin­ion and the Biden administration’s poli­cies,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R‑Austin, post­ed on X.

U.S. Rep. Clay Hig­gins of Louisiana offered sim­i­lar advice: “My thoughts are that the feds are stag­ing a civ­il war, and Texas should stand their ground.” And Jere­my Carl, a senior fel­low at the Clare­mont Insti­tute, a right-wing think tank, said that if Abbott “wants to have a future on a nation­al tick­et he will defy this law­less Supreme Court and pro­tect the Texas bor­der from inva­sion.”

...

But pres­sure from the party’s right flank to defy the rul­ing was grow­ing. A few GOP state law­mak­ers implic­it­ly called for Texas to ignore it on Mon­day.

“Some­times dis­obe­di­ence is the best way to show lead­er­ship,” tweet­ed state Rep. Tom Oliv­er­sion, R‑Houston, which drew agree­ment from state Rep. Steve Toth, R‑Conroe.

Repub­li­can state Rep. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park was more explic­it, writ­ing, “As Pres­i­dent Jack­son famous­ly said: ‘the Supreme Court has made their deci­sion, now let’s see them enforce it.’ ”

The Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty post­ed a fundrais­ing appeal accom­pa­nied by a graph­ic depict­ing a seg­ment of razor wire above the state’s “Come and take it” mantra, in which “take” was crossed out and replaced with “cut.”

Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, a group that push­es for hard-line immi­gra­tion poli­cies, said Abbott “should con­tin­ue to place bar­ri­ers and block the Biden admin­is­tra­tion from remov­ing them,” adding that Tex­ans “do not wish to see our coun­try over­run with mil­lions of ille­gal aliens.” (The group is linked to Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, the group bankrolled by right-wing oil­men Tim Dunn and Far­ris Wilks. Both groups have been the sub­ject of report­ing by the Texas Tri­bune high­light­ing their ties to white suprema­cists.)
...

And as we’ve also seen, those mem­bers of the Texas GOP close­ly allied with Dun­n’s fac­tion includes the state par­ty chair­man Matt Rinal­di, who also hap­pened to be at the Pale Horse Strate­gies office dur­ing those sev­en hours of meet­ings with Fuentes. But Rinal­di isn’t the high­est rank­ing Texas GOP offi­cial clear­ly aligned with Dunn. That prize goes to Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, one of the cen­tral fig­ures in the unfold­ing bor­der fight. It was an alliance that was on full dis­play dur­ing Pax­ton’s impeach­ment tri­al, with Dun­n’s groups like Defend Texas Lib­er­ty pledg­ing to go after GOP­ers who vot­ed to impeach. Pax­ton’s close alliance with Dunn — an alliance that only grows in strength the more legal trou­bles Pax­ton faces — is a big part of the polit­i­cal con­text to keep in mind as this bor­der show­down with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment plays out. Because as the fol­low­ing arti­cle from almost three months ago describes, it’s Pax­ton house has been wag­ing the legal bat­tles on behalf of Texas in order to assert this idea that Texas can assert its own bor­der patrolling poli­cies that super­sede fed­er­al law.

It was Pax­ton who sued the Biden admin­is­tra­tion back in Octo­ber, argu­ing that the Bor­der Patrol’s deci­sion to cut through the barbed wire was an ille­gal destruc­tion of state prop­er­ty, done to “assist” migrants to “ille­gal­ly cross” the bor­der. Pax­ton won that legal bat­tle and a fed­er­al judge ordered agents to tem­porar­i­ly stop tak­ing down barbed wire in Eagle Pass. But, as the arti­cle notes, when it was judge made that rul­ing, she issued it with “one impor­tant excep­tion for any med­ical emer­gency that most­ly like­ly results in seri­ous bod­i­ly injury or death to a per­son, absent any boats or oth­er life-sav­ing appa­ra­tus avail­able to avoid such med­ical emer­gen­cies pri­or to reach­ing the con­certi­na wire bar­ri­er.” In oth­er words, the judge was­n’t grant­i­ng Texas the right to con­tin­ue block­ing fed­er­al agents from sav­ing migrants fac­ing death. It’s an espe­cial­ly impor­tant detail in the con­text of the recent Supreme Court rul­ing and all the threats of civ­il war that have erupt­ed in response, because it’s a reminder that Texas is fight­ing for the abil­i­ty to have to right to leave the migrants to die under the legal argu­ment that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion is assist­ing in an “inva­sion” of the Unit­ed States. And it’s Ken Pax­ton lead­ing that fight:

Texas Tri­bune

Fed­er­al judge orders immi­gra­tion agents to stop remov­ing Texas’ con­certi­na wire on the bor­der

Bor­der Patrol agents have cut through the state’s wire to free migrants or take them into cus­tody. Judge Alia Moses will hear argu­ments from Texas and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion next week to deter­mine whether her tem­po­rary order will con­tin­ue past Nov. 13.

by Uriel J. Gar­cía
Oct. 30, 2023
3 PM Cen­tral

A fed­er­al judge on Mon­day ordered immi­gra­tion agents to stop tak­ing down or cut­ting through con­certi­na wire placed on the Texas-Mex­i­co bor­der in Eagle Pass by state troop­ers and Nation­al Guard mem­bers in their efforts to deter migrants from cross­ing the bor­der ille­gal­ly.

Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton sued the Biden admin­is­tra­tion last Tues­day, claim­ing that the Bor­der Patrol ille­gal­ly destroyed state prop­er­ty when its agents cut through con­certi­na wire on the banks of the Rio Grande to “assist” migrants to “ille­gal­ly cross” the bor­der.

Dis­trict Judge Alia Moses, a George W. Bush appointee, said she would grant Paxton’s request.

“The Court shall grant the tem­po­rary relief request­ed, with one impor­tant excep­tion for any med­ical emer­gency that most­ly like­ly results in seri­ous bod­i­ly injury or death to a per­son, absent any boats or oth­er life-sav­ing appa­ra­tus avail­able to avoid such med­ical emer­gen­cies pri­or to reach­ing the con­certi­na wire bar­ri­er,” Moses wrote in her order.

Moses will hear argu­ments from lawyers from Paxton’s office and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in the law­suit on Nov. 7. The tem­po­rary restrain­ing order will expire on Nov. 13 at 9:30 a.m. Moses will deter­mine whether her restrain­ing order will con­tin­ue past Nov. 13 after the hear­ing.

With­in the past three years, the Texas Mil­i­tary Depart­ment has spent $11 mil­lion to place 70,000 rolls of con­certi­na wire in dif­fer­ent parts of the Texas-Mex­i­co bor­der, most notably in Eagle Pass, where migrants have been seri­ous­ly injured try­ing to get through the wire.

Accord­ing to the law­suit, filed in the West­ern Dis­trict of Texas, Bor­der Patrol agents “not only cut Texas’ con­certi­na wire, but also attach ropes or cables from the back of pick­up trucks to ease” migrants’ abil­i­ty to get onto the U.S. side of the riv­er.

The law­suit names the heads of the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion, and U.S. Bor­der Patrol as defen­dants. Paxton’s office is ask­ing a fed­er­al judge to rule that immi­gra­tion agents cut­ting the wire is ille­gal and award dam­ages to the state.

...

“Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, Bor­der Patrol agents have a respon­si­bil­i­ty under fed­er­al law to take those who have crossed onto U.S. soil with­out autho­riza­tion into cus­tody for pro­cess­ing, as well as to act when there are con­di­tions that put our work­force or migrants at risk,” a spokesper­son for the depart­ment said last week.

Ear­li­er this year in Eagle Pass, a state troop­er claimed the state’s con­certi­na wire had injured peo­ple, includ­ing a woman who had a mis­car­riage while entan­gled in the wire. In an email mes­sage to a supe­ri­or that was lat­er leaked to reporters, the troop­er also said that a 4‑year-old girl who attempt­ed to cross the wire “was pressed back by Texas Guard sol­diers due to the orders giv­en to them.” The tem­per­a­ture “was well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out before receiv­ing med­ical treat­ment, the email said.

The trooper’s claims are under inves­ti­ga­tion.

———-

“Fed­er­al judge orders immi­gra­tion agents to stop remov­ing Texas’ con­certi­na wire on the bor­der” by Uriel J. Gar­cía; Texas Tri­bune; 10/30/2023

“Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton sued the Biden admin­is­tra­tion last Tues­day, claim­ing that the Bor­der Patrol ille­gal­ly destroyed state prop­er­ty when its agents cut through con­certi­na wire on the banks of the Rio Grande to “assist” migrants to “ille­gal­ly cross” the bor­der.”

Fed­er­al agents did­n’t cut barbed wire placed by the state in order to help human beings fac­ing death. No, it was to “assist” migrants to “ille­gal­ly cross” the bor­der. That was the argu­ment Ken Pax­ton made back in Octo­ber. A win­ning argu­ment in the eyes of George W. Bush appointee Dis­trict Judge Alia Moses, who grant Pax­ton tem­po­rary “relief” as the case played out through the courts. But there was one key excep­tion: med­ical emer­gen­cies. Which was not some­thing with­out prece­dent. A state troop­er report­ed a mis­car­riage a migrant expe­ri­enced while entan­gled in barbed wire ear­li­er in the year. Even a 4 year old girl was pressed back by Texas Guard sol­diers under Abbot­t’s orders until she passed out in the heat. Main­tain­ing that kind of bru­tal­i­ty was Ken Pax­ton was suing for:

...
Dis­trict Judge Alia Moses, a George W. Bush appointee, said she would grant Paxton’s request.

“The Court shall grant the tem­po­rary relief request­ed, with one impor­tant excep­tion for any med­ical emer­gency that most­ly like­ly results in seri­ous bod­i­ly injury or death to a per­son, absent any boats or oth­er life-sav­ing appa­ra­tus avail­able to avoid such med­ical emer­gen­cies pri­or to reach­ing the con­certi­na wire bar­ri­er,” Moses wrote in her order.

Moses will hear argu­ments from lawyers from Paxton’s office and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in the law­suit on Nov. 7. The tem­po­rary restrain­ing order will expire on Nov. 13 at 9:30 a.m. Moses will deter­mine whether her restrain­ing order will con­tin­ue past Nov. 13 after the hear­ing.

With­in the past three years, the Texas Mil­i­tary Depart­ment has spent $11 mil­lion to place 70,000 rolls of con­certi­na wire in dif­fer­ent parts of the Texas-Mex­i­co bor­der, most notably in Eagle Pass, where migrants have been seri­ous­ly injured try­ing to get through the wire.

...

Ear­li­er this year in Eagle Pass, a state troop­er claimed the state’s con­certi­na wire had injured peo­ple, includ­ing a woman who had a mis­car­riage while entan­gled in the wire. In an email mes­sage to a supe­ri­or that was lat­er leaked to reporters, the troop­er also said that a 4‑year-old girl who attempt­ed to cross the wire “was pressed back by Texas Guard sol­diers due to the orders giv­en to them.” The tem­per­a­ture “was well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out before receiv­ing med­ical treat­ment, the email said.
...

But, again, Pax­ton was­n’t just suing for the right to main­tain bru­tal con­di­tions at the bor­der in defi­ance of fed­er­al law. He was also suing to assert Tex­as­’s right to enforce bor­der pol­i­cy on its own and in defi­ance of fed­er­al pol­i­cy. We don’t have to infer this intent. As we can see in the fol­low­ing March 2022 Hous­ton Chron­i­cle piece, Pax­ton has been quite clear about those inten­tions. Specif­i­cal­ly, Pax­ton is pur­su­ing legal chal­lenges to the 2012 Ari­zona v. Unit­ed States Supreme Court rul­ing that found the state of Ari­zona could­n’t uni­lat­er­al­ly choose how it enforces fed­er­al bor­der pol­i­cy. Or as Pax­ton’s top deputy put it at the time, state leg­is­la­tors should con­sid­er pass­ing laws that could spur a legal case “so that once again Texas could be enabled through fed­er­al law to enforce immi­gra­tion.” Pax­ton was open about feel­ing embold­ened by the new con­ser­v­a­tive make­up of the Supreme Court com­pared to 2012. Keep in mind that Ari­zona v. Unit­ed States was based on Ari­zon­a’s 2010 law that became known as the “papers please” law because any­one could be sub­ject to prov­ing their immi­gra­tion (or cit­i­zen­ship) sta­tus at any moment to any law enforce­ment offi­cer. It was not just seen as a logis­ti­cal night­mare to enforce but also ter­ror­iz­ing on Ari­zon­a’s immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty, legal or ille­gal. Which, of course, is half the point for politi­cians affil­i­at­ed with Tim Dunn and his white Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da. And none more so than Ken Pax­ton:

Hous­ton Chron­i­cle

Ken Pax­ton wants Supreme Court rever­sal on immi­gra­tion, giv­ing Texas more sway in bor­der fight

By Jasper Scher­er, Staff writer
Updat­ed March 16, 2022 7:52 a.m.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton is push­ing to over­turn a key U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion that ham­strings states from enforc­ing fed­er­al immi­gra­tion law, a move that could dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand Texas’ offen­sive against Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s poli­cies at the south­ern bor­der.

Pax­ton has said for months that he is look­ing for a legal path to chal­lenge the 2012 rul­ing in the case, known as Ari­zona v. Unit­ed States. At a com­mit­tee hear­ing last week, First Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al Brent Web­ster — Paxton’s top deputy — encour­aged state leg­is­la­tors to con­sid­er pass­ing laws that could spur a legal case “so that once again Texas could be enabled through fed­er­al law to enforce immi­gra­tion.”

Under the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, the Repub­li­can attor­ney gen­er­al has emerged as a chief antag­o­nist on immi­gra­tion, using a bar­rage of law­suits to kill sev­er­al of the president’s high-pro­file poli­cies and force the rein­state­ment of Trump-era mea­sures such as the “Remain in Mex­i­co” pro­gram. Gov. Greg Abbott and oth­er Repub­li­can state offi­cials have also spear­head­ed con­struc­tion of a wall cov­er­ing por­tions of the U.S.-Mexico bor­der and sent thou­sands of state police and sol­diers to appre­hend migrants in South Texas — an approach that crit­ics and defense attor­neys argue is already blur­ring the line between legit­i­mate enforce­ment and state over­reach.

The prece­dent estab­lished in the Ari­zona case has been among the biggest obsta­cles for Texas Repub­li­cans, lim­it­ing the scope of their state-spon­sored bor­der crack­down and serv­ing as the legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion behind a sweep­ing attempt to toss out mis­de­meanor charges against hun­dreds of migrants arrest­ed under the governor’s “catch-and-jail” pro­gram. The Ari­zona deci­sion also under­pinned a Biden admin­is­tra­tion law­suit last year that blocked the Texas governor’s order for state troop­ers to pull over dri­vers who they sus­pect of trans­port­ing migrants.

Repub­li­can lead­ers have been care­ful to insist they are not enforc­ing fed­er­al law them­selves since states are gen­er­al­ly pre­vent­ed from tak­ing such action under the 2012 deci­sion.

A spokesman for Pax­ton, who is run­ning for re-elec­tion this fall, said the attor­ney gen­er­al does not nec­es­sar­i­ly want Texas to enact its own immi­gra­tion poli­cies, but rather regain the author­i­ty “to enforce fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws as a back­stop to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment fail­ing or refus­ing to do their job.”

...

The Ari­zona deci­sion arose from an Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion chal­lenge to the state’s 2010 immi­gra­tion law that sought to crack down on immi­grants liv­ing in the coun­try with­out legal autho­riza­tion.

In a 5–3 rul­ing, the court upheld the law’s core pro­vi­sion, lat­er mod­eled by Texas, that requires state author­i­ties to check the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of any­one they stop or detain if they sus­pect the per­son to be in the coun­try ille­gal­ly. But over the objec­tion of three jus­tices, the court struck down three oth­er pro­vi­sions of the law, includ­ing one that autho­rized police to arrest any­one sus­pect­ed of being in the coun­try ille­gal­ly. The dis­sent­ing trio includ­ed sit­ting Jus­tices Samuel Ali­to and Clarence Thomas.

In the major­i­ty opin­ion, then-Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy wrote that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has “broad dis­cre­tion” in set­ting immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, includ­ing deci­sions involv­ing the removal of migrants who are in the coun­try ille­gal­ly. He not­ed that despite Arizona’s “under­stand­able frus­tra­tions with the prob­lems caused by ille­gal immi­gra­tion … the state may not pur­sue poli­cies that under­mine fed­er­al law.”

...

In a town hall last Octo­ber, Pax­ton made clear that he feels embold­ened to bring the case back before the Supreme Court at least in part because of its bol­stered con­ser­v­a­tive wing. For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump appoint­ed three con­ser­v­a­tive judges to the court dur­ing his term, includ­ing two who took over for more lib­er­al jus­tices.

Kate Hud­dle­ston, an attor­ney with the ACLU of Texas and a fre­quent crit­ic of Abbott’s bor­der ini­tia­tive, said over­turn­ing the Ari­zona deci­sion and grant­i­ng states pow­er to deport or expel immi­grants “would be an unprece­dent­ed and out­ra­geous shift from all of mod­ern immi­gra­tion law.”

“I real­ly can­not over­state how legal­ly out­ra­geous it is,” she said, adding, “The pow­er to admit and expel indi­vid­u­als has always been under­stood as under the purview of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”

Con­ser­v­a­tives have pushed state lead­ers to test the legal bound­aries of state immi­gra­tion pow­ers, argu­ing such an approach is need­ed to counter an array of Biden admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies that they view as over­ly lenient toward asy­lum-seek­ing migrants and drug car­tels alike.

Short­ly before the gov­er­nor launched his plan last year to round up migrants on state tres­pass­ing charges, the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, a lead­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy group, pub­lished an op-ed — co-authored by the for­mer act­ing deputy home­land secu­ri­ty sec­re­tary under Trump — that urged Abbott to “do every­thing that is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly per­mis­si­ble” to han­dle “an inva­sion of ille­gal immi­grants.”

...

“That may take him into some gray areas, like using state offi­cials to enforce por­tions of immi­gra­tion law not in clear con­tra­ven­tion of fed­er­al law,” the Her­itage Foun­da­tion piece said. “The gov­er­nor has an oblig­a­tion to exer­cise every option avail­able. If the Biden admin­is­tra­tion then tries to lim­it a governor’s attempt to deal with an inva­sion, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide what the prop­er bounds are.”

———–

“Ken Pax­ton wants Supreme Court rever­sal on immi­gra­tion, giv­ing Texas more sway in bor­der fight” By Jasper Scher­er; Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; 03/16/2022

“Pax­ton has said for months that he is look­ing for a legal path to chal­lenge the 2012 rul­ing in the case, known as Ari­zona v. Unit­ed States. At a com­mit­tee hear­ing last week, First Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al Brent Web­ster — Paxton’s top deputy — encour­aged state leg­is­la­tors to con­sid­er pass­ing laws that could spur a legal case “so that once again Texas could be enabled through fed­er­al law to enforce immi­gra­tion.””

He’s not hid­ing it. Ken Pax­ton wants the Supreme Court to grant him the right to choose how fed­er­al immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy is enforced in Texas and to do that he’s going to have to see Ari­zona v. Unit­ed States over­turned. A rul­ing that has pre­vent­ed the Abbott admin­is­tra­tion from mak­ing life much hard to Tex­as­’s immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty. The whole com­mu­ni­ty poten­tial­ly, whether they are there legal­ly or ille­gal­ly, migrants or cit­i­zens. ANd Pax­ton isn’t just fight­ing for the pow­er to charge undoc­u­ment­ed migrants with crimes. He’s fight­ing for the pow­er to deport:

...
Under the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, the Repub­li­can attor­ney gen­er­al has emerged as a chief antag­o­nist on immi­gra­tion, using a bar­rage of law­suits to kill sev­er­al of the president’s high-pro­file poli­cies and force the rein­state­ment of Trump-era mea­sures such as the “Remain in Mex­i­co” pro­gram. Gov. Greg Abbott and oth­er Repub­li­can state offi­cials have also spear­head­ed con­struc­tion of a wall cov­er­ing por­tions of the U.S.-Mexico bor­der and sent thou­sands of state police and sol­diers to appre­hend migrants in South Texas — an approach that crit­ics and defense attor­neys argue is already blur­ring the line between legit­i­mate enforce­ment and state over­reach.

The prece­dent estab­lished in the Ari­zona case has been among the biggest obsta­cles for Texas Repub­li­cans, lim­it­ing the scope of their state-spon­sored bor­der crack­down and serv­ing as the legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion behind a sweep­ing attempt to toss out mis­de­meanor charges against hun­dreds of migrants arrest­ed under the governor’s “catch-and-jail” pro­gram. The Ari­zona deci­sion also under­pinned a Biden admin­is­tra­tion law­suit last year that blocked the Texas governor’s order for state troop­ers to pull over dri­vers who they sus­pect of trans­port­ing migrants.

Repub­li­can lead­ers have been care­ful to insist they are not enforc­ing fed­er­al law them­selves since states are gen­er­al­ly pre­vent­ed from tak­ing such action under the 2012 deci­sion.

A spokesman for Pax­ton, who is run­ning for re-elec­tion this fall, said the attor­ney gen­er­al does not nec­es­sar­i­ly want Texas to enact its own immi­gra­tion poli­cies, but rather regain the author­i­ty “to enforce fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws as a back­stop to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment fail­ing or refus­ing to do their job.”

...

The Ari­zona deci­sion arose from an Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion chal­lenge to the state’s 2010 immi­gra­tion law that sought to crack down on immi­grants liv­ing in the coun­try with­out legal autho­riza­tion.

In a 5–3 rul­ing, the court upheld the law’s core pro­vi­sion, lat­er mod­eled by Texas, that requires state author­i­ties to check the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of any­one they stop or detain if they sus­pect the per­son to be in the coun­try ille­gal­ly. But over the objec­tion of three jus­tices, the court struck down three oth­er pro­vi­sions of the law, includ­ing one that autho­rized police to arrest any­one sus­pect­ed of being in the coun­try ille­gal­ly. The dis­sent­ing trio includ­ed sit­ting Jus­tices Samuel Ali­to and Clarence Thomas.

In the major­i­ty opin­ion, then-Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy wrote that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has “broad dis­cre­tion” in set­ting immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, includ­ing deci­sions involv­ing the removal of migrants who are in the coun­try ille­gal­ly. He not­ed that despite Arizona’s “under­stand­able frus­tra­tions with the prob­lems caused by ille­gal immi­gra­tion … the state may not pur­sue poli­cies that under­mine fed­er­al law.”

...

In a town hall last Octo­ber, Pax­ton made clear that he feels embold­ened to bring the case back before the Supreme Court at least in part because of its bol­stered con­ser­v­a­tive wing. For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump appoint­ed three con­ser­v­a­tive judges to the court dur­ing his term, includ­ing two who took over for more lib­er­al jus­tices.

Kate Hud­dle­ston, an attor­ney with the ACLU of Texas and a fre­quent crit­ic of Abbott’s bor­der ini­tia­tive, said over­turn­ing the Ari­zona deci­sion and grant­i­ng states pow­er to deport or expel immi­grants “would be an unprece­dent­ed and out­ra­geous shift from all of mod­ern immi­gra­tion law.”

“I real­ly can­not over­state how legal­ly out­ra­geous it is,” she said, adding, “The pow­er to admit and expel indi­vid­u­als has always been under­stood as under the purview of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”
...

And while this is being framed by Abbott and Pax­ton as Texas vs Biden, note anoth­er one of the ‘usu­al sus­pects’ cheer­ing it all on: the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, which was cheer­ing Abbot­t’s push to uni­lat­er­al­ly enforce his own ver­sion of bor­der pol­i­cy before Abbott put the pol­i­cy into effect. This is a good time to recall how the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, Kevin Roberts, isn’t just a CNP mem­ber but the CEO of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF). Recall how Tim Dunn has been a TPPF board mem­ber since 1998. What Abbott and Pax­ton (and Tim Dunn) are try­ing to achieve in Texas — cre­at­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al hav­oc around immi­gra­tion — is entire­ly in line with the kind of pol­i­tics we rou­tine­ly see from the con­tem­po­rary GOP mega-donor class:

...
Con­ser­v­a­tives have pushed state lead­ers to test the legal bound­aries of state immi­gra­tion pow­ers, argu­ing such an approach is need­ed to counter an array of Biden admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies that they view as over­ly lenient toward asy­lum-seek­ing migrants and drug car­tels alike.

Short­ly before the gov­er­nor launched his plan last year to round up migrants on state tres­pass­ing charges, the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, a lead­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy group, pub­lished an op-ed — co-authored by the for­mer act­ing deputy home­land secu­ri­ty sec­re­tary under Trump — that urged Abbott to “do every­thing that is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly per­mis­si­ble” to han­dle “an inva­sion of ille­gal immi­grants.”

...

“That may take him into some gray areas, like using state offi­cials to enforce por­tions of immi­gra­tion law not in clear con­tra­ven­tion of fed­er­al law,” the Her­itage Foun­da­tion piece said. “The gov­er­nor has an oblig­a­tion to exer­cise every option avail­able. If the Biden admin­is­tra­tion then tries to lim­it a governor’s attempt to deal with an inva­sion, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide what the prop­er bounds are.”
...

So how much tur­moil can we expect Abbott and Pax­ton to unleash on Tex­as­’s immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty? Well, just lis­ten to the alarm from that com­mu­ni­ty’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, like State Rep. Arman­do Walle who has been rep­re­sent­ing a Texas bor­der com­mu­ni­ty since 2009 that is about 83 per­cent His­pan­ic, who warns that the bills under con­sid­er­a­tion at the time (and now signed into law by Abbott back in Decem­ber days before Christ­mas) empow­er Texas offi­cials to arrest and seek the depor­ta­tion of peo­ple charged with being in the state ille­gal­ly. And as Walle also warns, while laws like this might suc­ceed in ter­ri­fy­ing Tex­as­’s lati­no com­mu­ni­ty — espe­cial­ly giv­en the vague­ness of the rules around depor­ta­tions under this new sys­tem — it still does­n’t noth­ing to reverse the under­ly­ing caus­es behind the migrant surge in the first place. It’s just harm­ful manip­u­la­tive pol­i­tics of the worst kind, and poised to spread to every oth­er Repub­li­can-con­trolled state:

Hous­ton Chron­i­cle

Hous­ton law­mak­er stands behind viral out­burst over GOP bor­der bills

By Jasper Scher­er, Austin Bureau
Updat­ed Oct 31, 2023 1:11 p.m.

State Rep. Arman­do Walle fond­ly remem­bers his sis­ters’ quinceañeras, mark­ing their 15th birth­days along­side fam­i­ly and friends through the com­ing-of-age tra­di­tion cel­e­brat­ed by mil­lions of Lati­na teenagers every year.

But the Hous­ton Demo­c­rat and sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can says that for Lati­no com­mu­ni­ties, those sorts of “sacred tra­di­tions” — and even basic parts of every­day life — may soon face a chill­ing effect from a Repub­li­can-backed bill that estab­lish­es stiffer penal­ties for human smug­gling.

Though the bill aims to deter car­tels from ille­gal­ly mov­ing migrants across the south­ern bor­der, Walle said it is just as like­ly to sweep up peo­ple who are dri­ving undoc­u­ment­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers from quinceañeras and oth­er day-to-day gath­er­ings.

“I come from a big Mex­i­can fam­i­ly, and when we have quinceañeras, it’s not just our broth­ers and sis­ters. It’s a fam­i­ly affair,” Walle said, offer­ing a hypo­thet­i­cal: “If I’m trav­el­ing from the quinceañera Mass to the quinceañera recep­tion hall, and I have my cousins with me that may or may not be doc­u­ment­ed, and I get pulled over, I can face a 10-year manda­to­ry min­i­mum.”

That was run­ning through Walle’s mind when, in a now viral moment, he con­front­ed anoth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tive who led the effort to lim­it debate about relat­ed leg­is­la­tion.

“Y’all don’t under­stand the (exple­tive) that y’all do hurts our com­mu­ni­ty,” he said on the House floor last week. “It hurts us to our (exple­tive) core. And y’all don’t under­stand that. You don’t live in our (exple­tive) skin.”

...

His con­cerns come as GOP law­mak­ers are con­sid­er­ing a pack­age of bills that would mark the biggest ever expan­sion of Texas’ immi­gra­tion enforce­ment pow­ers. Along with the anti-smug­gling bill, the mea­sures would effec­tive­ly empow­er police to deport peo­ple they sus­pect of being in the coun­try ille­gal­ly and ear­mark $1.5 bil­lion to con­tin­ue build­ing a state-fund­ed bor­der wall.

If passed and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott, the depor­ta­tion pro­pos­al is almost cer­tain to be chal­lenged in court — which could lead the Supreme Court to revis­it a key 2012 rul­ing that restricts state immi­gra­tion enforce­ment in def­er­ence to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

Walle and oth­er Democ­rats say the GOP’s approach is deeply flawed and could have dan­ger­ous con­se­quences for the state’s grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of immi­grants — even those with legal sta­tus, who could be erro­neous­ly removed under vague­ly word­ed guide­lines that, they argue, offer lit­tle in the way of due process. While sup­port­ers say the bills are nec­es­sary to fill the gaps left by the Biden administration’s bor­der poli­cies, Walle said they appear “designed to put fear in immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties,” with none of the deter­rent effects promised by Repub­li­cans.

Walle, a Hous­ton native whose father was born in Mex­i­co, rep­re­sents a dis­trict in north Hous­ton and unin­cor­po­rat­ed Har­ris Coun­ty where about 83 per­cent of res­i­dents are His­pan­ic.

He has had a front-row seat to Texas’ inten­si­fy­ing bor­der poli­cies since he joined the Leg­is­la­ture in 2009. At that point, the state was spend­ing around $50 mil­lion a year on bor­der secu­ri­ty, and law­mak­ers were turn­ing down pro­pos­als to expand Texas’ immi­gra­tion role.

Now, they are set to hike Texas’ two-year bor­der secu­ri­ty bud­get to at least $6.5 bil­lion, burn­ing through that ini­tial $50 mil­lion-a-year tab every week. And while GOP law­mak­ers banned so-called sanc­tu­ary cities in 2017, allow­ing police to ask the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of peo­ple they stop, Walle said the lat­est slate of bills is “2017 on steroids.”

“My first two or three ses­sions, you wouldn’t think these type of bills would actu­al­ly get a hear­ing — much less get out of com­mit­tee, reach the floor and actu­al­ly pass — because cool­er heads would pre­vail,” Walle said. “Obvi­ous­ly, the polit­i­cal dynam­ics are dif­fer­ent.”

Under House Bill 4, police offi­cers across Texas could charge any­one they sus­pect of enter­ing the coun­try ille­gal­ly with a mis­de­meanor, pun­ish­able by up to six months in jail. The penal­ty would rise to a felony and up to two years in lock­up for repeat offend­ers.

In lieu of arrest, police could opt to drop migrants off at ports of entry and order them to cross the bor­der into Mex­i­co. Those who refuse could be charged with a sec­ond-degree felony and face up to 20 years in prison.

State Rep. David Spiller, the Jacks­boro Repub­li­can who authored the bill, said he intends for offi­cers to use the drop-off option in most cas­es because it would be too expen­sive to jail every offend­er. He has called it a “humane, log­i­cal and effi­cient approach to a prob­lem cre­at­ed and fos­tered by the Biden administration’s pro­hib­i­tive fail­ure and refusal to secure our bor­der.”

“We, as Tex­ans, need­ed to take mat­ters into our own hands,” Spiller said on Fox News this week­end, cit­ing the his­toric surge of migrants attempt­ing to cross the U.S.-Mexico bor­der.

The bill passed the House last week on an 84–60 vote that split along par­ty lines, fol­low­ing sev­er­al hours of debate and most­ly unsuc­cess­ful Demo­c­ra­t­ic attempts to lim­it the bill’s scope.

The smug­gling bill, hav­ing passed both cham­bers, is await­ing Abbott’s sig­na­ture. It fol­lows cur­rent anti-smug­gling laws that exempt from pros­e­cu­tion peo­ple trans­port­ing imme­di­ate rel­a­tives via blood and mar­riage, such as chil­dren, par­ents, grand­par­ents and in-laws.

...

Fears of racial pro­fil­ing and strain on law enforce­ment

Walle and oth­er Democ­rats say they agree some­thing needs to be done to com­bat human smug­gling and bet­ter han­dle the immi­gra­tion influx at the south­ern bor­der. But they argue the Texas GOP poli­cies will lead to wide­spread racial pro­fil­ing, while doing lit­tle to deter migrants from mak­ing the jour­ney north, with many flee­ing more pow­er­ful moti­va­tors like vio­lence and per­se­cu­tion in their home coun­tries.

“This leg­is­la­tion is an open attack on the immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty,” state Rep. Gene Wu, D‑Houston, said dur­ing last week’s House floor debate. “This leg­is­la­tion is an open attack on the Asian com­mu­ni­ty. It’s an open attack on the Lati­no com­mu­ni­ty. It’s an open attack on any group that’s going to be made to fear talk­ing to the police.”

Oth­er crit­ics have argued the bill places extra demand on rank-and-file law enforce­ment around the state, many of whom work for under­staffed agen­cies and lack the train­ing to prop­er­ly vet someone’s immi­gra­tion sta­tus.

“We already over­bur­den our law enforce­ment, who are deal­ing with a staffing short­age all across our state,” state Rep. Vic­to­ria Neave Cri­a­do, a Dal­las Demo­c­rat who chairs the House’s Mex­i­can Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Cau­cus, said last week. “We ask them to be CPS (Child Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices) work­ers. We ask them to be men­tal health coun­selors. We ask them to be home­less liaisons. And now we’re ask­ing them to be ICE (Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment).”

Spiller has repeat­ed­ly sought to tamp down Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­cerns about his “ille­gal entry” bill, telling crit­ics the goal is not to pun­ish migrants, but rather to “deter ille­gal cross­ings into our state.” The North Texas law­mak­er also has said he expects it would most­ly be used “with­in 100 miles of the bor­der.”

“I don’t antic­i­pate this hap­pen­ing in oth­er parts of the state, nec­es­sar­i­ly,” he said. “I’m not say­ing it couldn’t. But you run into a proof prob­lem to deter­mine when some­one actu­al­ly crossed.”

Spiller not­ed that mis­de­meanors have a two-year statute of lim­i­ta­tions in Texas, mean­ing the police can­not charge peo­ple who have lived in Texas for years with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion. Spiller said this ele­ment will help House Bill 4 avoid the legal pit­falls of a sim­i­lar Ari­zona law that was par­tial­ly struck down in the 2012 Supreme Court rul­ing.

“The prob­lem was, they were pick­ing folks up … at any time if they were here ille­gal­ly. Well, that’s not what this bill does,” Spiller said. “It is set at a def­i­nite time.”

Still, experts have said HB 4 con­tains a num­ber of appar­ent legal prob­lems. It would, for instance, con­flict with fed­er­al law that allows migrants to seek asy­lum regard­less of how they entered the coun­try, one immi­gra­tion expert told a House pan­el last week.

Walle said he sees the GOP’s lat­est pro­pos­als as fur­ther evi­dence of their “sala­cious appetite to feed far-right-wing extrem­ist poli­cies” on immi­gra­tion.

“When you com­bine the sub­stance of it, and try­ing to rig the process to shove it down our throat, I think me and my col­leagues are not going to take that sit­ting down,” Walle said. “My con­stituents expect me to fight, espe­cial­ly when I see that type of injus­tice.”

———-

“Hous­ton law­mak­er stands behind viral out­burst over GOP bor­der bills” By Jasper Scher­er; Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; 10/31/2023

“Walle and oth­er Democ­rats say the GOP’s approach is deeply flawed and could have dan­ger­ous con­se­quences for the state’s grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of immi­grants — even those with legal sta­tus, who could be erro­neous­ly removed under vague­ly word­ed guide­lines that, they argue, offer lit­tle in the way of due process. While sup­port­ers say the bills are nec­es­sary to fill the gaps left by the Biden administration’s bor­der poli­cies, Walle said they appear “designed to put fear in immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties,” with none of the deter­rent effects promised by Repub­li­cans.”

As State Rep. Arman­do Walle described, the pro­posed bills (that are now signed into law) appear “designed to put fear in immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties,” with none of the deter­rent effects promised by Repub­li­cans. Fear that will per­vade immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing with the aware­ness that state offi­cials eager to deport them are empow­ered to do so. It’s not just ter­ror­iz­ing for undoc­u­ment­ed migrants but their fam­i­lies too, who might also get charged under the new anti-traf­fick­ing laws. And yet, as ter­ri­fy­ing as these rules might be for the immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty already in Texas, it’s noth­ing com­pared to ter­rors dri­ving the migrant surge. Noth­ing will be fixed by this oth­er than Greg Abbott and Ken Pax­ton’s poll num­bers:

...
Though the bill aims to deter car­tels from ille­gal­ly mov­ing migrants across the south­ern bor­der, Walle said it is just as like­ly to sweep up peo­ple who are dri­ving undoc­u­ment­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers from quinceañeras and oth­er day-to-day gath­er­ings.

“I come from a big Mex­i­can fam­i­ly, and when we have quinceañeras, it’s not just our broth­ers and sis­ters. It’s a fam­i­ly affair,” Walle said, offer­ing a hypo­thet­i­cal: “If I’m trav­el­ing from the quinceañera Mass to the quinceañera recep­tion hall, and I have my cousins with me that may or may not be doc­u­ment­ed, and I get pulled over, I can face a 10-year manda­to­ry min­i­mum.”

...

His con­cerns come as GOP law­mak­ers are con­sid­er­ing a pack­age of bills that would mark the biggest ever expan­sion of Texas’ immi­gra­tion enforce­ment pow­ers. Along with the anti-smug­gling bill, the mea­sures would effec­tive­ly empow­er police to deport peo­ple they sus­pect of being in the coun­try ille­gal­ly and ear­mark $1.5 bil­lion to con­tin­ue build­ing a state-fund­ed bor­der wall.

If passed and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott, the depor­ta­tion pro­pos­al is almost cer­tain to be chal­lenged in court — which could lead the Supreme Court to revis­it a key 2012 rul­ing that restricts state immi­gra­tion enforce­ment in def­er­ence to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

...

Under House Bill 4, police offi­cers across Texas could charge any­one they sus­pect of enter­ing the coun­try ille­gal­ly with a mis­de­meanor, pun­ish­able by up to six months in jail. The penal­ty would rise to a felony and up to two years in lock­up for repeat offend­ers.

In lieu of arrest, police could opt to drop migrants off at ports of entry and order them to cross the bor­der into Mex­i­co. Those who refuse could be charged with a sec­ond-degree felony and face up to 20 years in prison.

...

Walle and oth­er Democ­rats say they agree some­thing needs to be done to com­bat human smug­gling and bet­ter han­dle the immi­gra­tion influx at the south­ern bor­der. But they argue the Texas GOP poli­cies will lead to wide­spread racial pro­fil­ing, while doing lit­tle to deter migrants from mak­ing the jour­ney north, with many flee­ing more pow­er­ful moti­va­tors like vio­lence and per­se­cu­tion in their home coun­tries.
...

And note the explo­sion in state spend­ing on bor­der secu­ri­ty: it was $50 mil­lion in 2009. Today, it’s over $6.5 bil­lion, a 130-fold expan­sion in spend­ing. Spend­ing that, again, does absolute­ly noth­ing to address the under­ly­ing caus­es of the migrant surge:

...
Walle, a Hous­ton native whose father was born in Mex­i­co, rep­re­sents a dis­trict in north Hous­ton and unin­cor­po­rat­ed Har­ris Coun­ty where about 83 per­cent of res­i­dents are His­pan­ic.

He has had a front-row seat to Texas’ inten­si­fy­ing bor­der poli­cies since he joined the Leg­is­la­ture in 2009. At that point, the state was spend­ing around $50 mil­lion a year on bor­der secu­ri­ty, and law­mak­ers were turn­ing down pro­pos­als to expand Texas’ immi­gra­tion role.

Now, they are set to hike Texas’ two-year bor­der secu­ri­ty bud­get to at least $6.5 bil­lion, burn­ing through that ini­tial $50 mil­lion-a-year tab every week. And while GOP law­mak­ers banned so-called sanc­tu­ary cities in 2017, allow­ing police to ask the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of peo­ple they stop, Walle said the lat­est slate of bills is “2017 on steroids.”
...

And note how even one of new law’s main back­ers — State Rep. David Spiller, the Jacks­boro Repub­li­can who authored the House bill — pre­dict­ed that the depor­ta­tion pow­ers would like­ly only be used near the Texas bor­der because “you run into a proof prob­lem to deter­mine when some­one actu­al­ly crossed”. Of course, he also acknowl­edged that, “I’m not say­ing it could­n’t” hap­pen far from the bor­der. Sim­i­lar­ly, Spiller cau­tions that the new law won’t be applic­a­ble to who have been in Texas ille­gal­ly for more than two years because of the two-year statute of lim­i­ta­tions in Texas for a mis­de­meanor. Which might be true in terms of whether or not the law an be ful­ly enforced against some­one. But it’s the kind of assur­ance that does noth­ing to remove the day-to-day has­sle of liv­ing under a “papers please” legal regime where any­one who does­n’t look ‘Amer­i­can’ enough:

...
Spiller has repeat­ed­ly sought to tamp down Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­cerns about his “ille­gal entry” bill, telling crit­ics the goal is not to pun­ish migrants, but rather to “deter ille­gal cross­ings into our state.” The North Texas law­mak­er also has said he expects it would most­ly be used “with­in 100 miles of the bor­der.”

“I don’t antic­i­pate this hap­pen­ing in oth­er parts of the state, nec­es­sar­i­ly,” he said. “I’m not say­ing it couldn’t. But you run into a proof prob­lem to deter­mine when some­one actu­al­ly crossed.”

Spiller not­ed that mis­de­meanors have a two-year statute of lim­i­ta­tions in Texas, mean­ing the police can­not charge peo­ple who have lived in Texas for years with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion. Spiller said this ele­ment will help House Bill 4 avoid the legal pit­falls of a sim­i­lar Ari­zona law that was par­tial­ly struck down in the 2012 Supreme Court rul­ing.

“The prob­lem was, they were pick­ing folks up … at any time if they were here ille­gal­ly. Well, that’s not what this bill does,” Spiller said. “It is set at a def­i­nite time.”
...

And, again, this isn’t just a prob­lem for Texas. Once this prece­dent is estab­lished, every state could end up with ‘Papers please’-style laws tar­get­ing any­one who does­n’t look ‘Amer­i­can’ enough. Which is, of course, the goal here. Tex­as­’s GOP is try­ing to turn­ing being an immi­grant in the Unit­ed States — legal or ille­gal — into a very unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence. But not just immi­grants. Any­one who might look like an immi­grant had bet­ter have their doc­u­men­ta­tion ready once these state-lev­el immi­gra­tion laws become the new nor­mal.

It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that, win or lose at the Supreme Court, it’s pret­ty clear who is win­ning the bat­tle for the heart and soul of the Texas GOP. Who knows what exact­ly Greg Abbot­t’s bor­der poli­cies would be right now if he was­n’t fac­ing a polit­i­cal insur­gency in his own par­ty. But it’s clear by now the par­ty if effec­tive­ly being led by the extrem­ist pol­i­tics cham­pi­oned by Tim Dun­n’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism.

And let’s not for­get that warn­ing from the Clare­mont Insti­tute to Abbott: if he has nation­al ambi­tions, he had bet­ter defy the Supreme Court. In oth­er words, the nation­al GOP estab­lish­ment is view­ing this fight as some­thing that will res­onate in states across the US. Which is a reminder that all of this is prob­a­bly going to be moot should Don­ald Trump win reelec­tion, in which case immi­grants in every state are pre­sum­ably going to be liv­ing under some sort of nation­al threat of arrest if they can’t prove their immi­gra­tion sta­tus or some­thing along those lines.

And in relat­ed news, recent polls indi­cate Don­ald Trump has high­er approval rat­ings among US Lati­nos than Joe Biden.

Why would any­one want to be the Speak­er of the House in 2024? Or, at least, Repub­li­can Speak­er of the House. It’s not exact­ly a for­giv­ing job. After all, Kevin McCarthy did­n’t just resign a Speak­er last year. He end­ed up resign­ing from con­gress entire­ly. Repub­li­can Speak­ers — forced to nav­i­gate the impos­si­ble ter­rain of pleas­ing an unhinged cau­cus while deal­ing with real­i­ty — sim­ply do not fair well under the ‘lunatics run­ning the asy­lum’ dynam­ics of con­tem­po­rary US pol­i­tics. So what com­pelled Mike John­son to run for a kind of polit­i­cal death sen­tence in the first place?

That’s the ques­tion we’re going to get some answers to in this post. Unsat­is­fac­to­ry answers that don’t actu­al­ly reveal John­son’s true motives, but instead serve as a reminder that we should­n’t expect fig­ures like John­son to be up front about their motives because they have motives that would ter­ri­fy most peo­ple and they know it. Domin­ion­ist motives that involve noth­ing less than the imple­men­ta­tion of a Bible-based reor­ga­niz­ing of Amer­i­can soci­ety. Specif­i­cal­ly, an Old Tes­ta­ment Bible-based reor­ga­niz­ing of Amer­i­can soci­ety. It’s one of the impor­tant details about the nature of this move­ment that’s described in the Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion below about the domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy ani­mat­ing Mike John­son. There’s a sim­ple rule when it comes to whether or not the Old Tes­ta­ment should be the mod­el for soci­ety: the Old Tes­ta­ment is the mod­el for soci­ety unless the New Tes­ta­ment specif­i­cal­ly over­rules it on a par­tic­u­lar mat­ter.

So how ‘Old Tes­ta­ment’ does domin­ion­ism get? Well, as the Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion also describes, it includes sup­port for Bible-based slav­ery. In fact, even the key pseu­do-his­to­ri­an for this move­ment — David Bar­ton — had an arti­cle defend­ing Bible-based slav­ery on his Wall­builders web­site post­ed in 2003. That arti­cle remained on the web­site until it was tak­en down in 2022. Of course, Bar­ton is far from the only leader of this move­ment to open­ly defend Bible-based slav­ery. Two impor­tant co-founders of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) — Gary North and his father-in-law RJ Rush­doony — both took a sim­i­lar Old Tes­ta­ment embrace. This is the true face of domin­ion­ism. Recall how John­son has referred to how Bar­ton has has a “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do.”

And yet, it’s the true face the domin­ion­ists would rather the gen­er­al pub­lic not know about. At least not yet. That decep­tive nature of the move­ment was on full dis­play, iron­i­cal­ly, dur­ing the recent keynote address by John­son at the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL) award gala back in Decem­ber. Recall how the NACL was found­ed by open domin­ion­ist — and Arkansas state sen­a­tor — Jason Rap­ert. Also recall how the NACL advi­so­ry board includes the impor­tant CNP lead­ers Tony Perkins and Matt Staver. Notably, as the Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion reports, when John­son gave the keynote address to the CNP in 2019, he repeat­ed­ly namechecked both Perkins and Staver as big influ­ences, and refer­ring to Perkins as a “big broth­er”.

So when John­son gave his NACL keynote address and shared with the audi­ence why he decid­ed to run for the Speak­er­ship in the first place, we should­n’t have been sur­prised if he ref­er­enced fig­ures like Perkins, Staver, or even Bar­ton. But that’s not who John­son cit­ed as the fig­ure who talked him into run­ning. Nope, that fig­ure was God. As John­son tells it, God repeat­ed­ly spoke to him in the mid­dle of the night. At first, John­son felt like the mes­sage from god was for him to play a role anal­o­gous to the role Aaron played in assist­ing Moses in the Bible. John­son need­ed to get ready for a “part­ing of the Red Sea” moment, both for the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the Unit­ed States at large. But, as John­son recounts, as one Speak­er can­di­date after anoth­er went down in fail­ure, God kept speak­ing to John­son and even­tu­al­ly John­son real­ized that it was the role of Moses, not Aaron, that God want­ed him to ful­fill. That was when he decid­ed to run for the Speak­er­ship.

Inter­est­ing­ly, before John­son got into all these details about God’s will, he shared how pleased he was that the NACL had­n’t invit­ed the media to the event. As John­son put to the audi­ence, “I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here.” What he did­n’t seem to real­ize was that the NACL was record­ing the event and post­ed it on Face­book. Oops.

So has Mike John­son been engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tions with God and were those con­ver­sa­tions the true moti­va­tion for run­ning for the Speak­er­ship? That’s what claims. Which hap­pen to clash with claims made by John­son’s “big broth­er” Tony Perkins just days after John­son won the Speak­er­ship. As Perkins told the Chris­t­ian Post, “There was a need for lead­er­ship, and Mike and I had been talk­ing about that and just pray­ing through it and felt like the oppor­tu­ni­ty was going to come where a leader like him could step for­ward, and that did, in fact, occur.”

Who should we believe? John­son and his con­ver­sa­tions with God sto­ries? Or Perkin­s’s admis­sions about the “big broth­er” role he played in encour­ag­ing John­son to run? While it would be inter­est­ing to know how many more alleged con­ver­sa­tions with God John­son has been engag­ing in late­ly, it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter. Either way, we’re talk­ing about a domin­ion­ist move­ment whose pow­er has yet to peak. And it’s very pos­si­ble, should Don­ald Trump some­how win back the White House, that this move­ment will once again have sol­id con­trol of all the branch­es of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, much like they had from 2017–2018. But this time, with the CNP’s ongo­ing Project 2025/Schedule F scheme, they’re going to be ready to ful­ly exploit the oppor­tu­ni­ty, while rec­og­niz­ing that the pub­lic at large is going to have to be kept in the dark about the nature of their vision for the future of the Unit­ed States. That’s why Mike John­son’s weird ‘I have a secret...God told me I’m the new Moses’ sto­ry is more than just some per­son­al reli­gious quirk. It’s a reflec­tion of the hid­den extrem­ism at work here. Old Tes­ta­ment extrem­ism:

Rolling Stone

Mike John­son Com­pares Him­self to Moses at Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Gala

The House Speak­er alleges God direct­ed his path to pow­er through the “roil­ing sea”

Tim Dick­in­son
Decem­ber 6, 2023

In a keynote speech to a gath­er­ing of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist law­mak­ers Tues­day night, House Speak­er Mike John­son com­pared him­self to Moses, lead­ing the GOP con­fer­ence — and Amer­i­ca — through the part­ed waters of the Red Sea.

John­son addressed the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers at the group’s award gala at the Muse­um of the Bible in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Per­haps unaware that the event was being record­ed for the NACL Face­book page, John­son told the crowd: “I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here.” (“Thank you for not allow­ing the media in,” John­son added, alleg­ing that jour­nal­ists have been tak­ing his com­ments “out of con­text” with “great joy for the last few weeks.”)

John­son then revealed that — in the lead up to the “tumult” of Kevin McCarthy los­ing his gav­el and the chaot­ic GOP process of select­ing new Speak­er — he had been speak­ing direct­ly to God. “Look, I’m a South­ern Bap­tist, I don’t wan­na get too spooky on you,” he said, pro­vok­ing some laugh­ter from the atten­dees. “But, you know, the Lord speaks to your heart.”

The mes­sage he received from God, John­son said, was to pre­pare for a “Red Sea moment” — both for the Repub­li­can con­fer­ence “and in the coun­try at large.” John­son said found the direc­tive con­fus­ing but he con­tin­ued to seek the coun­sel of God.

“The Lord began to wake me up, through this three-week process, in the mid­dle of night to speak to me,” John­son insist­ed. “Now at the time,” he con­tin­ued, “I assumed the Lord is going to choose a new Moses.” But because of his own less­er rank among the GOP’s lead­er­ship, John­son said, he believed the heav­en­ly mes­sage to be: “You’re gonna allow me to be Aaron to Moses,” cit­ing the role of the Old Tes­ta­ment prophet’s broth­er and bib­li­cal side­kick.

But then John­son watched as can­di­date after can­di­date failed to gen­er­ate the nec­es­sary Repub­li­can sup­port to win the Speak­er­ship. “Ulti­mate­ly 13 peo­ple ran for the post. And the Lord kept telling me to, ‘Wait, wait, wait,’” John­son recalled. “So I wait­ed, I wait­ed. And then at the end … the Lord said, ‘Now step for­ward.’” John­son regaled the audi­ence with his sur­prise to be tapped as the Moses fig­ure: “Me?” John­son said. “I’m sup­posed to be Aaron.” But that was not the mes­sage, John­son insist­ed, recall­ing: “‘No,’ the Lord said, ‘Step for­ward.’”

...

John­son told the NACL crowd that his “core con­vic­tion” that “God wants us to seek Him for the path through the roil­ing sea.” The Speak­er then under­scored his pes­simism about the state of the nation, assert­ing that Amer­i­ca is fac­ing the “great­est col­lec­tion of chal­lenges since maybe World War II, maybe the Civ­il War.”

Amer­i­ca, John­son insist­ed, is “engaged in a bat­tle between world­views” and “a great strug­gle for the future of the Repub­lic.” The specifics of that strug­gle remained unspo­ken. But the NACL mis­sion, accord­ing to mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing the gala, includes: “abol­ish­ing abor­tion”; restor­ing “tra­di­tion­al mar­riage between one man and one woman”; and “expos­ing the ungod­ly effort to under­mine our cul­ture by Left­ists,”. John­son added that he believed far-right Chris­tians will pre­vail: “We should not be daunt­ed. In the face of these chal­lenges. Our hope is in the Lord, our hope, and our trust is in God.”

At the gala, John­son was award­ed with NACL’s “Amer­i­can Patri­ot Award for Chris­t­ian Hon­or and Courage.” It was bestowed to rec­og­nize what the group’s leader, for­mer Arkansas state Rep. Jason Rap­pert, described as Johnson’s “states­man­ship, bold Chris­t­ian lead­er­ship, and faith­ful ser­vice to our Lord Jesus Christ.”

———–

“Mike John­son Com­pares Him­self to Moses at Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Gala” by Tim Dick­in­son; Rolling Stone; 12/06/2023

“John­son addressed the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers at the group’s award gala at the Muse­um of the Bible in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Per­haps unaware that the event was being record­ed for the NACL Face­book page, John­son told the crowd: “I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here.” (“Thank you for not allow­ing the media in,” John­son added, alleg­ing that jour­nal­ists have been tak­ing his com­ments “out of con­text” with “great joy for the last few weeks.”)”

Whoops! Some­one for­got to tell Mike John­son about the NACL’s Face­book feed. Who knows how John­son end­ed up mak­ing that mis­take. Per­haps he, rather rea­son­ably, assumed that a group rad­i­cal and extrem­ist as the NACL would­n’t be putting a record­ing of their gala event out to the pub­lic? Who would have sus­pect­ed that a group that’s effec­tive­ly ‘ALEC for theoc­ra­cy’ would post this event on Face­book? Mike John­son obvi­ous­ly did­n’t sus­pect it, and for good rea­son. It’s not like jour­nal­ists weren’t going to be on the look­out for con­tent from the event. John­son’s deci­sion to accept the keynote address was already in the news. So John­son gave his keynote address with his guard down and shared the kind of details about his reli­gios­i­ty that he appar­ent­ly does­n’t want to share with the broad­er pub­lic. Specif­i­cal­ly, the details of how he arrived at the deci­sion to run for Speak­er of the House: God repeat­ed­ly spoke to Mike John­son in the mid­dle of the night with a mes­sage that John­son first inter­pret­ed as a desire by God for John­son to play the role of Aaron to Moses. He need­ed to pre­pare for a “Red Sea moment”, both for the Repub­li­can con­fer­ence “and in the coun­try at large”. But as one can­di­date for House Speak­er after anoth­er went down, John­son real­ized through fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions with God that Moses was the role God had in mind for John­son. John­son isn’t going to help some oth­er Repub­li­can ‘part the Red Sea’. He’s going to be the one doing the part­ing. It’s God’s will:

...
John­son then revealed that — in the lead up to the “tumult” of Kevin McCarthy los­ing his gav­el and the chaot­ic GOP process of select­ing new Speak­er — he had been speak­ing direct­ly to God. “Look, I’m a South­ern Bap­tist, I don’t wan­na get too spooky on you,” he said, pro­vok­ing some laugh­ter from the atten­dees. “But, you know, the Lord speaks to your heart.”

The mes­sage he received from God, John­son said, was to pre­pare for a “Red Sea moment” — both for the Repub­li­can con­fer­ence “and in the coun­try at large.” John­son said found the direc­tive con­fus­ing but he con­tin­ued to seek the coun­sel of God.

“The Lord began to wake me up, through this three-week process, in the mid­dle of night to speak to me,” John­son insist­ed. “Now at the time,” he con­tin­ued, “I assumed the Lord is going to choose a new Moses.” But because of his own less­er rank among the GOP’s lead­er­ship, John­son said, he believed the heav­en­ly mes­sage to be: “You’re gonna allow me to be Aaron to Moses,” cit­ing the role of the Old Tes­ta­ment prophet’s broth­er and bib­li­cal side­kick.

But then John­son watched as can­di­date after can­di­date failed to gen­er­ate the nec­es­sary Repub­li­can sup­port to win the Speak­er­ship. “Ulti­mate­ly 13 peo­ple ran for the post. And the Lord kept telling me to, ‘Wait, wait, wait,’” John­son recalled. “So I wait­ed, I wait­ed. And then at the end … the Lord said, ‘Now step for­ward.’” John­son regaled the audi­ence with his sur­prise to be tapped as the Moses fig­ure: “Me?” John­son said. “I’m sup­posed to be Aaron.” But that was not the mes­sage, John­son insist­ed, recall­ing: “‘No,’ the Lord said, ‘Step for­ward.’”
...

And that divine call­ing that brought John­son into the Speak­er­ship brings us to the fol­low­ing Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion into John­son’s domin­ion­ist ties. And as experts cau­tioned, there’s no rea­son to expect John­son to be open about his domin­ion­ism. It’s kept hid­den for a rea­son, typ­i­cal­ly behind an ‘aww shucks’ folksy veneer. That rea­son being that the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, includ­ing devout Chris­tians, prob­a­bly would­n’t approve of the kind of theo­crat­ic vision John­son has for how the Unit­ed States should oper­ate. A vision that does­n’t sim­ply merge law­mak­ing with ‘the Bible’. It’s a merg­er of gov­ern­ment and the Old Tes­ta­ment. The same Old Tes­ta­ment that jus­ti­fied things like Bib­li­cal slav­ery.

Yes, Bib­li­cal slav­ery is just one of many Old Tes­ta­ment norms this domin­ion­ist move­ment would like to see again enshrined in law. Because accord­ing to this strain of the­ol­o­gy, every­thing in the Old Tes­ta­ment that Jesus did­n’t explic­it­ly denounce should be con­sid­ered God’s law. Includ­ing Bib­li­cal slav­ery. It’s not a fringe view with­in this move­ment. For exam­ple, even key pseu­do-his­to­ri­an for this move­ment, David Bar­ton, wrote an essay in 2003 defend­ing Bib­li­cal slav­ery and chal­leng­ing aspects of the 13th amend­ment that freed the slaves. That essay remained avail­able on his Wall­builders web­site for near­ly 20 years, final­ly get­ting tak­en down in 2022.

As the arti­cle high­lights, even CNP-cofounders Gary North and RJ Rush­doony backed Bib­li­cal slav­ery. Because, again, they were Old Tes­ta­ment domin­ion­ists. These are the actu­al the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tions of this net­work. Keep in mind John­son gave the CNP’s keynote address in 2019. Notable, when the Dai­ly Beast direct­ly posed ques­tions to John­son’s office about his ties to fig­ures who endorse Bib­li­cal slav­ery, his office returned with a kind of non-answer dodge.

And, return­ing to John­son’s inter­est­ing claims dur­ing his NACL keynote address about that fate­ful deci­sion. Claims made not by John­son but instead by one of his long-stand­ing key allies: Tony Perkins, founder of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil. As the arti­cle men­tions, John­son isn’t shy about the influ­ence Perkins has played on his career. In fact, dur­ing his 2019 keynote address to the CNP, John­son namechecked Perkins mul­ti­ple times, refer­ring to him as a “big broth­er”. Recall how Perkins was the pres­i­dent of the CNP from 2014 until at least 2018.

Anoth­er fig­ure namechecked by John­son dur­ing that 2019 CNP keynote address was Matt Staver. Recall how Perkins and Staver — both mem­bers high-lev­el mem­bers of the CNP — also served on the advi­so­ry board of the NACL.

Now, what did Perkins have to share about John­son’s deci­sion to run for the Speak­er­ship? Well, as Perkins described to the Chris­t­ian Post days after John­son won the Speak­er­ship, “There was a need for lead­er­ship, and Mike and I had been talk­ing about that and just pray­ing through it and felt like the oppor­tu­ni­ty was going to come where a leader like him could step for­ward, and that did, in fact, occur.”

So who had a big­ger role in John­son’s deci­sion to run for the Speak­er­ship? Tony Perkins? Or God? On one lev­el, it’s a sil­ly ques­tion. But on anoth­er lev­el, when you think about the dis­tort­ed pow­er-wor­ship­ping nature of the domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy John­son claims to fol­low — a the­ol­o­gy seem­ing­ly devoid of any of the real teach­ings of Jesus about com­pas­sion and grace — it’s a legit­i­mate ques­tion. When some­one is secret­ly back­ing a the­o­log­i­cal pow­er grab on behalf a move­ment that is ok with Bib­li­cal slav­ery, it’s hard not to won­der what they tru­ly believe. We can’t trust what John­son says he believes. He’s demon­stra­bly decep­tive about that. But we can observe his actions. And as the Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion shows, Mike John­son has­n’t just been act­ing like a theo­crat. He’s been a key actor for a theo­crat­ic move­ment that wor­ships at the altar of wealth and power....along with the mass decep­tion need­ed to keep is safe from scruti­ny:

The Dai­ly Beast

The ‘Pro­found Influ­ence’ of Chris­t­ian Extrem­ists on Mike John­son

OLD DOMINION

Speak­er Mike Johnson’s spir­i­tu­al jour­ney reveals ties to Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists who sup­port slav­ery. Johnson’s office won’t say where he stands on that issue.

Roger Sol­len­berg­er
Senior Polit­i­cal Reporter
Pub­lished Jan. 31, 2024 4:38AM EST

If you want to know where Repub­li­can House Speak­er Mike John­son stands on any giv­en polit­i­cal issue, he has a sim­ple answer.

“Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it—that’s my world­view,” John­son told Fox News host Sean Han­ni­ty in an inter­view short­ly after win­ning the speaker’s gav­el in Octo­ber. “That’s what I believe, and so I make no apolo­gies for it.”

While Johnson’s folksy answer dodges the ques­tion, you can find clar­i­ty else­where. And the more clar­i­ty you get, the more you under­stand why John­son may be eva­sive.

A Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion of his affil­i­a­tions, influ­ences, and pub­lic state­ments shows that Johnson’s world­view was forged in a rad­i­cal the­o­log­i­cal tradition—the lead­ers and adher­ents of which have dis­put­ed some of the country’s most impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples, includ­ing amend­ments that freed the slaves and extend­ed basic rights to all cit­i­zens.

That may sound dra­mat­ic, but Johnson’s con­nec­tions to one par­tic­u­lar strain of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism elic­it legit­i­mate ques­tions about the speaker’s bib­li­cal and con­sti­tu­tion­al inter­pre­ta­tions. Those ques­tions are all the more press­ing giv­en how open lead­ers of this move­ment have been about using anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic means to achieve their desired reli­gious ends—and giv­en Johnson’s own promi­nent role in the GOP effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion.

While Johnson’s legal endeav­ors to keep Don­ald Trump in office have been well doc­u­ment­ed, so, too, have his ties to that fun­da­men­tal­ist strain, known loose­ly as Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ism.

In a def­i­n­i­tion­al sense, Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ism is the belief that Chris­tians should hold “domin­ion” over things like media, cul­ture, and pol­i­tics. In prac­tice, it’s a rad­i­cal theology—unifying a num­ber of fun­da­men­tal­ist ide­olo­gies—advo­cat­ing for bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of law and soci­ety and hard-line views on issues like abor­tion and mar­riage.

More broad­ly, Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ism seeks to estab­lish the Unit­ed States as a Chris­t­ian nation gov­erned by bib­li­cal law. And sev­er­al lead­ers in the domin­ion­ist move­ment have had a pro­found impact on John­son personally—by Johnson’s own admis­sion.

In Decem­ber 2021, for instance, John­son pub­licly praised David Bar­ton, a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist whose his­tor­i­cal stud­ies have been reject­ed as wild­ly inac­cu­rate. The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter’s entry on Bar­ton notes that he has repeat­ed­ly “demo­nized LGBTQ per­sons and com­mu­ni­ties, argu­ing that HIV and AIDS are god-giv­en con­se­quences for liv­ing out one’s LGBTQ life.”

And yet, John­son said just two years ago that Bar­ton has had “a pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life, and every­thing I do.”

...

Bar­ton has stayed in touch with John­son since the Louisiana Repub­li­can took the speak­er­ship in Octo­ber. Bar­ton dis­closed on a pod­cast recent­ly that he and his group had been advis­ing the new speak­er on who to hire in the speaker’s office. “We’ve already been talk­ing with him about staff, and what kind of staff,” Bar­ton said. “They need to be the peo­ple with his world­view.”

“He is not going to com­pro­mise who he is,” Bar­ton added.

Barton’s group, Wall­Builders, advo­cates for laws and legal inter­pre­ta­tions premised on a fun­da­men­tal­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible. And Barton’s web­site once pub­lished an in-depth defense of bib­li­cal slav­ery, chal­leng­ing aspects of the 13th Amend­ment. The essay was first post­ed in 2003 and, though wide­ly crit­i­cized, was only tak­en down at some point after Octo­ber 2022, accord­ing to the non­prof­it Inter­net Archive.

More recent­ly, Bar­ton said on the Wall­Builders pod­cast that Johnson’s ele­va­tion to the speak­er­ship offers him and his group “some tools at our dis­pos­al” that “we haven’t had in a long time.”

John­son has been open about his belief that the Unit­ed States should be a Chris­t­ian nation liv­ing under rules set by the Bible. In a 2016 inter­view, John­son not­ed the seem­ing­ly pecu­liar dis­tinc­tion that the Unit­ed States was not found­ed as a direct democ­ra­cy, but as a con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic. That repub­lic, he said, was designed accord­ing to “bib­li­cal admo­ni­tion” about what a “civ­il soci­ety should look like.” He has also argued fer­vent­ly for a “bib­li­cal­ly sanc­tioned gov­ern­ment,” insist­ed the Unit­ed States is a “Chris­t­ian nation,” con­flat­ed his attorney’s prac­tice with a “legal min­istry,” and dis­missed the “so-called ‘sep­a­ra­tion of church and state’” in a speech, fit­ting­ly, on the House floor.

In 2016, John­son sat down with the Louisiana Bap­tist Mes­sage as he was run­ning for Con­gress. Dur­ing that inter­view, he expressed a num­ber of thoughts close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ism.

“I was called to a legal min­istry, and I’ve been out on the front lines of the cul­ture war defend­ing reli­gious free­dom, the sanc­ti­ty of human life, and bib­li­cal val­ues,” John­son said, specif­i­cal­ly men­tion­ing “tra­di­tion­al mar­riage” and “oth­er ideals.”

Just last month, John­son also gave the keynote at a domin­ion­ist con­fer­ence, dur­ing which he claimed that his ele­va­tion to House Speak­er was an act of God, who had told him per­son­al­ly to pre­pare for a “Red Sea moment.”

The Dai­ly Beast request­ed com­ment from Johnson’s office about the speaker’s ties to far-right Chris­t­ian lead­ers and tra­di­tions. The com­ment request specif­i­cal­ly asked whether John­son thought bib­li­cal­ly sanc­tioned vio­lence con­flict­ed with his duties as an offi­cer of the con­sti­tu­tion, whether he denounced the teach­ings of hard­line fun­da­men­tal­ists who have endorsed bib­li­cal slav­ery and reject­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions like lib­er­ty and jus­tice, and whether he per­son­al­ly believed the Bible per­mit­ted slav­ery.

A spokesper­son for the speak­er pro­vid­ed a state­ment that didn’t answer any of those ques­tions.

“None of these actions or com­ments you are ref­er­enc­ing were made by Speak­er John­son. The Speak­er is not going to apol­o­gize to the Dai­ly Beast for his Chris­t­ian faith or judge the beliefs or state­ments of oth­ers,” the state­ment said.

...

Keri Lad­ner, a reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar and author, told The Dai­ly Beast that John­son is “too smart” to out­ward­ly avow any con­nec­tions to wide­ly denounced veins of extrem­ism, even though the evi­dence is all around him. (The spokesperson’s state­ment added a twist, how­ev­er, also refus­ing to dis­avow those con­nec­tions.)

John­son, Lad­ner said, would not pub­licly pro­mote the kind of rad­i­cal the­olo­gies that have become anath­e­ma to more main­stream domin­ion­ism, but his asso­ci­a­tions, state­ments, and friend­ships over decades reveal sig­nif­i­cant and unde­ni­able com­mon­al­i­ties.

“When you dig into the peo­ple around John­son, that’s what you find when you peel back the layers—it’s absolute­ly in that orbit,” she said.

James Aho, author and pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of reli­gious stud­ies at Ida­ho State Uni­ver­si­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly flagged Johnson’s adu­la­tion for Bar­ton as a sig­nif­i­cant mark­er of his ties to the domin­ion­ist move­ment.

“That is huge,” Aho said, not­ing what he described as Barton’s “apol­o­gy for slav­ery.”

“It’s alarm­ing that these peo­ple have got­ten into Con­gress,” he said.

...

In 2019, John­son deliv­ered a keynote speech to the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an elite and secre­tive pro-Chris­t­ian group that wields immense influ­ence in con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics. That group was co-found­ed by Gary North, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ist who has endorsed bib­li­cal slav­ery. North died in 2022, but the group’s 2014 mem­ber­ship reg­istry also list­ed North’s father-in-law, Rousha Rush­doony, in the “in memo­ri­am” section—an acknowl­edg­ment of the impact of Rushdoony’s ideas on the group.

Rush­doony, for those less famil­iar with extrem­ist Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, is cred­it­ed as the god­fa­ther of “Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism,” anoth­er off­shoot in the far-right evan­gel­i­cal tree. Rush­doony advo­cat­ed for Old Tes­ta­ment laws to be applied to mod­ern soci­ety, there­fore sup­port­ing the death penal­ty for bib­li­cal “crimes” like homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, adul­tery, and pub­lic blasphemy—among many oth­er vio­la­tions.

Dur­ing that CNP keynote speech, John­son deliv­ered a suc­cinct sum­ma­tion of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist move­ment.

“I grew up in the move­ment,” John­son said, going on to fawn over Tony Perkins, who has fierce­ly pushed Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism as the head of Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Mat Staver, who has advo­cat­ed for laws crim­i­nal­iz­ing same-sex rela­tion­ships.

Specif­i­cal­ly, John­son not­ed that he had appren­tice­ships under Staver and Perkins, both of whom he cit­ed by name. Twice, he said he was their “bag boy.”

Perkins—whom John­son has also described as a “big brother”—is par­tic­u­lar­ly enmeshed in Johnson’s polit­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al life.

In 1998, out of “con­cern about the influ­ence of the homo­sex­u­al move­ment,” Perkins cre­at­ed the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum—the anti-LGBTQ, anti-abor­tion group that launched while John­son was in law school. The LFF even­tu­al­ly served as an incu­ba­tor for Johnson’s activism. And Perkins claims to have worked “hand in hand” on anti-LGBTQ issues with Johnson’s long­time legal employ­er, Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, the extrem­ist legal advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion which John­son joined short­ly after grad­u­at­ing.

The two men became close. In fact, days after John­son took the speak­er­ship, Perkins sat down with The Chris­t­ian Post to detail his 25-year rela­tion­ship with John­son. The two are so close, he said, that Perkins actu­al­ly played a role in John­son decid­ing to run for the speak­er­ship.

“There was a need for lead­er­ship, and Mike and I had been talk­ing about that and just pray­ing through it and felt like the oppor­tu­ni­ty was going to come where a leader like him could step for­ward, and that did, in fact, occur,” Perkins told The Chris­t­ian Post.

(Perkins once paid for­mer KKK Grand Wiz­ard David Duke $82,500 for his mail­ing list while man­ag­ing a Louisiana con­gres­sion­al cam­paign, and the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion fined the cam­paign $3,000 for attempt­ing to cov­er it up. Duke, mean­while, has also been described as hav­ing an “off and on rela­tion­ship with the Domin­ion­ist com­mu­ni­ty.”)

In Jan­u­ary, House Democ­rats in the Con­gres­sion­al Freethought Cau­cus pub­lished a white paper out­lin­ing many of Johnson’s long­stand­ing ties to Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and lead­ers of the New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR)—yet anoth­er rad­i­cal strain of Chris­tian­i­ty with direct ties to domin­ion­ism.

...

One of the lead­ers of that move­ment is pas­tor Jim Gar­low. Gar­low is per­haps bet­ter known for prop­a­gat­ing lies about Don­ald Trump’s 2020 defeat. He was a key fig­ure in the “Glob­al Prayer for Elec­tion Integri­ty” calls, where Chris­tians were asked “to pray and mobi­lize for Trump’s rein­state­ment as Pres­i­dent.”

But John­son has been close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Gar­low.

“You’ve been a pro­found influ­ence on my life and my walk with Christ, broth­er,” John­son told Gar­low dur­ing one World Prayer Net­work call from Novem­ber 2021, once again using the same phrase he applied to Bar­ton.

Gar­low, for his part, has said John­son “ranks up there in the top 1 per­centile” in Con­gress and has “worked with us very close­ly.”

John­son, of course, is an elec­tion denier who pro­mot­ed dubi­ous legal the­o­ries in the wake of Trump’s defeat. He lit­er­al­ly led the effort in Con­gress to use the courts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion. But Johnson’s close asso­ci­a­tion with Gar­low is yet anoth­er indi­ca­tion of his ties to dominionism—and has been the impe­tus for a num­ber of omi­nous quotes.

Johnson’s fre­quent appear­ances on Garlow’s World Prayer Net­work, as Rolling Stone report­ed in Novem­ber, have prompt­ed John­son to say things like:

“The only ques­tion is: Is God going to allow our nation to enter a time of judg­ment for our col­lec­tive sins?”
“The cul­ture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irre­deemable.”
“We are a nation sub­servient to Him.”

While study­ing law at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty, John­son cut his teeth in con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics by vol­un­teer­ing at LFF. The LFF first launched dur­ing Johnson’s time at LSU, when it was helmed by Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ists like Gene Mills, an influ­en­tial Pen­te­costal min­is­ter, and Perkins. In 2005, the LFF gave John­son its annu­al “Glad­i­a­tor Award,” and John­son has been described as “one of Mills’ clos­est allies.”

As a lawyer, John­son worked for years at the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, a Chris­t­ian legal orga­ni­za­tion with ties to domin­ion­ists. While ADF presents itself as a con­ser­v­a­tive response to the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, it does not take clients regard­less of ide­ol­o­gy, as the ACLU famous­ly does. Instead, ADF has pur­sued a domin­ion­ist-mind­ed mis­sion: to enshrine fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tions into law. John­son him­self pur­sued that goal while at the orga­ni­za­tion for a decade.

...

Adam Perez, pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at Bel­mont Uni­ver­si­ty, told The Dai­ly Beast that this inter­pre­ta­tion­al archi­tec­ture is, by its nature, author­i­tar­i­an.

“They read the Con­sti­tu­tion the same way they read the Bible, the same bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism,” Perez said. “It’s an ahis­tor­i­cal cri­tique, and what that allows for is to say, ‘Our read­ing of scrip­ture and the Con­sti­tu­tion is right, because func­tion­al­ly we are autho­rized to be the peo­ple who inter­pret it for you.’”

“They say they’re read­ing it plain and lit­er­al­ly,” Perez con­tin­ued, “and that allows them to strip away nuance, close the cir­cle of inter­pre­ta­tion small enough that it feels total­iz­ing and the inter­preter has all author­i­ty.”

Julie Inger­soll, author and schol­ar in Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Flori­da, not­ed that these kinds of extreme, hard­line worldviews—many of which inform and some­times dove­tail with polit­i­cal violence—tell you more about the believ­er them­selves than they tell you about what they believe.

“This expe­ri­ence just gets absorbed into the uni­verse, this ver­sion of god that peo­ple imag­ined,” Inger­soll said. “What I think of god tells you what I think god would be like, and that actu­al­ly says more about me.”

The­olo­gians and experts in Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism told The Dai­ly Beast that, while Johnson’s domin­ion­ist streak is a mile long, that catch-all alone still doesn’t cap­ture his spe­cif­ic world­view. Instead, they said, look at Johnson’s influ­ences and asso­ci­a­tions, what he has said, and, impor­tant­ly, what he does not say.

In that view, John­son hails from a long line of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists, some of whom have pro­pound­ed beliefs so con­tro­ver­sial that they’ve been excised from pub­lic-fac­ing rhetoric, even though fol­low­ers have a world­view that’s as extreme as ever.

Lad­ner sug­gest­ed John­son was sim­i­lar with regard to those pub­lic and pri­vate dis­tinc­tions.

“Domin­ion­ist politi­cians aren’t going to come out and iden­ti­fy them­selves and say, ‘We want to take over the gov­ern­ment,’” Lad­ner said, cit­ing the movement’s com­par­a­tive­ly recent dis­tanc­ing from extrem­ist lead­ers like Rush­doony and North.

Inger­soll sin­gled out Rush­doony and North as two fig­ures who could shed light on Johnson’s beliefs. Inger­soll drew a direct line from the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist influ­ence to reli­gious vio­lence, such as attacks on abor­tion clin­ics. (John­son pre­vi­ous­ly gave legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, for free, to a num­ber of clients tied to vio­lent reli­gious extrem­ism.)

“And now we’re hav­ing this big argu­ment once again about gay rights,” Inger­soll said.

Rush­doony and North have also made argu­ments jus­ti­fy­ing, even endors­ing, bib­li­cal slav­ery. After John­son seized the House gav­el in Octo­ber, jour­nal­ist and long­time Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist researcher Bruce Wil­son said Johnson’s prox­im­i­ty to Bar­ton sug­gests his ide­ol­o­gy might be clos­er to Rush­doony and North’s Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism than is pub­licly known, specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ing that movement’s defense of bib­li­cal slav­ery.

Aho, the Ida­ho State Uni­ver­si­ty reli­gious schol­ar, explained how seem­ing­ly moral­ly inde­fen­si­ble posi­tions, like pun­ish­ing gay peo­ple, derive from hermeneutics—the study of bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tions.

“In Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ism, the prin­ci­ple is that, unless a par­tic­u­lar Old Tes­ta­ment decree or rul­ing has been explic­it­ly denounced, denied, or reject­ed by either Jesus Christ or one or more of the apostles—particularly St. Paul—then that Old Tes­ta­ment read­ing is also applic­a­ble in a recon­struct­ed Amer­i­ca tak­en back in the name of Christ. That’s the­o­log­i­cal legal prin­ci­ple they work from,” Aho said.

Slavery—as Rush­doony, North, and oth­er mod­ern domin­ion­ist lead­ers have argued—was nev­er abol­ished by God in the Bible. At the same time, the text acknowl­edges and even con­dones forms of human bondage. (Lead­ers in the South­ern states used these same bib­li­cal argu­ments to to jus­ti­fy slav­ery.)

Aho point­ed to an arti­cle he wrote, host­ed by the Oxford Research Ency­clo­pe­dia, which out­lines how extreme domin­ion­ist ide­o­logues reject not only the 13th Amend­ment, but sev­er­al oth­ers, includ­ing the 14th, 15th, 19th, and 26th—even the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion. Domin­ion­ists are also anti-tax, with hard­lin­ers cit­ing any rates high­er than the Bible’s 10 per­cent tithing require­ment as hereti­cal.

Of course, most domin­ion­ists today find many of these argu­ments unsa­vory, at least pub­licly, and Rush­doony-style recon­struc­tion­ism has large­ly fall­en out of favor in pub­lic dis­course. How­ev­er, as the experts point­ed out, that dis­tanc­ing is a rel­a­tive­ly recent advance­ment, and this extrem­ist geneal­o­gy appears again and again in Johnson’s life.

John­son doesn’t exact­ly call him­self a “Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ist,” pre­fer­ring to just go with the more relat­able “Chris­t­ian” or “Bap­tist.” But he’s been named as a domin­ion­ist before. A 2019 local news sto­ry in the Bay­ou Brief doc­u­ment­ed how notable dominionists—like Johnson—were attempt­ing to turn Louisiana into a “theoc­ra­cy.” Oth­er outlets—like The Bul­wark, NPR, and Rolling Stone—have also not­ed many of Johnson’s close asso­ci­a­tions with domin­ion­ist lead­ers.

John­son has con­spic­u­ous­ly avoid­ed dis­tanc­ing him­self from these labels.

Accord­ing to Perez, the Bel­mont pro­fes­sor, these seem­ing­ly short mem­o­ries about recent extreme beliefs are a result of an ongo­ing white­wash­ing and the soft touch with which many pas­tors deliv­er the domin­ion­ist mes­sage.

“Chris­tians who ascribe to this think­ing, it’s not pre­sent­ed to them as rad­i­cal. Domin­ion­ism is pre­sent­ed to them as every­day,” Perez explained. Lead­ers like John­son, he said, often take a “sim­ple, gen­tle, folksy approach” that rebrands and obscures the more unseem­ly views at the roots of the move­ment.

...

Among the var­i­ous ban­ners seen in that boil­ing crowd of insur­rec­tion­ists on Jan. 6 were sev­er­al white flags embla­zoned with a green pine tree—a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist sym­bol known as the “Appeal to Heav­en” flag.

Not long after John­son moved into the Speaker’s office, that flag appeared out­side his door.

———–

“The ‘Pro­found Influ­ence’ of Chris­t­ian Extrem­ists on Mike John­son” by Roger Sol­len­berg­er; The Dai­ly Beast; 01/31/2024

“A Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion of his affil­i­a­tions, influ­ences, and pub­lic state­ments shows that Johnson’s world­view was forged in a rad­i­cal the­o­log­i­cal tradition—the lead­ers and adher­ents of which have dis­put­ed some of the country’s most impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples, includ­ing amend­ments that freed the slaves and extend­ed basic rights to all cit­i­zens.”

Mike John­son’s reli­gious rad­i­cal­ism isn’t exact­ly a secret. But that does­n’t mean the depths of that rad­i­cal­ism is rec­og­nized. It’s not a secret. But he’s not open about it either. Or at least not inten­tion­al­ly open, as he made clear about in his ‘God told me to run for the Speak­er’ keynote speech at the NACL gala. And yet, as the answers to the Dai­ly Beast­’s ques­tions addressed to John­son’s office about his exten­sive ties to the world of domin­ion­ism make clear, he’s unwill­ing to denounce domin­ion­ism too. Even when pressed on issues like the domin­ion­ist jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of Bib­li­cal slav­ery. His office refused to denounce Bib­li­cal slav­ery and instead tried to spin the ques­tion away. It’s a pret­ty big red flag:

...
That may sound dra­mat­ic, but Johnson’s con­nec­tions to one par­tic­u­lar strain of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism elic­it legit­i­mate ques­tions about the speaker’s bib­li­cal and con­sti­tu­tion­al inter­pre­ta­tions. Those ques­tions are all the more press­ing giv­en how open lead­ers of this move­ment have been about using anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic means to achieve their desired reli­gious ends—and giv­en Johnson’s own promi­nent role in the GOP effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion.

...

More broad­ly, Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ism seeks to estab­lish the Unit­ed States as a Chris­t­ian nation gov­erned by bib­li­cal law. And sev­er­al lead­ers in the domin­ion­ist move­ment have had a pro­found impact on John­son personally—by Johnson’s own admis­sion.

...

Just last month, John­son also gave the keynote at a domin­ion­ist con­fer­ence, dur­ing which he claimed that his ele­va­tion to House Speak­er was an act of God, who had told him per­son­al­ly to pre­pare for a “Red Sea moment.”

The Dai­ly Beast request­ed com­ment from Johnson’s office about the speaker’s ties to far-right Chris­t­ian lead­ers and tra­di­tions. The com­ment request specif­i­cal­ly asked whether John­son thought bib­li­cal­ly sanc­tioned vio­lence con­flict­ed with his duties as an offi­cer of the con­sti­tu­tion, whether he denounced the teach­ings of hard­line fun­da­men­tal­ists who have endorsed bib­li­cal slav­ery and reject­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions like lib­er­ty and jus­tice, and whether he per­son­al­ly believed the Bible per­mit­ted slav­ery.

A spokesper­son for the speak­er pro­vid­ed a state­ment that didn’t answer any of those ques­tions.

“None of these actions or com­ments you are ref­er­enc­ing were made by Speak­er John­son. The Speak­er is not going to apol­o­gize to the Dai­ly Beast for his Chris­t­ian faith or judge the beliefs or state­ments of oth­ers,” the state­ment said.

...

Keri Lad­ner, a reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar and author, told The Dai­ly Beast that John­son is “too smart” to out­ward­ly avow any con­nec­tions to wide­ly denounced veins of extrem­ism, even though the evi­dence is all around him. (The spokesperson’s state­ment added a twist, how­ev­er, also refus­ing to dis­avow those con­nec­tions.)

John­son, Lad­ner said, would not pub­licly pro­mote the kind of rad­i­cal the­olo­gies that have become anath­e­ma to more main­stream domin­ion­ism, but his asso­ci­a­tions, state­ments, and friend­ships over decades reveal sig­nif­i­cant and unde­ni­able com­mon­al­i­ties.

“When you dig into the peo­ple around John­son, that’s what you find when you peel back the layers—it’s absolute­ly in that orbit,” she said.
...

And it’s not like a the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Bib­li­cal slav­ery is some­thing we find in just a hand­ful of fringe fig­ures in this move­ment. Even David Bar­ton — key pseu­do-his­to­ri­an for this move­ment — wrote an essay in 2003 defend­ing Bib­li­cal slav­ery and chal­leng­ing aspects of the 13th amend­ment that freed the slaves. An essay that stayed up on his Wall­builders web­site for near­ly 20 years:

...
In Decem­ber 2021, for instance, John­son pub­licly praised David Bar­ton, a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist whose his­tor­i­cal stud­ies have been reject­ed as wild­ly inac­cu­rate. The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter’s entry on Bar­ton notes that he has repeat­ed­ly “demo­nized LGBTQ per­sons and com­mu­ni­ties, argu­ing that HIV and AIDS are god-giv­en con­se­quences for liv­ing out one’s LGBTQ life.”

And yet, John­son said just two years ago that Bar­ton has had “a pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life, and every­thing I do.”

...

Bar­ton has stayed in touch with John­son since the Louisiana Repub­li­can took the speak­er­ship in Octo­ber. Bar­ton dis­closed on a pod­cast recent­ly that he and his group had been advis­ing the new speak­er on who to hire in the speaker’s office. “We’ve already been talk­ing with him about staff, and what kind of staff,” Bar­ton said. “They need to be the peo­ple with his world­view.”

“He is not going to com­pro­mise who he is,” Bar­ton added.

Barton’s group, Wall­Builders, advo­cates for laws and legal inter­pre­ta­tions premised on a fun­da­men­tal­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible. And Barton’s web­site once pub­lished an in-depth defense of bib­li­cal slav­ery, chal­leng­ing aspects of the 13th Amend­ment. The essay was first post­ed in 2003 and, though wide­ly crit­i­cized, was only tak­en down at some point after Octo­ber 2022, accord­ing to the non­prof­it Inter­net Archive.

More recent­ly, Bar­ton said on the Wall­Builders pod­cast that Johnson’s ele­va­tion to the speak­er­ship offers him and his group “some tools at our dis­pos­al” that “we haven’t had in a long time.”

...

James Aho, author and pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of reli­gious stud­ies at Ida­ho State Uni­ver­si­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly flagged Johnson’s adu­la­tion for Bar­ton as a sig­nif­i­cant mark­er of his ties to the domin­ion­ist move­ment.

“That is huge,” Aho said, not­ing what he described as Barton’s “apol­o­gy for slav­ery.”

“It’s alarm­ing that these peo­ple have got­ten into Con­gress,” he said.
...

But it’s not just John­son’s affil­i­a­tions that make him such a con­cern­ing indi­vid­ual to hold the House Speak­er­ship. There’s also his years work­ing as a lawyer for the ADF. Recall how the ADF received large dona­tions from the Bet­sy DeVos and Erik Prince and fun­neled that mon­ey into sup­port­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments in Europe and backed a 2016 Belize law that pun­ished homo­sex­u­al sex with 10 years in prison. Also recall how the ADF has been play­ing a major behind the scenes role in shap­ing the cur­rent man­u­fac­tured anti-trans pan­ic. At the same time, the ADF shows up on the list of orga­ni­za­tions involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. CNP mem­ber Michael Far­ris, who co-found­ed the “Con­ven­tion of States” project designed to over­haul the Con­sti­tu­tion — has served as the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the ADF. And when we look at Mike John­son’s work as an ADF lawyer, we find him rep­re­sent­ing some of the most open defend­ers of ‘pro-life’ vio­lence like Grant Storms and his son Jason Storms. When it comes to Mike John­son’s cryp­to-theo­crat­ic ori­en­ta­tion, it’s both a mat­ter of guilt by asso­ci­a­tion and built by action. A broad spec­trum of avail­able evi­dence going back decades clear­ly impli­cates John­son as being a hard core theo­crat, whether he’s open about it with the pub­lic or not:

...
As a lawyer, John­son worked for years at the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, a Chris­t­ian legal orga­ni­za­tion with ties to domin­ion­ists. While ADF presents itself as a con­ser­v­a­tive response to the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, it does not take clients regard­less of ide­ol­o­gy, as the ACLU famous­ly does. Instead, ADF has pur­sued a domin­ion­ist-mind­ed mis­sion: to enshrine fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tions into law. John­son him­self pur­sued that goal while at the orga­ni­za­tion for a decade.

...

Adam Perez, pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at Bel­mont Uni­ver­si­ty, told The Dai­ly Beast that this inter­pre­ta­tion­al archi­tec­ture is, by its nature, author­i­tar­i­an.

“They read the Con­sti­tu­tion the same way they read the Bible, the same bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism,” Perez said. “It’s an ahis­tor­i­cal cri­tique, and what that allows for is to say, ‘Our read­ing of scrip­ture and the Con­sti­tu­tion is right, because func­tion­al­ly we are autho­rized to be the peo­ple who inter­pret it for you.’”

“They say they’re read­ing it plain and lit­er­al­ly,” Perez con­tin­ued, “and that allows them to strip away nuance, close the cir­cle of inter­pre­ta­tion small enough that it feels total­iz­ing and the inter­preter has all author­i­ty.”

...

Aho, the Ida­ho State Uni­ver­si­ty reli­gious schol­ar, explained how seem­ing­ly moral­ly inde­fen­si­ble posi­tions, like pun­ish­ing gay peo­ple, derive from hermeneutics—the study of bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tions.

“In Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ism, the prin­ci­ple is that, unless a par­tic­u­lar Old Tes­ta­ment decree or rul­ing has been explic­it­ly denounced, denied, or reject­ed by either Jesus Christ or one or more of the apostles—particularly St. Paul—then that Old Tes­ta­ment read­ing is also applic­a­ble in a recon­struct­ed Amer­i­ca tak­en back in the name of Christ. That’s the­o­log­i­cal legal prin­ci­ple they work from,” Aho said.

Slavery—as Rush­doony, North, and oth­er mod­ern domin­ion­ist lead­ers have argued—was nev­er abol­ished by God in the Bible. At the same time, the text acknowl­edges and even con­dones forms of human bondage. (Lead­ers in the South­ern states used these same bib­li­cal argu­ments to to jus­ti­fy slav­ery.)

Aho point­ed to an arti­cle he wrote, host­ed by the Oxford Research Ency­clo­pe­dia, which out­lines how extreme domin­ion­ist ide­o­logues reject not only the 13th Amend­ment, but sev­er­al oth­ers, includ­ing the 14th, 15th, 19th, and 26th—even the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion. Domin­ion­ists are also anti-tax, with hard­lin­ers cit­ing any rates high­er than the Bible’s 10 per­cent tithing require­ment as hereti­cal.

Of course, most domin­ion­ists today find many of these argu­ments unsa­vory, at least pub­licly, and Rush­doony-style recon­struc­tion­ism has large­ly fall­en out of favor in pub­lic dis­course. How­ev­er, as the experts point­ed out, that dis­tanc­ing is a rel­a­tive­ly recent advance­ment, and this extrem­ist geneal­o­gy appears again and again in Johnson’s life.
...

But John­son’s ties to this net­work aren’t just through his work as an ADF lawyer or ties to per­son­al­i­ties like David Bar­ton. There’s the fact that the CNP is effec­tive­ly the lead­ing domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing enti­ty in the US at this point. Along with the fact that you can’t under­stand the pow­er dynam­ics of the con­tem­po­rary GOP with­out rec­og­niz­ing the enor­mous behind-the-scenes influ­ence the CNP wields over the GOP’s oper­a­tions. Behind-the-scenes oper­a­tions that became a lot less behind-the-scenes with Mike John­son’s ascen­sion to the speak­er­ship. And as we can see, the ori­gins of the CNP includ­ed fig­ures like Gary North and his father-in-law RJ Rush­doony, both of whom embraced an Old Tes­ta­ment mod­el for soci­ety. An Old Tes­ta­ment that hap­pens to endorse slav­ery. That’s part of the sig­nif­i­cance of John­son’s keynote address at the 2019 CNP annu­al meet­ing. But there’s also the fact that John­son namechecked both Tony Perkins and Matt Staver dur­ing his address. Recall how Perkins and Staver — both mem­bers high-lev­el mem­bers of the CNP — also served on the advi­so­ry board of the NACL, which is also a reminder that we can’t real­ly sep­a­rate the NACL from the CNP. Both orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing towards the same goal, with large­ly over­lap­ping lead­er­ship:

...
In 2019, John­son deliv­ered a keynote speech to the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an elite and secre­tive pro-Chris­t­ian group that wields immense influ­ence in con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics. That group was co-found­ed by Gary North, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ist who has endorsed bib­li­cal slav­ery. North died in 2022, but the group’s 2014 mem­ber­ship reg­istry also list­ed North’s father-in-law, Rousha Rush­doony, in the “in memo­ri­am” section—an acknowl­edg­ment of the impact of Rushdoony’s ideas on the group.

Rush­doony, for those less famil­iar with extrem­ist Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, is cred­it­ed as the god­fa­ther of “Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism,” anoth­er off­shoot in the far-right evan­gel­i­cal tree. Rush­doony advo­cat­ed for Old Tes­ta­ment laws to be applied to mod­ern soci­ety, there­fore sup­port­ing the death penal­ty for bib­li­cal “crimes” like homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, adul­tery, and pub­lic blasphemy—among many oth­er vio­la­tions.

Dur­ing that CNP keynote speech, John­son deliv­ered a suc­cinct sum­ma­tion of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist move­ment.

“I grew up in the move­ment,” John­son said, going on to fawn over Tony Perkins, who has fierce­ly pushed Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism as the head of Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Mat Staver, who has advo­cat­ed for laws crim­i­nal­iz­ing same-sex rela­tion­ships.

Specif­i­cal­ly, John­son not­ed that he had appren­tice­ships under Staver and Perkins, both of whom he cit­ed by name. Twice, he said he was their “bag boy.”

...

Julie Inger­soll, author and schol­ar in Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Flori­da, not­ed that these kinds of extreme, hard­line worldviews—many of which inform and some­times dove­tail with polit­i­cal violence—tell you more about the believ­er them­selves than they tell you about what they believe.

“This expe­ri­ence just gets absorbed into the uni­verse, this ver­sion of god that peo­ple imag­ined,” Inger­soll said. “What I think of god tells you what I think god would be like, and that actu­al­ly says more about me.”

The­olo­gians and experts in Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism told The Dai­ly Beast that, while Johnson’s domin­ion­ist streak is a mile long, that catch-all alone still doesn’t cap­ture his spe­cif­ic world­view. Instead, they said, look at Johnson’s influ­ences and asso­ci­a­tions, what he has said, and, impor­tant­ly, what he does not say.

In that view, John­son hails from a long line of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists, some of whom have pro­pound­ed beliefs so con­tro­ver­sial that they’ve been excised from pub­lic-fac­ing rhetoric, even though fol­low­ers have a world­view that’s as extreme as ever.

Lad­ner sug­gest­ed John­son was sim­i­lar with regard to those pub­lic and pri­vate dis­tinc­tions.

“Domin­ion­ist politi­cians aren’t going to come out and iden­ti­fy them­selves and say, ‘We want to take over the gov­ern­ment,’” Lad­ner said, cit­ing the movement’s com­par­a­tive­ly recent dis­tanc­ing from extrem­ist lead­ers like Rush­doony and North.

Inger­soll sin­gled out Rush­doony and North as two fig­ures who could shed light on Johnson’s beliefs. Inger­soll drew a direct line from the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist influ­ence to reli­gious vio­lence, such as attacks on abor­tion clin­ics. (John­son pre­vi­ous­ly gave legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, for free, to a num­ber of clients tied to vio­lent reli­gious extrem­ism.)

“And now we’re hav­ing this big argu­ment once again about gay rights,” Inger­soll said.

Rush­doony and North have also made argu­ments jus­ti­fy­ing, even endors­ing, bib­li­cal slav­ery. After John­son seized the House gav­el in Octo­ber, jour­nal­ist and long­time Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist researcher Bruce Wil­son said Johnson’s prox­im­i­ty to Bar­ton sug­gests his ide­ol­o­gy might be clos­er to Rush­doony and North’s Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism than is pub­licly known, specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ing that movement’s defense of bib­li­cal slav­ery.

...

John­son doesn’t exact­ly call him­self a “Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ist,” pre­fer­ring to just go with the more relat­able “Chris­t­ian” or “Bap­tist.” But he’s been named as a domin­ion­ist before. A 2019 local news sto­ry in the Bay­ou Brief doc­u­ment­ed how notable dominionists—like Johnson—were attempt­ing to turn Louisiana into a “theoc­ra­cy.” Oth­er outlets—like The Bul­wark, NPR, and Rolling Stone—have also not­ed many of Johnson’s close asso­ci­a­tions with domin­ion­ist lead­ers.

John­son has con­spic­u­ous­ly avoid­ed dis­tanc­ing him­self from these labels.

Accord­ing to Perez, the Bel­mont pro­fes­sor, these seem­ing­ly short mem­o­ries about recent extreme beliefs are a result of an ongo­ing white­wash­ing and the soft touch with which many pas­tors deliv­er the domin­ion­ist mes­sage.

“Chris­tians who ascribe to this think­ing, it’s not pre­sent­ed to them as rad­i­cal. Domin­ion­ism is pre­sent­ed to them as every­day,” Perez explained. Lead­ers like John­son, he said, often take a “sim­ple, gen­tle, folksy approach” that rebrands and obscures the more unseem­ly views at the roots of the move­ment.
...