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The Eyes Over Mike Johnson: the CNP’s Texas Template for God’s Power Grope

“I am not the Catholic can­di­date for pres­i­dent. I am the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty’s can­di­date for pres­i­dent, who hap­pens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on pub­lic mat­ters, and the church does not speak for me” Those were the kinds of words John F. Kennedy had to use when run­ning for the pres­i­dent in 1960. Words that feel almost quaint in 2023. Painful­ly quaint, as we’re going to see in this post.

Because as we’ve seen, Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism isn’t sim­ply on the rise in the Unit­ed States. It’s already at the top, thanks in no small part to the decades long efforts of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the myr­i­ad of groups oper­at­ing under its theo­crat­ic umbrel­la. The Supreme Court is dom­i­nat­ed by a hard right major­i­ty like­ly to be in place for decades to come at the same time Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is whol­ly main­stream inside the con­tem­po­rary Repub­li­can Par­ty. We even have the CNP’s planned mass purges — start­ing with the gov­ern­ment but not end­ing thereunder the ‘Sched­ule F’/Project 2025 label that is being open­ly report­ed and dis­cussed in the news. The mask dropped a while ago.

That’s all part of the grim con­text sur­round­ing a series of reports around the new Speak­er of the House, Mike John­son. The kind of reports that should raise seri­ous ques­tions about just how much influ­ence the lead­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist hold over new Speak­er of the House.

For starters, the whole intra-par­ty ker­fuf­fle that result­ed in Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as speak­er appears to have the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it. Recall how it was the CNP-backed Free­dom Cau­cus that orches­trat­ed the giant intra-par­ty show­down over Kevin McCarthy’s speak­er­ship nom­i­na­tion back in Jan­u­ary with exten­sive CNP sup­port. Flash for­ward to the new show­down over the Speak­er­ship, and it was again the Free­dom Cau­cus lead­ing ‘anti-estab­lish­ment’ oppo­si­tion, with CNP affil­i­ates like Amy Kre­mer and Russ Vought again play­ing a sup­port­ing role. And at the end of it all, back­bencher Mike John­son emerges as the par­ty’s con­sen­sus can­di­date with unan­i­mous par­ty sup­port. Some­one who hap­pened to call CNP Vice Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford his men­tor dur­ing an Octo­ber 2019 speach at a CNP con­fer­ence. John­son isn’t real­ly hid­ing his theo­crat­ic sen­ti­ments.

But he has­n’t exact­ly adver­tised the full scope of his com­mit­ment to Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism either. But as we’re going to see, he’s com­mit­ted and he’s far from alone. Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is the main­stream ide­ol­o­gy gov­ern­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty in 2023. Mike John­son’s Speak­er­ship is mere­ly one of its many man­i­fes­ta­tions. So when we got reports about the gen­uine­ly creepy “Covenant Eyes” spy­ware that John­son proud­ly installed on his phone, we should prob­a­bly start ask­ing ques­tions about who exact­ly Mike John­son is answer­ing to in his role as House Speak­er. Spy­ware that tracks all of the web­sites he vis­its, search­es he makes, and even takes screen­shots and tends them back to ‘Covenant Eyes’, where any signs of way­ward activ­i­ty (like search­ing for LGBTQ con­tent) will be report­ed to John­son’s “Account­abil­i­ty Part­ner”, who hap­pens to be his adopt­ed son.

Yes, the new Speak­er of the House put some sort of super-spy­ware on his phone that enforces ‘Chris­t­ian’ behav­ior. And that’s why, while it was absurd to think JFK was tak­ing order from the Pope, these kinds of ques­tions aren’t so absurd when it comes to politi­cians like Mike John­son. Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is, after all, about the for­mal end­ing of the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State and the trans­fer of real polit­i­cal pow­er into the church­es. Not all church­es, mind you. Spe­cif­ic church­es deemed to be the ves­sels of the theo­crat­ic ideals that under­pin the found­ing of the Unit­ed States are to receive the sup­port of the state. And, lo and behold, those spe­cif­ic church­es tend to be the con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian church­es under the sway of the CNP net­work of lead­ers.

And as we should expect at this point, the par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual who deter­mines this ‘authen­tic the­ol­o­gy’ for church­es in the Unit­ed States is the same fig­ure who has long been the go-to pseu­do-his­to­ri­an for this move­ment: David Bar­ton. As we saw, Bar­ton has long been the defin­ing fig­ure for the CNP-backed his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism designed to under­mine the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State. And as we’re going to see below, Bar­ton’s vision for end­ing that sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is on the cusp of becom­ing a real­i­ty in his home state of Texas, thanks, in part to recent Supreme Court rul­ings that hint at a much greater will­ing­ness of the con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court major­i­ty to go much fur­ther in mak­ing this vision a real­i­ty. Worse, the plan is make Texas a tem­plate for the rest of the nation. With the Texas GOP firm­ly behind Bar­ton, it’s just a mat­ter of time. Things are in motion.

So it should come as no sur­prise to learn about anoth­er David Bar­ton super-fan: Mike John­son. Yes, it was just one day after John­son won the Speak­er­ship that Bar­ton said on a pod­cast that he was already dis­cus­sion staffing with John­son, a long­time ally of Bar­ton. John­son even recent­ly spoke at an event for Bar­ton’s Wall­builders group where he praised Bar­ton’s “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do.”

Chill­ing words to hear from the new Speak­er, but not sur­pris­ing. John­son worked as the attor­ney and spokesper­son for the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (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. John­son and Bar­ton have been oper­at­ing in the same CNP-run cir­cles for years. Of course Bar­ton has had a pro­found influ­ence on John­son’s life. They’re basi­cal­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist co-work­ers.

All in all, it’s high­ly dis­turb­ing con­text for the new Speak­er. But it gets worse. As usu­al. Because as we’re going to also see, the par­tic­u­lar the­o­log­i­cal insti­tu­tion most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Bar­ton’s work — the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion — has an ongo­ing mega-scan­dal of the kind of nature that is going to be increas­ing impor­tant to under­stand as this move­ment accrues more and more very real polit­i­cal pow­er over the lives of the US pop­u­la­tion. To put it blunt­ly, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC) — a denom­i­na­tion con­sist­ing of rough­ly 47,000 church­es — has a mas­sive sex­u­al abuse prob­lem. A large­ly unchecked prob­lem that has been ram­pant for decades thanks, in part, to the near com­plete lack of action of the part of the SBC lead­er­ship. When actions have been tak­en by the SBC lead­er­ship, they’ve typ­i­cal­ly been to cov­er up or deny the alle­ga­tions. It’s the kind of sys­tem­at­ic abuse of pow­er that should serve as a major warn­ing for what’s in store for the rest of US soci­ety as the strain of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism cham­pi­oned by the SBC con­tin­ues its polit­i­cal ascent.

Oh, and it turns out we’re learn­ing a lot about this his­toric of abuse and cov­er up thanks to an ongo­ing law­suit filed against a num­ber of SBC lead­ers and insti­tu­tions. The law­suit cen­ters around decades of abuse by Paul Pressler, a promi­nent mem­ber of the CNP and CNP pres­i­dent from 1988–1990. Pressler has been instru­men­tal in push­ing the SBC’s 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

This isn’t to say that the ascent of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism will nec­es­sar­i­ly bring wide­spread unchecked sex­u­al assaults on the rest of soci­ety. But it’s hard to ignore the deep tol­er­ance for sys­temic abus­es by the same lead­ers who per­son­i­fy the strains of Chris­tian­i­ty Bar­ton, John­son, and the rest of their Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist allies are aggres­sive­ly car­ry­ing out this theo­crat­ic pow­er grab. Lead­ers like Ed Young of the South­ern Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton. The Unit­ed States is in the midst of a theo­crat­ic pow­er grab decades in the mak­ing thanks to the exten­sive full-spec­trum work of the CNP’s pow­er­ful mem­ber­ship. And as we’re going to see, the peo­ple involved with the sys­temic cov­er up of these abus­es in the SBC com­mu­ni­ty includes one CNP mem­ber after anoth­er.

And bring­ing it all full cir­cle: there’s a rather amus­ing yet dis­turb­ing chap­ter of Mike John­son’s career as a Chris­t­ian legal activist that is only going to more and more amus­ing and/or dis­turb­ing as the case against Pressler plays out. It turns out Mike John­son was recruit­ed to be the dean of a new­ly form­ing Chris­t­ian law school back in 2010. Part of John­son’s role was to raise the funds need­ed to start the school. The prob­lem is some­one was embez­zling those fund. The school was ulti­mate­ly nev­er start­ed and John­son returned to his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal activism in 2012. The name of that school that nev­er was? The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law.

Here’s a quick review of the arti­cle excerpts we’re going to be review­ing in this post:

* Novem­ber 5, 2023: Mike John­son Admits He and His Son Mon­i­tor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resur­faced Video

It’s shock­ing. Except not real­ly. The new Speak­er of the House actu­al­ly bragged about how he had the “Covenant Eyes” soft­ware installed on his phone, along with his son’s phone. That way, they could keep each oth­er ‘account­able’ by get­ting updates house should the oth­er brows­er any unac­cept­able web­sites or pornog­ra­phy. In oth­er words, the new Speak­er of the House installed theo­crat­ic spy­ware on his phone.

* Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022: The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shame­ware’ Apps

You can call it ‘spy­ware’. But as this WIRED arti­cle warns, per­haps ‘dis­ci­ple­ship shame­ware’ is a more apt descrip­tion of the kind of app Mike John­son has run­ning on his phone. An app that does­n’t just send warn­ings about the view­ing of pornog­ra­phy. It mon­i­tors almost every­thing you do on your phone and sends that data back to the com­pa­ny. And while users are allowed to select their own per­son­al “account­abil­i­ty bud­dy” who will receive noti­fi­ca­tions of any ‘impure’ actions, the real­i­ty is that church lead­ers are fre­quent­ly the ones tapped to play that ‘bud­dy’ role, which has result­ed in sto­ries like teens get­ting ques­tioned by church elders over activ­i­ties like read­ing an arti­cle about athe­ism. It’s app-pow­ered ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’, and there­fore par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar with SBC church­es like Gra­ce­point, where ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ is heav­i­ly prac­ticed.

* Novem­ber 3, 2023: Texas activist David Bar­ton wants to end sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speak­er.

For all the uproar over Mike John­son’s anti-porn ‘shame­ware’, there was a far more dis­turb­ing sto­ry about the new Speak­er’s theo­crat­ic ori­en­ta­tion. It turns out Mike John­son is a huge fan of David Bar­ton. He even recent­ly declared Bar­ton’s “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do” as an event put on by Bar­ton’s Wall­Builders orga­ni­za­tion. And with Texas Repub­li­cans already on board with Bar­ton’s agen­da too, it’s easy to see why Texas is poised to become the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism tem­plate for the rest of the nation. Bar­ton is a super­star among Texas Repub­li­cans, where his brand of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is already the main­stream.

* May 4, 2023: Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians want more reli­gion in pub­lic life. Texas law­mak­ers are lis­ten­ing.

With the Texas Repub­li­cans already ful­ly embrace David Bar­ton’s brand of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, what’s stand­ing their in way? Well, a lot less than before thanks to a series of recent Supreme Court rul­ings. In 2020, the court ruled 5–4 in favor of a Mon­tana woman who argued that her state’s Depart­ment of Rev­enue improp­er­ly barred her from using a tax-cred­it schol­ar­ship at a Chris­t­ian school. And in 2022, the court sim­i­lar­ly ruled that Maine could not bar reli­gious insti­tu­tions from pub­lic fund­ing. It’s reminder that tear­ing down the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is unlike­ly to come in a sin­gle blow. It will be a death by a thou­sand cuts. And with Texas Repub­li­cans active­ly work­ing on legal chal­lenges to the laws cur­rent­ly block­ing tax exempt enti­ties like church­es from engag­ing in par­ti­san activ­i­ty, it appears to be just a mat­ter of time before the Supreme Court deliv­ers anoth­er one of those cuts.

* Novem­ber 1, 2023: Mike John­son is not the only David Bar­ton fan to be Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

And while Mike John­son’s improb­a­ble Speak­er­ship might seem like the improb­a­ble rise of a close Bar­ton ally, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that it’s not actu­al­ly that improb­a­ble to find out a Repub­li­can Speak­er of the House is a big Bar­ton fan. For­mer Speak­er Paul Ryan once said of Bar­ton, “I lis­ten to him all the time, even in my car while dri­ving.” Ryan went on to elab­o­rate that, because of Barton’s teach­ings, Ryan is very knowl­edge­able of the 1954 John­son Amend­ment that put restric­tions on the polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of pas­tors from their pul­pits, which has done so much dam­age to Amer­i­can cul­ture. So what appears to be a final push tak­ing place now to the end the restric­tions on church­es engag­ing in direct polit­i­cal action is the cul­mi­na­tion of long ongo­ing efforts.

* May 23, 2016: South­ern Bap­tist, oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet with Don­ald Trump: Reports

And as a reminder that we can’t real­ly sep­a­rate the cur­rent remark­able pow­er held by the move­ment from the impact of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the pro­found role it played in reshap­ing the Supreme Court, it’s worth tak­ing a lit­tle at a fas­ci­nat­ing May 2016 arti­cle describ­ing plans for a del­e­ga­tion of lead­ers — includ­ing many SBC lead­ers — who were plan­ning on meet­ing then-can­di­date Trump. The del­e­gat­ed includ­ed:
* CNP Found­ing Mem­ber James Dob­son
* CNP mem­ber Ralph Reed
* CNP mem­ber Pen­ny Nance
* CNP Exec­u­tive Direc­to Bob McEwen
* CNP mem­ber Tim Wild­mon
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP VP start­ing in 2020) Kel­ly Shack­elford, who also hap­pens to be Mike John­son’s men­tor.
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP Pres­i­dent in 2018) Tony Perkins
* CNP mem­ber Bill Dal­las

Ed Young, long­stand­ing past of South Bap­tist Church Hous­ton and a major leader in the SBC, also attend­ed. In oth­er words, he’s obvi­ous­ly very close­ly tied to the CNP.

* March 27, 2023: Hous­ton GOP offi­cial knew for years of child sex abuse claims against South­ern Bap­tist leader, law part­ner

And now we get to the oth­er chap­ter in this sto­ry. The ongo­ing sex­u­al abuse mega-scan­dal that con­tin­ues to rock the SBC com­mu­ni­ty. A mega-scan­dal that involves hun­dreds of fig­ures — pas­tors. Min­is­ters. Youth pas­tors. Sun­day school teach­ers. Dea­cons. Church vol­un­teers — inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty and which includes some extreme­ly promi­nent fig­ures. In par­tic­u­lar, Paul Pressler. Con­sid­ered one of the key fig­ures in the push to get to SBC to adopt Bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism in the 80s and 90s, Pressler has become one of those peo­ple whose endorse­ment aspir­ing Repub­li­cans seek out. Long an impor­tant fig­ure in the CNP’s lead­er­ship, Pressler was the CNP pres­i­dent from 1988–1990. And a ser­i­al sex­u­al abuser of young men and teenage boys going back to at least 1978. And with the SBC lead­er­ship seem­ing­ly run­ning cov­er for Pressler the whole time. But, Pressler’s sex­u­al abuse did­n’t just take place with­in his role as an SBC youth pas­tor. A for­mer judge, Pressler was a part­ner in the law firm Wood­fill & Pressler, LLP, with fel­low Texas con­ser­v­a­tive activist Jared Wood­fill. It turns out Pressler was­n’t paid a salary for his work at the law firm. Instead, he was paid in the form of young male per­son­al assis­tants who would ‘assist the fam­i­ly’ at his home. And, yes, mul­ti­ple for­mer assis­tants have come for­ward alleg­ing abus­es. It’s far from the only sto­ry involv­ing sys­temic sex­u­al abuse and coverup inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty. But it’s a big one, and with a law­suit still play­ing out it’s the kind of sto­ry that promis­es to deliv­er more and more sor­did details.

* Feb­ru­ary 10, 2019: Abuse of Faith

Next, we’re going to look at Part 1 of an explo­sive 6 Part inves­tiga­tive series pub­lished ear­li­er this year by the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle. In an inves­ti­ga­tion that exam­ined court records, crim­i­nal records, and hun­dreds of inter­views describ­ing how hun­dreds of known abusers — some con­vict­ed sex offend­ers — were rou­tine­ly allowed into posi­tions of pow­er and author­i­ty inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty. And this was hap­pen­ing with the full aware­ness of SBC lead­er­ship — includ­ing fig­ures like Ed Young and CNP mem­ber Paige Pat­ter­son — who con­sis­tent­ly fell back on a doc­trine of ‘local church auton­o­my’ as an excuse for doing noth­ing. And if some­thing was done, it was typ­i­cal­ly some sort of cov­er up.

* April 20, 2023: SBC sem­i­nary and promi­nent for­mer leader set­tle in high-pro­file abuse law­suit, SBC still defend­ing

While Rollins’s law­suit against Pressler and the SBC lead­er­ship is still ongo­ing, there was a set­tle­ment announced: Paige Pat­ter­son set­tled with Rollins back in April. The terms of the set­tle­ment have not been dis­closed. But this would mark at least the sec­ond instance we know of where Rollins brought a law­suit involv­ing Pressler that result in an undis­closed set­tle­ment.

* Octo­ber 31, 2023: House Speak­er Mike John­son was once the dean of a Chris­t­ian law school. It nev­er opened its doors

Final­ly, a look back at a inter­est­ing chap­ter in Mike John­son’s Chris­t­ian activism legal career that is all the more inter­est­ing in light of the ongo­ing law­suits against Pressler and his SBC enablers. It turns out John­son was hired to be the dean of new­ly formed Chris­t­ian law school back in 2010. Except it nev­er actu­al­ly opened due to finan­cial issues (includ­ing pos­si­ble embez­zle­ment) and John­son left that role in 2012 to return to his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal career. The school was to be called the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law.

Mike Johnson Has Nothing to Hide...At Least Not from the Owners of Covenant Eyes

Ok, start­ing off, let’s take a look at a recent Rolling Stone arti­cle that asks the ques­tion: so what are the impli­ca­tions of the Speak­er of the House installing an app on his phone that sends almost every­thing he does to the ‘Covenant Eyes” com­pa­ny? It’s the kind of dis­turb­ing ques­tion we should­n’t real­ly have to ask. But we have to ask it. And while the con­cerns obvi­ous­ly include all sorts of gov­ern­ment-relat­ed con­cerns about the leak­ing of impor­tant gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion to this com­pa­ny (and any­one else they decide to share the info with), there’s also the oth­er obvi­ous con­cern here: the fact that the new Speak­er of the House is an active mem­ber of a hyper-con­trol­ling reli­gious sect that seeks to wield cult-like con­trol over the lives of its fol­low­ers:

The Rolling Stones

Mike John­son Admits He and His Son Mon­i­tor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resur­faced Video

“I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate,” Speak­er of the House says of his “account­abil­i­ty part­ner”

By Daniel Kreps
Novem­ber 5, 2023

Speak­er of the House Mike John­son admit­ted that he and his son mon­i­tored each other’s porn intake in a resur­faced clip from 2022.

Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on the “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” at Ben­ton, Louisiana’s Cypress Bap­tist Church — unearthed by X user Receipt Maven last week — the Louisiana rep­re­sen­ta­tive talked about how he installed “account­abil­i­ty soft­ware” called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from inter­net porn and oth­er unsa­vory web­sites.

“It scans all the activ­i­ty on your phone, or your devices, your lap­top, what have you; we do all of it,” John­son told the pan­el about the app.

“It sends a report to your account­abil­i­ty part­ner. My account­abil­i­ty part­ner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If any­thing objec­tion­able comes up, your account­abil­i­ty part­ner gets an imme­di­ate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”

COMPROMISE ALERT: Speak­er Mike John­son uses soft­ware Covenant Eyes (learned about at a Promise Keep­ers retreat) that scans all his elec­tron­ic devices & gives a week­ly report an “account­abil­i­ty part­ner” his 17 yr old son (so basi­cal­ly don’t watch porn or your son/dad will know??) pic.twitter.com/SSWpB9IIDB

— Receipt Maven (@receiptmaven) Octo­ber 31, 2023

...

“A US Con­gress­man is allow­ing a 3rd Par­ty tech com­pa­ny to scan ALL of his elec­tron­ic devices dai­ly and then upload­ing reports to his son about what he’s watch­ing or not watch­ing….,” Receipt Maven wrote. “I mean, who else is access­ing that data?”

Since he was elect­ed Speak­er of the House in Octo­ber, Johnson’s his­to­ry as a faith-obsessed, elec­tion-deny­ing, far-right Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist has come under the micro­scope, from his time with the anti-LBGTQ orga­ni­za­tion Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom to his claim that school shoot­ings could be blamed on abor­tion and teach­ing evo­lu­tion.

In an inter­view Sun­day morn­ing on Fox News, John­son was asked about his his­to­ry on abor­tion, includ­ing claims that he was opposed to con­tra­cep­tion and IVF treat­ment. “I’m pro-life. I’ve said very clear­ly, I’m a Bible-believ­ing Chris­t­ian, I believe in the sanc­ti­ty of every sin­gle human life,” John­son said, but added, “I’ve not brought for­ward any mea­sure to address any of those issues.” How­ev­er, he didn’t deny whether he would vote against con­tra­cep­tion when the time comes.

Wow. Mike John­son on Fox News Sun­day does­n’t rule out vot­ing against access to con­tra­cep­tion but then says “I real­ly don’t remem­ber any of those mea­sures” when asked about his past votes against repro­duc­tive health care pic.twitter.com/4pDl3BGGD3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) Novem­ber 5, 2023

———–

“Mike John­son Admits He and His Son Mon­i­tor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resur­faced Video” By Daniel Kreps; The Rolling Stones; 11/05/2023

“Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on the “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” at Ben­ton, Louisiana’s Cypress Bap­tist Church — unearthed by X user Receipt Maven last week — the Louisiana rep­re­sen­ta­tive talked about how he installed “account­abil­i­ty soft­ware” called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from inter­net porn and oth­er unsa­vory web­sites.

Yes, dur­ing a “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” talk at Louisiana’s Cypress Bap­tist Church, the new Speak­er of the House open­ly bragged about using the “Covenant Eyes” app so he and his son can be “account­abil­i­ty part­ners”. Except Mike John­son isn’t just shar­ing all of this sen­si­tive data with his son (and vice ver­sa). He’s shar­ing it with the Covenant Eyes com­pa­ny too. Basi­cal­ly all of the data gen­er­at­ed by his phone is poten­tial­ly sent to this creepy com­pa­ny:

...
“It scans all the activ­i­ty on your phone, or your devices, your lap­top, what have you; we do all of it,” John­son told the pan­el about the app.

“It sends a report to your account­abil­i­ty part­ner. My account­abil­i­ty part­ner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If any­thing objec­tion­able comes up, your account­abil­i­ty part­ner gets an imme­di­ate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”

...

“A US Con­gress­man is allow­ing a 3rd Par­ty tech com­pa­ny to scan ALL of his elec­tron­ic devices dai­ly and then upload­ing reports to his son about what he’s watch­ing or not watch­ing….,” Receipt Maven wrote. “I mean, who else is access­ing that data?”
...

Now why did the top­ic of the Con­venant Eyes app come up dur­ing a “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” talk at a Bap­tist Church? Well, as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Sep­tem­ber 2022 WIRED arti­cle, the Covenant Eyes app was actu­al­ly pulled from both the Google app store after WIRED report­ed on the incred­i­ble amount of infor­ma­tion being passed along to these third-par­ty com­pa­nies via these apps. Covenant Eyes has sub­se­quent­ly been restored to Google’s app store back in March. So that was pre­sum­ably part of why it came up dur­ing a “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” talk.

But as we’re also going to see, it appears that Covenant Eyes is par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar with the South­ern Bap­tist church­es. That includes Gra­ce­point, a Cal­i­for­nia-based min­istry that focus­es on col­lege cam­pus­es and claims to “serve stu­dents” on more than 70 cam­pus­es across the US. Impor­tant­ly, Gra­ce­point hails prac­tices the kind of ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ or ‘shep­herd­ing’ prac­tices many for­mer mem­bers describe as cultish. This is a good time to recall how the “Peo­ple of Praise” Catholic com­mu­ni­ty that Supreme Court Jus­tice Amy Coney-Bar­rett hails from has also been accused of engag­ing in sim­i­lar cult-like ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ prac­tices.

Gra­ce­point’s ‘ser­vices’ include help­ing stu­dents secure afford­able apart­ments, and that’s where the creepi­ness of this sto­ry gets extra inter­est­ing. Because, based on this report, installing Covenant Eyes on their phones is some­thing Gra­ce­point asks of the stu­dents in its min­istry. Stu­dents poten­tial­ly receiv­ing assis­tance, like Grant Hao-Wei Lin who recounts the dis­turb­ing expe­ri­ences he had with the Covenant Eyes soft­ware and his church lead­er­ship. With­in a month of installing the app, Hao-Wei Lin start­ed start­ed receiv­ing emails from his church leader about the things he had viewed online. As Hao-Wei Lin describes, he did­n’t real­ly think he was in a posi­tion to refuse the Covenant Eyes app giv­en all the stu­dent assis­tance he was get­ting from Gra­ce­point. And Hao-Wei Lin’s sto­ry is just one exam­ple of a rapid­ly grow­ing ‘shame­ware’ app indus­try that is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty in reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties. A trend that includes church lead­ers typ­i­cal­ly end­ing up as the ‘account­abil­i­ty part­ner’ for church mem­bers.

And while the Covenant Eyes and sim­i­lar apps claim to be exclu­sive­ly focused on fight­ing pornog­ra­phy, it’s capa­ble of col­lect­ing a lot more infor­ma­tion, includ­ing what web­sites you vis­it or social media pages vis­it­ed. As one for­mer Gra­ce­point mem­ber put it, “It’s real­ly not about pornography...It’s about mak­ing you con­form to what your pas­tor wants.” This same per­son recounts, “I remem­ber I had to sit down and have a con­ver­sa­tion with him [her pas­tor] after I Wikipedia’d an arti­cle about athe­ism.” Yes, church lead­ers are able to get noti­fied any time one of their ‘flock’ reads some­thing unap­proved. That’s the top-down lev­el of con­trol being tech­no­log­i­cal­ly enabled here.

It’s that much broad­er, and deep­er, pow­er grab over the per­son­al lives of the mem­bers of these com­mu­ni­ties that’s a big part of the sto­ry here. Because as we’re also going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cles, when we’re talk­ing about the lead­er­ship of the South­ern Bap­tist Church com­mu­ni­ty, we are talk­ing about a major ele­ment of the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed States, with one CNP mem­ber after anoth­er after anoth­er, includ­ing major fig­ures like David Bar­ton. Which, of course, is the same com­mu­ni­ty of lead­ers behind the efforts to over­turn the 2020 and upcom­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 mass polit­i­cal purges. So as we are learn­ing about the eye­brow-rais­ing deci­sion by the new Speak­er of the House to install ‘dis­ci­ple­ship shame­ware’ on his, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that this is just one piece of a much larg­er sto­ry about the ongo­ing plans for a full-spec­trum cap­ture of soci­ety:

Wired

The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shame­ware’ Apps

Church­es are using inva­sive phone-mon­i­tor­ing tech to dis­cour­age “sin­ful” behav­ior. Some soft­ware is see­ing more than con­gre­gants real­ize.

Dhruv Mehro­tra
Secu­ri­ty
Sep 22, 2022 1:00 PM

Gra­ce­point is the kind of evan­gel­i­cal South­ern Bap­tist church that’s com­pelled to pub­licly enu­mer­ate all of the ways it’s not a cult. “We’ll admit that we’re a bit crazy about the Great Com­mis­sion and shar­ing the Gospel,” reads an FAQ page titled, “Is Gra­ce­point a Cult?” So when Grant Hao-Wei Lin came out to a Gra­ce­point church leader dur­ing their week­ly one-on-one ses­sion, he was sur­prised to learn that he wasn’t going to be kicked out. Accord­ing to his church leader, Hao-Wei Lin says, God still loved him in spite of his “strug­gle with same-sex attrac­tion.”

But Gra­ce­point did not leave the mat­ter in God’s hands alone. At their next one-on-one the fol­low­ing week, Hao-Wei Lin says the church leader asked him to install an app called Covenant Eyes on his phone. The app is explic­it­ly mar­ket­ed as anti-pornog­ra­phy soft­ware, but accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, his church leader told him it would help “con­trol all of his urges.”

Covenant Eyes is part of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar ecosys­tem of so-called account­abil­i­ty apps. These apps are mar­ket­ed to both church­es and par­ents as tools to police online activ­i­ty, and they charge a month­ly fee to do so. Some of these apps mon­i­tor every­thing their users see and do on their devices, even tak­ing screen­shots (at least one per minute, in the case of Covenant Eyes) and eaves­drop­ping on web traf­fic, WIRED found. The apps then report a feed of all of the users’ online activ­i­ty direct­ly to a chaperone—an “account­abil­i­ty part­ner,” in the apps’ par­lance. When WIRED pre­sent­ed its find­ings to Google, how­ev­er, the com­pa­ny deter­mined that two of the top account­abil­i­ty apps—Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You—vio­late its poli­cies.

The omni­science of Covenant Eyes soon weighed heav­i­ly on Hao-Wei Lin, who has since left Gra­ce­point. With­in a month of installing the app, he start­ed receiv­ing accusato­ry emails from his church leader ref­er­enc­ing things he had viewed online. “Any­thing you need to tell me?” reads one email Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED. Attached was a report from Covenant Eyes that detailed every sin­gle piece of dig­i­tal con­tent Hao-Wei Lin had con­sumed the pri­or week. It was a trail of dig­i­tal minu­ti­ae accu­mu­lat­ed from nights spent aim­less­ly brows­ing the inter­net, things Hao-Wei Lin could bare­ly remem­ber hav­ing seen—and would have for­got­ten about had a mem­ber of his Church not con­front­ed him. The church leader zeroed in on a sin­gle piece of con­tent that Covenant Eyes had flagged as “Mature”: Hao-Wei Lin had searched “#Gay” on a web­site called Statigr.am, and the app had flagged it.

Gra­ce­point, which focus­es on col­leges, claims to “serve stu­dents” on more than 70 cam­pus­es across the Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to emails between a Covenant Eyes rep­re­sen­ta­tive and a for­mer Gra­ce­point church leader that WIRED reviewed, the com­pa­ny said that in 2012 as many as 450 Gra­ce­point Church mem­bers were signed up to be mon­i­tored through Covenant Eyes.

“I wouldn’t quite call it spy­ware,” says a for­mer mem­ber of Gra­ce­point who was asked to use Covenant Eyes and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s more like ‘shame­ware,’ and it’s just anoth­er way the church con­trols you.”

Sim­i­lar to sur­veil­lance soft­ware like Bark or Net­Nan­ny, which is used to mon­i­tor chil­dren at home and school, “shame­ware” apps are less­er-known tools that are used to keep track of behav­iors par­ents or reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions deem unhealthy or immoral. For­ti­fy, for instance, was devel­oped by the founder of an anti-pornog­ra­phy non­prof­it called Fight the New Drug and tracks how often an indi­vid­ual mas­tur­bates in order to help them over­come “sex­u­al com­pul­siv­i­ty.” The app has been down­loaded over 100,000 times and has thou­sands of reviews on the Google Play store.

The cur­rent iter­a­tion of the Covenant Eyes app was devel­oped by Michael Holm, a for­mer NSA math­e­mati­cian who now serves as a data sci­en­tist for the com­pa­ny. The sys­tem is alleged­ly capa­ble of dis­tin­guish­ing between porno­graph­ic and non-porno­graph­ic images. The soft­ware cap­tures every­thing vis­i­ble on a device’s screen, ana­lyz­ing the images local­ly before slight­ly blur­ring them and send­ing them to a serv­er to be saved. “Image-based pornog­ra­phy detec­tion was a huge con­cep­tu­al change for Covenant Eyes,” Holm told The Chris­t­ian Post, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian news out­let, in 2019. “While I didn’t yet know it, God had put me in that place at that time for a pur­pose high­er than myself, just as I and oth­ers had desired and prayed for.”

Covenant Eyes spokesper­son Dan Arm­strong says the com­pa­ny is “con­cerned” about “peo­ple being mon­i­tored with­out prop­er con­sent.” He adds that “account­abil­i­ty rela­tion­ships are bet­ter off between peo­ple who already know each oth­er and want the best for one anoth­er, such as close per­son­al friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers,” and that the com­pa­ny dis­cour­ages using its app in rela­tion­ships with a pow­er imbal­ance.

Among the top account­abil­i­ty apps—including Accountable2You and Ever­Ac­count­able—Covenant Eyes appears to be the largest play­er. The com­pa­ny orga­nizes con­fer­ences that are attend­ed by thou­sands of peo­ple and ded­i­cat­ed to edu­cat­ing atten­dees about the dan­gers of pornog­ra­phy while pitch­ing the company’s prod­uct as an urgent solu­tion to what it char­ac­ter­izes as a grow­ing moral cri­sis. Accord­ing to the app ana­lyt­ics firm App­Fig­ures, in the past year more than 50,000 peo­ple have down­loaded Covenant Eyes. Rock­e­treach esti­mates that the com­pa­ny has an annu­al rev­enue of $26 mil­lion.

Ed Kang, pas­tor of Gra­ce­point Church in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, and a major fig­ure in the orga­ni­za­tion, says in an email that vol­un­teer staff mem­bers are required to install Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “as part of their staff agree­ment.” But he dis­putes that church lead­ers were instruct­ed to mon­i­tor con­gre­gants’ phone activ­i­ty. “Usu­al­ly it’s who­ev­er they [con­gre­gants] des­ig­nate, and we actu­al­ly dis­cour­age lead­ers from being the account­abil­i­ty part­ners as that seems a bit too heavy,” he writes. (All five for­mer Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who spoke to WIRED said a church leader was their account­abil­i­ty part­ner.) Kang adds that the num­ber of Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who use Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “may be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than 450 nowa­days” and that Accountable2You “has bet­ter pric­ing.”

What’s com­mon across Covenant Eyes, Accountable2You, and Ever­Ac­count­able is their zero-tol­er­ance approach to pornog­ra­phy. All three sug­gest in their mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als that not only is watch­ing porn a moral fail­ure, but any amount of porn con­sump­tion is bad for your health. Their solu­tion: Pro­mote puri­ty through what they call “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty,” a con­cept where­in a com­mu­ni­ty comes togeth­er to con­front a per­son who is liv­ing in sin. At its most basic lev­el, the idea is pret­ty straight­for­ward: Why would any­one watch porn if they are going to have to talk to their par­ents or pas­tor about it?

While these apps claim to have helped many peo­ple over­come pornog­ra­phy addic­tions, experts who study sex­u­al health are skep­ti­cal that the apps have a last­ing pos­i­tive effect. “I’ve nev­er seen any­one who’s been on one of these apps feel bet­ter about them­selves in the long term,” says Nicole Praus, a sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les, who stud­ies the effects of pornog­ra­phy on the brain and the spread of dis­in­for­ma­tion on sex­u­al health. “These peo­ple just end up feel­ing like there’s some­thing wrong with them when the real­i­ty is that there like­ly isn’t.”

But Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You do much more than just police pornog­ra­phy. When WIRED down­loaded, decom­piled, and test­ed Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You, we found that both apps are built to col­lect, mon­i­tor, and report all sorts of inno­cent behav­ior. The appli­ca­tions exploit­ed Android’s acces­si­bil­i­ty per­mis­sions to mon­i­tor almost every­thing some­one does on their phone. While the acces­si­bil­i­ty func­tion­al­i­ties are meant to help devel­op­ers build out fea­tures that assist peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, these apps take advan­tage of such per­mis­sions to either cap­ture screen­shots of every­thing active­ly being viewed on the device or detect the name of apps as they’re being used and record every web­site vis­it­ed in the device’s brows­er.

In Hao-Wei Lin’s case, that includ­ed his Ama­zon pur­chas­es, arti­cles he read, and even which friends’ accounts he looked at on Insta­gram. The trou­ble is, accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, pro­vid­ing his church leader with a ledger of every­thing he did online meant he could always find some­thing to ask him about, and the way Covenant Eyes flagged con­tent didn’t help. For exam­ple, in Covenant Eyes reports that Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED, his online psy­chi­a­try text­book was rat­ed “High­ly Mature,” the most severe cat­e­go­ry of con­tent reserved for “anonymiz­ers, nudi­ty, erot­i­ca, and pornog­ra­phy.” The same was true of any­thing Hao-Wei Lin felt was “remote­ly gay,” like his Statigr.am search­es.

After WIRED con­tact­ed Google about Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You, both apps were sus­pend­ed from the Google Play store. “Google Play per­mits the use of the Acces­si­bil­i­ty API for a wide range of appli­ca­tions,” spokesper­son Danielle Cohen says in an email. “How­ev­er, only ser­vices that are designed to help peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties access their device or oth­er­wise over­come chal­lenges stem­ming from their dis­abil­i­ties are eli­gi­ble to declare that they are acces­si­bil­i­ty tools.”

...

In our tests of Accountable2You pri­or to its sus­pen­sion, we found that the soft­ware sim­i­lar­ly flagged con­tent with key­words like “gay” or “les­bian” in the URL. For instance, when we set up a test account and nav­i­gat­ed to the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Control’s web­site for LGBTQ youth resources, the phone we des­ig­nat­ed as our account­abil­i­ty part­ner was imme­di­ate­ly texted and emailed a “ques­tion­able activ­i­ty report” indi­cat­ing that our test phone had vis­it­ed a “High­ly Ques­tion­able” web­site.

“It’s real­ly not about pornog­ra­phy,” says Brit, a for­mer user of Accountable2You who asked to only be iden­ti­fied by her first name, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s about mak­ing you con­form to what your pas­tor wants.” Brit says she was asked to install the app by her par­ents after she was caught look­ing at pornog­ra­phy and that her moth­er and her pas­tor were both her des­ig­nat­ed account­abil­i­ty part­ners. “I remem­ber I had to sit down and have a con­ver­sa­tion with him [her pas­tor] after I Wikipedia’d an arti­cle about athe­ism,” she says. “I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some kind of right to read what I want to read.”

While account­abil­i­ty apps are large­ly mar­ket­ed to par­ents and fam­i­lies, some also adver­tise their ser­vices to church­es. Accountable2You, for exam­ple, adver­tis­es group rates for church­es or small groups and has set up sev­er­al land­ing pages for spe­cif­ic church­es where mem­bers can sign up. Covenant Eyes, mean­while, employs a direc­tor of Church and Min­istry Out­reach to help onboard reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions.

Accountable2You did not respond to WIRED’s requests for com­ment.

Eva Galperin is direc­tor of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty at the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights non­prof­it, and cofounder of the Coali­tion Against Stalk­er­ware. Galperin says con­sent to such sur­veil­lance is a major con­cern. “One of the key ele­ments of con­sent is that a per­son can feel com­fort­able say­ing no,” she says. “You could argue that any app installed in a church set­ting is done in a coer­cive man­ner.” While WIRED did not speak to any­one who was unaware that the app was on their phone, which is often the case with spy­ware, Hao-Wei Lin says he didn’t feel like he was in a posi­tion where he could say no to his church leader when he was asked to install Covenant Eyes. Gra­ce­point had secured him a $400-a-month apart­ment in Berke­ley, where he was attend­ing col­lege. With­out the church’s sup­port, he might have had nowhere to live.

But this is not the expe­ri­ence of every­one we spoke to. James Nagy is a for­mer Gra­ce­point mem­ber who says he was on both sides of Covenant Eyes reports. Nagy, who is gay, was taught from a young age that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a sin. So when Gra­ce­point offered him a soft­ware solu­tion that claimed to be able to help what he then con­sid­ered to be a moral dilem­ma, he jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty. He says that while he believed many peo­ple at Gra­ce­point were pres­sured to install the app, in his case, the pres­sure came from him­self. “Gra­ce­point didn’t try to change me,” Nagy says. “I tried to change me.” Nagy is now an elder at the Pres­by­ter­ian Church (USA) and until 2021 was a facil­i­ta­tor with the Ref­or­ma­tion Project, a non­prof­it whose mis­sion is to advance LGBTQ inclu­sion in the church.

In the quest to curb behav­ior church­es deem immoral, these account­abil­i­ty apps will col­lect and store extreme­ly sen­si­tive per­son­al infor­ma­tion from their users, includ­ing from those under the age of 18. For­ti­fy, which describes itself as an addic­tion recov­ery app, asks its users to log infor­ma­tion about when they last mas­tur­bat­ed, where they were when it hap­pened, and what device they used. While Fortify’s pri­va­cy pol­i­cy states that the com­pa­ny doesn’t sell or oth­er­wise share this data with third par­ties, its pol­i­cy does allow it to share data with trust­ed third par­ties to per­form sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, though it does not men­tion who these trust­ed third par­ties are. In a phone call, Clay Olsen, the CEO of For­ti­fy par­ent com­pa­ny Impact Suite, clar­i­fied that these trust­ed third par­ties include com­pa­nies like Mix­pan­el, an ana­lyt­ics ser­vice com­pa­ny that tracks user inter­ac­tions with web and mobile appli­ca­tions.

...

When WIRED test­ed the For­ti­fy soft­ware, we found that the app also uti­lizes oth­er tech­nol­o­gy to track users. For instance, because it includes Facebook’s Pix­el, data relat­ed to Fortify’s mas­tur­ba­tion-track­ing form is sent to Face­book. While the data does not appear to include the con­tents of the track­ing form, it does have meta­da­ta about the form itself, includ­ing when it was filled out. Face­book appears to store that data and, when pos­si­ble, asso­ciates it with a user’s account. After set­ting up a test account with Face­book, log­ging in, and then inter­act­ing with For­ti­fy, we were able to see inter­ac­tions with For­ti­fy in a copy of the test account’s data obtained through Facebook’s pri­va­cy cen­ter.

Fortify’s inclu­sion of Facebook’s Pix­el isn’t just a pri­va­cy issue, it’s a secu­ri­ty prob­lem. While test­ing the app, we also noticed that the pass­word to our account was sent in plain­text to Face­book in the URL of the track­ing requests. Face­book claims to have fil­ter­ing mech­a­nisms to pre­vent its sys­tems from stor­ing this type of per­son­al infor­ma­tion, but Fortify’s appar­ent over­sight is still con­cern­ing to experts like Galperin. “That’s a huge vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty,” she says. “It’s the sort of behav­ior that makes me feel like they don’t have secu­ri­ty experts review­ing the app or its poli­cies.”

Face­book spokesper­son Emil Vazquez says com­pa­nies that share sen­si­tive user data with the Meta-owned social media plat­form are vio­lat­ing its poli­cies. “Adver­tis­ers should not send sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion about peo­ple through our Busi­ness Tools. Doing so is against our poli­cies,” Vazquez says. “Our sys­tem is designed to fil­ter out poten­tial­ly sen­si­tive data it is able to detect.” Face­book did not say whether its fil­ters detect­ed the plain­text pass­words sent by For­ti­fy.

After being noti­fied of the pass­word issue, Olsen said For­ti­fy would stop trans­mit­ting users’ unen­crypt­ed pass­words to Face­book. As we went to press, the issue had not yet been addressed.

Hao-Wei Lin has since moved on from Gra­ce­point but is still pro­cess­ing the trau­ma he feels the church has caused him. I met him ear­li­er this month at his the­sis exhi­bi­tion at Par­sons School of Design in New York City, where he is about to get his Mas­ter of Fine Arts in pho­tog­ra­phy. He tells me that it was only after he went back to school that he felt he was in a safe enough space to start pro­cess­ing what he went through at Gra­ce­point.

Hao-Wei Lin’s pho­tog­ra­phy was somber, but not with­out humor. One was of a 3D ren­der­ing of a room where he says he and oth­er mem­bers of Gra­ce­point would meet after their Sun­day ser­vice. A soli­tary fig­ure is hunched over pray­ing, his head rest­ing in the seat of his plas­tic chair. As I look at the pho­to, Hao-Wei Lin tells me he wants the view­er to feel like they are a sur­veil­lance cam­era perched in the top cor­ner of the room. The name of his work: “Covenant Eyes.”

...

———–

“The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shame­ware’ Apps” by Dhruv Mehro­tra; Wired; 09/22/2022

““I wouldn’t quite call it spy­ware,” says a for­mer mem­ber of Gra­ce­point who was asked to use Covenant Eyes and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s more like ‘shame­ware,’ and it’s just anoth­er way the church con­trols you.””

It’s not spy­ware. It’s much worse. It’s ‘shame­ware’ designed to be so overt­ly inva­sive that you’ll be too scared to view any ‘sin­ful’ con­tent in the first place. Or to use the ter­mi­nol­o­gy of this move­ment, puri­ty through “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty”. And that “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty” comes through apps watch­ing vir­tu­al­ly every­thing you do on your phone, includ­ing which arti­cles you read and the social media accounts you vis­it. It’s like giv­ing your church leader a ‘Gods eye’ view of your dig­i­tal life:

...
The cur­rent iter­a­tion of the Covenant Eyes app was devel­oped by Michael Holm, a for­mer NSA math­e­mati­cian who now serves as a data sci­en­tist for the com­pa­ny. The sys­tem is alleged­ly capa­ble of dis­tin­guish­ing between porno­graph­ic and non-porno­graph­ic images. The soft­ware cap­tures every­thing vis­i­ble on a device’s screen, ana­lyz­ing the images local­ly before slight­ly blur­ring them and send­ing them to a serv­er to be saved. “Image-based pornog­ra­phy detec­tion was a huge con­cep­tu­al change for Covenant Eyes,” Holm told The Chris­t­ian Post, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian news out­let, in 2019. “While I didn’t yet know it, God had put me in that place at that time for a pur­pose high­er than myself, just as I and oth­ers had desired and prayed for.”

...

What’s com­mon across Covenant Eyes, Accountable2You, and Ever­Ac­count­able is their zero-tol­er­ance approach to pornog­ra­phy. All three sug­gest in their mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als that not only is watch­ing porn a moral fail­ure, but any amount of porn con­sump­tion is bad for your health. Their solu­tion: Pro­mote puri­ty through what they call “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty,” a con­cept where­in a com­mu­ni­ty comes togeth­er to con­front a per­son who is liv­ing in sin. At its most basic lev­el, the idea is pret­ty straight­for­ward: Why would any­one watch porn if they are going to have to talk to their par­ents or pas­tor about it?

...

But Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You do much more than just police pornog­ra­phy. When WIRED down­loaded, decom­piled, and test­ed Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You, we found that both apps are built to col­lect, mon­i­tor, and report all sorts of inno­cent behav­ior. The appli­ca­tions exploit­ed Android’s acces­si­bil­i­ty per­mis­sions to mon­i­tor almost every­thing some­one does on their phone. While the acces­si­bil­i­ty func­tion­al­i­ties are meant to help devel­op­ers build out fea­tures that assist peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, these apps take advan­tage of such per­mis­sions to either cap­ture screen­shots of every­thing active­ly being viewed on the device or detect the name of apps as they’re being used and record every web­site vis­it­ed in the device’s brows­er.

In Hao-Wei Lin’s case, that includ­ed his Ama­zon pur­chas­es, arti­cles he read, and even which friends’ accounts he looked at on Insta­gram. The trou­ble is, accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, pro­vid­ing his church leader with a ledger of every­thing he did online meant he could always find some­thing to ask him about, and the way Covenant Eyes flagged con­tent didn’t help. For exam­ple, in Covenant Eyes reports that Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED, his online psy­chi­a­try text­book was rat­ed “High­ly Mature,” the most severe cat­e­go­ry of con­tent reserved for “anonymiz­ers, nudi­ty, erot­i­ca, and pornog­ra­phy.” The same was true of any­thing Hao-Wei Lin felt was “remote­ly gay,” like his Statigr.am search­es.

...

“It’s real­ly not about pornog­ra­phy,” says Brit, a for­mer user of Accountable2You who asked to only be iden­ti­fied by her first name, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s about mak­ing you con­form to what your pas­tor wants.” Brit says she was asked to install the app by her par­ents after she was caught look­ing at pornog­ra­phy and that her moth­er and her pas­tor were both her des­ig­nat­ed account­abil­i­ty part­ners. “I remem­ber I had to sit down and have a con­ver­sa­tion with him [her pas­tor] after I Wikipedia’d an arti­cle about athe­ism,” she says. “I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some kind of right to read what I want to read.”
...

Now, if this was a pure­ly vol­un­tary arrange­ment, that would be one thing. Dis­turb­ing and cult­like, but at least not coer­cive. But when we read about how Gra­ce­point basi­cal­ly asks all of their stu­dent mem­bers — many of whom are receiv­ing Gra­ce­point’s assis­tance to attend col­lege — to install this soft­ware this soft­ware, it’s clear that this isn’t a pure­ly vol­un­tary trend. Instead, we’re look­ing at the lead­er­ship of a ‘discipleship’-based move­ment gain­ing an even deep­er direct stran­gle­hold over the lives of their ‘flock’. Hence the con­stant ‘We’re not a cult!’ dec­la­ra­tions:

...
Gra­ce­point is the kind of evan­gel­i­cal South­ern Bap­tist church that’s com­pelled to pub­licly enu­mer­ate all of the ways it’s not a cult. “We’ll admit that we’re a bit crazy about the Great Com­mis­sion and shar­ing the Gospel,” reads an FAQ page titled, “Is Gra­ce­point a Cult?” So when Grant Hao-Wei Lin came out to a Gra­ce­point church leader dur­ing their week­ly one-on-one ses­sion, he was sur­prised to learn that he wasn’t going to be kicked out. Accord­ing to his church leader, Hao-Wei Lin says, God still loved him in spite of his “strug­gle with same-sex attrac­tion.”

...

The omni­science of Covenant Eyes soon weighed heav­i­ly on Hao-Wei Lin, who has since left Gra­ce­point. With­in a month of installing the app, he start­ed receiv­ing accusato­ry emails from his church leader ref­er­enc­ing things he had viewed online. “Any­thing you need to tell me?” reads one email Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED. Attached was a report from Covenant Eyes that detailed every sin­gle piece of dig­i­tal con­tent Hao-Wei Lin had con­sumed the pri­or week. It was a trail of dig­i­tal minu­ti­ae accu­mu­lat­ed from nights spent aim­less­ly brows­ing the inter­net, things Hao-Wei Lin could bare­ly remem­ber hav­ing seen—and would have for­got­ten about had a mem­ber of his Church not con­front­ed him. The church leader zeroed in on a sin­gle piece of con­tent that Covenant Eyes had flagged as “Mature”: Hao-Wei Lin had searched “#Gay” on a web­site called Statigr.am, and the app had flagged it.

...

Gra­ce­point, which focus­es on col­leges, claims to “serve stu­dents” on more than 70 cam­pus­es across the Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to emails between a Covenant Eyes rep­re­sen­ta­tive and a for­mer Gra­ce­point church leader that WIRED reviewed, the com­pa­ny said that in 2012 as many as 450 Gra­ce­point Church mem­bers were signed up to be mon­i­tored through Covenant Eyes.

...

Ed Kang, pas­tor of Gra­ce­point Church in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, and a major fig­ure in the orga­ni­za­tion, says in an email that vol­un­teer staff mem­bers are required to install Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “as part of their staff agree­ment.” But he dis­putes that church lead­ers were instruct­ed to mon­i­tor con­gre­gants’ phone activ­i­ty. “Usu­al­ly it’s who­ev­er they [con­gre­gants] des­ig­nate, and we actu­al­ly dis­cour­age lead­ers from being the account­abil­i­ty part­ners as that seems a bit too heavy,” he writes. (All five for­mer Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who spoke to WIRED said a church leader was their account­abil­i­ty part­ner.) Kang adds that the num­ber of Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who use Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “may be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than 450 nowa­days” and that Accountable2You “has bet­ter pric­ing.”

...

Eva Galperin is direc­tor of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty at the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights non­prof­it, and cofounder of the Coali­tion Against Stalk­er­ware. Galperin says con­sent to such sur­veil­lance is a major con­cern. “One of the key ele­ments of con­sent is that a per­son can feel com­fort­able say­ing no,” she says. “You could argue that any app installed in a church set­ting is done in a coer­cive man­ner.” While WIRED did not speak to any­one who was unaware that the app was on their phone, which is often the case with spy­ware, Hao-Wei Lin says he didn’t feel like he was in a posi­tion where he could say no to his church leader when he was asked to install Covenant Eyes. Gra­ce­point had secured him a $400-a-month apart­ment in Berke­ley, where he was attend­ing col­lege. With­out the church’s sup­port, he might have had nowhere to live.
...

How much spy­ware will peo­ple allow in their lives for an afford­able apart­ment? These might seem like ques­tions spe­cif­ic to these ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ based com­mu­ni­ties of faith. But we aren’t just talk­ing about insu­lar reli­gious move­ments push­ing these kinds of ‘apps’ on their ‘flock’. We are talk­ing about a net­work of reli­gious lead­ers with deep ties to the CNP and the grow­ing polit­i­cal strength of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in Amer­i­ca.

Mike Johnson’s “Profound Influence”: David Bartons’s Christian Nationalist Texas Template

It’s that cru­cial con­text of the grow­ing polit­i­cal pow­er of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists affil­i­at­ed with the CNP that we’re going to look at next. In par­tic­u­lar, the remark­able polit­i­cal influ­ence of some­one we’ve looked at before: David Bar­ton, lead­ing pseu­do-his­to­ri­an of the Chris­t­ian Right. As we’ve seen, “Covenant Eyes” is far from only Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist influ­ence in Mike John­son’s life. He’s sur­round­ed him­self with CNP fig­ures, includ­ing CNP Vice Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford, who John­son once described as a per­son­al men­tor. So it should come as no sur­prise to learn that John­son has described key CNP-mem­ber David Bar­ton as anoth­er source of “pro­found influ­ence” influ­ence in his life. A pro­found influ­ence who is cur­rent­ly work­ing on turn­ing the state of Texas into a kind of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ‘tem­plate’ for the rest of the US. But as we’re going to see, this isn’t just David Bar­ton’s agen­da. It’s the Texas GOP’s agen­da too:

The Texas Tri­bune

Texas activist David Bar­ton wants to end sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speak­er.

Bar­ton has been a sta­ple of Texas’ Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, offer­ing cru­cial sup­port to politi­cians and fre­quent­ly being cit­ed or called on to tes­ti­fy in favor of bills that crit­ics say would erode church-state sep­a­ra­tions.

by Robert Dow­nen
Nov. 3, 2023
5 AM Cen­tral

For near­ly four decades, Texas activist David Bar­ton has barn­stormed state­hous­es and pul­pits across the nation, argu­ing that the sep­a­ra­tion between church and state is a myth and that Amer­i­ca should be run as a Chris­t­ian nation.

Now, he’s clos­er to pow­er than per­haps ever before.

One day after lit­tle-known Repub­li­can U.S. Rep. Mike John­son of Louisiana was elect­ed as the new House speak­er last week, Bar­ton said on a pod­cast that he was already dis­cussing staffing with John­son, his long­time ally in deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, Chris­t­ian caus­es.

“We have some tools at our dis­pos­al now (that) we haven’t had in a long time,” Bar­ton added.

John­son recent­ly spoke at an event host­ed by Barton’s non­prof­it, Wall­Builders; he’s praised Bar­ton and his “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do”; and, before his career as a law­mak­er, John­son worked for Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom — a legal advo­ca­cy group that has helped infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic schools and gov­ern­ment, a key goal of Barton’s move­ment.

Bar­ton, who lives in Ale­do, has been a sta­ple of Texas’ own Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, offer­ing cru­cial pub­lic sup­port to politi­cians and fre­quent­ly being cit­ed or called on to tes­ti­fy in favor of bills that crit­ics say would erode church-state sep­a­ra­tions — includ­ing in front of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

Johnson’s elec­tion — and his prox­im­i­ty to Bar­ton — is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for a grow­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment that claims the Unit­ed States’ foun­da­tion was ordained by God, and there­fore its laws and insti­tu­tions should favor their brand of Chris­tian­i­ty.

“John­son’s rise means that Bar­ton and his fel­low Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists now have unprece­dent­ed access to the levers of pow­er on the nation­al stage, par­al­lel­ing the access they already have here in Texas and some oth­er states,” said David Brock­man, a non-res­i­dent schol­ar in reli­gion and pub­lic pol­i­cy at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bak­er Insti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy.

...

In 1988, Bar­ton found­ed his group, Wall­Builders, to “exert a direct and pos­i­tive influ­ence in gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, and the fam­i­ly by edu­cat­ing the nation con­cern­ing the God­ly foun­da­tion of our coun­try” and “pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion to fed­er­al, state, and local offi­cials as they devel­op pub­lic poli­cies which reflect Bib­li­cal val­ues,” accord­ing to the group’s web­site.

Since then, Bar­ton has been arguably the most influ­en­tial fig­ure in a grow­ing move­ment to under­mine the estab­lish­ment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amend­ment, which states that “Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion.”

Bar­ton claims the clause has been mis­un­der­stood. He argues that most of the Found­ing Fathers were “ortho­dox, evan­gel­i­cal” Chris­tians, and that it would thus be more accu­rate to read the estab­lish­ment clause’s use of the word “reli­gion” as a stand-in for “Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.”

“We would best under­stand the actu­al con­text of the First Amend­ment by say­ing, ‘Con­gress shall make no law estab­lish­ing one Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion as the nation­al denom­i­na­tion,’” he has said.

Bar­ton also argues that the coun­try’s founders “nev­er intend­ed the First Amend­ment to become a vehi­cle to pro­mote a plu­ral­ism of oth­er reli­gions.”

In his mind, the wall sep­a­rat­ing church and state was only meant to extend one way, pro­tect­ing reli­gion — specif­i­cal­ly, Chris­tian­i­ty — from the gov­ern­ment, but not vice ver­sa.

“‘Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state’ cur­rent­ly means almost exact­ly the oppo­site of what it orig­i­nal­ly meant,” his group’s web­site claims.

And he argues that most of what he con­sid­ers society’s ills — from school shoot­ings, low stan­dard­ized test scores and drug use to divorce, crime and LGBTQ+ peo­ple — are the nat­ur­al con­se­quences of aban­don­ing the Judeo-Chris­t­ian virtues, as artic­u­lat­ed in his form of Chris­tian­i­ty, that he says are the bedrock of the nation’s found­ing. Some­times, he’s drawn fire for those views — such as when he said the lack of cure for AIDS was God’s vengeance for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty or when he com­pared the Third Reich’s “evils” to the “homo­sex­u­al lifestyle” in 2017.

Bar­ton, a self-styled “ama­teur his­to­ri­an,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actu­al his­to­ri­ans and schol­ars, who note that he has no for­mal train­ing and that his work is filled with selec­tive quotes, mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and inac­cu­ra­cies — cri­tiques that Bar­ton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of white­wash­ing the Found­ing Fathers — par­tic­u­lar­ly, their slave own­ing — to fit his nar­ra­tive of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowl­edged using uncon­firmed quotes from his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was so wide­ly panned by Chris­t­ian aca­d­e­mics that it prompt­ed a sep­a­rate book, “Get­ting Jef­fer­son Right,” to debunk all of his inac­cu­ra­cies, and was lat­er pulled by its Chris­t­ian pub­lish­er because “the basic truths just were not there.”

Despite that, Bar­ton has remained a fix­ture in con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cir­cles and Repub­li­can Par­ty pol­i­tics. He served as vice chair of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and, in 2004, was tapped for cler­gy out­reach by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s reelec­tion cam­paign. In 2010, his fel­low Tex­an and promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive per­son­al­i­ty Glenn Beck praised him as “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now.” Bar­ton was an ear­ly and impor­tant endors­er of Sen. Ted Cruz’s unex­pect­ed first win in 2012. And in 2016, Bar­ton ran one of mul­ti­ple super PACs that were cru­cial to Cruz’s reelec­tion.

...

In Texas, Bar­ton has become increas­ing­ly instru­men­tal among GOP politi­cians. He and Wall­Builders cur­rent­ly work close­ly with Rick Green, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive and cur­rent leader of Patri­ot Acad­e­my, a Drip­ping Springs-based group that trains young adults, church­es and oth­ers how to “influ­ence gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy with a Bib­li­cal world­view” and bor­rows heav­i­ly from Barton’s teach­ings.

Bar­ton has also railed against the John­son Amend­ment, which pro­hibits tax-exempt groups, includ­ing church­es, from direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy. And he is fre­quent­ly called on to sup­port laws that would infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic life — includ­ing in pub­lic schools. In May, he and his son, Tim­o­thy Bar­ton, tes­ti­fied in favor of a bill — which lat­er failed — that would have required all Texas pub­lic school class­rooms to dis­play the Ten Com­mand­ments.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Barton’s work was praised as “great” by Sen. Don­na Camp­bell, R‑New Braun­fels. His the­o­ries were echoed by Sen. Mayes Mid­dle­ton, R‑Galveston, who said that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is “not a real doc­trine. And the bil­l’s spon­sor, Sen. Phil King, R‑Weatherford, extolled Bar­ton and his son as “esteemed wit­ness­es.”

Oth­er promi­nent Texas Repub­li­cans have sim­i­lar­ly echoed Bar­ton’s views, includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the Unit­ed States “a Chris­t­ian nation” and said “there is no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. It was not in the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

“We were a nation found­ed upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Patrick said last year.

The main­stream­ing of Barton’s views has cor­re­spond­ed with a series of U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions that have allowed for a greater infu­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere, and a bur­geon­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment on the right that was tur­bocharged by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his promise to white evan­gel­i­cals that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” should they sup­port him.

Feb­ru­ary polling from the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute found that more than half of Repub­li­cans adhere to or sym­pa­thize with foun­da­tion­al aspects of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, includ­ing beliefs that the U.S. should be a strict­ly Chris­t­ian nation. Of those respon­dents, PRRI found, rough­ly half sup­port­ed hav­ing an author­i­tar­i­an leader who main­tains Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance in soci­ety. Experts have also found strong cor­re­la­tions between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs and oppo­si­tion to immi­gra­tion, racial jus­tice and reli­gious diver­si­ty.

Johnson’s elec­tion to House Speak­er shows how nor­mal­ized such beliefs have become, said Aman­da Tyler, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Bap­tist Joint Com­mit­tee for Reli­gious Lib­er­ty, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based group that advo­cates for a strong wall between gov­ern­ment and reli­gion. She not­ed that some Repub­li­cans — includ­ing U.S. Rep. Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, R‑Georgia, have embraced the title of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist in recent years.

Tyler said that Johnson’s views are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing because of his back­ground as both a South­ern Bap­tist and as a con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer. Bap­tists, she not­ed, have a long his­to­ry of advo­ca­cy for strong church-state sep­a­ra­tions because of the per­se­cu­tion they faced dur­ing the country’s found­ing — a stance that she said John­son has betrayed through­out his legal and polit­i­cal career.

“He has worked active­ly for these prin­ci­ples that fur­ther Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism,” Tyler said. “I am also a Bap­tist, and to see some­one who is a Bap­tist real­ly reject foun­da­tion­al con­cepts of reli­gious free­dom for all — con­cepts which are real­ly core to what it means to be a Bap­tist — is also very dis­heart­en­ing.”

John­son played a cen­tral role in attempts to over­turn the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by craft­ing a legal brief that was signed by more than 100 U.S. House Repub­li­cans in sup­port of a law­suit filed by Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton that sought to have elec­tion results thrown out in four swing states by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

At the same time that he was aid­ing the legal charge to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, John­son was also cul­ti­vat­ing clos­er ties to fig­ures in the New Apolostolic Ref­or­ma­tion, a fast-grow­ing move­ment of ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive preach­ers, tel­e­van­ge­lists, self-described prophets and faith heal­ers who abide by the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date” — a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist-adja­cent the­ol­o­gy that says Chris­tians must ful­fill a divine man­date to rule over all sev­en aspects of soci­ety (fam­i­ly, reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, media, enter­tain­ment, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ment) in order to ush­er in the “end times.”

Dri­ven by that the­ol­o­gy, New Apolostic Ref­or­ma­tion fig­ures played major roles in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, com­bin­ing Trump’s lies about a stolen elec­tion with claims that they were engaged in “spir­i­tu­al war­fare” with their polit­i­cal ene­mies and, thus, extreme and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic mea­sures were not only nec­es­sary, but God-ordained.

———-

“Texas activist David Bar­ton wants to end sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speak­er.” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 11/03/2023

“Johnson’s elec­tion — and his prox­im­i­ty to Bar­ton — is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for a grow­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment that claims the Unit­ed States’ foun­da­tion was ordained by God, and there­fore its laws and insti­tu­tions should favor their brand of Chris­tian­i­ty.”

The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment just keeps accru­ing more and more pow­er and influ­ence. It took the ele­va­tion of Mike John­son — a rel­a­tive­ly unknown mem­ber of the House until now who pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the CNP-dom­i­nat­ed Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom — to end the par­ty squab­ble. Why Jon­son, of all peo­ple? That’s part of the sig­nif­i­cance of John­son’s unlike­ly abil­i­ty to gar­ner the unan­i­mous sup­port of the GOP cau­cus to end this bizarre intra-par­ty speak­er­ship fight.

And a day lat­er, we have Bar­ton open­ly brag­ging on a pod­cast about how his long­time ally just become the speak­er and how Bar­ton was already involved with staffing dis­cus­sions with John­son. So John­son chose to put ‘discipleship’-style apps on his phone and has now been con­sult­ing Bar­ton about staffing deci­sions. What kind of ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ role is Bar­ton play­ing for the new Speak­er of the House?

...
One day after lit­tle-known Repub­li­can U.S. Rep. Mike John­son of Louisiana was elect­ed as the new House speak­er last week, Bar­ton said on a pod­cast that he was already dis­cussing staffing with John­son, his long­time ally in deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, Chris­t­ian caus­es.

“We have some tools at our dis­pos­al now (that) we haven’t had in a long time,” Bar­ton added.

John­son recent­ly spoke at an event host­ed by Barton’s non­prof­it, Wall­Builders; he’s praised Bar­ton and his “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do”; and, before his career as a law­mak­er, John­son worked for Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom — a legal advo­ca­cy group that has helped infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic schools and gov­ern­ment, a key goal of Barton’s move­ment.
...

And, of course, when we see David Bar­ton cit­ed as a pro­found influ­ence on Mike John­son’s life, that influ­ence isn’t lim­it­ed to John­son. Bar­ton is a cen­tral char­ac­ter in con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, and in par­tic­u­lar in Tex­as­’s pow­er­ful Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist com­mu­ni­ty, and has been for years. He was vice chair of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and declared “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now” in 2010 by Glenn Beck:

...
Bar­ton, who lives in Ale­do, has been a sta­ple of Texas’ own Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, offer­ing cru­cial pub­lic sup­port to politi­cians and fre­quent­ly being cit­ed or called on to tes­ti­fy in favor of bills that crit­ics say would erode church-state sep­a­ra­tions — includ­ing in front of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

...

“John­son’s rise means that Bar­ton and his fel­low Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists now have unprece­dent­ed access to the levers of pow­er on the nation­al stage, par­al­lel­ing the access they already have here in Texas and some oth­er states,” said David Brock­man, a non-res­i­dent schol­ar in reli­gion and pub­lic pol­i­cy at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bak­er Insti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy.

...

Bar­ton, a self-styled “ama­teur his­to­ri­an,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actu­al his­to­ri­ans and schol­ars, who note that he has no for­mal train­ing and that his work is filled with selec­tive quotes, mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and inac­cu­ra­cies — cri­tiques that Bar­ton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of white­wash­ing the Found­ing Fathers — par­tic­u­lar­ly, their slave own­ing — to fit his nar­ra­tive of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowl­edged using uncon­firmed quotes from his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was so wide­ly panned by Chris­t­ian aca­d­e­mics that it prompt­ed a sep­a­rate book, “Get­ting Jef­fer­son Right,” to debunk all of his inac­cu­ra­cies, and was lat­er pulled by its Chris­t­ian pub­lish­er because “the basic truths just were not there.”

Despite that, Bar­ton has remained a fix­ture in con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cir­cles and Repub­li­can Par­ty pol­i­tics. He served as vice chair of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and, in 2004, was tapped for cler­gy out­reach by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s reelec­tion cam­paign. In 2010, his fel­low Tex­an and promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive per­son­al­i­ty Glenn Beck praised him as “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now.” Bar­ton was an ear­ly and impor­tant endors­er of Sen. Ted Cruz’s unex­pect­ed first win in 2012. And in 2016, Bar­ton ran one of mul­ti­ple super PACs that were cru­cial to Cruz’s reelec­tion.
...

And what was “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now” work­ing on at the time that made him so impor­tant? The same thing he’s been work­ing on since he found­ed Wall­Builders in 1988: over­turn­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State, allow­ing for the state back­ing of spe­cif­ic Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions:

...
In 1988, Bar­ton found­ed his group, Wall­Builders, to “exert a direct and pos­i­tive influ­ence in gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, and the fam­i­ly by edu­cat­ing the nation con­cern­ing the God­ly foun­da­tion of our coun­try” and “pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion to fed­er­al, state, and local offi­cials as they devel­op pub­lic poli­cies which reflect Bib­li­cal val­ues,” accord­ing to the group’s web­site.

Since then, Bar­ton has been arguably the most influ­en­tial fig­ure in a grow­ing move­ment to under­mine the estab­lish­ment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amend­ment, which states that “Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion.”

Bar­ton claims the clause has been mis­un­der­stood. He argues that most of the Found­ing Fathers were “ortho­dox, evan­gel­i­cal” Chris­tians, and that it would thus be more accu­rate to read the estab­lish­ment clause’s use of the word “reli­gion” as a stand-in for “Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.”

“We would best under­stand the actu­al con­text of the First Amend­ment by say­ing, ‘Con­gress shall make no law estab­lish­ing one Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion as the nation­al denom­i­na­tion,’” he has said.

Bar­ton also argues that the coun­try’s founders “nev­er intend­ed the First Amend­ment to become a vehi­cle to pro­mote a plu­ral­ism of oth­er reli­gions.”

In his mind, the wall sep­a­rat­ing church and state was only meant to extend one way, pro­tect­ing reli­gion — specif­i­cal­ly, Chris­tian­i­ty — from the gov­ern­ment, but not vice ver­sa.

“‘Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state’ cur­rent­ly means almost exact­ly the oppo­site of what it orig­i­nal­ly meant,” his group’s web­site claims.

...

In Texas, Bar­ton has become increas­ing­ly instru­men­tal among GOP politi­cians. He and Wall­Builders cur­rent­ly work close­ly with Rick Green, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive and cur­rent leader of Patri­ot Acad­e­my, a Drip­ping Springs-based group that trains young adults, church­es and oth­ers how to “influ­ence gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy with a Bib­li­cal world­view” and bor­rows heav­i­ly from Barton’s teach­ings.
...

And then there’s Bar­ton’s cru­sade against the laws ban­ning tax-exempt groups, like church­es, from direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy. Or his push to get the Ten Com­mand­ments post­ed in all pub­lic school class­rooms, a move that earned him praise from Texas Law­mak­ers like CNP-mem­ber Mayes Mid­dle­ton, who declared that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is “not a real doc­trine”:

...
Bar­ton has also railed against the John­son Amend­ment, which pro­hibits tax-exempt groups, includ­ing church­es, from direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy. And he is fre­quent­ly called on to sup­port laws that would infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic life — includ­ing in pub­lic schools. In May, he and his son, Tim­o­thy Bar­ton, tes­ti­fied in favor of a bill — which lat­er failed — that would have required all Texas pub­lic school class­rooms to dis­play the Ten Com­mand­ments.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Barton’s work was praised as “great” by Sen. Don­na Camp­bell, R‑New Braun­fels. His the­o­ries were echoed by Sen. Mayes Mid­dle­ton, R‑Galveston, who said that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is “not a real doc­trine. And the bil­l’s spon­sor, Sen. Phil King, R‑Weatherford, extolled Bar­ton and his son as “esteemed wit­ness­es.”
...

Even Lt. Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick is com­fort­able being open about his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. David Bar­ton’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da real­ly is the Texas GOP’s agen­da. Bar­ton is just the fig­ure­head pro­vid­ing alleged his­tor­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for that shared agen­da:

...
Oth­er promi­nent Texas Repub­li­cans have sim­i­lar­ly echoed Bar­ton’s views, includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the Unit­ed States “a Chris­t­ian nation” and said “there is no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. It was not in the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

“We were a nation found­ed upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Patrick said last year.
...

But it’s not just the Texas GOP behind this agen­da. Polls reveal a major­i­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers sup­port the idea of an author­i­tar­i­an leader who main­tains Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance in soci­ety. David Bar­ton has A LOT of fans:

...
The main­stream­ing of Barton’s views has cor­re­spond­ed with a series of U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions that have allowed for a greater infu­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere, and a bur­geon­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment on the right that was tur­bocharged by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his promise to white evan­gel­i­cals that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” should they sup­port him.

Feb­ru­ary polling from the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute found that more than half of Repub­li­cans adhere to or sym­pa­thize with foun­da­tion­al aspects of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, includ­ing beliefs that the U.S. should be a strict­ly Chris­t­ian nation. Of those respon­dents, PRRI found, rough­ly half sup­port­ed hav­ing an author­i­tar­i­an leader who main­tains Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance in soci­ety. Experts have also found strong cor­re­la­tions between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs and oppo­si­tion to immi­gra­tion, racial jus­tice and reli­gious diver­si­ty.
...

And when Mike John­son craft­ed that legal brief in sup­port of a law­suit seek­ing to over­turn the elec­tion results of four swing states, it was Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton who waged that law­suit. The Texas GOP is a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist cau­cus:

...
John­son played a cen­tral role in attempts to over­turn the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by craft­ing a legal brief that was signed by more than 100 U.S. House Repub­li­cans in sup­port of a law­suit filed by Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton that sought to have elec­tion results thrown out in four swing states by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

At the same time that he was aid­ing the legal charge to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, John­son was also cul­ti­vat­ing clos­er ties to fig­ures in the New Apolostolic Ref­or­ma­tion, a fast-grow­ing move­ment of ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive preach­ers, tel­e­van­ge­lists, self-described prophets and faith heal­ers who abide by the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date” — a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist-adja­cent the­ol­o­gy that says Chris­tians must ful­fill a divine man­date to rule over all sev­en aspects of soci­ety (fam­i­ly, reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, media, enter­tain­ment, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ment) in order to ush­er in the “end times.”

Dri­ven by that the­ol­o­gy, New Apolostic Ref­or­ma­tion fig­ures played major roles in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, com­bin­ing Trump’s lies about a stolen elec­tion with claims that they were engaged in “spir­i­tu­al war­fare” with their polit­i­cal ene­mies and, thus, extreme and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic mea­sures were not only nec­es­sary, but God-ordained.
...

As we can see, David Bar­ton’s polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed fan base is much larg­er than the new Speak­er of the House. He’s got the Texas Repub­li­can del­e­ga­tion more or less total­ly on board. And as the fol­low­ing May 2023 Texas Tri­bune arti­cle excerpt describes, that vision of turn­ing Texas into a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism tem­plate of the nation is clos­er to fruition than ever before thanks, in part, to the CNP-select­ed con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court major­i­ty that has made a num­ber of recent ‘Chris­t­ian Nationalist’-friendly rul­ings worth plen­ty more pre­sum­ably on the way:

The Texas Tri­bune

Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians want more reli­gion in pub­lic life. Texas law­mak­ers are lis­ten­ing.

Oppo­nents of church-state sep­a­ra­tion have been embold­ened by recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions and the grow­ing accep­tance of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism on the right.

by Robert Dow­nen
May 4, 2023
5 AM Cen­tral

Wav­ing a copy of the Ten Com­mand­ments and a 17th-cen­tu­ry text­book, ama­teur his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton recent­ly argued that Chris­tian­i­ty has always formed the basis of Amer­i­can moral­i­ty and thus is essen­tial to Texas class­rooms.

“This is tra­di­tion­al, his­tor­i­cal stuff,” he told a Texas Sen­ate Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee last month. “It’s hard to say that any­thing is more tra­di­tion­al in Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion than was the Ten Com­mand­ments.”

For near­ly four decades, Bar­ton has preached that mes­sage to politi­cians and pews across the coun­try, argu­ing that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is a “myth” that is dis­proven by cen­turies-old texts, like the school book he showed sen­a­tors, that ref­er­ence the Ten Com­mand­ments and oth­er reli­gious texts.

Now, Barton’s once-fringe the­o­ries could be cod­i­fied into Texas law.

Embold­ened by recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions and the grow­ing accep­tance of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism on the right, Bar­ton and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians could see mon­u­men­tal vic­to­ries in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

Already this leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the Texas Sen­ate has approved bills that would require the Ten Com­mand­ments to be post­ed in all pub­lic school class­rooms and allow unli­censed reli­gious chap­lains to sup­plant the role of school coun­selors. Mean­while, there are numer­ous efforts to elim­i­nate or weak­en two state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that pro­hib­it direct state sup­port of reli­gious schools and orga­ni­za­tions, a key plank of the broad­er school-choice move­ment.

In leg­isla­tive hear­ings, law­mak­ers have called church-state sep­a­ra­tion a “false doc­trine,” and bill sup­port­ers have blamed it for school shoot­ings, crime and grow­ing LGBTQ accep­tance.

In Texas, they believe they can cre­ate a nation­al mod­el for infus­ing Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere.

“We think there can be a restora­tion of faith in Amer­i­ca, and we think get­ting Ten Com­mand­ments on these walls is a great way to do that,” for­mer state Rep. Matt Krause tes­ti­fied last month. “We think we can real­ly set a trend for the rest of the coun­try.”

A new legal and polit­i­cal land­scape

It’s the lat­est bat­tle in what Bar­ton and oth­er Chris­t­ian lead­ers have framed as a long-run­ning and exis­ten­tial war with the sec­u­lar world, rhetoric that has helped fuel Repub­li­can move­ments to crack down on LGBTQ rights, ban books, push back against gun con­trol and lim­it the teach­ing of Amer­i­can his­to­ry in class­rooms, among oth­er oft-framed “cul­ture war” issues.

And it comes amid grow­ing accep­tance on the right of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, the belief that the Unit­ed States’ found­ing was ordained by God and, thus, its laws and insti­tu­tions should favor Chris­tians.

Bol­stered by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump — who shored up evan­gel­i­cal sup­port through his vow that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” under his lead­er­ship — and ani­mat­ed by a rapid­ly sec­u­lar­iz­ing and diver­si­fy­ing soci­ety, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments have become main­stream among large fac­tions of the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

...

“The nation has start­ed to become con­scious of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism with­in the last hand­ful of years,” said David Brock­man, a non­res­i­dent schol­ar at the Reli­gion and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Pro­gram at Rice University’s Bak­er Insti­tute. “But we’ve been pret­ty much under the thumb of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism here in Texas for at least a decade.”

He notes that Texas is home to a litany of well-known pur­vey­ors of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism or relat­ed ide­olo­gies, includ­ing BlazeTV founder Glenn Beck; U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz; and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the Unit­ed States “a Chris­t­ian nation” and said “there is no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. It was not in the con­sti­tu­tion.”

“We were a nation found­ed upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Patrick said last year.

Such claims have been ele­vat­ed by a cadre of far-right financiers who have shov­eled small for­tunes into polit­i­cal cam­paigns and insti­tu­tions that seek to erode the wall between church and state, includ­ing through can­di­dates for the State Board of Edu­ca­tion and local school boards.

Those efforts have found an avid audi­ence with­in the state’s mas­sive evan­gel­i­cal — and most­ly white — con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ing bloc and have been rou­tine­ly ampli­fied by Texas megachurch pas­tors who’ve made no bones about pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit, even after oth­ers have said they’re run­ning afoul of restric­tions on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by tax-exempt non­prof­its.

A 2022 Texas Tri­bune and ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion found that at least 20 church­es in Texas may have vio­lat­ed such rules. Among them was Mer­cy Cul­ture Church in Fort Worth, which has host­ed Kel­ly Shack­elford — whose First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute has been instru­men­tal in legal chal­lenges to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. Krause, the for­mer Texas rep­re­sen­ta­tive who tes­ti­fied last month in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill, recent­ly took a job at First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute after a decade in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture.

On Sun­day, Krause’s suc­ces­sor, state Rep. Nate Schat­z­line, also spoke at the church.

“The dev­il is not afraid of a church that stays with­in the four walls,” Schat­z­line said before tout­ing a wave of suc­cess­ful con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates in Tar­rant Coun­ty and anti-LGBTQ bills he’s sup­port­ing in the Leg­is­la­ture. “That’s what hap­pens when the church wakes up. That’s what hap­pens when men and women of God get behind oth­er men and women of God.”

Found­ing fathers: A wall of sep­a­ra­tion

But few fig­ures have been as instru­men­tal in the push to erode church-state sep­a­ra­tion as Bar­ton, a self-taught his­to­ri­an who found­ed his group, Wall­Builders, in 1988 with a mis­sion to “present America’s for­got­ten his­to­ry and heroes, with an empha­sis on the moral, reli­gious, and con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tion on which Amer­i­ca was built.”

Bar­ton served as vice chair of the Texas GOP from 1997 to 2006 and has pushed back for decades against con­ven­tion­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the First Amendment’s estab­lish­ment clause, which pro­hibits the gov­ern­ment from estab­lish­ing a state reli­gion. Bar­ton argues the “wall of sep­a­ra­tion” that the Found­ing Fathers envi­sioned has been mis­con­strued. In his view, that sep­a­ra­tion was only meant to extend one way, pro­tect­ing reli­gion — osten­si­bly, Chris­tian­i­ty — from the gov­ern­ment, not vice ver­sa.

“‘Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state’ cur­rent­ly means almost exact­ly the oppo­site of what it orig­i­nal­ly meant,” his group’s web­site claims.

Among Barton’s favorite tac­tics: cit­ing cen­turies-old texts, such as the one he pre­sent­ed to the Texas Sen­ate com­mit­tee, that he says men­tion Chris­tian­i­ty or the Ten Com­mand­ments. That, he says, sug­gests a long­stand­ing Judeo-Chris­t­ian influ­ence on Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion, law and moral­i­ty. Aban­don­ing those uni­ver­sal moral stan­dards, he and oth­er Wall­Builders lead­ers claim, helps explain most of America’s ills — includ­ing the recent mass shoot­ing at a Nashville, Ten­nessee, Chris­t­ian school.

“Our young peo­ple are hav­ing a very hard time deter­min­ing what’s right and wrong,” David Barton’s son, Tim­o­thy Bar­ton, told the Sen­ate com­mit­tee last month. “We’re see­ing peo­ple do what they think is right. But what they think is right is often things like what result­ed in Nashville. … Instead we should be pre­sent­ing those morals [in the Ten Com­mand­ments] in front of stu­dents so they know there is a basis of moral­i­ty and killing is always wrong.”

Barton’s broad­er the­o­ries have been wide­ly ridiculed and debunked by his­to­ri­ans and oth­er schol­ars who note that he has no for­mal his­tor­i­cal train­ing and that his 2012 book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was recalled by its Chris­t­ian pub­lish­er because of fac­tu­al errors.

Even so, he’s been court­ed by polit­i­cal hope­fuls, includ­ing Cruz, and his the­o­ries have been rou­tine­ly ele­vat­ed by oth­ers in the Texas GOP.

In just one hear­ing last month, state Sen. Don­na Camp­bell, R‑New Braun­fels, praised one of Barton’s books as “great”; Sen. Mayes Mid­dle­ton, R‑Galveston, called sep­a­ra­tion of church and state “not a real doc­trine ; and Weath­er­ford Repub­li­can Sen. Phil King brought forth Bar­ton — an “esteemed” wit­ness — to sup­port King’s bill to post the Ten Com­mand­ments in pub­lic school class­rooms.

Such a pro­pos­al, King said, would not have been fea­si­ble a few years ago.

“How­ev­er, the legal land­scape has changed,” he added.

A “mas­sive shift” in the law?

King has a point.

In 2022’s Kennedy v. Bre­mer­ton School Dis­trict, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Wash­ing­ton state high school foot­ball coach who argued that his reli­gious rights were vio­lat­ed because his employ­er, a pub­lic school, sought to lim­it his prac­tice of silent­ly pray­ing in the mid­dle of the foot­ball field imme­di­ate­ly after games. The dis­trict had asked Kennedy to pray at a lat­er time to avoid the appear­ance that the school was endors­ing his beliefs, then declined to renew his con­tract after he refused to do so.

In a 6–3 rul­ing, the court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty said Kennedy’s prayers were pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment, reject­ing the district’s con­tention that allow­ing the prayers amount­ed to an offi­cial endorse­ment of reli­gion.

The rul­ing dealt a sub­stan­tial blow to the so-called Lemon test. Estab­lished by the court’s 1971 deci­sion in Lemon v. Kurtz­man, the Lemon test held that the gov­ern­ment could inter­act with reli­gion so long as it served a sec­u­lar pur­pose, did not advance or inhib­it reli­gion, and did not cre­ate an exces­sive gov­ern­ment entan­gle­ment with reli­gion.

In the Kennedy deci­sion, the Supreme Court also ruled that restric­tions on reli­gious expres­sion must take into account his­tor­i­cal con­text and prac­tices — a direc­tive that some have tak­en as a green light to put reli­gion in the class­room, includ­ing Krause and First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, which rep­re­sent­ed Kennedy.

“The law has under­gone a mas­sive shift,” Krause said dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill. “It’s not too much to say that the Kennedy case for reli­gious lib­er­ty was much like the Dobbs case was for the pro-life move­ment. It was a fun­da­men­tal shift.”

Experts aren’t yet sold on that claim.

“Any­one who tells you that the law in this area is clear, or has ever been clear, is prob­a­bly try­ing to sell you some­thing,” said pro­fes­sor Steven Col­lis, direc­tor of both the First Amend­ment Cen­ter and the Law and Reli­gion Clin­ic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin.

While Col­lis added that the Lemon test was often ignored or dis­put­ed by courts because of its vague lan­guage, he said the Kennedy rul­ing neutered much of it, as well as the government’s abil­i­ty to lim­it reli­gious expres­sion based on claims that doing so amounts to a state-sanc­tioned endorse­ment of reli­gion.

But Col­lis not­ed that part of the Kennedy rul­ing was pred­i­cat­ed on the idea that the coach was not forc­ing play­ers to pray with him, an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion to the court’s major­i­ty. He said there’s a case to be made that post­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments or oth­er reli­gious texts in a class­room — where chil­dren are required to remain — is far dif­fer­ent. And he expects such leg­is­la­tion would face court chal­lenges in which oppo­nents say that it amounts to a “coer­cion of reli­gion upon stu­dents.”

“There has been a long tra­di­tion in the Unit­ed States of say­ing, what­ev­er gov­ern­ment is doing, it has to do neu­tral­ly between reli­gions — it can’t treat one reli­gion dif­fer­ent­ly than anoth­er. And cer­tain­ly, it can’t favor one reli­gion over anoth­er,” he said. “One of the chal­lenges with hav­ing some­thing like the Ten Com­mand­ments up in a pub­lic school — or real­ly any reli­gious texts up on the wall in a pub­lic school — is you imme­di­ate­ly have to ask the ques­tion, whose reli­gion is it going to be?”

...

Rul­ings embraced by school choice advo­cates

A poten­tial legal chal­lenge to the Ten Com­mand­ments or a sim­i­lar bill would come amid a broad­er shift in how the U.S. Supreme Court and some state leg­is­la­tures treat reli­gious expres­sion.

The series of moves has deeply con­cerned advo­cates for church-state sep­a­ra­tion. Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, for exam­ple, Con­gress made the his­toric deci­sion to let reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing some of the nation’s largest and most influ­en­tial con­gre­ga­tions — receive for­giv­able fed­er­al dis­as­ter loans.

In 2021, Texas law­mak­ers passed leg­is­la­tion that required donat­ed “In God We Trust” signs to be placed in pub­lic class­rooms. Not long after, a North Texas school dis­trict reject­ed signs in Ara­bic that were donat­ed by a local par­ent while allow­ing Eng­lish ver­sions that were pro­vid­ed by Patri­ot Mobile, a Grapevine-based con­ser­v­a­tive cell­phone com­pa­ny that has fund­ed numer­ous Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist cam­paigns in the state, includ­ing anti-LGBTQ school board can­di­dates.

Mean­while, the Supreme Court, dri­ven by its con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty, has hand­ed down a series of con­se­quen­tial rul­ings that have raised ques­tions about so-called Blaine amend­ments in 37 state con­sti­tu­tions, includ­ing Texas’, that pro­hib­it or lim­it state fund­ing of reli­gious insti­tu­tions, includ­ing schools:

* In 2020, the court ruled 5–4 in favor of a Mon­tana woman, Kendra Espinoza, who argued that her state’s Depart­ment of Rev­enue improp­er­ly barred her from using a tax-cred­it schol­ar­ship at a Chris­t­ian school.

* In 2022, jus­tices sim­i­lar­ly ruled that Maine could not bar reli­gious insti­tu­tions from pub­lic fund­ing, a sig­nif­i­cant deci­sion to ongo­ing debates over pub­lic edu­ca­tion financ­ing in Texas.

Those rul­ings have been embraced by the broad­er school choice move­ment.

The same week that state Sen. Bran­don Creighton, R‑Conroe, filed Sen­ate Bill 8 — a mas­sive over­haul of the Texas edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem that would allow reli­gious schools to receive state fund­ing via edu­ca­tion­al sav­ings accounts — he request­ed an expe­dit­ed opin­ion from Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton about whether the state’s Blaine amend­ments were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

Days pri­or, state Sen. Angela Pax­ton — a McK­in­ney Repub­li­can who is mar­ried to the attor­ney gen­er­al — filed leg­is­la­tion that would repeal “the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion that pro­hibits the appro­pri­a­tion of state mon­ey or prop­er­ty for the ben­e­fit of any sect, reli­gious soci­ety, or the­o­log­i­cal or reli­gious sem­i­nary.”

The next week, the attor­ney gen­er­al released an opin­ion that said Texas’ Blaine amend­ments vio­lat­ed the U.S. Constitution’s free-exer­cise clause.

There are also two bills, one in the House and one in the Sen­ate, that sim­i­lar­ly chal­lenge the state’s Blaine amend­ments.

...

———-

“Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians want more reli­gion in pub­lic life. Texas law­mak­ers are lis­ten­ing.” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 05/04/2023

“Bol­stered by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump — who shored up evan­gel­i­cal sup­port through his vow that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” under his lead­er­ship — and ani­mat­ed by a rapid­ly sec­u­lar­iz­ing and diver­si­fy­ing soci­ety, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments have become main­stream among large fac­tions of the Repub­li­can Par­ty.”

It may be a cult. But it’s a main­stream cult. At least with­in the con­tem­po­rary Repub­li­can Par­ty. The kind of cult that was more than hap­py to make a deal with a fig­ure like Don­ald Trump and his promis­es that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” under his lead­er­ship. And Trump is far from the only major polit­i­cal force pro­pelling Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism at a nation­al lev­el. The hard right Supreme Court major­i­ty has Bar­ton and his allies in Texas poised for much greater vic­to­ries to come. They’re embold­ened for a rea­son. Texas has been head­ing toward this moment for well over a decade. Or, as CNP mem­ber Matt Krause tes­ti­fied back in April dur­ing a leg­isla­tive hear­ing on a bill to put the 10 Com­mand­ments in Texas pub­lic school class­rooms ‚“We think there can be a restora­tion of faith in Amer­i­ca, and we think get­ting Ten Com­mand­ments on these walls is a great way to do that...We think we can real­ly set a trend for the rest of the coun­try”:

...
For near­ly four decades, Bar­ton has preached that mes­sage to politi­cians and pews across the coun­try, argu­ing that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is a “myth” that is dis­proven by cen­turies-old texts, like the school book he showed sen­a­tors, that ref­er­ence the Ten Com­mand­ments and oth­er reli­gious texts.

Now, Barton’s once-fringe the­o­ries could be cod­i­fied into Texas law.

Embold­ened by recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions and the grow­ing accep­tance of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism on the right, Bar­ton and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians could see mon­u­men­tal vic­to­ries in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

Already this leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the Texas Sen­ate has approved bills that would require the Ten Com­mand­ments to be post­ed in all pub­lic school class­rooms and allow unli­censed reli­gious chap­lains to sup­plant the role of school coun­selors. Mean­while, there are numer­ous efforts to elim­i­nate or weak­en two state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that pro­hib­it direct state sup­port of reli­gious schools and orga­ni­za­tions, a key plank of the broad­er school-choice move­ment.

In leg­isla­tive hear­ings, law­mak­ers have called church-state sep­a­ra­tion a “false doc­trine,” and bill sup­port­ers have blamed it for school shoot­ings, crime and grow­ing LGBTQ accep­tance.

In Texas, they believe they can cre­ate a nation­al mod­el for infus­ing Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere.

“We think there can be a restora­tion of faith in Amer­i­ca, and we think get­ting Ten Com­mand­ments on these walls is a great way to do that,” for­mer state Rep. Matt Krause tes­ti­fied last month. “We think we can real­ly set a trend for the rest of the coun­try.”

...

“The nation has start­ed to become con­scious of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism with­in the last hand­ful of years,” said David Brock­man, a non­res­i­dent schol­ar at the Reli­gion and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Pro­gram at Rice University’s Bak­er Insti­tute. “But we’ve been pret­ty much under the thumb of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism here in Texas for at least a decade.”
...

And it appears that allow­ing the bla­tant pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit is one of the ways Texas is push­ing that Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist enve­lope, with a 2022 inves­ti­ga­tion find­ing at least 20 church­es in Texas vio­lat­ing those rules, includ­ing the Mer­cy Cul­ture Church in Fort Worth, which fea­tured talks by CNP Vice Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford who has long argued against the sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State. Again, recall how Mike John­son referred to Shack­elford has a men­tor. That’s who was invit­ed to give a talk at a megachurch that is in open defi­ance of laws pro­hib­it­ed pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit:

...
Such claims have been ele­vat­ed by a cadre of far-right financiers who have shov­eled small for­tunes into polit­i­cal cam­paigns and insti­tu­tions that seek to erode the wall between church and state, includ­ing through can­di­dates for the State Board of Edu­ca­tion and local school boards.

Those efforts have found an avid audi­ence with­in the state’s mas­sive evan­gel­i­cal — and most­ly white — con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ing bloc and have been rou­tine­ly ampli­fied by Texas megachurch pas­tors who’ve made no bones about pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit, even after oth­ers have said they’re run­ning afoul of restric­tions on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by tax-exempt non­prof­its.

A 2022 Texas Tri­bune and ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion found that at least 20 church­es in Texas may have vio­lat­ed such rules. Among them was Mer­cy Cul­ture Church in Fort Worth, which has host­ed Kel­ly Shack­elford — whose First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute has been instru­men­tal in legal chal­lenges to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. Krause, the for­mer Texas rep­re­sen­ta­tive who tes­ti­fied last month in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill, recent­ly took a job at First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute after a decade in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture.

On Sun­day, Krause’s suc­ces­sor, state Rep. Nate Schat­z­line, also spoke at the church.

“The dev­il is not afraid of a church that stays with­in the four walls,” Schat­z­line said before tout­ing a wave of suc­cess­ful con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates in Tar­rant Coun­ty and anti-LGBTQ bills he’s sup­port­ing in the Leg­is­la­ture. “That’s what hap­pens when the church wakes up. That’s what hap­pens when men and women of God get behind oth­er men and women of God.”
...

And when we look at the recent Supreme Court rul­ings that have fueled this move­ment, look at who was behind those law­suits: the plain­tiffs in the 2022 Kennedy v. Bre­mer­ton School Dis­trict rul­ing were rep­re­sent­ed by Kel­ly Shack­elford’s Lib­er­ty insti­tute, which at that point had Matt Krause work­ing for them. This was a CNP-backed law­suit:

...
“How­ev­er, the legal land­scape has changed,” he added.

A “mas­sive shift” in the law?

King has a point.

In 2022’s Kennedy v. Bre­mer­ton School Dis­trict, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Wash­ing­ton state high school foot­ball coach who argued that his reli­gious rights were vio­lat­ed because his employ­er, a pub­lic school, sought to lim­it his prac­tice of silent­ly pray­ing in the mid­dle of the foot­ball field imme­di­ate­ly after games. The dis­trict had asked Kennedy to pray at a lat­er time to avoid the appear­ance that the school was endors­ing his beliefs, then declined to renew his con­tract after he refused to do so.

In a 6–3 rul­ing, the court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty said Kennedy’s prayers were pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment, reject­ing the district’s con­tention that allow­ing the prayers amount­ed to an offi­cial endorse­ment of reli­gion.

The rul­ing dealt a sub­stan­tial blow to the so-called Lemon test. Estab­lished by the court’s 1971 deci­sion in Lemon v. Kurtz­man, the Lemon test held that the gov­ern­ment could inter­act with reli­gion so long as it served a sec­u­lar pur­pose, did not advance or inhib­it reli­gion, and did not cre­ate an exces­sive gov­ern­ment entan­gle­ment with reli­gion.

In the Kennedy deci­sion, the Supreme Court also ruled that restric­tions on reli­gious expres­sion must take into account his­tor­i­cal con­text and prac­tices — a direc­tive that some have tak­en as a green light to put reli­gion in the class­room, includ­ing Krause and First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, which rep­re­sent­ed Kennedy.

“The law has under­gone a mas­sive shift,” Krause said dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill. “It’s not too much to say that the Kennedy case for reli­gious lib­er­ty was much like the Dobbs case was for the pro-life move­ment. It was a fun­da­men­tal shift.”
...

Texas Repub­li­cans are clear­ly enthu­si­as­tic about turn­ing their state into a mod­el for the nation. David Bar­ton’s mod­el for the nation. A mod­el that implic­it­ly got a big endorse­ment with Mike John­son’s new role as Speak­er of the House.

But, for addi­tion­al con­text, don’t over­in­ter­pret the sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance of a Bar­ton super-fan becom­ing speak­er. Because as the fol­low­ing piece in Cur­rent reminds us, Bar­ton has been quite pop­u­lar among Repub­li­can speak­ers for years:

Cur­rent

Mike John­son is not the only David Bar­ton fan to be Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

John Fea | Novem­ber 1, 2023

I was recent­ly talk­ing with a reporter who asked me if Mike John­son was the first Speak­er of the House to embrace the teach­ings of David Bar­ton. I didn’t know the answer off the top of my head so after the call I decid­ed to do some research. Here’s what I found:

Paul Ryan, who served as Speak­er from 2015–2019, was also a fan of the con­ser­v­a­tive activist who invokes the past to advance his polit­i­cal agen­da. Or at least this is what he told Dan Cum­mins of Charis­ma mag­a­zine in 2016:

Though we may nev­er agree total­ly with everyone’s pol­i­tics, let me tell you why I’m thank­ful that Paul Ryan is speak­er of the House and that he won his pri­ma­ry race. Speak­er Ryan, a Roman Catholic, is a pas­sion­ate dis­ci­ple and fol­low­er of Jesus Christ. He is sur­round­ing him­self with god­ly spir­i­tu­al pas­tors.

He said, “The only hope for Amer­i­ca is a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. … We must have spir­i­tu­al solu­tions to our prob­lems, or we’re in for trou­bled times as a nation” (spo­ken to JoAnn and me alone in a pri­vate, 30-minute con­ver­sa­tion). He asked that I help him invite pas­tors to the Capi­tol for spir­i­tu­al advice. So far, we have had more than 200 pas­tors vis­it the Capi­tol, and we plan for many more for this fall.

Ryan makes meet­ing pas­tors a top pri­or­i­ty in his busy sched­ule. JoAnn and I have an open work­ing rela­tion­ship with his staff. They told us that in six weeks’ time, they had to turn down more than 500 invi­ta­tions to var­i­ous impor­tant events (I saw the print out sheets), “but he’s doing the pas­tors brief­in­gs because he’s pas­sion­ate about it,” a top staffer told us.

Speak­er Ryan is an avid fan of his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. “I lis­ten to him all the time, even in my car while dri­ving,” he said. Because of Barton’s teach­ings, Speak­er Ryan is very knowl­edge­able of the 1954 John­son Amend­ment (putting polit­i­cal speech restric­tions on pas­tors from their pul­pits) and its dev­as­tat­ing effects on our cul­ture.

...

But wait, there’s more:

In Jan­u­ary 2009, John Boehn­er, who was speak­er from 2011–2015, appeared on Barton’s radio show Wall­builders Live when he was the House minor­i­ty leader to talk about the cen­sus:

To be fair, Boehn­er did not say, as Mike John­son did, that Bar­ton and com­pa­ny had a “pro­found influ­ence” on his life. The inter­view actu­al­ly had noth­ing to do with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism direct­ly, but it is still worth not­ing that Wall­builders Live was on Boehner’s radar screen.

Bar­ton has had an influ­ence on con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics for a long time. If you can find any­thing about his con­nec­tions to Den­ny Hastert or Kevin McCarthy let me know.

———–

“Mike John­son is not the only David Bar­ton fan to be Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives” by John Fea; Cur­rent; 11/01/2023

“Speak­er Ryan is an avid fan of his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. “I lis­ten to him all the time, even in my car while dri­ving,” he said. Because of Barton’s teach­ings, Speak­er Ryan is very knowl­edge­able of the 1954 John­son Amend­ment (putting polit­i­cal speech restric­tions on pas­tors from their pul­pits) and its dev­as­tat­ing effects on our cul­ture.”

David Bar­ton is quite the celebri­ty when it comes to Repub­li­can Speak­ers of the House. He almost sounds like a men­tor to Paul Ryan. Was Bar­ton involved in Ryan­s’s staffing deci­sion too?

All in all, it’s quite a love fest between Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist lead­ers and Repub­li­can politi­cians. Even more so after the pres­i­den­cy of Don­ald Trump and the pro­found impact his term in office had the com­po­si­tion of the Supreme Court. And as the fol­low­ing May 2016 arti­cle about plans for a June gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump reminds us, this same net­work of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist lead­ers was bear hug­ging Trump’s polit­i­cal ascent from the very begin­ning. It was ‘Who’s Who’ of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism:

* CNP Found­ing Mem­ber James Dob­son
* CNP mem­ber Ralph Reed
* CNP mem­ber Pen­ny Nance
* CNP Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Bob McEwen
* CNP mem­ber Tim Wild­mon
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP VP start­ing in 2020) Kel­ly Shack­elford, who also hap­pens to be Mike John­son’s men­tor.
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP Pres­i­dent in 2018) Tony Perkins
* CNP mem­ber Bill Dal­las

That was the del­e­ga­tion of Chris­t­ian lead­ers who gath­ered to meet with Don­ald Trump back in May of 2016. It was a CNP del­e­ga­tion sent to assess Don­ald Trump. And the rest is his­to­ry. Specif­i­cal­ly, the his­to­ry of the ongo­ing love sto­ry between Trump and his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism base that even­tu­al­ly result­ed in the CNP-orches­trat­ed attempts to over­turn in 2020 elec­tion:

AL.com

South­ern Bap­tist, oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet with Don­ald Trump: Reports

By Lea­da Gore
Pub­lished: May. 23, 2016, 11:41 a.m.

Don­ald Trump will meet with some of the nation’s most promi­nent Evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious groups.

The meet­ing comes as sev­er­al Evan­gel­i­cal leader have spo­ken out against Trump, the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee.

The gath­er­ing, first report­ed by Fox News, will include South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion Pres­i­dent Ron­nie Floyd; Focus on the Fam­i­ly founder James Dob­son; Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion founder Ralph Reed; Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca CEO Pen­ny Nance; Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Bob McEwen; Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Tim Wild­mon; First Lib­er­ty Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­le­ford; and pas­tors Jack Gra­ham of Pre­ston­wood Bap­tist Church in Plano, Texas and Ed Young in Grapevine, Texas.

South­ern Bap­tist pres­i­dent Floyd told Fox News he wants to learn more about Trump’s poli­cies and plans.

...

Set for June 21 in New York, the meet­ing is being orga­nized by Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Tony Perkins. For­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date turned Trump sup­port­er Dr. Ben Car­son and Bill Dal­las of Unit­ed in Pur­pose assist­ed in plan­ning the event, which is expect­ed to include as many as 500 reli­gious lead­ers. The meet­ing will not include an endorse­ment or straw poll but rather pro­vide atten­dees time to ask ques­tions about Trump, who has main­tained his poli­cies will align with those of Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.

———–

“South­ern Bap­tist, oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet with Don­ald Trump: Reports” by Lea­da Gore; AL.com; 05/23/2016

“Set for June 21 in New York, the meet­ing is being orga­nized by Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Tony Perkins.> For­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date turned Trump sup­port­er Dr. Ben Car­son and Bill Dal­las of Unit­ed in Pur­pose assist­ed in plan­ning the event, which is expect­ed to include as many as 500 reli­gious lead­ers. The meet­ing will not include an endorse­ment or straw poll but rather pro­vide atten­dees time to ask ques­tions about Trump, who has main­tained his poli­cies will align with those of Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.”

Orga­nized by CNP mem­bers Perkins and Dal­las, and attend­ed by CNP mem­bers Dob­son, Reed, Nance, McEwen, Wild­mon, and Shack­elford. This was the CNP’s oppor­tu­ni­ty to for­mal­ly gov­ern­ment Trump their bless­ing:

...
“The gath­er­ing, first report­ed by Fox News, will include South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion Pres­i­dent Ron­nie Floyd; Focus on the Fam­i­ly founder James Dob­son; Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion founder Ralph Reed; Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca CEO Pen­ny Nance; Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Bob McEwen; Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Tim Wild­mon; First Lib­er­ty Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­le­ford; and pas­tors Jack Gra­ham of Pre­ston­wood Bap­tist Church in Plano, Texas and Ed Young in Grapevine, Texas.”
...

And note the two pas­tors who also attend­ed: Jack Gra­ham and Ed Young. While Ed Young’s name does­n’t show up on the avail­able leaked CNP mem­ber­ship lists, there are indi­ca­tions that Young is indeed a CNP mem­ber includ­ing a 2015 doc­u­ment put out by the CNP sum­ma­riz­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on mar­riage equal­i­ty. But whether or not Young is a for­mal CNP mem­ber, he’s clear­ly a play­er in this agen­da. A rather sig­nif­i­cant one, as we’re going to see below. And some­one with an atro­cious track record of cov­er­ing up sys­tem­at­ic abus­es inside the South­ern Bap­tist Con­fer­ence (SBC) net­work of church­es. Sys­temic abus­es, includ­ing abus­es by a promi­nent Texas CNP mem­ber, the SBC lead­er­ship was very aware of very many years.

The SBC’s Megachurch Sexual Abuse Mega-scandal. It’s the CNP’s Mega-scandal Too

Paul Pressler isn’t a house­hold name. Unless you have to come from the house­hold of an aspir­ing Texas Repub­li­can politi­cian, in which case you may have heard of the promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer and SBC leader. Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge and one-time White House nom­i­nee under George H.W. Bush, is the kind of fig­ure whose sup­port GOP hope­ful have long sought out out and brag about should they get it. That includes Texas Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, who has report­ed­ly known Pressler since he was a teenag­er. In 2012, Pressler — who was CNP pres­i­dent from 1988–1990 — host­ed a meet­ing at his ranch where con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers agreed to sup­port the CNP mem­ber Rick San­to­rum over Mitt Rom­ney in the GOP pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. Pressler is described as hav­ing been instru­men­tal in push­ing the SBC’s 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing March 2023 Hous­ton Pub­lic Radio arti­cle, Pressler has been using his pow­er and influ­ence inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty to sex­u­al­ly assault young men for decades, going back to at least the 1978 when he was forced out of Hous­ton church for molest­ing a teenag­er in a sauna.

For years, Pressler’s law firm part­ners paid him in young men. That’s right, Paul Pressler was­n’t paid a salary for his work at Wood­fill & Pressler LLP. He was instead paid in the form of a string of employ­ees tasked to serve him as per­son­al assis­tants. Most of these assis­tants are described as young men who typ­i­cal­ly worked out of his Riv­er Oaks man­sion. Two of those assis­tants have now accused Pressler of sex­u­al assaults. They are among at least six men who have now come for­ward to accuse Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct includ­ing two who say they were minors at the time. Notably, Pressler’s for­mer per­son­al assis­tant, John Fields, also shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list. You have to won­der what’s under that rock.

Jared Wood­fill — Pressler’s part­ner of Wood­fill & Pressler LLP — is no stranger to Pressler’s pol­i­tics or sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties. Wood­fill, who led the Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty from 2002 to 2014, is him­self a promi­nent Hous­ton con­ser­v­a­tive activist who led the cam­paign against a Hous­ton 2015 ordi­nance on the bal­lot that would have pro­tect­ed the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. And based on what we’re learn­ing from the doc­u­ments released in a law­suit against Pressler, Wood­fill was no stranger to Pressler’s pat­tern of prey­ing on young men. Worse, he appar­ent­ly enabled it, often arrang­ing for meet­ings between Pressler and young male con­ser­v­a­tives in his cir­cle.

Nor is the cur­rent law­suit the first against Pressler. Wood­fill rep­re­sent­ed him in a 2004 law­suit stem­ming from a 2003 inci­dent in a Dal­las hotel room. As Wood­fill admit­ted dur­ing a tes­ti­mo­ny back in Feb­ru­ary, Wood­fill helped set­tle the 2004 suit for $450,000 in a one-day medi­a­tion that also includ­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. It was a notable dis­clo­sure giv­en that Wood­fill has been assert­ing since 2016 that he knew noth­ing about Pressler’s groom­ing behav­ior.

2016 is also the year Pressler report­ed­ly invit­ed a young male attor­ney who had just joined Wood­fil­l’s law­firm back to his Drip­ping Springs ranch where they have a 10-per­son hot tub for a naked boys-only hot tub­bing expe­ri­ence. When the young man brought up the inci­dent with a long­time Wood­fill law firm employ­ee, he learned this was not the first time they 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,” accord­ing to the man’s affi­davit.

The invite to this young attor­ney took place at the home of CNP mem­ber Steven Hotze, anoth­er con­ser­v­a­tive activist who co-led the 2015 anti-LBGTQ cam­paign with Wood­fill. Wood­fill is also rep­re­sent­ing Hotze in a sep­a­rate crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion over an Octo­ber 2020 inci­dent in which a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Mark Aguirre held at gun­point an A/C repair­man who he believed was trans­port­ing fake bal­lots. Aguiree was paid $266,400 by the group Lib­er­ty Cen­ter for God and Coun­try, whose CEO is Hotze.

But it’s just inci­dents that hap­pens to these young attor­neys that trig­gered the cur­rent ongo­ing law­suit play­ing out. Decades of rape and molesta­tion start­ed, accord­ing to Duane Rollins, when he was 14 and a mem­ber of Pressler’s church youth group. Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of molesta­tion begin­ning when Rollins was 14. Notably, Rollins is the same per­son who sued Pressler back in 2004, which end­ed in the $450,000 settlement/confidentiality agree­ment. Also notable is that Rollins did actu­al­ly end up going to work at Wood­fill & Pressler in 2002, so Rollins’s case against against Pressler poten­tial­ly involves abus­es that took place in both church and law office set­tings.

And that brings us to anoth­er oth­er major facet of this sto­ry: Pressler’s abuse inside the SBC net­work of church­es almost sure­ly could have gone unchecked for decades because that’s the giant scan­dal that’s been unfold­ing for the SBC com­mu­ni­ty for years now. Unchecked sex­u­al abuse, often at the hands of known abusers and con­vict­ed sex offend­ed repeat­ed­ly allowed back into posi­tions of pow­er and influ­ence inside the SBC’s 47k church­es. And all of this is wide­ly tol­er­at­ed by the SBC lead­er­ship, includ­ing promi­nent SBC lead­ers like Ed Young. Pressler’s decades of unchecked abuse did­n’t just hap­pen because Paul Pressler is a pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial man. He’s instead a pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial exam­ple of some­thing that is appar­ent­ly ram­pant inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty with almost no effort by the SBC lead­er­ship to do any­thing oth­er than cov­er it up.

And that brings us to anoth­er SBC leader impli­cat­ed in Rollins’s lat­est law­suit: Paige Pat­ter­son, a for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent. Pat­ter­son and Pressler are described as two of fig­ures who pushed the SBC to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible back in the 1980s and 90s. Pat­ter­son, and his wife Dorothy Kel­ly Pat­ter­son, are both mem­bers of the CNP. Pat­ter­son has been ignor­ing and cov­er­ing up sex­u­al abuse claims in the SBC for decades, accord­ing to the law­suit, includ­ed accu­sa­tions made by mul­ti­ple women against his ex-pro­tégé, Dar­rell Gilyard. In May of 2018, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, after it was revealed he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down.”

It’s the ‘Catholic Church’ cri­sis for Bap­tists. But it’s also awful con­text for this broad­er sto­ry we’ve been look­ing at of the pro­found ascen­den­cy of the CNP’s pow­er and influ­ence as exem­pli­fied by the ascen­sion of a back­bencher David Bar­ton-fan with creepy theo­crat­ic spy­ware on his phone to the House Speak­er­ship. But also exem­pli­fied by the CNP’s abil­i­ty to orches­trate the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion and get away with almost no scruti­ny and then pro­ceed to open­ly plan a Sched­ule F/Project 2025 mass purge. And then there’s the CNP’s sol­id grip on the Supreme Court for decades to come. It’s a meta cri­sis of sys­temic abus­es of pow­er under the guise of piety:

Hous­ton Pub­lic Radio

Hous­ton GOP offi­cial knew for years of child sex abuse claims against South­ern Bap­tist leader, law part­ner

Under oath, out­spo­ken anti-gay activist Jared Wood­fill said he was told in 2004 that Paul Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused a minor. But Wood­fill did not cut ties with the South­ern Bap­tist leader — and said he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s alleged behav­ior when anoth­er young man came for­ward about alleged sex­u­al mis­con­duct in 2016.

Robert Dow­nen, The Texas Tri­bune
Post­ed on March 27, 2023, 11:46 AM (Last Updat­ed: March 27, 2023, 12:50 PM)

In 2016, for­mer Har­ris Coun­ty GOP chair Jared Wood­fill received an urgent warn­ing about Paul Pressler, his long­time law part­ner and a South­ern Bap­tist leader. In an email, a 25-year-old attor­ney from Wood­fil­l’s Hous­ton firm said he’d recent­ly gone to lunch with Pressler, who told him “lewd sto­ries about being naked on beach­es with young men” and then invit­ed him to skin­ny-dip at his ranch.

Wood­fill — an out­spo­ken anti-gay politi­cian and promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive activist 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 and indig­na­tion. “This 85-year-old man has nev­er made any inap­pro­pri­ate com­ments or actions toward me or any one I know of,” he wrote of Pressler at the time.

...

In recent sworn tes­ti­mo­ny, Wood­fill said he’d known since 2004 of an alle­ga­tion that Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused a child. Wood­fill learned of those claims, he said, dur­ing medi­a­tion of an assault law­suit filed against Pressler that he helped qui­et­ly set­tle for near­ly a half-mil­lion dol­lars at the time. Despite his knowl­edge of the accu­sa­tion, Wood­fill con­tin­ued to work with Pressler for near­ly a decade — lean­ing on Pressler’s name and rep­u­ta­tion to bol­ster their firm, Wood­fill & Pressler LLP.

Rather than pay him a salary, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, the firm pro­vid­ed Pressler a string of employ­ees to serve as per­son­al assis­tants, most of them young men who typ­i­cal­ly worked out of his Riv­er Oaks man­sion. Two have accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct.

Ref­er­ence

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Wood­fill led the Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty from 2002 to 2014 and has for years been at the helm of anti-LGBTQ and oth­er hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments in Hous­ton and Texas. In 2015, amid tense debate over a Hous­ton equal rights ordi­nance that would have made LGBTQ work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion ille­gal, he and well-known GOP pow­er bro­ker Steven Hotze co-led a cam­paign that, among oth­er things, said the mea­sure would allow chil­dren to be sex­u­al­ly groomed and abused in bath­rooms, paid for hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in oppo­si­tion adver­tise­ments and com­pared the gay rights move­ment to Nazis.

Since then, Wood­fill has remained a fix­ture in Texas GOP pol­i­tics: Dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic, he and Hotze filed numer­ous law­suits chal­leng­ing COVID-19 man­dates, and he’s cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal can­di­dates chal­leng­ing the 2022 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 A/C repair­man who he believed was trans­port­ing fake bal­lots.

Wood­fil­l’s depo­si­tion came as part of an ongo­ing, six-year-old law­suit in which a for­mer mem­ber of Pressler’s church youth group accus­es him of decades of rape begin­ning when he was 14. The suit also accus­es Wood­fill and oth­ers, includ­ing lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, of con­ceal­ing and enabling Pressler’s behav­ior — claims that prompt­ed a 2019 Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and San Anto­nio Express-News inves­ti­ga­tion into wide­spread sex­u­al abuse in the SBC, the nation’s sec­ond-largest faith group.

Released over the last few weeks, the thou­sands of pages of new court records show how Wood­fill leaned on his Pressler con­nec­tions to bol­ster his polit­i­cal and legal career — despite warn­ings about his law part­ner’s behav­ior. And they shed new light on how Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge and one-time White House nom­i­nee under George H.W. Bush, alleged­ly used his pres­tige and influ­ence to evade respon­si­bil­i­ty amid repeat­ed accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and assault dat­ing back to at least 1978, when he was forced out of a Hous­ton church for alleged­ly molest­ing a teenag­er in a sauna.

Pressler is best known for his work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, where he was instru­men­tal in push­ing its 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible, strong­ly denounce homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And for decades, he was a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an uber-secre­tive net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, mega donors, media fig­ures and reli­gious elites led by Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil.

The new records show that in 2004, lead­ers of First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive South­ern Bap­tist con­gre­ga­tion, inves­ti­gat­ed claims that Pressler, then a dea­con, had groped and undressed a col­lege stu­dent at his Hous­ton man­sion. The church lead­ers deemed the behav­ior “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate and warned Pressler but took no fur­ther action, cit­ing dif­fer­ing accounts of the inci­dent and Pressler’s stature in their church and the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. In recent depo­si­tions, plain­tiffs attor­neys also briefly men­tion new com­plaints from two oth­ers about Pressler, though those doc­u­ments remain sealed ahead of the loom­ing civ­il tri­al in the case.

At least six men have now accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct, includ­ing two who say they were molest­ed while minors and two who say they were solicit­ed for sex in inci­dents after 2004, when Wood­fill and First Bap­tist lead­ers were sep­a­rate­ly made aware of com­plaints about Pressler.

Pressler has not been crim­i­nal­ly charged in any of the inci­dents. Nei­ther Wood­fill nor his attor­ney respond­ed to a list of ques­tions about Wood­fil­l’s han­dling of the alle­ga­tions against Pressler. In a Wednes­day email, Wood­fil­l’s lawyer David Oubre said they are “con­fi­dent Mr. Wood­fill will be suc­cess­ful in defeat­ing these claims.”

“A big name”

The new alle­ga­tions came as part of an ongo­ing law­suit in which Duane Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of rape and molesta­tion begin­ning when Rollins was 14 and a mem­ber of the church youth group led by Pressler, who was then in his late 40s. Those alleged attacks, Rollins says in court doc­u­ments, pushed him into years of drug and alco­hol addic­tions that kept him in prison for much of his adult life. While in prison ther­a­py ses­sions in 2015, Rollins says he uncov­ered repressed mem­o­ries of sex­u­al abuse by Pressler. He was lat­er diag­nosed with post-trau­mat­ic stress as a “direct result of the child­hood sex­u­al trau­ma he suf­fered,” accord­ing to med­ical records filed in court.

In 2017, Rollins sued Pressler, Wood­fill and South­ern Bap­tist fig­ures and insti­tu­tions that he says enabled and con­cealed Pressler’s behav­ior, argu­ing that, because of trau­ma and manip­u­la­tion by Pressler, it took him decades to rec­on­cile that he was sex­u­al­ly abused. Last year, after the defen­dants fought to have the suit tossed by argu­ing the assault claims were out­side the statute of lim­i­ta­tions, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with Rollins‘ argu­ments and allowed the law­suit to go for­ward.

The new fil­ings give insight into Wood­fil­l’s long rela­tion­ship with Pressler begin­ning in the mid-1990s. At the time, Pressler, then 65, was phas­ing out of years of work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and focus­ing more on pol­i­tics. Wood­fill was still in his 20s and said Pressler’s con­ser­v­a­tive bona fides were a valu­able asset.

Pressler’s sup­port has long been sought and tout­ed by Repub­li­can polit­i­cal hope­fuls, includ­ing Sen. Ted Cruz, who has known Pressler since he was a teenag­er. In 2012, Pressler host­ed a retreat at his Texas ranch, where a group of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers agreed to sup­port Rick San­to­rum over Mitt Rom­ney in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

...

Over the course of their law part­ner­ship, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, Pressler did almost no work for the firm, but was pro­vid­ed numer­ous young, male assis­tants who tend­ed to his and his fam­i­ly’s needs — includ­ing his son who has a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty.

“I can think of one or two cas­es that he brought in,” Wood­fill tes­ti­fied. “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.”

The lat­est law­suit marks the sec­ond time Rollins has sued Pressler over alle­ga­tions of assault.

In 2004, Wood­fill rep­re­sent­ed Pressler in a law­suit in which Rollins accused him of assault stem­ming from a 2003 inci­dent in a Dal­las hotel room, dur­ing which Rollins says Pressler injured him dur­ing a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion and, cit­ing his stature as a for­mer Texas judge, threat­ened him if he came for­ward. In order to avoid pub­lic­i­ty, Wood­fill helped set­tle the suit for $450,000 in a one-day medi­a­tion that also includ­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment, he said in tes­ti­mo­ny last month.

Copies of the law­suit did not refer to the inci­dent as sex­u­al assault. But as the case was being medi­at­ed, Wood­fill said under oath last month, he was told by Rollins’ then-attor­ney that Pressler had “been sex­u­al­ly inap­pro­pri­ate” with Rollins, had “done some things to him when he was a child” and “sex­u­al­ly abused (Rollins) … when he was a child or in a youth group or some­thing.”

Dur­ing his depo­si­tion, Wood­fill declined to dis­cuss most oth­er details of the 2004 law­suit, cit­ing the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. Even so, Wood­fil­l’s tes­ti­mo­ny direct­ly con­tra­dicts his pre­vi­ous asser­tions that he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s alleged groom­ing and sex­u­al mis­con­duct toward young men — claims that he has repeat­ed since at least 2016, when he denied any knowl­edge of such behav­ior after the young attor­ney detailed Pressler’s alleged invi­ta­tion to hot tub naked, as well as in sub­se­quent media inter­views and court fil­ings.

Rollins’ attor­neys say Wood­fill “had an incen­tive to turn a blind eye to Mr. Pressler’s abuse.”

...

Records show that Pressler remained a lim­it­ed part­ner at the firm until around 2012, when Wood­fill said Pressler retired. The firm was renamed Wood­fill Law Firm and has been involved in numer­ous law­suits involv­ing con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es over the years. The firm has also faced accu­sa­tions of impro­pri­ety, includ­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing alle­ga­tions that sparked a 2018 raid and inves­ti­ga­tion by the Har­ris Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office, though no charges were ever filed in the mat­ter.

“If brought to light”

Rollins’ lat­est law­suit also brought to light oth­er sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions against Pressler, includ­ing an affi­davit that was sub­mit­ted as part of the 2004 law­suit. Wood­fill declined to com­ment on the affi­davit while under oath, cit­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty rules.

In the affi­davit, which was made pub­lic this year, anoth­er col­lege stu­dent says Pressler pres­sured him to get naked and then groped him at his Hous­ton man­sion. Accord­ing to court records, the young man met Pressler through First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton and then was hired by Wood­fil­l’s law firm as Pressler’s assis­tant. The Texas Tri­bune does not iden­ti­fy vic­tims of alleged sex­u­al assault with­out their con­sent.

In the new­ly-sur­faced affi­davit, the young man said he was invit­ed to live with the Presslers. “Mov­ing into the Pressler home was in the fash­ion of being invit­ed to be a mem­ber of the fam­i­ly which, by that time and owing to the church rela­tion­ship, I had become,” he wrote in his affi­davit.

One night in May 2004, he was asked by Pressler to give him a neck mas­sage on his bed, he said in the affi­davit. Pressler then removed his pants and began to give the young man a mas­sage, the man said. Pressler lat­er invit­ed him on a trip to Europe, and the col­lege stu­dent said he was “non-com­mit­tal.” When he went out­side after, Pressler fol­lowed him and sug­gest­ed they undress to get him “adjust­ed to trav­el­ing in Europe,” where he said nudi­ty among men was com­mon, accord­ing to the affi­davit.

The young man said he declined mul­ti­ple times but even­tu­al­ly gave in to Pressler’s requests and briefly undressed. Pressler lat­er sug­gest­ed they pray togeth­er naked, he said in the affi­davit, after which the col­lege stu­dent got dressed and hur­ried into the home. Pressler fol­lowed him inside, he said, and “reached to hug me good­night.”

He said Pressler then “quick­ly and with­out warn­ing or invi­ta­tion, grabbed my swim trunks and pulled them down far enough to expose my gen­i­tals and but­tocks.”

“I was hor­ri­fied and froze,” he said. “Appar­ent­ly, in response to my reac­tion, he backed away and went upstairs.”

Court records show that, after the col­lege stu­dent men­tioned the inci­dent to a church leader, a small group of top First Bap­tist lead­ers briefly looked into the mat­ter but deter­mined it was a “he said, she said” type of ordeal that would be dam­ag­ing to Pressler if made pub­lic. Pressler was beloved by many at the church and had just served on a search com­mit­tee that brought the church’s new pas­tor on around the same time.

“Giv­en your stature and var­i­ous lead­er­ship roles in our church, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and oth­er Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that this kind of behav­ior, if brought to light, might dis­tort your tes­ti­mo­ny or cause oth­ers to stum­ble,” First Bap­tist lead­ers wrote in a 2004 let­ter to Pressler that was recent­ly made pub­lic as part of Rollins’ law­suit. “We desire nei­ther, but, rather, pray that God con­tin­ues to use your gifts and tal­ents to accom­plish His will and pur­pose.”

In an inter­view, a lawyer for First Bap­tist defend­ed the church’s actions, say­ing lead­ers imme­di­ate­ly looked into the alle­ga­tions and, after inter­view­ing both Pressler and the col­lege stu­dent, found noth­ing that was con­clu­sive or crim­i­nal.

“The church act­ed prompt­ly when we heard this alleged behav­ior,” Hous­ton attor­ney Bar­ry Fly­nn said. “Remem­ber: We did­n’t know if this was true or untrue.”

Fly­nn said the church has strict rules on back­ground checks for any­one who works with chil­dren — but not­ed that Pressler pri­mar­i­ly taught adult Bible study class­es. And, he added, even if the church had checked his back­ground, they would not have found any­thing crim­i­nal.

In a depo­si­tion, a top church leader reit­er­at­ed that stance and com­pared Pressler’s behav­ior to boys who play­ful­ly “depants” one anoth­er. He said Pressler’s defense — that he was ready­ing the young man for a trip to Europe — was believ­able.

Pressler remained a dea­con at the church, First Bap­tist lead­ers tes­ti­fied, but sig­nif­i­cant­ly cur­tailed his involve­ment there until around 2007, when he trans­ferred to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive net­work of Hous­ton-area church­es that’s led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young, and has been pre­vi­ous­ly accused of con­ceal­ing oth­er sex­u­al abus­es. Fly­nn, the First Bap­tist attor­ney, said there was “no com­mu­ni­ca­tion” between the two church­es about the alle­ga­tions against Pressler.

A pat­tern of behav­ior

In the years after leav­ing First Bap­tist, Pressler was accused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct by at least two oth­er young men — includ­ing a young Hous­ton Bap­tist Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent who tes­ti­fied that, as a result of Pressler’s sex­u­al advances, he stopped pur­su­ing a career in min­istry, fre­quent­ly had pan­ic attacks and attempt­ed sui­cide.

That man’s alle­ga­tions are sim­i­lar in detail to those described by the 25-year-old attor­ney who wrote to Wood­fill in 2016. The attor­ney, whom the Tri­bune is not nam­ing, was a recent law school grad­u­ate who said in an affi­davit that he moved to Texas in 2016 for a job at Wood­fil­l’s law firm. Dur­ing that time, he said, Wood­fill intro­duced him to Pressler, call­ing him his “men­tor for over 25 years,” a “hero of the faith” and a “great man.”

Two months lat­er, the young attor­ney said he ran into Pressler at a polit­i­cal fundrais­er at the home of Hotze, and was encour­aged by Wood­fill to go to lunch with Pressler. The fol­low­ing week, he said, he arrived at Pressler’s home to pick him up. Pressler answered the door with­out pants on and invit­ed him inside, after which he showed him pic­tures of “impor­tant peo­ple” he knew and talked about swim­ming naked in Europe numer­ous times, the attor­ney wrote in his 2018 sworn affi­davit.

At lunch, Pressler told the attor­ney about a 10-per­son hot tub at his Drip­ping Springs ranch and invit­ed him there, say­ing “when the ladies are not around, us boys all go in the hot tub com­plete­ly naked,” he said.

Hor­ri­fied, the attor­ney 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, the attor­ney said in the affi­davit.

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,” he wrote in his affi­davit.

Emails show that the attor­ney reached out to Wood­fill, who claimed it was the first time he’d heard of such alleged behav­ior by Pressler. Wood­fill lat­er offered the attor­ney a $10,000 raise, court records show, and said he’d talk to Pressler and keep him away.

“How­ev­er,” the attor­ney wrote, “with­in two weeks Pressler was at a polit­i­cal lun­cheon that Wood­fill required me to attend.”

———–

“Hous­ton GOP offi­cial knew for years of child sex abuse claims against South­ern Bap­tist leader, law part­ner” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 03/27/2023

“Pressler is best known for his work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, where he was instru­men­tal in push­ing its 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible, strong­ly denounce homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And for decades, he was a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an uber-secre­tive net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, mega donors, media fig­ures and reli­gious elites led by Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil.

Judge Pressler, a long­stand­ing leader in the SBC com­mu­ni­ty, isn’t just a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the CNP. He was the CNP’s pres­i­dent from 1988–1990 and a major fig­ure in Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. He even helped orches­trate an obvi­ous­ly failed attempt to shore up sup­port for CNP mem­ber Rick San­to­rum’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial run:

...
Pressler’s sup­port has long been sought and tout­ed by Repub­li­can polit­i­cal hope­fuls, includ­ing Sen. Ted Cruz, who has known Pressler since he was a teenag­er. In 2012, Pressler host­ed a retreat at his Texas ranch, where a group of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers agreed to sup­port Rick San­to­rum over Mitt Rom­ney in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.
...

So it’s a pret­ty big deal for the SBC and Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics that Paul Pressler is now the sub­ject of an ongo­ing law­suit that is bring­ing out one damn­ing tes­ti­mo­ny after anoth­er and paints of pic­ture of unchecked abus­es of pow­er going back decades. Bla­tant abus­es of pow­er that were effec­tive­ly hid­den in plain sight. Like the fact that Pressler was appar­ent­ly nev­er paid a salary by his law firm, Wood­fill & Pressler LLP, but instead was paid in the form of young male assis­tants who would serve at his man­sion, osten­si­bly to help with the fam­i­ly’s needs. That’s just one of the details Pressler’s law part­ner Jared Wood­fill had to reveal in sworn tes­ti­mo­ny this year as part of an ongo­ing law­suit that has been bring­ing to light evi­dence of abuse by Pressler going back to at least 1978:

...
In recent sworn tes­ti­mo­ny, Wood­fill said he’d known since 2004 of an alle­ga­tion that Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused a child. Wood­fill learned of those claims, he said, dur­ing medi­a­tion of an assault law­suit filed against Pressler that he helped qui­et­ly set­tle for near­ly a half-mil­lion dol­lars at the time. Despite his knowl­edge of the accu­sa­tion, Wood­fill con­tin­ued to work with Pressler for near­ly a decade — lean­ing on Pressler’s name and rep­u­ta­tion to bol­ster their firm, Wood­fill & Pressler LLP.

Rather than pay him a salary, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, the firm pro­vid­ed Pressler a string of employ­ees to serve as per­son­al assis­tants, most of them young men who typ­i­cal­ly worked out of his Riv­er Oaks man­sion. Two have accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct.

...

Wood­fil­l’s depo­si­tion came as part of an ongo­ing, six-year-old law­suit in which a for­mer mem­ber of Pressler’s church youth group accus­es him of decades of rape begin­ning when he was 14. The suit also accus­es Wood­fill and oth­ers, includ­ing lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, of con­ceal­ing and enabling Pressler’s behav­ior — claims that prompt­ed a 2019 Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and San Anto­nio Express-News inves­ti­ga­tion into wide­spread sex­u­al abuse in the SBC, the nation’s sec­ond-largest faith group.

Released over the last few weeks, the thou­sands of pages of new court records show how Wood­fill leaned on his Pressler con­nec­tions to bol­ster his polit­i­cal and legal career — despite warn­ings about his law part­ner’s behav­ior. And they shed new light on how Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge and one-time White House nom­i­nee under George H.W. Bush, alleged­ly used his pres­tige and influ­ence to evade respon­si­bil­i­ty amid repeat­ed accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and assault dat­ing back to at least 1978, when he was forced out of a Hous­ton church for alleged­ly molest­ing a teenag­er in a sauna.

...

Over the course of their law part­ner­ship, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, Pressler did almost no work for the firm, but was pro­vid­ed numer­ous young, male assis­tants who tend­ed to his and his fam­i­ly’s needs — includ­ing his son who has a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty.

“I can think of one or two cas­es that he brought in,” Wood­fill tes­ti­fied. “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.

...

Records show that Pressler remained a lim­it­ed part­ner at the firm until around 2012, when Wood­fill said Pressler retired. The firm was renamed Wood­fill Law Firm and has been involved in numer­ous law­suits involv­ing con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es over the years. The firm has also faced accu­sa­tions of impro­pri­ety, includ­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing alle­ga­tions that sparked a 2018 raid and inves­ti­ga­tion by the Har­ris Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office, though no charges were ever filed in the mat­ter.
...

It’s an ongo­ing law­suit stem­ming from abuse alle­ga­tions around Pressler’s church youth group. Duane Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of abuse start­ing when he was 14. It’s not the first time Rollins sued Pressler over these alle­ga­tions. Rollins first sued in 2004. But Rollins isn’t just suing Pressler in the ongo­ing law­suit. He’s suing Wood­fill, and oth­er SBC fig­ures and insti­tu­tions that enabled and con­cealed Pressler’s behav­ior. It’s the kind of giant scan­dal that huge, in part, because it could obvi­ous­ly get a lot big­ger:

...
The new records show that in 2004, lead­ers of First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive South­ern Bap­tist con­gre­ga­tion, inves­ti­gat­ed claims that Pressler, then a dea­con, had groped and undressed a col­lege stu­dent at his Hous­ton man­sion. The church lead­ers deemed the behav­ior “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate and warned Pressler but took no fur­ther action, cit­ing dif­fer­ing accounts of the inci­dent and Pressler’s stature in their church and the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. In recent depo­si­tions, plain­tiffs attor­neys also briefly men­tion new com­plaints from two oth­ers about Pressler, though those doc­u­ments remain sealed ahead of the loom­ing civ­il tri­al in the case.

At least six men have now accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct, includ­ing two who say they were molest­ed while minors and two who say they were solicit­ed for sex in inci­dents after 2004, when Wood­fill and First Bap­tist lead­ers were sep­a­rate­ly made aware of com­plaints about Pressler.

...

The new alle­ga­tions came as part of an ongo­ing law­suit in which Duane Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of rape and molesta­tion begin­ning when Rollins was 14 and a mem­ber of the church youth group led by Pressler, who was then in his late 40s. Those alleged attacks, Rollins says in court doc­u­ments, pushed him into years of drug and alco­hol addic­tions that kept him in prison for much of his adult life. While in prison ther­a­py ses­sions in 2015, Rollins says he uncov­ered repressed mem­o­ries of sex­u­al abuse by Pressler. He was lat­er diag­nosed with post-trau­mat­ic stress as a “direct result of the child­hood sex­u­al trau­ma he suf­fered,” accord­ing to med­ical records filed in court.

In 2017, Rollins sued Pressler, Wood­fill and South­ern Bap­tist fig­ures and insti­tu­tions that he says enabled and con­cealed Pressler’s behav­ior, argu­ing that, because of trau­ma and manip­u­la­tion by Pressler, it took him decades to rec­on­cile that he was sex­u­al­ly abused. Last year, after the defen­dants fought to have the suit tossed by argu­ing the assault claims were out­side the statute of lim­i­ta­tions, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with Rollins‘ argu­ments and allowed the law­suit to go for­ward.

The new fil­ings give insight into Wood­fil­l’s long rela­tion­ship with Pressler begin­ning in the mid-1990s. At the time, Pressler, then 65, was phas­ing out of years of work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and focus­ing more on pol­i­tics. Wood­fill was still in his 20s and said Pressler’s con­ser­v­a­tive bona fides were a valu­able asset.
...

Wood­fill was even forced to reveal dur­ing tes­ti­mo­ny that he helped to arrange the 2004 $450,000 settlement/confidentiality agree­ment in the face of Rollins’s first suit, which direct­ly con­tra­dicts the claims Wood­fill has been mak­ing since 2016 that he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s his­to­ry of abuse:

...
The lat­est law­suit marks the sec­ond time Rollins has sued Pressler over alle­ga­tions of assault.

In 2004, Wood­fill rep­re­sent­ed Pressler in a law­suit in which Rollins accused him of assault stem­ming from a 2003 inci­dent in a Dal­las hotel room, dur­ing which Rollins says Pressler injured him dur­ing a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion and, cit­ing his stature as a for­mer Texas judge, threat­ened him if he came for­ward. In order to avoid pub­lic­i­ty, Wood­fill helped set­tle the suit for $450,000 in a one-day medi­a­tion that also includ­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment, he said in tes­ti­mo­ny last month.

Copies of the law­suit did not refer to the inci­dent as sex­u­al assault. But as the case was being medi­at­ed, Wood­fill said under oath last month, he was told by Rollins’ then-attor­ney that Pressler had “been sex­u­al­ly inap­pro­pri­ate” with Rollins, had “done some things to him when he was a child” and “sex­u­al­ly abused (Rollins) … when he was a child or in a youth group or some­thing.”

Dur­ing his depo­si­tion, Wood­fill declined to dis­cuss most oth­er details of the 2004 law­suit, cit­ing the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. Even so, Wood­fil­l’s tes­ti­mo­ny direct­ly con­tra­dicts his pre­vi­ous asser­tions that he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s alleged groom­ing and sex­u­al mis­con­duct toward young men — claims that he has repeat­ed since at least 2016, when he denied any knowl­edge of such behav­ior after the young attor­ney detailed Pressler’s alleged invi­ta­tion to hot tub naked, as well as in sub­se­quent media inter­views and court fil­ings.

Rollins’ attor­neys say Wood­fill “had an incen­tive to turn a blind eye to Mr. Pressler’s abuse.”
...

And as we can see with the range of addi­tion­al accu­sa­tion that have come to light in the affi­davits pro­vid­ed to the court, Pressler’s abuse was­n’t just cov­ered up. He was allowed to con­tin­ue his role as a dea­con at First Bap­tist until around 2007, when he was trans­ferred to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young. No com­mu­ni­ca­tion was made to SBC about the alle­ga­tions against Pressler. That’s despite the fact that anoth­er col­lege stu­dent who met Pressler through First Bap­tist Church and end­ed up serv­ing as one of Pressler’s “per­son­al assis­tants” at Wood­fil­l’s law­firm told church lead­ers about a grop­ing inci­dent. The lead­ers dis­missed it as a “he said, she said” inci­dent that should be kept pri­vate:

...
Rollins’ lat­est law­suit also brought to light oth­er sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions against Pressler, includ­ing an affi­davit that was sub­mit­ted as part of the 2004 law­suit. Wood­fill declined to com­ment on the affi­davit while under oath, cit­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty rules.

In the affi­davit, which was made pub­lic this year, anoth­er col­lege stu­dent says Pressler pres­sured him to get naked and then groped him at his Hous­ton man­sion. Accord­ing to court records, the young man met Pressler through First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton and then was hired by Wood­fil­l’s law firm as Pressler’s assis­tant. The Texas Tri­bune does not iden­ti­fy vic­tims of alleged sex­u­al assault with­out their con­sent.

...

Court records show that, after the col­lege stu­dent men­tioned the inci­dent to a church leader, a small group of top First Bap­tist lead­ers briefly looked into the mat­ter but deter­mined it was a “he said, she said” type of ordeal that would be dam­ag­ing to Pressler if made pub­lic. Pressler was beloved by many at the church and had just served on a search com­mit­tee that brought the church’s new pas­tor on around the same time.

...

Pressler remained a dea­con at the church, First Bap­tist lead­ers tes­ti­fied, but sig­nif­i­cant­ly cur­tailed his involve­ment there until around 2007, when he trans­ferred to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive net­work of Hous­ton-area church­es that’s led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young, and has been pre­vi­ous­ly accused of con­ceal­ing oth­er sex­u­al abus­es. Fly­nn, the First Bap­tist attor­ney, said there was “no com­mu­ni­ca­tion” between the two church­es about the alle­ga­tions against Pressler.
...

And based on the accu­sa­tions against him, Pressler con­tin­ued to prey on young men until at least 2016. That’s what we can con­clude based on inci­dent involv­ing a young attor­ney who had just joined Wood­fil­l’s law­firm (Pressler was retired by then). Wood­fill intro­duced the young lawyer to Pressler. Two months lat­er, the young lawyer met Pressler at a polit­i­cal fundrais­er at the home of CNP mem­ber Steven Hotze, where the lawyer was encour­aged by Wood­fill to go to lunch with Pressler. The fol­low­ing week, the lawyer arrived at Pressler’s home to pick him up for lunch. It was dur­ing that encounter when Pressler invit­ed to lawyer to his ranch for some naked boys-only hot tub­bing. Again, this was 2016, 12 years after the 2004 set­tle­ment. It’s a the kind of anec­dote that rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about just per­va­sive Pressler’s abus­es tru­ly were. We’re pre­sum­ably not hear­ing from all of his vic­tims:

...

In the years after leav­ing First Bap­tist, Pressler was accused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct by at least two oth­er young men — includ­ing a young Hous­ton Bap­tist Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent who tes­ti­fied that, as a result of Pressler’s sex­u­al advances, he stopped pur­su­ing a career in min­istry, fre­quent­ly had pan­ic attacks and attempt­ed sui­cide.

That man’s alle­ga­tions are sim­i­lar in detail to those described by the 25-year-old attor­ney who wrote to Wood­fill in 2016. The attor­ney, whom the Tri­bune is not nam­ing, was a recent law school grad­u­ate who said in an affi­davit that he moved to Texas in 2016 for a job at Wood­fil­l’s law firm. Dur­ing that time, he said, Wood­fill intro­duced him to Pressler, call­ing him his “men­tor for over 25 years,” a “hero of the faith” and a “great man.”

Two months lat­er, the young attor­ney said he ran into Pressler at a polit­i­cal fundrais­er at the home of Hotze, and was encour­aged by Wood­fill to go to lunch with Pressler. The fol­low­ing week, he said, he arrived at Pressler’s home to pick him up. Pressler answered the door with­out pants on and invit­ed him inside, after which he showed him pic­tures of “impor­tant peo­ple” he knew and talked about swim­ming naked in Europe numer­ous times, the attor­ney wrote in his 2018 sworn affi­davit.

At lunch, Pressler told the attor­ney about a 10-per­son hot tub at his Drip­ping Springs ranch and invit­ed him there, say­ing “when the ladies are not around, us boys all go in the hot tub com­plete­ly naked,” he said.

Hor­ri­fied, the attor­ney 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, the attor­ney said in the affi­davit.

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,” he wrote in his affi­davit.

Emails show that the attor­ney reached out to Wood­fill, who claimed it was the first time he’d heard of such alleged behav­ior by Pressler. Wood­fill lat­er offered the attor­ney a $10,000 raise, court records show, and said he’d talk to Pressler and keep him away.

“How­ev­er,” the attor­ney wrote, “with­in two weeks Pressler was at a polit­i­cal lun­cheon that Wood­fill required me to attend.”
...

And we can’t help not­ing the gross hypocrisy involved with this whole sit­u­a­tion: Jared Wood­fill and Steven Hotze were co-lead­ers of 2015 cam­paign oppos­ing a Hous­ton ref­er­en­dum that would have pro­tect­ed bath­room access rights for the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty:

...
Wood­fill led the Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty from 2002 to 2014 and has for years been at the helm of anti-LGBTQ and oth­er hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments in Hous­ton and Texas. In 2015, amid tense debate over a Hous­ton equal rights ordi­nance that would have made LGBTQ work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion ille­gal, he and well-known GOP pow­er bro­ker Steven Hotze co-led a cam­paign that, among oth­er things, said the mea­sure would allow chil­dren to be sex­u­al­ly groomed and abused in bath­rooms, paid for hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in oppo­si­tion adver­tise­ments and com­pared the gay rights move­ment to Nazis.

Since then, Wood­fill has remained a fix­ture in Texas GOP pol­i­tics: Dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic, he and Hotze filed numer­ous law­suits chal­leng­ing COVID-19 man­dates, and he’s cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal can­di­dates chal­leng­ing the 2022 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 A/C repair­man who he believed was trans­port­ing fake bal­lots.
...

How many more rev­e­la­tions are we going to get thanks to this law­suit? Time will tell. But as the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary 2019 Hous­ton Chron­i­cle inves­tiga­tive piece lays out, this was already a mega-scan­dal that goes far beyond Paul Pressler. The SBC lead­er­ship — includ­ing Ed Young and CNP mem­ber Paige Pat­ter­son — has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pro­tect­ing and cov­er­ing up hun­dreds abusers with­in its ranks going back decades. In fact, there’s a spe­cif­ic doc­trine they cite to excuse the lack of action: local church auton­o­my. As far as the SBC is con­cerned, each of its rough­ly 47,000 mem­ber church have exclu­sive author­i­ty over their inter­nal oper­a­tions and, as such, the SBC lead­er­ship has nev­er had the author­i­ty to do any­thing about reports of abuse. Either the local lead­ers han­dle it or no one will. And, typ­i­cal­ly, no one did. Hence the ongo­ing unfold­ing mega-scan­dal:

The Hous­ton Chron­i­cle

Abuse of Faith

20 years, 700 vic­tims: South­ern Bap­tist sex­u­al abuse spreads as lead­ers resist reforms

By Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco
Pub­lished Feb. 10, 2019

First of six parts

Thir­ty-five years lat­er, Deb­bie Vasquez’s voice trem­bled as she described her trau­ma to a group of South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers.

She was 14, she said, when she was first molest­ed by her pas­tor in Sanger, a tiny prairie town an hour north of Dal­las. It was the first of many assaults that Vasquez said destroyed her teenage years and, at 18, left her preg­nant by the South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor, a mar­ried man more than a dozen years old­er.

In June 2008, she paid her way to Indi­anapo­lis, where she and oth­ers asked lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and its 47,000 church­es to track sex­u­al preda­tors and take action against con­gre­ga­tions that har­bored or con­cealed abusers. Vasquez, by then in her 40s, implored them to con­sid­er pre­ven­tion poli­cies like those adopt­ed by faiths that include the Catholic Church.

“Lis­ten to what God has to say,” she said, accord­ing to audio of the meet­ing, which she record­ed. “... All that evil needs is for good to do noth­ing. ... Please help me and oth­ers that will be hurt.”

Days lat­er, South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers reject­ed near­ly every pro­posed reform.

The abusers haven’t stopped. They’ve hurt hun­dreds more.

In the decade since Vasquez’s appeal for help, more than 250 peo­ple who worked or vol­un­teered in South­ern Bap­tist church­es have been charged with sex crimes, an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and the San Anto­nio Express-News reveals.

It’s not just a recent prob­lem: In all, since 1998, rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the news­pa­pers found. That includes those who were con­vict­ed, cred­i­bly accused and suc­cess­ful­ly sued, and those who con­fessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any oth­er state.

They left behind more than 700 vic­tims, many of them shunned by their church­es, left to them­selves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to for­give their abusers or to get abor­tions.

About 220 offend­ers have been con­vict­ed or took plea deals, and dozens of cas­es are pend­ing. They were pas­tors. Min­is­ters. Youth pas­tors. Sun­day school teach­ers. Dea­cons. Church vol­un­teers.

How we did this sto­ry:

Cur­rent as of June 2019

In 2007, vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse by South­ern Bap­tist pas­tors request­ed cre­ation of a reg­istry con­tain­ing the names of cur­rent and for­mer lead­ers of South­ern Bap­tist church­es who had been con­vict­ed of sex crimes or who had been cred­i­bly accused. That did­n’t hap­pen; the last time any such list was made pub­lic was by the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas. It con­tained the names of eight sex crim­i­nals.

In 2018, as advo­cates again pressed SBC offi­cials for such a reg­istry, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle reporters began to search news archives, web­sites and data­bas­es nation­wide to com­pile an archive of alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse, sex­u­al assault and oth­er seri­ous mis­con­duct involv­ing South­ern Bap­tist pas­tors and oth­er church offi­cials. We found com­plaints made against hun­dreds of pas­tors, church offi­cials and vol­un­teers at South­ern Bap­tist church­es nation­wide.

We focused our search on the 10 years pre­ced­ing the vic­tims’ first call for a reg­istry and on the 10-plus years since. And we con­cen­trat­ed on indi­vid­u­als who had a doc­u­ment­ed con­nec­tion to a church list­ed in an SBC direc­to­ry pub­lished by a state or nation­al asso­ci­a­tion.

We ver­i­fied details in hun­dreds of accounts of abuse by exam­in­ing fed­er­al and state court data­bas­es, prison records and offi­cial doc­u­ments from more than 20 states and by search­ing sex offend­er reg­istries nation­wide. In Texas, we vis­it­ed more than a dozen coun­ty cour­t­hous­es. We inter­viewed dis­trict attor­neys and police in more than 40 Texas coun­ties. We filed dozens of pub­lic records requests in Texas and nation­wide.

Ulti­mate­ly, we com­piled infor­ma­tion on rough­ly 400 cred­i­bly accused offi­cials in South­ern Bap­tist church­es, includ­ing pas­tors, dea­cons, Sun­day school teach­ers and vol­un­teers.

We ver­i­fied that about 260 had been con­vict­ed of sex crimes or received deferred pros­e­cu­tions in plea deals and sent let­ters to all of them solic­it­ing their respons­es to sum­maries we com­piled. We received writ­ten respons­es from more than 30 and inter­viewed three in Texas pris­ons.

Find our records that relate to those con­vict­ed or forced to reg­is­ter as sex offend­ers at HoustonChronicle.com/AbuseofFaith

Near­ly 100 are still held in pris­ons stretch­ing from Sacra­men­to Coun­ty, Calif., to Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty, Fla., state and fed­er­al records show. Scores of oth­ers cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are reg­is­tered sex offend­ers. Some still work in South­ern Bap­tist church­es today.

Jour­nal­ists in the two news­rooms spent more than six months review­ing thou­sands of pages of court, prison and police records and con­duct­ing hun­dreds of inter­views. They built a data­base of for­mer lead­ers in South­ern Bap­tist church­es who have been con­vict­ed of sex crimes.

The inves­ti­ga­tion reveals that:

• At least 35 church pas­tors, employ­ees and vol­un­teers who exhib­it­ed preda­to­ry behav­ior were still able to find jobs at church­es dur­ing the past two decades. In some cas­es, church lead­ers appar­ent­ly failed to alert law enforce­ment about com­plaints or to warn oth­er con­gre­ga­tions about alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct.

• Sev­er­al past pres­i­dents and promi­nent lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion are among those crit­i­cized by vic­tims for con­ceal­ing or mis­han­dling abuse com­plaints with­in their own church­es or sem­i­nar­ies.

• Some reg­is­tered sex offend­ers returned to the pul­pit. Oth­ers remain there, includ­ing a Hous­ton preach­er who sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a teenag­er and now is the prin­ci­pal offi­cer of a Hous­ton non­prof­it that works with stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions, fed­er­al records show. Its name: Touch­ing the Future Today Inc.

• Many of the vic­tims were ado­les­cents who were molest­ed, sent explic­it pho­tos or texts, exposed to pornog­ra­phy, pho­tographed nude, or repeat­ed­ly raped by youth pas­tors. Some vic­tims as young as 3 were molest­ed or raped inside pas­tors’ stud­ies and Sun­day school class­rooms. A few were adults — women and men who sought pas­toral guid­ance and instead say they were seduced or sex­u­al­ly assault­ed.

Heather Schnei­der was 14 when she was molest­ed in a choir room at Hous­ton’s Sec­ond Bap­tist Church, accord­ing to crim­i­nal and civ­il court records. Her moth­er, Gwen Casa­dos, said church lead­ers wait­ed months to fire the attack­er, who lat­er plead­ed no con­test. In response to her law­suit, church lead­ers also denied respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Schnei­der slit her wrists the day after that attack in 1994, Casa­dos said. She sur­vived, but she died 14 years lat­er from a drug over­dose that her moth­er blames on the trau­ma.

“I nev­er got her back,” Casa­dos said.

Oth­ers took decades to come for­ward, and only after their lives had unrav­eled. David Pittman was 12, he says, when a youth min­is­ter from his Geor­gia church first molest­ed him in 1981. Two oth­er for­mer mem­bers of the man’s church­es said in inter­views that they also were abused by him. But by the time Pittman spoke out in 2006, it was too late to press crim­i­nal charges.

The min­is­ter still works at an SBC church.

Pittman won’t soon for­give those who have offered prayers but tak­en no action. He only recent­ly stopped hat­ing God.

“That is the great­est tragedy of all,” he said. “So many peo­ple’s faith is mur­dered. I mean, their faith is slaugh­tered by these preda­tors.”

August “Augie” Boto, inter­im pres­i­dent of the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, helped draft the rejec­tion of reform pro­pos­als in 2008. In an inter­view, he expressed “sor­row” about some of the news­pa­pers’ find­ings but said the con­ven­tion’s lead­er­ship can do only so much to stop sex­u­al abus­es.

“It would be sor­row if it were 200 or 600” cas­es, Boto said. “Sor­row. What we’re talk­ing about is crim­i­nal. The fact that crim­i­nal activ­i­ty occurs in a church con­text is always the basis of grief. But it’s going to hap­pen. And that state­ment does not mean that we must be resigned to it.”

‘A porous sieve’

At the core of South­ern Bap­tist doc­trine is local church auton­o­my, the idea that each church is inde­pen­dent and self-gov­ern­ing. It’s one of the main rea­sons that Boto said most of the pro­pos­als a decade ago were viewed as flawed by the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee because the com­mit­tee does­n’t have the author­i­ty to force church­es to report sex­u­al abuse to a cen­tral reg­istry.

Because of that, Boto said, the com­mit­tee “real­ized that lift­ing up a mod­el that could not be enforced was an exer­cise in futil­i­ty,” and so instead draft­ed a report that “accept­ed the exis­tence of the prob­lem rather than attempt­ing to define its mag­ni­tude.”

SBC church­es and orga­ni­za­tions share resources and mate­ri­als, and togeth­er they fund mis­sion­ary trips and sem­i­nar­ies. Most pas­tors are ordained local­ly after they’ve con­vinced a small group of church elders that they’ve been called to ser­vice by God. There is no cen­tral data­base that tracks ordi­na­tions, or sex­u­al abuse con­vic­tions or alle­ga­tions.

All of that makes South­ern Bap­tist church­es high­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to preda­tors, says Christa Brown, an activist who wrote a book about being molest­ed as a child by a pas­tor at her SBC church in Farm­ers Branch, a Dal­las sub­urb.

“It’s a per­fect pro­fes­sion for a con artist, because all he has to do is talk a good talk and con­vince peo­ple that he’s been called by God, and bin­go, he gets to be a South­ern Bap­tist min­is­ter,” said Brown, who lives in Col­orado. “Then he can infil­trate the entire­ty of the SBC, move from church to church, from state to state, go to big­ger church­es and more promi­nent church­es where he has more influ­ence and pow­er, and it all starts in some small church.

“It’s a porous sieve of a denom­i­na­tion.”

To try to mea­sure the prob­lem, the news­pa­pers col­lect­ed and cross-checked news reports, prison records, court records, sex offend­er reg­istries and oth­er doc­u­ments. Reporters also con­duct­ed hun­dreds of inter­views with vic­tims, church lead­ers, inves­ti­ga­tors and offend­ers.

Sev­er­al fac­tors make it like­ly that the abuse is even more wide­spread than can be doc­u­ment­ed: Vic­tims of sex­u­al assault come for­ward at a low rate; many cas­es in church­es are han­dled inter­nal­ly; and many South­ern Bap­tist church­es are in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where media cov­er­age is sparse.

It’s clear, how­ev­er, that SBC lead­ers have long been aware of the prob­lem. Bow­ing to pres­sure from activists, the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas, one of the largest SBC state orga­ni­za­tions, in 2007 pub­lished a list of eight sex offend­ers who had served in South­ern Bap­tist church­es in Texas.

Around the same time, the Rev. Thomas Doyle wrote to SBC lead­ers, implor­ing them to act. A priest and for­mer high-rank­ing lawyer for the Catholic Church, Doyle in the 1980s was one of the ear­li­est to blow the whis­tle on child sex­u­al abuse in the church. But Catholic lead­ers “lied about it ... cov­ered it up and ignored the vic­tims,” said Doyle, now retired and liv­ing in north­ern Vir­ginia.

Doyle turned to activism because of his expe­ri­ences, work that brought him clos­er to those abused in South­ern Bap­tist church­es. Their sto­ries — and how the SBC han­dled them — felt haunt­ing­ly famil­iar, he said.

“I saw the same type of behav­ior going on with the South­ern Bap­tists,” he said.

The respons­es were pre­dictable, Doyle said. In one, Frank Page, then the SBC pres­i­dent, wrote that they were “tak­ing this issue seri­ous­ly” but that local church auton­o­my pre­sent­ed “seri­ous lim­i­ta­tions.” In March, Page resigned as pres­i­dent and CEO of the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for “a moral­ly inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship in the recent past,” accord­ing to the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.

Details have not been dis­closed, but SBC offi­cials said they had “no rea­son to sus­pect any legal impro­pri­ety.” Page declined to be inter­viewed.

[see doc­u­ment]

Oth­er lead­ers have acknowl­edged that Bap­tist church­es are trou­bled by preda­tors but that they could not inter­fere in local church affairs. Even so, the SBC has end­ed its affil­i­a­tion with at least four church­es in the past 10 years for affirm­ing or endors­ing homo­sex­u­al behav­ior. The SBC gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments ban gay or female pas­tors, but they do not out­law con­vict­ed sex offend­ers from work­ing in church­es.

In one email to Deb­bie Vasquez, Augie Boto assured her that “no Bap­tist I know of is pre­tend­ing that ‘the prob­lem does not exist.’ ”

“There is no ques­tion that some South­ern Bap­tist min­is­ters have done crim­i­nal things, includ­ing sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren,” he wrote in a May 2007 email. “It is a sad and trag­ic truth. Hope­ful­ly, the harm ema­nat­ing from such occur­rences will cause the local church­es to be more aggres­sive­ly vig­i­lant.”

Offend­ers return to preach

The SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee also wrote in 2008 that it “would cer­tain­ly be jus­ti­fied” to end affil­i­a­tions with church­es that “inten­tion­al­ly employed a known sex­u­al offend­er or know­ing­ly placed one in a posi­tion of lead­er­ship over chil­dren or oth­er vul­ner­a­ble par­tic­i­pants in its min­istries.”

Cur­rent SBC Pres­i­dent J.D. Greear reaf­firmed that stance in an email to the Chron­i­cle, writ­ing that any church that “proves a pat­tern of sin­ful neglect — regard­ing abuse or any oth­er mat­ter — should absolute­ly be removed from fel­low­ship from the broad­er denom­i­na­tion.”

“The Bible calls for pas­tors to be peo­ple of integri­ty, known for their self-con­trol and kind­ness,” Greear wrote. “A con­vict­ed sex offend­er would cer­tain­ly not meet those qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Church­es that ignore that are out of line with both Scrip­ture and Bap­tist prin­ci­ples of coop­er­a­tion.”

But the news­pa­pers found at least 10 SBC church­es that wel­comed pas­tors, min­is­ters and vol­un­teers since 1998 who had pre­vi­ous­ly faced charges of sex­u­al mis­con­duct. In some cas­es, they were reg­is­tered sex offend­ers.

In Illi­nois, Leslie Mason returned to the pul­pit a few years after he was con­vict­ed in 2003 on two counts of crim­i­nal sex­u­al assault. Mason had been a ris­ing star in local South­ern Bap­tist cir­cles until the charges were pub­li­cized by Michael Leathers, who was then edi­tor of the state’s Bap­tist news­pa­per.

Let­ters from angry read­ers poured in. Among those upset by Leathers’ deci­sion to pub­lish the sto­ry was Glenn Akins, the inter­im exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Illi­nois Bap­tist State Asso­ci­a­tion.

“To have sin­gled Les out in such a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic man­ner ignores many oth­ers who have done the same thing,” Akins wrote in a memo, a copy of which Leathers pro­vid­ed. “You could have asked near­ly any staff mem­ber and got­ten the names of sev­er­al oth­er promi­nent church­es where the same sort of sex­u­al mis­con­duct has occurred recent­ly in our state.”

Akins, now the assis­tant exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Vir­ginia, declined an inter­view request.

Leathers resigned after state Bap­tist con­ven­tion lead­ers told him he might be fired and lose his sev­er­ance pay, he said. Mason, mean­while, admit­ted to inves­ti­ga­tors that he had rela­tion­ships with four dif­fer­ent girls, records show.

Mason received a sev­en-year prison sen­tence under a plea deal in which inves­ti­ga­tors dropped all but two of his charges. After his release, he returned to the pul­pit of a dif­fer­ent SBC church a few miles away.

“That just appalled me,” Leathers said. “They had to have known they put a con­vict­ed sex offend­er behind the pul­pit. ... If a church calls a woman to pas­tor their church, there are a lot of South­ern Bap­tist orga­ni­za­tions that, sad­ly, would dis­as­so­ci­ate with them imme­di­ate­ly. Why would­n’t they do the same for con­vict­ed sex offend­ers?”

Mason has since preached at mul­ti­ple SBC church­es in cen­tral Illi­nois. He said in an inter­view that those church­es “absolute­ly know about my past,” and said church­es and oth­er insti­tu­tions need “to be bet­ter at han­dling” sex­u­al abuse.

Mason said that “nobody is above reproach in all things” and that church lead­ers — par­tic­u­lar­ly those who work with chil­dren — “des­per­ate­ly need account­abil­i­ty.”

In Hous­ton, Michael Lee Jones start­ed a South­ern Bap­tist church, Cathe­dral of Faith, after his 1998 con­vic­tion for hav­ing sex with a teenage female con­gre­gant at a dif­fer­ent SBC church near­by. Jones, also leader of a non­prof­it called Touch­ing the Future Today, was includ­ed on the list of con­vict­ed min­is­ters released by the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas a decade ago.

In Decem­ber, Cathe­dral of Faith cel­e­brat­ed its 20th anniver­sary at a down­town Hous­ton hotel, accord­ing to the church’s web­site. A fly­er for the event tout­ed ser­mons from Jones, anoth­er pas­tor and Joseph S. Ratliff, the long­time pas­tor of Hous­ton’s Brent­wood Bap­tist Church.

Ratliff was sued in 2003 for sex­u­al mis­con­duct with a man he was coun­sel­ing. The law­suit was set­tled and dis­missed by agree­ment of the par­ties, accord­ing to Har­ris Coun­ty court records and inter­views. The set­tle­ment is sub­ject to a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. Ratliff has been sued two oth­er times, one involv­ing anoth­er per­son who had come in for coun­sel­ing; the oth­er involved his han­dling of alle­ga­tions against anoth­er church offi­cial, Har­ris Coun­ty records show. The dis­po­si­tion of those two cas­es was not avail­able.

...

‘A known prob­lem’

Wade Burleson, a for­mer pres­i­dent of Okla­homa’s South­ern Bap­tist con­ven­tion, says it has long been clear that South­ern Bap­tist church­es face a cri­sis. In 2007 and 2018, he asked SBC lead­ers to study sex­u­al abuse in church­es and bring pre­ven­tion mea­sures to a vote at the SBC’s annu­al meet­ing.

Lead­ers pushed back both times, he said. Some cit­ed local church auton­o­my; oth­ers feared law­suits if the reforms did­n’t pre­vent abuse.

Burleson could­n’t help but won­der if there have been “ulte­ri­or motives” at play.

“There’s a known prob­lem, but it’s too messy to deal with,” he said in a recent inter­view. “It’s not that we can’t do it as much as we don’t want to do it. ... To me, that’s a prob­lem. You must want to do it, to do it.”

Doyle, the Catholic whistle­blow­er, was sim­i­lar­ly sus­pi­cious, if more blunt: “I under­stand the fear, because it’s going to make the lead­er­ship look bad,” he said. “Well, they are bad, and they should look bad. Because they have ignored this issue. They have demo­nized the vic­tims.”

Sev­er­al South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers and their church­es have been crit­i­cized for ignor­ing the abused or cov­er­ing for alleged preda­tors, includ­ing at Hous­ton’s Sec­ond Bap­tist, where for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young has been pas­tor since 1978. Young built the church into one of the largest and most impor­tant in the SBC; today, it counts more than 60,000 mem­bers who attend at mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es.

Before she was molest­ed in the choir room at Sec­ond Bap­tist in 1994, Heather Schnei­der filled a black note­book with poems. The sev­enth-grad­er, with long white-blond hair and sparkling green eyes, had begun to work as a mod­el. She soon attract­ed atten­tion from John Forse, who coor­di­nat­ed church pageants and pro­grams at Sec­ond Bap­tist.

He also used his posi­tion to recruit girls for pri­vate act­ing lessons, accord­ing to Har­ris Coun­ty court doc­u­ments.

A day after she was attacked, Schnei­der told her moth­er, Casa­dos, that Forse had touched her inap­pro­pri­ate­ly and tried to force her to do “hor­ren­dous things.” Casa­dos called police.

Casa­dos, who was raised a Bap­tist, said she received a call from Young, who ini­tial­ly offered to do what­ev­er he could to help her daugh­ter. But after she told Young she already had called police, he hung up and “we nev­er heard from him again,” she said in an inter­view.

It took months — and the threat of crim­i­nal charges — before Forse left his posi­tion at the church, accord­ing to state­ments made by Forse’s attor­ney at the time and Schnei­der’s respons­es to ques­tions in a relat­ed civ­il law­suit.

In August 1994, Forse received deferred adju­di­ca­tion and 10 years’ pro­ba­tion after plead­ing no con­test to two counts of inde­cen­cy with a child by con­tact. He remains a reg­is­tered sex offend­er and was lat­er con­vict­ed of a pornog­ra­phy charge. He is list­ed in the sex offend­er reg­istry as tran­sient; he could not be reached for com­ment.

Church offi­cials declined inter­view requests. In a state­ment to the Chron­i­cle, Sec­ond Bap­tist stat­ed that it takes “alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct or abuse very seri­ous­ly and con­stant­ly strives to pro­vide and main­tain a safe, Chris­t­ian envi­ron­ment for all employ­ees, church mem­bers and guests.”

IN THEIR WORDS: Vic­tims, fam­i­lies and law enforce­ment explain the dev­as­ta­tion that occurs when a child is abused by a reli­gious leader

The church declined to release its employ­ment poli­cies but described Forse as a “short-term con­tract work­er” when he was accused of sex abuse. “After Sec­ond Bap­tist became aware of the alle­ga­tions made against Forse his con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed,” the state­ment says. “Upon noti­fi­ca­tion, Sec­ond Bap­tist Church coop­er­at­ed ful­ly with law enforce­ment in this mat­ter.”

Schnei­der’s par­ents filed a civ­il law­suit against the church, Forse and a mod­el­ing agency. The case against the church was dis­missed; its lawyers argued that Forse was not act­ing as a church employ­ee. Sec­ond Bap­tist was not part of an even­tu­al set­tle­ment.

In 1992, before Schnei­der was molest­ed, a lawyer for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion wrote in a court fil­ing that the SBC did not dis­trib­ute instruc­tions to its mem­ber church­es on han­dling sex­u­al abuse claims. He said Sec­ond Bap­tist had no writ­ten pro­ce­dures on the top­ic.

The lawyer, Neil Mar­tin, was writ­ing in response to a law­suit that accused First Bap­tist Church of Con­roe of con­tin­u­ing to employ Riley Edward Cox Jr. as a youth pas­tor after a fam­i­ly said that he had molest­ed their child. In a court fil­ing, Cox admit­ted to molest­ing three boys in the late 1980s.

Young, SBC pres­i­dent at the time of the law­suit, was asked to out­line the orga­ni­za­tion’s poli­cies on child sex­u­al abuse as part of the law­suit. He declined to tes­ti­fy, cit­ing “local church auton­o­my” and say­ing in an affi­davit that he had “no edu­ca­tion­al train­ing in the area of sex­u­al abuse or the inves­ti­ga­tion of sex­u­al abuse claims.”

Young also said he feared tes­ti­fy­ing could jeop­ar­dize his blos­som­ing TV min­istry.

[see doc­u­ment]

Lead­ers of Sec­ond Bap­tist have been sim­i­lar­ly reluc­tant to release or dis­cuss their poli­cies on sex­u­al abuse in response to two oth­er civ­il law­suits relat­ed to sex­u­al assault claims filed in the last five years, court records show. Those suits accuse the church of ignor­ing or con­ceal­ing abus­es com­mit­ted by youth pas­tor Chad Fos­ter, who was lat­er con­vict­ed.

Anoth­er civ­il law­suit assert­ed that Sec­ond Bap­tist helped con­ceal alleged rapes by Paul Pressler, a for­mer Texas state judge and for­mer SBC vice pres­i­dent. In that suit, brought by a mem­ber of Pressler’s youth group, three oth­er men have said in affi­davits that Pressler groped them or tried to pres­sure them into sex. Sec­ond Bap­tist, how­ev­er, has been dis­missed from the suit, and the plain­tiff’s sex­u­al abuse claims against Pressler have been dis­missed because the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired.

Pressler has been a promi­nent mem­ber of Sec­ond Bap­tist for much of his adult life.

In its state­ment to the Chron­i­cle, Sec­ond Bap­tist said “our pol­i­cy and prac­tice have been and will con­tin­ue to be that any com­plaint of sex­u­al mis­con­duct will be heard, inves­ti­gat­ed and han­dled in a law­ful and appro­pri­ate way. Reports of sex­u­al abuse are imme­di­ate­ly report­ed to law enforce­ment offi­cials as required by law.”

‘Break her down’

Anoth­er defen­dant in the law­suit against Pressler: Paige Pat­ter­son, a for­mer SBC pres­i­dent who, with Pressler, pushed the con­ven­tion in the 1980s and 1990s to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible.

In May of last year, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth 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.

But his han­dling of sex­u­al abuse dates back decades. Sev­er­al women have said that Pat­ter­son ignored their claims that his ex-pro­tégé, Dar­rell Gilyard, assault­ed them at Texas church­es in the 1980s; some of those alle­ga­tions were detailed in a 1991 Dal­las Morn­ing News arti­cle.

The Gilyard case both­ered Deb­bie Vasquez. She feared oth­er vic­tims had been ignored or left to han­dle their trau­ma alone.

When Vasquez became preg­nant, she said, lead­ers of her church forced her to stand in front of the con­gre­ga­tion and ask for for­give­ness with­out say­ing who had fathered the child.

She said church mem­bers were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive but were nev­er told the child was their pas­tor’s. Church lead­er­ship shunned her, asked her to get an abor­tion and, when she said no, threat­ened her and her child, she said. She moved abroad soon after.

Vasquez sued her for­mer pas­tor and his church in 2006. In a depo­si­tion, the pas­tor, Dale “Dick­ie” Amyx, admit­ted to hav­ing sex with her when she was a teenag­er, though he main­tained that it was con­sen­su­al. He acknowl­edged pater­ni­ty of her child but was nev­er charged with any crime. Amyx was list­ed as the church’s pas­tor as late as 2016, state Bap­tist records show. He could not be reached for com­ment.

Amyx denies that he threat­ened or phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed Vasquez. He and his employ­er at the time of the law­suit — an SBC church Vasquez nev­er attend­ed — argued that Vasquez exag­ger­at­ed her sto­ry in an attempt to get pub­lic­i­ty for her fight for reforms, court records show.

Amyx wrote an apol­o­gy let­ter that Vasquez pro­vid­ed to the news­pa­pers; her law­suit was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed, but she con­tin­ued press­ing SBC lead­ers, includ­ing Pat­ter­son, to act. In one series of emails, she asked Pat­ter­son why lead­ers did­n’t inter­vene in cas­es such as Gilyard’s.

Pat­ter­son respond­ed force­ful­ly, writ­ing in 2008 that he “forced Gilyard to resign his church” and “called pas­tors all over the USA and since that day (Gilyard) has nev­er preached for any South­ern Bap­tist orga­ni­za­tion.”

In fact, Gilyard preached after his Texas ouster at var­i­ous church­es, includ­ing Jack­sonville’s First Bap­tist Church, which was led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Jer­ry Vines. It was there that Tiffany Thig­pen said she met Gilyard, who she said lat­er “vicious­ly” attacked her.

Thig­pen, who was 18 at the time, said that Vines tried to shame her into silence after she dis­closed the abuse to him. “How embar­rass­ing this will be for you,” she recalled Vines telling her. As far as Thig­pen knows, police were nev­er noti­fied.

Gilyard was con­vict­ed in 2009 of lewd and las­civ­i­ous molesta­tion of two oth­er teenage girls, both under 16, while pas­tor­ing a Flori­da church. He found work at an SBC church after his three-year prison sen­tence, prompt­ing the local South­ern Bap­tist asso­ci­a­tion to end its affil­i­a­tion.

...

Vasquez: “They made excus­es and did noth­ing.”

Thig­pen said of Vines in a recent inter­view: “You left this lit­tle sheep to get hurt and then you pro­tect­ed your­self. And I hope when you lay your head on your pil­low you think of every girl (Gilyard) hurt and life he ruined. And I hope you can’t sleep.”

...

‘Lethal’ abuse

Defen­sive respons­es from church lead­ers rank among the worst things the abused can endure, says Har­vey Rosen­stock, a Hous­ton psy­chi­a­trist who has worked for decades with vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors of cler­gy sex­u­al abuse. They can rewire a devel­op­ing brain to for­ev­er asso­ciate faith or author­i­ty with trau­ma or betray­al, he says.

“If some­one is iden­ti­fied as a man of God, then there are no holds barred,” he said. “Your defense sys­tem is com­plete­ly par­a­lyzed. This man is speak­ing with the voice of God. ... So a per­son who is not only an author­i­ty fig­ure, but God’s ser­vant, is telling you this is between us, this is a spe­cial rela­tion­ship, this has been sanc­tioned by the Lord. That allows a young vic­tim to have almost zero defens­es. Total­ly vul­ner­a­ble.”

Rosen­stock is among a grow­ing num­ber of expert clin­i­cians who advo­cate for changes in statute of lim­i­ta­tions laws in sex­u­al abuse cas­es. They cite decades of neu­ro­science to show that those abused as chil­dren — par­tic­u­lar­ly by cler­gy — can devel­op a sort of Stock­holm syn­drome that pre­vents them for decades from rec­og­niz­ing them­selves as vic­tims.

Such was the case for most of David Pittman’s life.

...

An ath­let­ic child with an incar­cer­at­ed father, Pittman said he had dreamed about join­ing the youth group at his church near Atlanta since he was bap­tized there at age 8.

There, he could play any sport he want­ed, and at 12 he found in the youth pas­tor a much-sought father fig­ure. The groom­ing start­ed almost imme­di­ate­ly, he said: front-seat rides in the youth pas­tor’s Camaro; trips to see the Doo­bie Broth­ers and Kansas in con­cert; and, even­tu­al­ly, sleep­overs dur­ing which Pittman said he was first molest­ed. Pittman said the assaults con­tin­ued until he turned 15 and the youth pas­tor qui­et­ly moved to a new church near­by.

...

Three decades lat­er, in 2006, Pittman learned that his alleged abuser was work­ing as a youth min­is­ter in Geor­gia. Though Geor­gia’s statute of lim­i­ta­tions had by then elapsed, Pittman and oth­ers came for­ward with alle­ga­tions.

Like Pittman, Ray Har­rell grew up with­out a male fig­ure in his life. His father left ear­ly, he said, and his moth­er lat­er “threw her­self” into the church. Even­tu­al­ly the youth min­is­ter start­ed babysit­ting Har­rell, then a pre-teen. Har­rell still remem­bers the min­is­ter’s stuffed mon­key, which was used to “break the ice,” he said.

...

Pittman reached out to the church’s lead pas­tor and chair­man of the church’s dea­cons.

The dea­con said in an inter­view that he con­front­ed the youth min­is­ter and “asked him if there had ever been any­thing in his past and he acknowl­edged that there had been.” The min­is­ter also told the dea­con that he had got­ten “dis­creet” coun­sel­ing, the dea­con said.

The youth min­is­ter resigned, after which the dea­con and oth­ers began look­ing through a Myspace account that he had while employed at the church. On it, the dea­con found mes­sages “that the police should have,” he said.

The dea­con said he pro­vid­ed the Geor­gia State Bap­tist Con­ven­tion with evi­dence that the youth min­is­ter should be barred from work­ing in church­es.

The youth min­is­ter who Pittman and Har­rell say abused them still works at an SBC church in Geor­gia. The church’s lead pas­tor declined to say if he was ever made aware of the alle­ga­tions, though Pittman pro­vid­ed emails that show he reached out to the pas­tor repeat­ed­ly.

The youth min­is­ter did not return phone calls. Reached by email, he declined to be inter­viewed. The news­pa­pers are not iden­ti­fy­ing him because he has not been charged.

Anne Marie Miller says she, too, has been denied jus­tice. In July, Mark Ader­holt, a for­mer employ­ee of the South Car­oli­na Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and a for­mer mis­sion­ary, was charged in Tar­rant Coun­ty with sex­u­al­ly assault­ing Miller in the late 1990s, when she was a teenag­er. Texas elim­i­nat­ed its statute of lim­i­ta­tions for most sex crimes against chil­dren in 2007.

In 2007, Miller told the SBC’s Inter­na­tion­al Mis­sion Board about Ader­holt after he was hired there, prompt­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion that offi­cials said sup­port­ed her sto­ry. Ader­holt resigned and worked at SBC church­es in Arkansas before mov­ing to South Car­oli­na, where he worked for the state’s Bap­tist con­ven­tion.

Miller, mean­while, was told to “let it go” when she asked mis­sion board offi­cials about the inves­ti­ga­tion.

“For­give­ness is up to you alone,” gen­er­al coun­sel Derek Gaubatz wrote in one 2007 email. “It involves a deci­sion by you to for­give the oth­er per­son of the wrongs done to you, just as Christ has for­giv­en you.”

After Ader­holt’s arrest, a mis­sion board spokes­woman said it did not noti­fy his future SBC employ­ers about the alle­ga­tions in 2007 because of local church auton­o­my. The board also said that Miller at the time did not want to talk with police. She says that was because she was still trau­ma­tized.

The charges against Ader­holt are pend­ing.

Miller, 38, lives in the Fort Worth area. She says she has received sup­port from Greear, the new SBC pres­i­dent. But she’s skep­ti­cal that the SBC will act deci­sive­ly.

“I was real­ly, real­ly hope­ful that it was a turn­ing point, but I’ve been dis­ap­point­ed that there has­n’t been any mean­ing­ful action oth­er than form­ing com­mit­tees and assign­ing bud­gets, which is just good old Bap­tist red tape,” Miller said. “That’s just what you do — you form a com­mit­tee, and you put some mon­ey towards it and no change actu­al­ly hap­pens.”

The elec­tion last year of Greear, the 45-year-old pas­tor of The Sum­mit Church in Durham, N.C., was seen as a sig­nal that the SBC was mov­ing away from more rigid con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers such as Pat­ter­son. Greear has launched a group that is study­ing sex­u­al abuse at the request of Burleson and oth­ers.

Unlike in 2008, Burleson last year direct­ed his request for a sex offend­er reg­istry to the Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, which does moral advo­ca­cy on behalf of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. For the first time, the study of his pro­pos­al has been fund­ed.

But Greear said in an email that he is lim­it­ed by local church auton­o­my.

“Change has to begin at the ground lev­el with church­es and orga­ni­za­tions,” he wrote. “Our church­es must start stand­ing togeth­er with a com­mit­ment to take this issue much more seri­ous­ly than ever before.”

Part 2: South­ern Bap­tist church­es hired min­is­ters accused of past sex offens­es

Part 3: All too often, South­ern Bap­tist youth pas­tors take advan­tage of chil­dren

Part 4: Mis­sion­ar­ies left trail of abuse, but lead­ers stayed qui­et

Part 5: South­ern Bap­tist church­es har­bored sex offend­ers

Part 6: Sur­vivors of Bap­tist sex­u­al abuse come for­ward to help oth­ers

———

“Abuse of Faith” By Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco; The Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; 02/10/2019

“It’s not just a recent prob­lem: In all, since 1998, rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the news­pa­pers found. That includes those who were con­vict­ed, cred­i­bly accused and suc­cess­ful­ly sued, and those who con­fessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any oth­er state.”

This is not a new scan­dal. Paul Pressler pow­er and influ­ence may have helped him evade jus­tice over the decades, but he had a lot of help. The same help kind of sys­tem­at­ic help that was like­ly pro­vid­ed to the rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers who have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct since 1998 alone. Don’t for­get that Pressler’s abuse alle­ga­tions go back to 1978. Those were the find­ings of a six month long jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tion first pub­lished back in Feb­ru­ary of 2019 that exam­ined thou­sands of pages of court, prison and police records and con­duct­ing hun­dreds of inter­views. Decades of sys­temic coverup and denials going all the way to the top of the SBC lead­er­ship:

...
They left behind more than 700 vic­tims, many of them shunned by their church­es, left to them­selves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to for­give their abusers or to get abor­tions.

About 220 offend­ers have been con­vict­ed or took plea deals, and dozens of cas­es are pend­ing. They were pas­tors. Min­is­ters. Youth pas­tors. Sun­day school teach­ers. Dea­cons. Church vol­un­teers.

...

Near­ly 100 are still held in pris­ons stretch­ing from Sacra­men­to Coun­ty, Calif., to Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty, Fla., state and fed­er­al records show. Scores of oth­ers cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are reg­is­tered sex offend­ers. Some still work in South­ern Bap­tist church­es today.

Jour­nal­ists in the two news­rooms spent more than six months review­ing thou­sands of pages of court, prison and police records and con­duct­ing hun­dreds of inter­views. They built a data­base of for­mer lead­ers in South­ern Bap­tist church­es who have been con­vict­ed of sex crimes.

The inves­ti­ga­tion reveals that:

• At least 35 church pas­tors, employ­ees and vol­un­teers who exhib­it­ed preda­to­ry behav­ior were still able to find jobs at church­es dur­ing the past two decades. In some cas­es, church lead­ers appar­ent­ly failed to alert law enforce­ment about com­plaints or to warn oth­er con­gre­ga­tions about alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct.

Sev­er­al past pres­i­dents and promi­nent lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion are among those crit­i­cized by vic­tims for con­ceal­ing or mis­han­dling abuse com­plaints with­in their own church­es or sem­i­nar­ies.

• Some reg­is­tered sex offend­ers returned to the pul­pit. Oth­ers remain there, includ­ing a Hous­ton preach­er who sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a teenag­er and now is the prin­ci­pal offi­cer of a Hous­ton non­prof­it that works with stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions, fed­er­al records show. Its name: Touch­ing the Future Today Inc.

• Many of the vic­tims were ado­les­cents who were molest­ed, sent explic­it pho­tos or texts, exposed to pornog­ra­phy, pho­tographed nude, or repeat­ed­ly raped by youth pas­tors. Some vic­tims as young as 3 were molest­ed or raped inside pas­tors’ stud­ies and Sun­day school class­rooms. A few were adults — women and men who sought pas­toral guid­ance and instead say they were seduced or sex­u­al­ly assault­ed.
...

“Local church auton­o­my” appears to be the slo­gan SBC lead­er­ship is falling back on to jus­ti­fy its decades of inac­tion. Despite all the claims of abus­es, SBC lead­ers con­clud­ed they nev­er had any author­i­ty to do any­thing. And it’s not actu­al­ly clear that stance has even changed to this day:

...
At the core of South­ern Bap­tist doc­trine is local church auton­o­my, the idea that each church is inde­pen­dent and self-gov­ern­ing. It’s one of the main rea­sons that Boto said most of the pro­pos­als a decade ago were viewed as flawed by the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee because the com­mit­tee does­n’t have the author­i­ty to force church­es to report sex­u­al abuse to a cen­tral reg­istry.

Because of that, Boto said, the com­mit­tee “real­ized that lift­ing up a mod­el that could not be enforced was an exer­cise in futil­i­ty,” and so instead draft­ed a report that “accept­ed the exis­tence of the prob­lem rather than attempt­ing to define its mag­ni­tude.”

SBC church­es and orga­ni­za­tions share resources and mate­ri­als, and togeth­er they fund mis­sion­ary trips and sem­i­nar­ies. Most pas­tors are ordained local­ly after they’ve con­vinced a small group of church elders that they’ve been called to ser­vice by God. There is no cen­tral data­base that tracks ordi­na­tions, or sex­u­al abuse con­vic­tions or alle­ga­tions.

All of that makes South­ern Bap­tist church­es high­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to preda­tors, says Christa Brown, an activist who wrote a book about being molest­ed as a child by a pas­tor at her SBC church in Farm­ers Branch, a Dal­las sub­urb.

“It’s a per­fect pro­fes­sion for a con artist, because all he has to do is talk a good talk and con­vince peo­ple that he’s been called by God, and bin­go, he gets to be a South­ern Bap­tist min­is­ter,” said Brown, who lives in Col­orado. “Then he can infil­trate the entire­ty of the SBC, move from church to church, from state to state, go to big­ger church­es and more promi­nent church­es where he has more influ­ence and pow­er, and it all starts in some small church.

“It’s a porous sieve of a denom­i­na­tion.”
...

Note how Rev. Thomas Doyle — a priest and for­mer high-rank­ing lawyer for the Catholic Church who was one of the ear­li­est to blow the whis­tle on the ram­pant child sex­u­al abuse in the Catholic church — even wrote to SBC lead­ers back in 2007 fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a list of eight sex offend­ers who served in SBC church­es in Texas. Doyle recounts how haunt­ing­ly famil­iar the lack of action was from the SBC lead­er­ship. This real­ly is the ‘Catholic cri­sis’ for the SBC com­mu­ni­ty:

...
Sev­er­al fac­tors make it like­ly that the abuse is even more wide­spread than can be doc­u­ment­ed: Vic­tims of sex­u­al assault come for­ward at a low rate; many cas­es in church­es are han­dled inter­nal­ly; and many South­ern Bap­tist church­es are in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where media cov­er­age is sparse.

It’s clear, how­ev­er, that SBC lead­ers have long been aware of the prob­lem. Bow­ing to pres­sure from activists, the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas, one of the largest SBC state orga­ni­za­tions, in 2007 pub­lished a list of eight sex offend­ers who had served in South­ern Bap­tist church­es in Texas.

Around the same time, the Rev. Thomas Doyle wrote to SBC lead­ers, implor­ing them to act. A priest and for­mer high-rank­ing lawyer for the Catholic Church, Doyle in the 1980s was one of the ear­li­est to blow the whis­tle on child sex­u­al abuse in the church. But Catholic lead­ers “lied about it ... cov­ered it up and ignored the vic­tims,” said Doyle, now retired and liv­ing in north­ern Vir­ginia.

Doyle turned to activism because of his expe­ri­ences, work that brought him clos­er to those abused in South­ern Bap­tist church­es. Their sto­ries — and how the SBC han­dled them — felt haunt­ing­ly famil­iar, he said.

“I saw the same type of behav­ior going on with the South­ern Bap­tists,” he said.

The respons­es were pre­dictable, Doyle said. In one, Frank Page, then the SBC pres­i­dent, wrote that they were “tak­ing this issue seri­ous­ly” but that local church auton­o­my pre­sent­ed “seri­ous lim­i­ta­tions.” In March, Page resigned as pres­i­dent and CEO of the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for “a moral­ly inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship in the recent past,” accord­ing to the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.

Details have not been dis­closed, but SBC offi­cials said they had “no rea­son to sus­pect any legal impro­pri­ety.” Page declined to be inter­viewed.
...

Also keep in mind that 2007 is the year Paul Pressler was trans­ferred from First Bap­tist to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, which is led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young. So we should­n’t be sur­prised to find Ed Young sin­gled out by a vic­tim for being par­tic­u­lar­ly unhelp­ful when she came for­ward with an abuse alle­ga­tion. As a long-time SBC leader going back to 1978, it’s hard to think of some­one more impli­cat­ed in this than Young:

...
Sev­er­al South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers and their church­es have been crit­i­cized for ignor­ing the abused or cov­er­ing for alleged preda­tors, includ­ing at Hous­ton’s Sec­ond Bap­tist, where for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young has been pas­tor since 1978. Young built the church into one of the largest and most impor­tant in the SBC; today, it counts more than 60,000 mem­bers who attend at mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es.

Before she was molest­ed in the choir room at Sec­ond Bap­tist in 1994, Heather Schnei­der filled a black note­book with poems. The sev­enth-grad­er, with long white-blond hair and sparkling green eyes, had begun to work as a mod­el. She soon attract­ed atten­tion from John Forse, who coor­di­nat­ed church pageants and pro­grams at Sec­ond Bap­tist.

He also used his posi­tion to recruit girls for pri­vate act­ing lessons, accord­ing to Har­ris Coun­ty court doc­u­ments.

A day after she was attacked, Schnei­der told her moth­er, Casa­dos, that Forse had touched her inap­pro­pri­ate­ly and tried to force her to do “hor­ren­dous things.” Casa­dos called police.

Casa­dos, who was raised a Bap­tist, said she received a call from Young, who ini­tial­ly offered to do what­ev­er he could to help her daugh­ter. But after she told Young she already had called police, he hung up and “we nev­er heard from him again,” she said in an inter­view.

It took months — and the threat of crim­i­nal charges — before Forse left his posi­tion at the church, accord­ing to state­ments made by Forse’s attor­ney at the time and Schnei­der’s respons­es to ques­tions in a relat­ed civ­il law­suit.

...

Schnei­der’s par­ents filed a civ­il law­suit against the church, Forse and a mod­el­ing agency. The case against the church was dis­missed; its lawyers argued that Forse was not act­ing as a church employ­ee. Sec­ond Bap­tist was not part of an even­tu­al set­tle­ment.

In 1992, before Schnei­der was molest­ed, a lawyer for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion wrote in a court fil­ing that the SBC did not dis­trib­ute instruc­tions to its mem­ber church­es on han­dling sex­u­al abuse claims. He said Sec­ond Bap­tist had no writ­ten pro­ce­dures on the top­ic.

The lawyer, Neil Mar­tin, was writ­ing in response to a law­suit that accused First Bap­tist Church of Con­roe of con­tin­u­ing to employ Riley Edward Cox Jr. as a youth pas­tor after a fam­i­ly said that he had molest­ed their child. In a court fil­ing, Cox admit­ted to molest­ing three boys in the late 1980s.

Young, SBC pres­i­dent at the time of the law­suit, was asked to out­line the orga­ni­za­tion’s poli­cies on child sex­u­al abuse as part of the law­suit. He declined to tes­ti­fy, cit­ing “local church auton­o­my” and say­ing in an affi­davit that he had “no edu­ca­tion­al train­ing in the area of sex­u­al abuse or the inves­ti­ga­tion of sex­u­al abuse claims.”

Young also said he feared tes­ti­fy­ing could jeop­ar­dize his blos­som­ing TV min­istry.
...

But Young obvi­ous­ly isn’t the only SBC leader impli­cat­ed in this. And that brings us to for­mer SBC pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, one of the oth­er defen­dants in Rollins’s law­suit against Paul Pressler and the SBC lead­er­ship. Pat­ter­son, and his wife Dorothy Kel­ly Pat­ter­son, are both mem­bers of the CNP. In May of 2018, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, after it was revealed he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down”:

...
Anoth­er civ­il law­suit assert­ed that Sec­ond Bap­tist helped con­ceal alleged rapes by Paul Pressler, a for­mer Texas state judge and for­mer SBC vice pres­i­dent. In that suit, brought by a mem­ber of Pressler’s youth group, three oth­er men have said in affi­davits that Pressler groped them or tried to pres­sure them into sex. Sec­ond Bap­tist, how­ev­er, has been dis­missed from the suit, and the plain­tiff’s sex­u­al abuse claims against Pressler have been dis­missed because the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired.

Pressler has been a promi­nent mem­ber of Sec­ond Bap­tist for much of his adult life.

In its state­ment to the Chron­i­cle, Sec­ond Bap­tist said “our pol­i­cy and prac­tice have been and will con­tin­ue to be that any com­plaint of sex­u­al mis­con­duct will be heard, inves­ti­gat­ed and han­dled in a law­ful and appro­pri­ate way. Reports of sex­u­al abuse are imme­di­ate­ly report­ed to law enforce­ment offi­cials as required by law.”

‘Break her down’

Anoth­er defen­dant in the law­suit against Pressler: Paige Pat­ter­son, a for­mer SBC pres­i­dent who, with Pressler, pushed the con­ven­tion in the 1980s and 1990s to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible.

In May of last year, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth 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.

But his han­dling of sex­u­al abuse dates back decades. Sev­er­al women have said that Pat­ter­son ignored their claims that his ex-pro­tégé, Dar­rell Gilyard, assault­ed them at Texas church­es in the 1980s; some of those alle­ga­tions were detailed in a 1991 Dal­las Morn­ing News arti­cle.
...

Final­ly, again, note the gross hypocrisy here: the SBC lead­er­ship is unwill­ing to take actions against sys­temic sex­u­al abuse tak­ing place with­in its mem­ber church­es thanks to the “local church auton­o­my” doc­trine. But it’s fine with kick­ing out church­es for affirm­ing the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. It’s weird how that local auton­o­my works:

...
[see doc­u­ment]

Oth­er lead­ers have acknowl­edged that Bap­tist church­es are trou­bled by preda­tors but that they could not inter­fere in local church affairs. Even so, the SBC has end­ed its affil­i­a­tion with at least four church­es in the past 10 years for affirm­ing or endors­ing homo­sex­u­al behav­ior. The SBC gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments ban gay or female pas­tors, but they do not out­law con­vict­ed sex offend­ers from work­ing in church­es.
...

And don’t for­get, that was just Part 1 in the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle’s amaz­ing 6 Part series. There’s a lot more on this sto­ry.

Although we did get an update back in April. It’s a some­what mys­te­ri­ous update: Rollins agreed to set­tle in his suit against Paige Pat­ter­son in an undis­closed set­tle­ment. The law­suits against Pressler, the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and oth­ers involved in suit is still ongo­ing. So in 2004, Rollins man­aged to get Pressler to set­tle in an undis­closed set­tle­ment. And almost 20 years lat­er, his­to­ry sort of repeats itself:

The Ten­nessean

SBC sem­i­nary and promi­nent for­mer leader set­tle in high-pro­file abuse law­suit, SBC still defend­ing

Liam Adams
Nashville Ten­nessean
Pub­lished 5:00 a.m. CT April 20, 2023

Key Points

* Ger­ald D. Rollins, Jr. is suing Paul Pressler, a promi­nent for­mer SBC leader and for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge, over abuse alle­ga­tions, and the SBC and oth­ers for fail­ure to pre­vent abuse.
* Rollins set­tled with South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary and Paige Pat­ter­son, for­mer South­west­ern pres­i­dent and who led the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence move­ment in the SBC with Pressler.
* Rollins is still suing Pressler, SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and oth­ers in case that’s sched­uled for tri­al in May.

A promi­nent for­mer leader in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and an SBC sem­i­nary set­tled a law­suit with an alleged sex­u­al abuse vic­tim. But the high-stakes case remains pend­ing against two oth­ers — anoth­er promi­nent South­ern Bap­tist leader and the denom­i­na­tion itself.

Ger­ald D. Rollins, Jr. agreed to an undis­closed set­tle­ment with South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas and for­mer South­west­ern pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, a major devel­op­ment in a six-year-long case against Paul Pressler.

The set­tle­ment leaves Pressler, the SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and First Bap­tist Church Hous­ton as defen­dants in the case, which is set for tri­al in May. The case’s even­tu­al con­clu­sion is poten­tial­ly prece­dent set­ting for the Nashville-based SBC and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of its top lead­ers to address sex­u­al abuse.

Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge, and Pat­ter­son famous­ly led the late 20th-cen­tu­ry Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence move­ment in the SBC that pulled the denom­i­na­tion fur­ther to the right. It was dur­ing that same time Pressler alleged­ly repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly abused Rollins, accord­ing to the law­suit.

Rollins’ case has sent shock­waves in the SBC and in Texas. It led to an adja­cent Texas Supreme Court case over the statute of lim­i­ta­tions and Rollins’ abil­i­ty to sue Pressler. The Texas Supreme Court ruled last April in favor of Rollins, who argued the trau­ma of the abuse caused him to sup­press mem­o­ries until 2016.

For the SBC, Rollins’ law­suit, through which addi­tion­al abuse alle­ga­tions against Pressler have emerged, helped spark a reck­on­ing over abuse through­out the con­ven­tion and cov­er-up by its top lead­ers. That reck­on­ing is recent­ly marked by a his­toric report in May fol­low­ing a third-par­ty inves­ti­ga­tion and ongo­ing reform led by a task force.

“Dr. Pat­ter­son is grate­ful that he has been removed from a suit that he should nev­er have been includ­ed,” J. Shel­by Sharpe, Pat­ter­son­’s attor­ney, said in a state­ment. “No mon­ey was paid on Dr. Pat­ter­son­’s behalf or by him to have him non-suit­ed.”

...

Suing South­west­ern and Pat­ter­son

Rollins’ case against South­west­ern and Pat­ter­son was part of a larg­er effort to hold SBC insti­tu­tions respon­si­ble for Pressler’s alleged abuse.

“Rather than report­ing, they col­lec­tive­ly con­cealed,” Rollins said in an amend­ed com­plaint about sev­en defen­dants. “Rather than coop­er­at­ing in the work­ings of jus­tice, they col­lec­tive­ly obstruct­ed it.”

Rollins sued Pat­ter­son because of his rela­tion­ship with Pressler. Rollins sued South­west­ern most­ly because Pat­ter­son was its pres­i­dent between 2003–2018.

Due to Pat­ter­son and Pressler’s tight rela­tion­ship as they led the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, Rollins calls Pat­ter­son a “joint enter­pris­er” in the law­suit, a term that places lia­bil­i­ty on Pat­ter­son for not speak­ing up about sus­pect­ed abuse.

Rollins said he inter­act­ed with Pat­ter­son on sev­er­al occa­sions dur­ing the time of Pressler’s alleged abuse between 1979–2004, accord­ing to Rollins’ amend­ed com­plaint. Lat­er, when Pressler hired Rollins at his law firm in 2002, Pressler alleged­ly called Rollins his “spe­cial office assis­tant” to Pat­ter­son, the com­plaint said.

But Pat­ter­son denies abuse alle­ga­tions against Pressler and any pri­or knowl­edge of Pressler’s abu­sive behav­ior, accord­ing to recent­ly released court fil­ings, includ­ing a depo­si­tion tran­script.

“I can­not make a judg­ment about whether it’s true,” Pat­ter­son said in a depo­si­tion on Jan. 11, 2023. It was only on a trip to North Africa that includ­ed Pressler, Pat­ter­son and Rollins that Pat­ter­son said he inter­act­ed with Rollins.

Pat­ter­son has faced his own series of scan­dal relat­ed to abuse in the SBC.

When he was pres­i­dent of South­west­ern in 2015 and pres­i­dent of South­east­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in 2003, he report­ed­ly treat­ed female sem­i­nar­i­ans with hos­til­i­ty after they came for­ward with reports of sex­u­al assault and down­played their reports.

Reports of both inci­dents led South­west­ern to fire Pat­ter­son in 2018, and the lat­ter case led to a law­suit against Pat­ter­son in fed­er­al court. A judge in that case dis­missed some claims against Pat­ter­son ahead of a tri­al sched­uled for ear­ly April.

Suing the SBC

Rollins’ suit still includes the SBC, SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, First Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton and Pressler’s for­mer law part­ners.

Rollins’ argu­ment against the SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee is based on mul­ti­ple fac­tors, such as that Pressler served on the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. The exec­u­tive com­mit­tee man­ages denom­i­na­tion busi­ness out­side the SBC annu­al meet­ing.

...

The SBC denies all alle­ga­tions it’s fac­ing from Rollins, accord­ing to a recent court fil­ing. Due to the bot­tom-up struc­ture of the SBC, it’s always been a high bar for sur­vivors to sue the SBC for inci­dents of abuse at a local South­ern Bap­tist church.

How­ev­er, Rollins’ suit and oth­ers have cit­ed the report from Guide­post in May to argue the SBC has a hier­ar­chy and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­vent abuse in local church­es. The con­ven­tion is also fac­ing two defama­tion law­suits from alleged abusers.

———-

“SBC sem­i­nary and promi­nent for­mer leader set­tle in high-pro­file abuse law­suit, SBC still defend­ing” by Liam Adams; The Ten­nessean; 04/20/2023

Ger­ald D. Rollins, Jr. agreed to an undis­closed set­tle­ment with South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas and for­mer South­west­ern pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, a major devel­op­ment in a six-year-long case against Paul Pressler.”

We don’t know what exact­ly the set­tle­ment was, but we know Paige Pat­ter­son set­tled. And based on every­thing else we know about this case, that was prob­a­bly a for­tu­itous turn of events for Pat­ter­son, who worked so close­ly to Pressler over the decades that Rollins called them a “joint enter­prise” in the law­suit. And note how Rollins’s abuse at the hands of Pressler did­n’t just include his inter­ac­tions with Pressler as his youth pas­tor. Rollins got a job at Wood­fill & Pressler in 2002, where he served as Pat­ter­son­’s “spe­cial office assis­tant”. Or at least that’s how Pressler describe Rollins’s job to Pat­ter­son at the time:

...
Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge, and Pat­ter­son famous­ly led the late 20th-cen­tu­ry Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence move­ment in the SBC that pulled the denom­i­na­tion fur­ther to the right. It was dur­ing that same time Pressler alleged­ly repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly abused Rollins, accord­ing to the law­suit.

...

Due to Pat­ter­son and Pressler’s tight rela­tion­ship as they led the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, Rollins calls Pat­ter­son a “joint enter­pris­er” in the law­suit, a term that places lia­bil­i­ty on Pat­ter­son for not speak­ing up about sus­pect­ed abuse.

Rollins said he inter­act­ed with Pat­ter­son on sev­er­al occa­sions dur­ing the time of Pressler’s alleged abuse between 1979–2004, accord­ing to Rollins’ amend­ed com­plaint. Lat­er, when Pressler hired Rollins at his law firm in 2002, Pressler alleged­ly called Rollins his “spe­cial office assis­tant” to Pat­ter­son, the com­plaint said.
...

But this set­tle­ment was­n’t a set­tle­ment for Pressler, or the rest of the defend­ents in the case. This case isn’t over:

...
The set­tle­ment leaves Pressler, the SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and First Bap­tist Church Hous­ton as defen­dants in the case, which is set for tri­al in May. The case’s even­tu­al con­clu­sion is poten­tial­ly prece­dent set­ting for the Nashville-based SBC and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of its top lead­ers to address sex­u­al abuse.

...

Rollins sued Pat­ter­son because of his rela­tion­ship with Pressler. Rollins sued South­west­ern most­ly because Pat­ter­son was its pres­i­dent between 2003–2018.

...

Rollins’ suit still includes the SBC, SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, First Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton and Pressler’s for­mer law part­ners.
...

You have to won­der if some future law­suit against Pat­ter­son, Pressler, or the SBC will ulti­mate­ly end up reveal­ing the nature of this undis­closed set­tle­ment. It’s pos­si­ble. Just ask Jared Wood­fill.

The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law: Mike Johnson’s College that Never Was

So that was our look at the broad­er con­text sur­round­ing Mike John­son’s sur­prise Speak­er­ship. But we aren’t quite done yet. There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of Mike John­son’s his­to­ry worth recount­ing here: the time Mike John­son was hired back in 2010 to lead a Chris­t­ian legal school that nev­er exist­ed. It tried to exist, mind you. But real­i­ty got in the way. Real­i­ties like embez­zle­ment of the funds need­ed to get the school start­ed. John­son was­n’t per­son­al­ly charged with any wrong­do­ing and end­ed up resign­ing from the posi­tion in 2012 and return­ing to his role as a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal advo­cate.

Now here’s the part that’s sad­ly poignant giv­en every­thing we just looked at: the name of law school to be was the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law. It was sup­posed to be the kind of law school that admin­is­tra­tors boast­ed would “unashamed­ly embrace” a “bib­li­cal world­view.”

Five years after John­son left that role, of course, Pressler and much of the rest of the SBC found them­selves fac­ing Rollins’s sec­ond still-ongo­ing law­suit. So while it was pre­sum­ably seen as mis­for­tune when the school was pre­emp­tive­ly shut­tered, that may not have been the worst out­come all things con­sid­ered:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

House Speak­er Mike John­son was once the dean of a Chris­t­ian law school. It nev­er opened its doors

By BRIAN SLODYSKO
Updat­ed 8:25 PM CST, Octo­ber 31, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before House Speak­er Mike John­son was elect­ed to pub­lic office, he was the dean of a small Bap­tist law school that didn’t exist.

The estab­lish­ment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law was sup­posed to be a cap­stone achieve­ment for Louisiana Col­lege, which admin­is­tra­tors boast­ed would “unashamed­ly embrace” a “bib­li­cal world­view.” Instead, it col­lapsed rough­ly a decade ago with­out enrolling stu­dents or open­ing its doors amid infight­ing by offi­cials, accu­sa­tions of finan­cial impro­pri­ety and dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing accred­i­ta­tion, which fright­ened away would-be donors.

There is no indi­ca­tion that John­son engaged in wrong­do­ing while employed by the pri­vate col­lege, now known as Louisiana Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ty. But as a vir­tu­al­ly unknown play­er in Wash­ing­ton, the episode offers insight into how John­son nav­i­gat­ed lead­er­ship chal­lenges that echo the chaos, feud­ing and hard-right pol­i­tics that have come to define the Repub­li­can House major­i­ty he now leads.

The chap­ter is just the lat­est to sur­face since the four-term congressman’s improb­a­ble elec­tion as speak­er last week fol­low­ing the ouster of for­mer Speak­er Kevin McCarthy, a reminder of his long­stand­ing ties to the Chris­t­ian right, which is now a dom­i­nant force in GOP pol­i­tics.

It’s also a mile­stone that he does not typ­i­cal­ly men­tion when dis­cussing a pre-Con­gress resume that includes work as lit­i­ga­tor for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian groups that fierce­ly opposed gay rights and abor­tion, as well as his brief tenure as a Louisiana law­mak­er who pushed leg­is­la­tion that sanc­tioned dis­crim­i­na­tion for reli­gious rea­sons.

...

“The law school deal was real­ly an anom­aly,” said Gene Mills, a long­time friend of Johnson’s. “It was a great idea. But due to issues that were out of Mike’s hands that came unrav­eled.”

J. Michael John­son Esq., as he was then known pro­fes­sion­al­ly, was hired in 2010 to be the “inau­gur­al dean” of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, named for a South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion lumi­nary who was instru­men­tal in the faith group’s turn to the polit­i­cal right in the 1980s. The board of trustees who brought John­son onboard includ­ed Tony Perkins, a long­time men­tor who is now the pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil in Wash­ing­ton, a pow­er­house Chris­t­ian lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion that the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter clas­si­fies as an anti-gay “hate group.”

In ear­ly pub­lic remarks, John­son pre­dict­ed a bright future for the school, and col­lege offi­cials hoped it would some­day rival the law school at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty, the evan­gel­i­cal insti­tu­tion found­ed by the Rev. Jer­ry Fal­well.

“From a pure fea­si­bil­i­ty stand­point,” John­son said, “I’m not sure how this can fail.” Accord­ing to the Dai­ly Town Talk, a news­pa­per in Alexan­dria, Louisiana, he added that it looked “like the per­fect storm for our law school.”

Real­i­ty soon intrud­ed.

For sev­er­al years before Johnson’s arrival, the col­lege had been in a state of tur­moil fol­low­ing a board takeover by con­ser­v­a­tives who felt the school had become too lib­er­al. They imple­ment­ed poli­cies that restrict­ed aca­d­e­m­ic free­doms, includ­ing the poten­tial fir­ing of instruc­tors whose cur­ricu­lum touched upon sex­u­al moral­i­ty or teach­ings con­tra­dic­to­ry to the Bible.

The school’s pres­i­dent and oth­er fac­ul­ty resigned, and the col­lege was placed on pro­ba­tion by an accred­i­ta­tion agency.

But a shale oil boom in the area also brought a wave of pros­per­i­ty from new­ly enriched donors. And school offi­cials, led by pres­i­dent Joe Aguil­lard, had grand ambi­tions beyond just the law school, which includ­ed open­ing a med­ical school, a film school and mak­ing a movie adap­ta­tion of the 1960s pas­toral com­e­dy TV show “Green Acres.”

Bring­ing John­son into the school’s lead­er­ship helped fur­ther those ambi­tions. As dean of the pro­posed law school, John­son embarked on a major fundrais­ing cam­paign and described a big-dol­lar event in Hous­ton with for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, then-Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal and Pressler, accord­ing to an account John­son wrote in a 2011 alum­ni mag­a­zine.

But he strug­gled to draw an ade­quate amount of cash while dra­ma per­co­lat­ed behind the scenes. That cul­mi­nat­ed in a flur­ry of law­suits, includ­ing a whistle­blow­er claim by a school vice pres­i­dent, who accused Aguil­lard of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing mon­ey and lying to the board, accord­ing to court records.

A law firm brought in to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion lat­er con­clud­ed in a 2013 report that Aguil­lard had inap­pro­pri­ate­ly divert­ed funds to a school the insti­tu­tion hoped to build in Africa, as well as for per­son­al expens­es.

...

Mean­while, the his­toric for­mer fed­er­al cour­t­house in Shreve­port that was select­ed as the law school’s cam­pus required at least $20 mil­lion in ren­o­va­tions. The envi­ron­ment turned unten­able after the school was denied accred­i­ta­tion to issue juris doc­tor­ate degrees and major donors backed away from their finan­cial pledges.

“Mike worked dili­gent­ly to assem­ble a very elite fac­ul­ty and cur­ricu­lum,” said Gilbert Lit­tle, who was involved in the effort. But “fundrais­ing for a small pri­vate col­lege is very, very dif­fi­cult.”

John­son resigned in the fall of 2012 and went back to lit­i­gat­ing for Chris­t­ian caus­es. He also start­ed a new pro-bono firm, Free­dom Guard, which Perkins served as a direc­tor, busi­ness fil­ings show.

Five years lat­er, Pressler, the school’s name­sake, was sued in a civ­il case that has since grown to include alle­ga­tions of abuse by mul­ti­ple men who say he sex­u­al­ly assault­ed them, some when they were chil­dren. The mat­ter, which is still pend­ing in court, helped spark a broad­er reck­on­ing by the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion over its han­dling of claims of sex­u­al abuse.

Lit­tle said the school was named after Pressler because he had a close rela­tion­ship with the institution’s lead­ers. John­son didn’t stray entire­ly from the school. He rep­re­sent­ed the col­lege for six more years in a case chal­leng­ing a man­date in then-Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law that required employ­ers to pro­vide work­ers access to birth con­trol, court records show.

It was the type of case that has defined his legal career.

The 51-year-old John­son was born in Shreve­port, Louisiana, the eldest of four chil­dren in what he has described as a “tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian house­hold.” Tragedy struck when John­son was 12.

His father, Pat, a Shreve­port fire­fight­er and haz­ardous mate­ri­als spe­cial­ist, was crit­i­cal­ly injured when ammo­nia gas leak­ing inside a cold stor­age facil­i­ty explod­ed dur­ing an emer­gency repair — leav­ing him per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled, while killing his part­ner.

“None of our lives would ever be the same again,” his son wrote years lat­er in a com­men­tary piece pub­lished in the Shreve­port Times.

John­son and his wife, Kel­ly, mar­ried in 1999, enter­ing into a covenant mar­riage, which both have tout­ed for the dif­fi­cul­ty it pos­es to obtain­ing a divorce, and the cou­ple served as a pub­lic face of an effort by evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives to pro­mote such mar­riages. In 2005, Kel­ly John­son told ABC News that she viewed any­thing less as “mar­riage-light.”

John­son has said he was the first in his fam­i­ly to grad­u­ate col­lege, enrolling at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty, where he earned a law degree in 1998. He also worked on the 1996 Sen­ate cam­paign of Louis “Woody” Jenk­ins, where he had an ear­ly brush with a con­test­ed elec­tion.

Jenk­ins, a con­ser­v­a­tive state law­mak­er, nar­row­ly lost to Demo­c­rat Mary Lan­drieu amid alle­ga­tions of vot­er fraud, includ­ing bal­lots cast by dead peo­ple and vot­ers who were paid. A sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion by the Senate’s then-Repub­li­can major­i­ty found no evi­dence “to prove that fraud or irreg­u­lar­i­ties affect­ed the out­come of the elec­tion.”

But in the wake of Trump’s 2020 elec­tion loss, which John­son played a lead­ing role in dis­put­ing, the con­gress­man offered a dif­fer­ing view of the decades-old con­test while describ­ing him­self as a young law stu­dent “car­ry­ing around everyone’s brief­cas­es.”

“Even though we had all the evi­dence all wrapped up,” John­son, told Louisiana radio host Moon Grif­fon in 2020, the Sen­ate “put it in a clos­et and nev­er looked at it again.”

Even though Jenk­ins lost, John­son drew notice from con­ser­v­a­tive activists who worked on the cam­paign.

Among them was Perkins, the founder of the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum, who has long pro­mot­ed an exis­ten­tial clash between pious Chris­tians and deca­dent lib­er­als. He did not respond to a request for com­ment.

Mills, a long­time Perkins con­fi­dant who now leads the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum, called Johnson’s ascen­sion to House speak­er “a won­der­ful day in Amer­i­ca,” adding, “if you don’t believe God is at work in the midst of this, then you aren’t pay­ing atten­tion.”

Of his ini­tial inter­ac­tions with John­son, Mills said, “he just glowed.“

“The real­i­ty is Mike added val­ue every­where he went. And that was evi­dent from the ear­ly days,” Mills said.

Soon John­son was rep­re­sent­ing the group and oth­ers dur­ing his rough­ly decade-long tenure as an attor­ney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a non­prof­it legal orga­ni­za­tion still in its infan­cy, which pre­sent­ed itself as a bul­wark for tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly val­ues.

The group is no longer an upstart. Now known as the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, or ADF, the orga­ni­za­tion raised over $100 mil­lion in 2022 and con­ceived the legal strat­e­gy that led to the Supreme Court last year over­turn­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an abor­tion, among oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive wins it helped secure from the high court.

Much of Johnson’s ear­ly work for ADF was far more pro­sa­ic. In court and before pub­lic boards, he rep­re­sent­ed con­ser­v­a­tives on issues relat­ed to the exer­cise of faith in schools and alco­hol reg­u­la­tions, as well as zon­ing dis­putes over casi­nos and strip clubs.

But Johnson’s vehe­ment oppo­si­tion to the bur­geon­ing gay rights move­ment in the mid-2000s soon gar­nered greater atten­tion.

In 2004, John­son and the ADF filed suit, seek­ing to over­turn a New Orleans law that allowed same-sex part­ners of city work­ers to receive health ben­e­fits, which a judge reject­ed.

He also wrote a semi-reg­u­lar guest col­umn in the Shreve­port Times, where his defens­es of “reli­gious lib­er­ty” includ­ed stri­dent­ly anti-gay rhetoric, includ­ing a pre­dic­tion that same-sex mar­riage would be a “dark har­bin­ger of chaos and sex­u­al anar­chy that could doom even the strongest repub­lic.”

...

Anoth­er col­umn lament­ed the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in 2004 to over­turn a Texas law that out­lawed same-sex inti­ma­cy, which John­son referred to as “devi­ate sex­u­al inter­course.”

His advo­ca­cy did not occur in a polit­i­cal vac­u­um. Then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s reelec­tion cam­paign was look­ing to ener­gize turnout among social con­ser­v­a­tives, tap­ping allies across the U.S. to place ref­er­en­dums oppos­ing gay mar­riage on the bal­lot in hopes of doing so. It’s a role John­son leaned into.

In 2004, he rep­re­sent­ed the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum in oppos­ing a case filed by gay rights sup­port­ers who sought to block a vot­er-approved state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that pro­hib­it­ed “civ­il unions” — a legal pre­cur­sor to same-sex mar­riage — and cod­i­fied mar­riage as between one man and one woman.

The amend­ment was over­whelm­ing­ly approved in an unusu­al and low-turnout elec­tion, held weeks before the 2004 pres­i­den­tial con­test, in which it was the only issue on the bal­lot. The elec­tion was marred by the late deliv­ery of vot­ing machines to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­hold of Orleans Parish.

In a legal brief, John­son chid­ed gay rights sup­port­ers for chal­leng­ing the out­come in court.

“Dis­con­tent with an election’s results does not enti­tle one to have it over­turned,” he wrote. Near­ly two decades lat­er, John­son, then in Trump’s cor­ner, would effec­tive­ly argue the oppo­site.

Johnson’s harsh rhetoric in the ear­ly 2000s sur­round­ing the issue of gay rights con­trasts stark­ly with the ami­able image he cul­ti­vat­ed fol­low­ing his elec­tion to pub­lic office, which is punc­tu­at­ed with appeals for “a respect­ful, diverse soci­ety where cit­i­zens from all view­points can peace­ful­ly coex­ist.”

Yet his argu­ments often obscure a far more strik­ing real­i­ty.

The Mar­riage and Con­science Act, which he spon­sored as a fresh­man state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in 2015, would have effec­tive­ly blocked Louisiana from pun­ish­ing busi­ness own­ers and work­ers who dis­crim­i­nat­ed against gay cou­ples, so long as it was for reli­gious rea­sons — sim­i­lar to argu­ments invoked dur­ing the Civ­il Rights era against inter­ra­cial mar­riage. The bill was reject­ed by law­mak­ers in both par­ties.

The fol­low­ing year, crit­ics charged that his “Pas­tor Pro­tec­tion Act,” which was focused on gay mar­riage, would also cre­ate a legal defense for cler­gy who opposed inter­ra­cial mar­riage. John­son, who has an adopt­ed Black son, acknowl­edged the point but argued it wasn’t a big deal because oppo­si­tion to inter­ra­cial mar­riage was an issue of the past — unlike gay mar­riage.

“Maybe there are some peo­ple out there who do that. But it’s not a big cur­rent issue, I think we would agree, at least in the courts and the court of pub­lic opin­ion,” John­son said dur­ing a 2016 com­mit­tee hear­ing.

The bill was reject­ed by law­mak­ers in both par­ties. John­son was elect­ed to Con­gress the next fall, draw­ing his short tenure as a law­mak­er in Baton Rouge to a close.

Lamar White Jr., a pro­gres­sive who wrote a wide­ly read Louisiana polit­i­cal blog, said his inter­ac­tions with John­son were always pleas­ant, even if he “dis­agreed with every­thing he stood for.”

“His climb to the top is not sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing his per­son­al charm, his charis­ma and intel­lect, which were dis­arm­ing,” said White. “That obscured the end goal and what he was real­ly up to.”

———–

“House Speak­er Mike John­son was once the dean of a Chris­t­ian law school. It nev­er opened its doors” by BRIAN SLODYSKO; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 10/31/2023

The estab­lish­ment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law was sup­posed to be a cap­stone achieve­ment for Louisiana Col­lege, which admin­is­tra­tors boast­ed would “unashamed­ly embrace” a “bib­li­cal world­view.” Instead, it col­lapsed rough­ly a decade ago with­out enrolling stu­dents or open­ing its doors amid infight­ing by offi­cials, accu­sa­tions of finan­cial impro­pri­ety and dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing accred­i­ta­tion, which fright­ened away would-be donors.”

Well look at that. The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law. The school that nev­er was. It was going to be Mike John­son’s next big project back in 2010:

...
J. Michael John­son Esq., as he was then known pro­fes­sion­al­ly, was hired in 2010 to be the “inau­gur­al dean” of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, named for a South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion lumi­nary who was instru­men­tal in the faith group’s turn to the polit­i­cal right in the 1980s. The board of trustees who brought John­son onboard includ­ed Tony Perkins, a long­time men­tor who is now the pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil in Wash­ing­ton, a pow­er­house Chris­t­ian lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion that the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter clas­si­fies as an anti-gay “hate group.”

...

For sev­er­al years before Johnson’s arrival, the col­lege had been in a state of tur­moil fol­low­ing a board takeover by con­ser­v­a­tives who felt the school had become too lib­er­al. They imple­ment­ed poli­cies that restrict­ed aca­d­e­m­ic free­doms, includ­ing the poten­tial fir­ing of instruc­tors whose cur­ricu­lum touched upon sex­u­al moral­i­ty or teach­ings con­tra­dic­to­ry to the Bible.

The school’s pres­i­dent and oth­er fac­ul­ty resigned, and the col­lege was placed on pro­ba­tion by an accred­i­ta­tion agency.

But a shale oil boom in the area also brought a wave of pros­per­i­ty from new­ly enriched donors. And school offi­cials, led by pres­i­dent Joe Aguil­lard, had grand ambi­tions beyond just the law school, which includ­ed open­ing a med­ical school, a film school and mak­ing a movie adap­ta­tion of the 1960s pas­toral com­e­dy TV show “Green Acres.”

Bring­ing John­son into the school’s lead­er­ship helped fur­ther those ambi­tions. As dean of the pro­posed law school, John­son embarked on a major fundrais­ing cam­paign and described a big-dol­lar event in Hous­ton with for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, then-Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal and Pressler, accord­ing to an account John­son wrote in a 2011 alum­ni mag­a­zine.
...

But then the embez­zle­ment charges came, along with costs for get­ting the cam­pus ready that the school could­n’t afford. John­son end­ed up resign­ing in 2012, return­ing to his career as a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal cru­sad­er:

...
But he strug­gled to draw an ade­quate amount of cash while dra­ma per­co­lat­ed behind the scenes. That cul­mi­nat­ed in a flur­ry of law­suits, includ­ing a whistle­blow­er claim by a school vice pres­i­dent, who accused Aguil­lard of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing mon­ey and lying to the board, accord­ing to court records.

A law firm brought in to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion lat­er con­clud­ed in a 2013 report that Aguil­lard had inap­pro­pri­ate­ly divert­ed funds to a school the insti­tu­tion hoped to build in Africa, as well as for per­son­al expens­es.

...

Mean­while, the his­toric for­mer fed­er­al cour­t­house in Shreve­port that was select­ed as the law school’s cam­pus required at least $20 mil­lion in ren­o­va­tions. The envi­ron­ment turned unten­able after the school was denied accred­i­ta­tion to issue juris doc­tor­ate degrees and major donors backed away from their finan­cial pledges.

“Mike worked dili­gent­ly to assem­ble a very elite fac­ul­ty and cur­ricu­lum,” said Gilbert Lit­tle, who was involved in the effort. But “fundrais­ing for a small pri­vate col­lege is very, very dif­fi­cult.”

John­son resigned in the fall of 2012 and went back to lit­i­gat­ing for Chris­t­ian caus­es. He also start­ed a new pro-bono firm, Free­dom Guard, which Perkins served as a direc­tor, busi­ness fil­ings show.

Five years lat­er, Pressler, the school’s name­sake, was sued in a civ­il case that has since grown to include alle­ga­tions of abuse by mul­ti­ple men who say he sex­u­al­ly assault­ed them, some when they were chil­dren. The mat­ter, which is still pend­ing in court, helped spark a broad­er reck­on­ing by the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion over its han­dling of claims of sex­u­al abuse.

Lit­tle said the school was named after Pressler because he had a close rela­tion­ship with the institution’s lead­ers. John­son didn’t stray entire­ly from the school. He rep­re­sent­ed the col­lege for six more years in a case chal­leng­ing a man­date in then-Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law that required employ­ers to pro­vide work­ers access to birth con­trol, court records show.
...

Final­ly, note one final bit of John­son’s gross hypocrisy in the name of his Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist cause: in 2004, John­son chid­ed gay rights sup­port­ers for chal­leng­ing the out­come in court, writ­ing, “Dis­con­tent with an election’s results does not enti­tle one to have it over­turned.” 16 years lat­er, he’s the guy writ­ing legal mem­os argu­ing the oppo­site in an effort that cul­mi­nat­ed in an insur­rec­tion:

...
In 2004, he rep­re­sent­ed the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum in oppos­ing a case filed by gay rights sup­port­ers who sought to block a vot­er-approved state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that pro­hib­it­ed “civ­il unions” — a legal pre­cur­sor to same-sex mar­riage — and cod­i­fied mar­riage as between one man and one woman.

The amend­ment was over­whelm­ing­ly approved in an unusu­al and low-turnout elec­tion, held weeks before the 2004 pres­i­den­tial con­test, in which it was the only issue on the bal­lot. The elec­tion was marred by the late deliv­ery of vot­ing machines to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­hold of Orleans Parish.

In a legal brief, John­son chid­ed gay rights sup­port­ers for chal­leng­ing the out­come in court.

“Dis­con­tent with an election’s results does not enti­tle one to have it over­turned,” he wrote. Near­ly two decades lat­er, John­son, then in Trump’s cor­ner, would effec­tive­ly argue the oppo­site.
...

But, of course, this isn’t about the hypocrisy of Mike John­son. It’s about the exis­ten­tial threat to the fab­ric of the Unit­ed States posed by the CNP and its vision for for the impo­si­tion of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism. A threat that seems to keep grow­ing whether Repub­li­cans win or lose elec­tions. Because that’s the kind of game the CNP is play­ing. It’s not a game cen­tered around gain­ing pow­er by win­ning elec­tions. It’s about gain­ing pow­er through any means nec­es­sary. With David Bar­ton’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism there to jus­ti­fy what­ev­er is done in the name of Chris­tian­i­ty. Or at least the arch-con­ser­v­a­tive ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ cult-like genre of Chris­tian­i­ty cham­pi­oned for decades by CNP stal­warts like Paul Pressler and Paige Pat­ter­son.

It’s God’s Pow­er Grab. The kind of pow­er grab that starts with grab­bing the state but does­n’t end there. The kind of pow­er grab where the pow­er­ful are free to ‘grab’ what­ev­er they want, and who­ev­er they want, with­out any real con­se­quences. A soci­ety run by pow­er preda­tors cyn­i­cal­ly oper­at­ing in the name of God. So if you find the idea of the Speak­er of the House vol­un­tar­i­ly installing a creepy ‘dis­ci­ple­ship shame­ware’ app on his phone high­ly dis­turb­ing, imag­ine how dis­turb­ing it’s going to be when it’s your phone get­ting the creepy shame­ware app and it’s not at all vol­un­tar­i­ly because soci­ety is now run by a bunch of pow­er­ful cultist who seized pow­er and now demand that every­one else join their cult or face the con­se­quences. It’s hap­pen­ing. This cult with very big plans for the future real­ly is steadi­ly tak­ing over. It’s a long-game. And the fur­ther it goes, the more ‘old school’ those con­se­quences are going to get.

Discussion

31 comments for “The Eyes Over Mike Johnson: the CNP’s Texas Template for God’s Power Grope”

  1. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 10, 2023, 6:43 pm
  2. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 11, 2023, 6:19 pm
  3. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 13, 2023, 6:50 pm
  4. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 18, 2023, 8:50 pm
  5. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 30, 2023, 10:42 pm
  6. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 4, 2023, 1:12 am
  7. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 7, 2023, 12:33 am
  8. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 11, 2023, 10:21 pm
  9. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 14, 2023, 2:09 am
  10. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 22, 2023, 2:04 pm
  11. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 28, 2023, 12:26 am
  12. 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 empirewas 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 2, 2024, 1:42 am
  13. 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.

    ...

    ———–

    “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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 5, 2024, 10:53 pm
  14. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 12, 2024, 12:03 am
  15. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 16, 2024, 10:29 pm
  16. 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 29, 2024, 5:05 pm
  17. 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.
    ...

    But when it comes to Mike John­son’s rela­tion­ship to Tony Perkins — who hap­pened to be the pres­i­dent of the CNP from 2014 to at least 2018 — we don’t just find Perkins serv­ing as a kind of a “big broth­er” to John­son. As Perkins him­self described, it was Perkins who appar­ent­ly sat down and talked John­son into run­ning for the Speak­er­ship. And yet, Perkins does­n’t men­tion any con­ver­sions with God:

    ...
    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.”)
    ...

    Did John­son share with Perkins all of his var­i­ous Aaron-then-Moses divine rev­e­la­tions he was alleged­ly expe­ri­ence dur­ing this peri­od? Perkins did­n’t bring it up. But who knows, maybe they had lots of con­ver­sa­tions about John­son’s con­ver­sa­tions with God. Again, it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter. What’s impor­tant here is the fact that one of Tony Perkin­s’s long-stand­ing domin­ion­ist oper­a­tives now holds the Speak­er­ship. And whether or not God real­ly did tell Mike John­son to run for that office, that’s their sto­ry and they’re stick­ing to it. Because that’s how domin­ion­ism works. If domin­ion­ist soci­ety seems like an author­i­tar­i­an hellscape it’s because that’s how God wills it to be. It’s the future of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Or rather, Amer­i­can theoc­ra­cy. God-derived laws chan­neled through elite holy ser­vants like Mike John­son. And don’t be too wor­ried about any future calami­ties caused by this move­ment that threat­ens to tear the Unit­ed States asun­der. It’s just the upcom­ing mod­ern ver­sion of the ‘part­ing of the Red Sea’. Mike John­son, aka Moses II, has it cov­ered.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 18, 2024, 6:06 pm
  18. Cred­it where cred­it’s due: Don­ald Trump is an excel­lent blovi­a­tor. The guy can talk about almost any­thing with­out real­ly say­ing any­thing at all. Maybe it’s an acquired skill. Per­haps it’s demen­tia. Either way, the guy knows how to ram­ble. It’s a demon­stra­bly handy skill for some­one oper­at­ing under Trump’s Chaos Agent polit­i­cal brand where it’s real­ly all about break­ing stuff and get­ting away with it.

    And yet, it’s not clear that Trump’s for­mi­da­ble rhetor­i­cal obfus­ca­tion skills are going to be enough to get him out of the polit­i­cal pick­le cre­at­ed by what was arguably his only real ‘suc­cess’ from his first term in office: stack­ing the Supreme Court with a 6–3 far right major­i­ty. Because as one Supreme Court rul­ing after anoth­er is remind­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic, elec­tions have con­se­quences. Espe­cial­ly pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Con­se­quences that can linger for decades to come thanks to the rel­a­tive­ly young ages of Trump’s court picks. Con­se­quences that now include the over­turn­ing of Roe v Wade and all of the polit­i­cal and real-world tur­moil cre­at­ed by that deci­sion.

    Put sim­ply, Trump as a Supreme Court prob­lem. It’s pri­mar­i­ly an abor­tion prob­lem right now, but as we learned with last week’s Alaba­ma Supreme Court rul­ing that con­ferred per­son­hood rights onto frozen embryos, imper­il­ing the abil­i­ty for Alaba­ma fam­i­lies to use in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion, it’s not going to remain an abor­tion prob­lem. The polit­i­cal dilem­mas cre­at­ed by the over­turn­ing of Roe are only going to grow for Trump. He real­ly does need to get a han­dle on these dynam­ics.

    But can he? What can Trump pos­si­bly do to find some sort of com­mon ground on issues like that will sat­is­fy his ardent pro-life base while calm­ing the fears of, well, any­one who wants to start a fam­i­ly with­out wor­ry­ing about a preg­nan­cy-relat­ed com­pli­ca­tion killing the moth­er. Or, thanks to the Alaba­ma rul­ing, wants to start a fam­i­ly with IVF. And don’t for­get, while the Alaba­ma rul­ing just applies to Alaba­ma, it’s the kind of rul­ing that’s going to make its way to the Supreme Court. There’s no rea­son to assume embry­on­ic per­son­hood won’t be a fed­er­al­ly enforced real­i­ty after this case gets its Supreme Court review. Espe­cial­ly if Trump wins the elec­tion and gets a chance to stack the court with even more extreme jus­tices.

    But all those chal­lenges does­n’t mean the Trump cam­paign does­n’t have a plan. And it looks like we may have got­ten a hint as to the nature of that about a week and a half ago in the form of a fas­ci­nat­ing New York Times report osten­si­bly describ­ing Trump’s pri­vate think­ing on the top­ic of abor­tion. The piece is based entire­ly on two anony­mous sources said to be famil­iar with Trump’s think­ing on the mat­ter. And as we’re going to see, Trump has appar­ent­ly arrived at the con­clu­sion that a fed­er­al 16 week abor­tion ban, with excep­tions for med­ical sit­u­a­tions after 16-weeks, could be the com­pro­mise he’s look­ing for that will sat­is­fy all the sides. Beyond that, these sources say Trump has pri­vate­ly been blam­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s rel­a­tive under­per­for­mance in 2022 and 2023 to the over­turn­ing of Roe, which was over­whelm­ing­ly respon­si­ble for the GOP’s poor show­ing, accord­ing to Trump’s think­ing. In oth­er words, Trump has a cul­prit for the GOP’s poor show­ing in recent years and that cul­prit isn’t named Don­ald J. Trump. The cul­prit is named Dobbs.

    It’s a remark­able report, in part because it’s not clear what the motive was of the two anony­mous sources. Where they ardent pro-life activists alarmed by Trump’s think­ing on the top­ic? Or was this a delib­er­ate strate­gic leak? Because if you read between the lines, Trump is effec­tive­ly ask­ing his Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist base for a pass on this issue. At least until he’s elect­ed. Trump des­per­ate­ly wants to be able to cam­paign on some­thing like a 16-week fed­er­al ban and yet, as we’ve seen, that base has zero inter­est in some­thing as loose as a 16-week ban. In com­par­i­son, recall the posi­tion tak­en by now-for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ron DeSan­tis: a fed­er­al 6‑week ‘heart­beat’ ban that put DeSan­tis in line with what we were hear­ing from Heritage’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Domes­tic Pol­i­cy, Roger Sev­eri­no, declar­ing in Octo­ber 2022 that he wants to see “heart­beat or bet­ter for the next pres­i­den­tial can­di­date that is con­ser­v­a­tive”, which is effec­tive­ly a call for a 6‑weeks (or less) nation­al abor­tion ban from the next GOP can­di­date. And 6‑weeks is, quite frankly, 6 more weeks than many pro-life activists want to see at all. After all, if ‘life begins at con­cep­tion’, 0‑weeks is the only accept­able option.

    And that brings us back to the Alaba­ma Supreme Court’s IVF rul­ing, which came just days after this New York Times report on Trump’s abor­tion tightrope. A rul­ing that not only appeared to take the “life begins at con­cep­tion” con­cept very seri­ous­ly, but was done using straight up Domin­ion­ist the­o­log­i­cal lan­guage. Yep, it turns out the Chief Jus­tice of the Alaba­ma Supreme Court, Tom Park­er, is a long­time ardent Domin­ion­ist who has for decades been seen as one of the pro-life move­men­t’s top activists with his abil­i­ty to make rul­ings with the aim of enshrin­ing fetal per­son­hood in law. In years past, the pri­ma­ry direct goal of these rul­ings was to lay the pre­text for a Supreme Court case that could lead to the over­turn­ing of Roe. But today, these kinds of rul­ings are about the next steps. The restric­tions long-feared by pro-choice activists that would inevitably come after Roe’s fall. Like extend­ing fetal per­son­hood rights and end­ing IVF treat­ments in the process. This was always the long-term goal of the pro-life move­ment, and espe­cial­ly hard core Domin­ion­ists like Park­er.

    That’s all part of the con­text of Trump’s appar­ent desire to get the per­mis­sion to run on a 16-week ‘com­pro­mise’ fed­er­al abor­tion ban. Lit­er­al­ly just days after that report, which almost reads like a cry for help from the Trump cam­paign, Alaba­ma’s domin­ion­ist-led Supreme Court dropped this polit­i­cal time bomb in his lap. But it gets more omi­nous for Trump’s plans for get­ting some sort of abor­tion pass: on the same day of the Alaba­ma rul­ing, a QAnon-friend domin­ion­ist pod­cast­er, John­ny Enlow, post­ed a new inter­view with Jus­tice Park­er. Enlow, of author of “The Sev­en Moun­tain Prophe­cy,” praised Park­er for being a “pio­neer” for the move­ment. Park­er, for his part, demon­strat­ed a famil­iar­i­ty with Enlow’s work. In oth­er words, Park­er did­n’t just acci­den­tal­ly show up on a domin­ion­ist QAnon pod­cast.

    As we’re also going to see, Park­er’s his­to­ry in the move­ment includes his role in set­ting up a pair of think tanks asso­ci­at­ed with James Dob­son’s Focus on the Fam­i­ly. Recall how Dob­son is a found­ing mem­ber of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP). Lat­er, Park­er served as the legal lieu­tenant, strate­gist and spokesman for none oth­er than CNP mem­ber Roy Moore, who him­self served as Alaba­ma’s Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice from 2000–2003. Moore was even­tu­al­ly oust­ed in 2003 after he defied court rul­ings order­ing him to remove a giant 2 1/2 ton stat­ue of the Ten Com­mand­ments that he placed on the cour­t­house grounds in 2001. Fol­low­ing Moore’s ouster, Park­er went on to serve at Moore’s Foun­da­tion for Moral Law, a think tank that pro­mot­ed Bib­li­cal Recon­struc­tion­ism, a form of domin­ion­ism. When Park­er was elect­ed to the Alaba­ma Supreme Court him­self in 2004, he recruit­ed John Eidsmoe to be his chief of staff. Eidsmoe is an ex-law pro­fes­sor and author of sev­er­al sem­i­nal Recon­struc­tion­ist works.

    By 2013, Park­er earned the prais­es of Matt Staver. As Staver put it, “He’s some­one who real­ly takes time to read his­to­ry and the devel­op­ment of jurisprudence...He’s not a sur­face thinker.” Recall the 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 also an open advo­cate of the theo­crat­ic impo­si­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment. Staver also sits on the advi­so­ry board of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL), which is like ALEC for Domin­ion­ism. And let’s not for­get who repeat­ed­ly namechecked Staver as a major influ­ence on his dur­ing dur­ing the keynote address of last year’s NACL gala event: House Speak­er Mike John­son. It’s a reminder that the CNP is the ulti­mate domin­ion­ists orga­niz­ing insti­tu­tion in the Unit­ed States today.

    So the same day Alaba­ma exac­er­bates Trump’s polit­i­cal abor­tion-relat­ed per­ils, the lead­ing author of rul­ing basi­cal­ly engages in a vic­to­ry lap with a fel­low domin­ion­ist on a QAnon pod­cast. Park­er knows how to play to the crowd too. So giv­en the pal­pa­ble enthu­si­asm from orga­nized domin­ion­ism for more restric­tions now, will Park­er and his fel­low domin­ion­ists be will­ing to gov­ern­ment Trump a pass for the rest of the year on not just abor­tion but a whole host of relat­ed issues like fetal per­son­hood? That’s what we’re going to find out, either in the form of out­cry from pro-life lead­ers over Trump’s pro­posed 16-week fed­er­al ban compromise...or their eerie strate­gic silence:

    The New York Times

    Trump Pri­vate­ly Express­es Sup­port for a 16-Week Abor­tion Ban

    In sup­port­ing a 16-week ban with excep­tions, Don­ald Trump appears to be try­ing to sat­is­fy social con­ser­v­a­tives who want to fur­ther restrict abor­tion access and vot­ers who want more mod­est lim­its.

    By Mag­gie Haber­man, Jonathan Swan and Lisa Lerer
    Pub­lished Feb. 16, 2024
    Updat­ed Feb. 19, 2024

    For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump has told advis­ers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week nation­al abor­tion ban with three excep­tions, in cas­es of rape or incest, or to save the life of the moth­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with direct knowl­edge of Mr. Trump’s delib­er­a­tions.

    Mr. Trump has stu­dious­ly avoid­ed tak­ing a clear posi­tion on restric­tions to abor­tion since Roe v. Wade was over­turned in the mid­dle of 2022, gal­va­niz­ing Democ­rats ahead of the midterm elec­tions that year. He has said in pri­vate that he wants to wait until the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry con­test is over to pub­licly dis­cuss his views, because he doesn’t want to risk alien­at­ing social con­ser­v­a­tives before he has secured the nom­i­na­tion, the two peo­ple said.

    Mr. Trump has approached abor­tion trans­ac­tion­al­ly since becom­ing a can­di­date in 2015, and his cur­rent pri­vate dis­cus­sions reflect that same approach.

    One thing Mr. Trump likes about a 16-week fed­er­al ban on abor­tions is that it’s a round num­ber. “Know what I like about 16?” Mr. Trump told one of these peo­ple, who was giv­en anonymi­ty to describe a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion. “It’s even. It’s four months.”

    When dis­cussing prospec­tive vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, Mr. Trump often asks whether they are “OK on abor­tion.” He is instant­ly dis­mis­sive when he hears that a Repub­li­can doesn’t sup­port “the three excep­tions.” He tells advis­ers that Repub­li­cans will keep los­ing elec­tions with that posi­tion.

    Mr. Trump is hop­ing to van­quish his remain­ing pri­ma­ry rival, Nik­ki Haley, in the South Car­oli­na Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry on Feb. 24. The state has restric­tive abor­tion laws that took effect in 2023 essen­tial­ly ban­ning the pro­ce­dure after six weeks.

    When the Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Mr. Trump told advis­ers that he believed the deci­sion was going to be harm­ful to Repub­li­cans. Since then, he has formed the view that the abor­tion issue is over­whelm­ing­ly respon­si­ble for a string of Repub­li­can loss­es in con­gres­sion­al races.

    And he is acute­ly aware of his own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty: He appoint­ed the three jus­tices who enabled that deci­sion, a fact he has pub­licly claimed cred­it for in sev­er­al set­tings. Those state­ments have already been includ­ed in ads, and Democ­rats plan to spend hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to remind vot­ers of that fact.

    In back­ing a 16-week ban, Mr. Trump would be try­ing to sat­is­fy both social con­ser­v­a­tives who want to fur­ther restrict access to abor­tions and Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers who want more mod­est lim­its on the pro­ce­dure.

    Abor­tion is cur­rent­ly banned at var­i­ous stages of preg­nan­cy before 16 weeks in 20 states, includ­ing Mr. Trump’s home state of Flori­da. The type of ban that Mr. Trump has dis­cussed pri­vate­ly would restrict abor­tion rights in the remain­ing 30 states where it is legal beyond that point. And the ques­tion of excep­tions lim­it­ed to the life of the moth­er is also con­tro­ver­sial. In Texas, state courts have ruled that women did not qual­i­fy for the lim­it­ed excep­tions for “life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions” relat­ed to preg­nan­cy, even in cas­es where their fetus faced a severe diag­no­sis and the woman’s future fer­til­i­ty and health were jeop­ar­dized.

    ...

    Mr. Trump, who described him­self as sup­port­ive of abor­tion rights for most of his adult life, announced in ear­ly 2011 as he con­sid­ered run­ning for pres­i­dent in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry that he now was anti-abor­tion.

    Yet Mr. Trump nev­er appeared com­fort­able dis­cussing it. In ear­ly 2016, in an inter­view with the tele­vi­sion host Chris Matthews, Mr. Trump said there need­ed to be “some form of pun­ish­ment” for women who had ille­gal abor­tions, a com­ment his cam­paign quick­ly walked back.

    At the time, Mr. Trump had to con­vince skep­ti­cal social con­ser­v­a­tives that he would imple­ment anti-abor­tion poli­cies and pick social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices, and he select­ed a deeply con­ser­v­a­tive vice pres­i­dent in Mike Pence to help with the per­sua­sion effort.

    Since then, Mr. Trump has deliv­ered on that and has formed a pow­er­ful con­nec­tion of his own with evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, so he has felt less of a need to pan­der to them. After Roe was over­turned, Repub­li­cans have strug­gled to find ways to talk about abor­tion now that they can no longer sim­ply say they oppose it. The con­cept of a nation­al ban of some sort has become a focus, with a 15-week fed­er­al abor­tion ban emerg­ing as the base­line many anti-abor­tion activists have set for Repub­li­can can­di­dates.

    A 16-week ban would not end many abor­tions: near­ly 94 per­cent of abor­tions hap­pen before 13 weeks in preg­nan­cy, accord­ing to data col­lect­ed by the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol. Nor is such a ban ground­ed in med­ical research. Even 15 weeks falls before the point when sig­nif­i­cant screens take place in a preg­nan­cy to exam­ine the fetus for rare — but poten­tial­ly fatal — con­di­tions. Instead, it has become a posi­tion that some Repub­li­cans, based on polling, believe will be the most polit­i­cal­ly palat­able to vot­ers.

    An AP/NORC poll released in July 2023, a year after Roe was over­turned, showed a slim major­i­ty dis­ap­prove of a ban after 15 weeks of preg­nan­cy. In the sur­vey, Repub­li­cans most­ly sup­port­ed such a mea­sure and Democ­rats most­ly opposed it. A six-week ban polled poor­ly among a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Repub­li­cans, while a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans didn’t sup­port allow­ing abor­tions up to 24 weeks of preg­nan­cy, accord­ing to the sur­vey.

    One of Mr. Trump’s allies, Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na, intro­duced leg­is­la­tion in 2022 call­ing for a 15-week abor­tion ban with excep­tions for rape, incest and the life of the moth­er after that win­dow clos­es.

    Mr. Trump nev­er backed the bill, which oth­er promi­nent Repub­li­cans dis­tanced them­selves from, and he said as recent­ly as last fall that the deci­sion should be left up to states to decide. A lead­ing anti-abor­tion group crit­i­cized him for that state­ment, but its leader was appeased after meet­ing with Mr. Trump and Mr. Gra­ham.

    There are signs that embrac­ing any sort of nation­al ban is unpop­u­lar with broad swaths of inde­pen­dent vot­ers, and poten­tial­ly risky for Mr. Trump. For instance, in Vir­ginia, efforts by Gov. Glenn Youngkin to ral­ly vot­ers around what his cam­paign called a “15 week lim­it” last Novem­ber failed and Democ­rats sur­passed expec­ta­tions in the state’s leg­isla­tive elec­tions.

    So far in this Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing con­test, in which pri­ma­ry vot­ers gen­er­al­ly reward can­di­dates for oppos­ing abor­tion rights, Mr. Trump has avoid­ed answer­ing the ques­tion of whether he’d sup­port a nation­al ban. Instead, he talks about abor­tion as if it’s a real-estate trans­ac­tion. He has tak­en cred­it for giv­ing “great nego­ti­at­ing pow­er” to anti-abor­tion activists.

    “What’s going to hap­pen is you’re going to come up with a num­ber of weeks or months,” Mr. Trump said in an inter­view on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in Sep­tem­ber. “You’re going to come up with a num­ber that’s going to make peo­ple hap­py.”

    In a Fox News town-hall event in Jan­u­ary, a week before the Iowa cau­cus­es, a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er asked Mr. Trump to “reas­sure me” that he would pro­tect “every person’s right to life, with­out com­pro­mise.”

    Mr. Trump declined to reas­sure her. “I love where you are com­ing from,” he told the vot­er. “But we still have to win elec­tions. And they have used this — you know, we have some great Repub­li­cans and they are great on the issue, and you would love them on the issue. And a lot of them have just been dec­i­mat­ed in the elec­tion.”

    Mr. Trump went so far as to crit­i­cize the six-week abor­tion ban signed by his for­mer Repub­li­can rival Gov. Ron DeSan­tis of Flori­da as “ter­ri­ble.”

    Mr. DeSan­tis tried to cap­i­tal­ize on the com­ment in social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa. “I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re pro-life if you’re crit­i­ciz­ing states for enact­ing pro­tec­tions for babies that have heart­beats,” he told Radio Iowa soon after Mr. Trump made the com­ments in Sep­tem­ber. “I think if he’s going into this say­ing he’s going to make the Democ­rats hap­py with respect to right to life, I think all pro-lif­ers should know that he’s prepar­ing to sell you out.”

    But con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers gave Mr. Trump a pass and, ulti­mate­ly, a record-mar­gin vic­to­ry in Iowa.

    Mr. Trump has been encour­aged by the lack of blow­back and has pri­vate­ly gone even fur­ther in blam­ing more hard-line Repub­li­cans for the party’s elec­tion loss­es. He has repeat­ed­ly crit­i­cized two los­ing 2022 can­di­dates for gov­er­nor — Tudor Dixon in Michi­gan and Doug Mas­tri­ano in Penn­syl­va­nia — for squan­der­ing winnable races by being too “hard-right” on abor­tion and not allow­ing for suf­fi­cient excep­tions.

    ...

    ———–

    “Trump Pri­vate­ly Express­es Sup­port for a 16-Week Abor­tion Ban” By Mag­gie Haber­man, Jonathan Swan and Lisa Lerer; The New York Times; 02/16/2024

    “When the Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Mr. Trump told advis­ers that he believed the deci­sion was going to be harm­ful to Repub­li­cans. Since then, he has formed the view that the abor­tion issue is over­whelm­ing­ly respon­si­ble for a string of Repub­li­can loss­es in con­gres­sion­al races.

    Trump has found his cul­prit: the col­lapse of Roe. That’s why Repub­li­cans keep los­ing. Not Trump’s antics and chaos. This is the con­clu­sion Trump has pri­vate­ly arrived at, accord­ing to this report based on two anony­mous sources famil­iar with Trump’s pri­vate think­ing on the mat­ter. Pri­vate think­ing that is now report­ed on in the New York Times and not very pri­vate any­more. This was either two peo­ple betray­ing Trump’s con­fi­dence, or two peo­ple help­ing Trump deliv­er a mes­sage to a core con­stituen­cy that can’t be direct­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed. A mes­sage warn­ing Trump’s pro-life sup­port­ers that he’s plan­ning on run­ning as far less overt­ly pro-life than many of those sup­port­ers might pre­fer. So this was either a warn­ing call by dis­ap­point­ed pro-life Trump insid­ers or, more like­ly, just one part of delib­er­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tions cam­paign designed to set expec­ta­tions for Trump’s pro-Life base. Expec­ta­tions that come with the implic­it wink & nod that he’s tak­ing these posi­tions in order to get elect­ed.

    And let’s face it, he’s prob­a­bly large­ly cor­rect in that polit­i­cal assess­ment. As dam­ag­ing as Trump him­self may have been in 2018 and 2020, he was­n’t on the bal­lot or in office in 2022 or 2023, when the GOP seri­ous­ly under­per­formed. Which is part of why it’s so inter­est­ing that the mes­sage these anony­mous sources are shar­ing is a mes­sage of how Trump is seek­ing some sort of com­pro­mise on the issue of abor­tion that ‘can make every­one hap­py’. A com­pro­mise that wil allow Trump to avoid the fate of los­ing the whole elec­tion on this issue. In oth­er words, a vital pub­lic com­pro­mise that Trump’s pro-life Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist base has to allow him to pub­lic make if they want to main­tain their gen­er­a­tional lock on the Supreme Court. T

    hat’s all part of the con­text of Trump’s pro­posed 16 week fed­er­al ban. He’s hop­ing to get per­mis­sion from his base to run on a polit­i­cal palat­able ‘com­pro­mise’. A 16-week com­pro­mise if we take what he’s been say­ing at face val­ue. Of course, that 16-week fed­er­al ban pro­pos­al is implic­it­ly just an open­ing bid. Trump is going to have to com­pro­mise on that, pre­sum­ably in the direc­tion of 0 weeks. A com­pro­mise Trump hint­ed at back in Sep­tem­ber when he pre­dict­ed, “What’s going to hap­pen is you’re going to come up with a num­ber of weeks or months...You’re going to come up with a num­ber that’s going to make peo­ple hap­py.” That’s the appar­ent plan. An impos­si­ble plan to sin­cere­ly exe­cute since there is no ban that real­ly would “make peo­ple hap­py” with­out alien­at­ing large vot­ing blocks. But it is a plan that could work if exe­cut­ed insin­cere­ly. A ‘say what it takes to get elect­ed’ wink & nod plan where the base under­stands what’s real­ly being promised:

    ...
    Mr. Trump has stu­dious­ly avoid­ed tak­ing a clear posi­tion on restric­tions to abor­tion since Roe v. Wade was over­turned in the mid­dle of 2022, gal­va­niz­ing Democ­rats ahead of the midterm elec­tions that year. He has said in pri­vate that he wants to wait until the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry con­test is over to pub­licly dis­cuss his views, because he doesn’t want to risk alien­at­ing social con­ser­v­a­tives before he has secured the nom­i­na­tion, the two peo­ple said.

    Mr. Trump has approached abor­tion trans­ac­tion­al­ly since becom­ing a can­di­date in 2015, and his cur­rent pri­vate dis­cus­sions reflect that same approach.

    ...

    When dis­cussing prospec­tive vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, Mr. Trump often asks whether they are “OK on abor­tion.” He is instant­ly dis­mis­sive when he hears that a Repub­li­can doesn’t sup­port “the three excep­tions.” He tells advis­ers that Repub­li­cans will keep los­ing elec­tions with that posi­tion.

    ...

    And he is acute­ly aware of his own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty: He appoint­ed the three jus­tices who enabled that deci­sion, a fact he has pub­licly claimed cred­it for in sev­er­al set­tings. Those state­ments have already been includ­ed in ads, and Democ­rats plan to spend hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to remind vot­ers of that fact.

    In back­ing a 16-week ban, Mr. Trump would be try­ing to sat­is­fy both social con­ser­v­a­tives who want to fur­ther restrict access to abor­tions and Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers who want more mod­est lim­its on the pro­ce­dure.

    ...

    Yet Mr. Trump nev­er appeared com­fort­able dis­cussing it. In ear­ly 2016, in an inter­view with the tele­vi­sion host Chris Matthews, Mr. Trump said there need­ed to be “some form of pun­ish­ment” for women who had ille­gal abor­tions, a com­ment his cam­paign quick­ly walked back.

    At the time, Mr. Trump had to con­vince skep­ti­cal social con­ser­v­a­tives that he would imple­ment anti-abor­tion poli­cies and pick social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices, and he select­ed a deeply con­ser­v­a­tive vice pres­i­dent in Mike Pence to help with the per­sua­sion effort.

    Since then, Mr. Trump has deliv­ered on that and has formed a pow­er­ful con­nec­tion of his own with evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, so he has felt less of a need to pan­der to them. After Roe was over­turned, Repub­li­cans have strug­gled to find ways to talk about abor­tion now that they can no longer sim­ply say they oppose it. The con­cept of a nation­al ban of some sort has become a focus, with a 15-week fed­er­al abor­tion ban emerg­ing as the base­line many anti-abor­tion activists have set for Repub­li­can can­di­dates.

    A 16-week ban would not end many abor­tions: near­ly 94 per­cent of abor­tions hap­pen before 13 weeks in preg­nan­cy, accord­ing to data col­lect­ed by the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol. Nor is such a ban ground­ed in med­ical research. Even 15 weeks falls before the point when sig­nif­i­cant screens take place in a preg­nan­cy to exam­ine the fetus for rare — but poten­tial­ly fatal — con­di­tions. Instead, it has become a posi­tion that some Repub­li­cans, based on polling, believe will be the most polit­i­cal­ly palat­able to vot­ers.

    ...

    There are signs that embrac­ing any sort of nation­al ban is unpop­u­lar with broad swaths of inde­pen­dent vot­ers, and poten­tial­ly risky for Mr. Trump. For instance, in Vir­ginia, efforts by Gov. Glenn Youngkin to ral­ly vot­ers around what his cam­paign called a “15 week lim­it” last Novem­ber failed and Democ­rats sur­passed expec­ta­tions in the state’s leg­isla­tive elec­tions.

    So far in this Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing con­test, in which pri­ma­ry vot­ers gen­er­al­ly reward can­di­dates for oppos­ing abor­tion rights, Mr. Trump has avoid­ed answer­ing the ques­tion of whether he’d sup­port a nation­al ban. Instead, he talks about abor­tion as if it’s a real-estate trans­ac­tion. He has tak­en cred­it for giv­ing “great nego­ti­at­ing pow­er” to anti-abor­tion activists.

    “What’s going to hap­pen is you’re going to come up with a num­ber of weeks or months,” Mr. Trump said in an inter­view on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in Sep­tem­ber. “You’re going to come up with a num­ber that’s going to make peo­ple hap­py.”
    ...

    So what kind of ‘com­pro­mise’, authen­tic or not, is Trump going to arrive at? Will he be able to get by with the 15 week ban pro­posed by Sen­a­tor Lind­say Gra­ham? Well, to get an idea of what Trump’s evan­gel­i­cal base is real­ly will­ing to accept, we just have to look at the posi­tion tak­en by now-for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ron DeSan­tis and his 6‑week ‘heart­beat’ ban. A 6‑week fed­er­al ban that put DeSan­tis’s posi­tion in line with what we were hear­ing from Heritage’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Domes­tic Pol­i­cy, Roger Sev­eri­no, declar­ing in Octo­ber 2022 that he wants to see “heart­beat or bet­ter for the next pres­i­den­tial can­di­date that is con­ser­v­a­tive”, which is effec­tive­ly a call for a 6‑weeks (or less) nation­al abor­tion ban from the next GOP can­di­date. Which is a reminder that, should we see Trump’s pro-life base accept any­thing less than a fed­er­al 6‑week ban, we’re prob­a­bly see­ing some sort of arranged the­atrics going on. The­atrics that will require the coop­er­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cal and Catholic lead­ers who can effec­tive­ly con­vey to their fol­low­ers the need to give Trump space on this issue:

    ...
    An AP/NORC poll released in July 2023, a year after Roe was over­turned, showed a slim major­i­ty dis­ap­prove of a ban after 15 weeks of preg­nan­cy. In the sur­vey, Repub­li­cans most­ly sup­port­ed such a mea­sure and Democ­rats most­ly opposed it. A six-week ban polled poor­ly among a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Repub­li­cans, while a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans didn’t sup­port allow­ing abor­tions up to 24 weeks of preg­nan­cy, accord­ing to the sur­vey.

    ...

    In a Fox News town-hall event in Jan­u­ary, a week before the Iowa cau­cus­es, a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er asked Mr. Trump to “reas­sure me” that he would pro­tect “every person’s right to life, with­out com­pro­mise.”

    Mr. Trump declined to reas­sure her. “I love where you are com­ing from,” he told the vot­er. “But we still have to win elec­tions. And they have used this — you know, we have some great Repub­li­cans and they are great on the issue, and you would love them on the issue. And a lot of them have just been dec­i­mat­ed in the elec­tion.”

    Mr. Trump went so far as to crit­i­cize the six-week abor­tion ban signed by his for­mer Repub­li­can rival Gov. Ron DeSan­tis of Flori­da as “ter­ri­ble.”

    Mr. DeSan­tis tried to cap­i­tal­ize on the com­ment in social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa. “I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re pro-life if you’re crit­i­ciz­ing states for enact­ing pro­tec­tions for babies that have heart­beats,” he told Radio Iowa soon after Mr. Trump made the com­ments in Sep­tem­ber. “I think if he’s going into this say­ing he’s going to make the Democ­rats hap­py with respect to right to life, I think all pro-lif­ers should know that he’s prepar­ing to sell you out.”

    But con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers gave Mr. Trump a pass and, ulti­mate­ly, a record-mar­gin vic­to­ry in Iowa.

    Mr. Trump has been encour­aged by the lack of blow­back and has pri­vate­ly gone even fur­ther in blam­ing more hard-line Repub­li­cans for the party’s elec­tion loss­es. He has repeat­ed­ly crit­i­cized two los­ing 2022 can­di­dates for gov­er­nor — Tudor Dixon in Michi­gan and Doug Mas­tri­ano in Penn­syl­va­nia — for squan­der­ing winnable races by being too “hard-right” on abor­tion and not allow­ing for suf­fi­cient excep­tions.
    ...

    It’s that need for the Trump cam­paign to work out some sort of arrange­ment with his staunch­ly pro-life base that allows him to skirt this issue dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that brings us to the fol­low­ing sto­ry that blew up days after the above New York Times report: Alaba­ma’s anti-IVF rul­ing that extends fetal per­son­hood pro­tec­tions to frozen embryos. As we’re going to see, it’s the kind rul­ing that pro-life activists have long been work­ing to make hap­pen. But also a com­plete polit­i­cal night­mare for Trump and Repub­li­cans in gen­er­al. Which is part of what makes this Alaba­ma Supreme Court rul­ing so fas­ci­nat­ing in the con­text of not just the 2024 elec­tion cycle but the deep alliance be between MAGA-world and the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist pow­er net­works that have long-dom­i­nat­ed GOP pol­i­tics and form a cru­cial base for Trump to this day. Trump can’t ignore this move­ment. But this move­ment needs Trump to win if its going to have any shot of imple­ment­ing its agen­da. An agen­da proven to be polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic since the fall of Roe and all the more tox­ic fol­low­ing this Alaba­ma rul­ing.

    Some­thing has to give if Trump’s going to avoid the issue of abor­tion, and now IVF access, from tank­ing his cam­paign. And yet, as we’re also going to see, it’s not like Trump is nego­ti­at­ing with mod­er­ates. He’s nego­ti­at­ing with Domin­ion­ists. Like Jus­tice Tom Park­er, the Alaba­ma Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice who has been strate­gi­cal­ly mak­ing rul­ings from an explic­it­ly Domin­ion­ist “Sev­en Moun­tains” per­spec­tive for years now. The kind of per­spec­tive that implores con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to seek out sta­tions of pow­er and influ­ence across soci­ety and impose fun­da­men­tal­ist laws on all mem­bers of soci­ety, regard­less of the laws’ pop­u­lar­i­ty. It’s not exact­ly a posi­tion of com­pro­mise. Nor did Jus­tice Park­er seem at all con­cerned about the elec­toral impli­ca­tions of this rul­ing. Quite the oppo­site, he active­ly threw fuel on the issue and forced Trump and many oth­er Repub­li­can offi­cials to issue state­ments declar­ing their sup­port for IVF. Sup­port for IVF that may work with the major­i­ty of the elec­torate but not for the hard-core pro-life base. A base that will not allow itself to be ignored.

    But, of course, it’s not just the mil­lions of pro-life vot­ers who make up this cru­cial base of sup­port Trump needs to win in Novem­ber. It’s the pro-life lead­er­ship like the orga­nized domin­ion­ism of the CNP. And as we should expect, Jus­tice Park­er has long-stand­ing CNP ties. For starters, before Park­er was a Supreme Court jus­tice, he worked as a lob­by­ist who helped set up two think tanks asso­ci­at­ed with James Dob­son of Focus on the Fam­i­ly ( the Alaba­ma Fam­i­ly Alliance, now the Alaba­ma Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, and the Alaba­ma Fam­i­ly Advo­cates). Dob­son is, of course, a found­ing CNP mem­ber. Park­er lat­er became the con­fi­dant of Roy Moore, anoth­er CNP mem­ber. When Moore became chief jus­tice of the Alaba­ma Supreme Court in 200, Park­er served as his legal lieu­tenant, strate­gist and spokesman. Recall how, in 2001, Moore placed a 2 1/2 ton gran­ite mon­u­ment of the Tne Com­mand­ments in the State Judi­cial Build­ing, touch­ing off a legal bat­tle he ulti­mate­ly lost, which gives us a sense of the kind of strate­gies Park­er was con­coct­ing at the time.

    After win­ning a seat on the Alaba­ma Supreme Court in 2004, Park­er went on to issue one rul­ing after anoth­er designed to ulti­mate­ly under­mine Roe v Wade, pri­mar­i­ly by focus­ing on the con­cept of fetal per­son­hood. But he did­n’t just issues these rul­ings. He con­sis­tent­ly did so using lan­guage that cast the US legal sys­tems as ulti­mate­ly being depen­dent on the Bible as its foun­da­tion. One Domion­inst-friend­ly rul­ing after anoth­er. As we should expect, pro-life forces came to view Chief Jus­tice Park­er as a lead­ing force in the effort to over­turn Roe.

    Now, of course, Roe is already over­turned. That mis­sion has been accom­plished. But that does­n’t mean the mis­sion is over. Over­turn­ing Roe was just the start. Park­er’s Domin­ion­ist allies aren’t going to be sat­is­fied with just return­ing the issue of abor­tion back to the states. And they’re going to need Trump, or some oth­er Repub­li­can, to win back the White House if they want to secure that Supreme Court major­i­ty.

    Oh, and on the same day the Alaba­ma Supreme Court made this rul­ing, a QAnon-friend­ly pod­cast­er post­ed an inter­view with Chief Jus­tice Park­er. That pod­cast­er, John­ny Enlow, also hap­pens to be the author of “The Sev­en Moun­tain Prophe­cy.” Which, itself, is a reminder that Trump’s intense QAnon-affil­i­at­ed fol­low­ing is bound to include large num­bers of Domin­ion­ist true believ­ers. Which also means any sort of wink & nod ‘com­pro­mise’ stance Trump adopts on these issues dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion is going to need to have buy-in from QAnon influ­encers who can make it clear to this Domin­ion­ist-heavy audi­ence that Trump’s ‘com­pro­mis­es’ are only as good as Trump’s word and can there­fore be utter­ly ignored.

    So about a week after we get reports based on anony­mous sources from inside the Trump cam­paign sig­nal­ing to the world that Trump is seek­ing some sort of com­pro­mise stance with his pro-life base on abor­tion that he can take into the gen­er­al elec­tion, one of the pro-life move­men­t’s long-stand­ing domin­ion­ist activists drops this judi­cial turd right in Trump’s lap. And on the same day as that rul­ing, a QAnon pod­cast­er posts an inter­view of Jus­tice Park­er. How are we to inter­pret this sequence of events? Because it sure seems like Jus­tice Park­er — who is no ‘lone nut’ in the pro-life move­ment — has no room for any sort of com­pro­mise on the issue of abor­tion or any of the oth­er issues ani­mat­ing his domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy:

    Wash­ing­ton Post

    Alaba­ma jus­tice who quot­ed Bible in IVF case often invokes reli­gion

    By Dan Rosen­zweig-Ziff
    Feb­ru­ary 24, 2024 at 4:27 p.m. EST

    In the Alaba­ma Supreme Court rul­ing that said frozen embryos are peo­ple, Chief Jus­tice Tom Park­er wrote a con­cur­ring opin­ion that sought to define the “sanc­ti­ty of unborn life,” cit­ing heav­i­ly from scrip­ture and the­ol­o­gy. His opin­ion, which drew crit­i­cism from abor­tion rights activists for instill­ing reli­gious beliefs into a judi­cial deci­sion, was the lat­est in near­ly 20 years on the bench in which he has repeat­ed­ly invoked reli­gion on his way to lay­ing the ground­work to over­turn Roe v. Wade.

    Park­er has also open­ly crit­i­cized oth­er judges for not suf­fi­cient­ly con­sid­er­ing reli­gion in their rul­ings and has expressed sup­port for the the­o­ry known as the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date, which calls for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to run the gov­ern­ment and broad­ly influ­ence Amer­i­can life.

    Who is Chief Jus­tice Tom Park­er?

    * Park­er, 72, was first elect­ed to the Alaba­ma Supreme Court in 2004 and won the chief justice’s seat in 2018. His term ends in 2025; state law pro­hibits judges old­er than 70 from being elect­ed.

    * Park­er has for years been laud­ed by abor­tion foes and con­demned by repro­duc­tive rights advo­cates for writ­ing opin­ions that would help spawn the fall of Roe and fur­ther restrict abor­tion access.

    What did he write in the con­cur­ring opin­ion?

    Park­er repeat­ed­ly invoked scrip­ture in his rul­ing, argu­ing that Alaba­ma law is based on the­ol­o­gy that says God cre­at­ed every per­son “in His image.” He and the oth­er jus­tices in the 8–1 major­i­ty said that life begins at con­cep­tion and that there­fore frozen embryos are pro­tect­ed under the law.

    “Human life can­not be wrong­ful­ly destroyed with­out incur­ring the wrath of a holy God,” Park­er wrote in his con­cur­ring opin­ion.

    He added that state code rec­og­nizes “unborn human life,” and that destroy­ing it — includ­ing frozen embryos — is an affront to God.

    “All human beings bear the image of God, and their lives can­not be destroyed with­out effac­ing his glo­ry,” he wrote.

    He also referred to the writ­ings of a 17th-cen­tu­ry the­olo­gian as evi­dence that peo­ple were cre­at­ed in God’s image.

    “The prin­ci­ple itself — that human life is fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­tinct from oth­er forms of life and can­not be tak­en inten­tion­al­ly with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion — has deep roots that reach back to the cre­ation of man ‘in the image of God,’” he wrote, cit­ing the book of Gen­e­sis.

    The chief jus­tice also tried to swat away con­cerns that the rul­ing would imper­il in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion (IVF) in Alaba­ma, sug­gest­ing that the leg­is­la­ture could restrict IVF embryos to one or two at a time to reduce the num­ber that are destroyed while allow­ing the pro­ce­dure.

    At least three fer­til­i­ty clin­ics have since paused oper­a­tions in the state, and Repub­li­cans nation­wide have sought to dis­tance them­selves from IVF restric­tions.

    Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in the Alaba­ma leg­is­la­ture have been work­ing to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect IVF access.

    Park­er went on to write that, in pass­ing a bal­lot ini­tia­tive defin­ing life begin­ning at con­cep­tion, “the Peo­ple of Alaba­ma took what was spo­ken of the prophet Jere­mi­ah and applied it to every unborn per­son in this state.”

    “[Alabami­ans] have required us to treat every human being in accor­dance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image,” he wrote in his con­clu­sion.

    ...

    What is his his­to­ry in pre­vi­ous rul­ings and pol­i­tics?

    Park­er served as an assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al under Jeff Ses­sions, who would go on to become U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. He was an aide to Roy Moore on the state Supreme Court in 2000 until Moore was dis­missed in 2003 for ignor­ing a fed­er­al court order to remove a Ten Com­mand­ments mon­u­ment he had ordered installed in the judi­cial build­ing.

    After Park­er was elect­ed to the state’s high court in 2004, he went to Wash­ing­ton to take the oath of office. Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, one of his role mod­els, presided.

    Once on the bench, Park­er rou­tine­ly invoked scrip­ture, crit­i­ciz­ing his peers who didn’t.

    “When judges don’t rule in the fear of the Lord, everything’s falling apart,” he once wrote, accord­ing to a 2014 ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion. “The whole world is com­ing unglued.”

    ...

    “Today, the only major area in which unborn chil­dren are denied legal pro­tec­tion is abor­tion,” he wrote in one case, accord­ing to ProP­ub­li­ca, “and that denial is only because of the dic­tates of Roe.”

    He also wrote that Roe was wrong in argu­ing that states couldn’t ban abor­tions before via­bil­i­ty.

    Mis­sis­sip­pi cit­ed that line of rea­son­ing in its case to chal­lenge Roe at the U.S. Supreme Court, a move his sup­port­ers say helped pave the way for Roe’s fall in 2022.

    What is his con­nec­tion to the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date?

    Park­er has often expressed sup­port for the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date, a the­o­ry that con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca should use fun­da­men­tal­ist beliefs to influ­ence and run gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion and media, among sev­en key areas of life. Its sup­port­ers have sought to restrict repro­duc­tive care while allow­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion of LGBTQ+ peo­ple for reli­gious beliefs.

    Last week, the same day the Alaba­ma Supreme Court released its embryo deci­sion and Parker’s con­cur­rent rul­ing, the chief jus­tice said in an online broad­cast that “God cre­at­ed gov­ern­ment” and that Chris­tians should take it back from the “pos­ses­sion” of oth­ers.

    The com­ments came dur­ing an inter­view with QAnon sup­port­er John­ny Enlow, author of “The Sev­en Moun­tain Prophe­cy.” Enlow describes Park­er as a “true pio­neer” of the move­ment, while Park­er thanked Enlow for pro­mot­ing the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. The inter­view was report­ed by Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca, a lib­er­al watch­dog group.

    Park­er added in the inter­view that the country’s orig­i­nal form of gov­ern­ment was based on the Bible, a com­mon view of sup­port­ers of the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date, and that its laws should reflect that. Schol­ars have crit­i­cized that inter­pre­ta­tion, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press reports.

    ...

    ————

    “Alaba­ma jus­tice who quot­ed Bible in IVF case often invokes reli­gion” By Dan Rosen­zweig-Ziff; Wash­ing­ton Post; 02/24/2024

    “Park­er repeat­ed­ly invoked scrip­ture in his rul­ing, argu­ing that Alaba­ma law is based on the­ol­o­gy that says God cre­at­ed every per­son “in His image.” He and the oth­er jus­tices in the 8–1 major­i­ty said that life begins at con­cep­tion and that there­fore frozen embryos are pro­tect­ed under the law.”

    Per­son­hood for frozen embryos. It’s some­thing the pro-life move­ment has been work­ing towards for years. But this was­n’t just a legal vic­to­ry for the fetal per­son­hood move­ment. Chief Jus­tice Park­er framed his rul­ing from a view of Bib­li­cal author­i­ty over US jurispru­dence. This was a vic­to­ry for domin­ion­ism too:

    ...
    “Human life can­not be wrong­ful­ly destroyed with­out incur­ring the wrath of a holy God,” Park­er wrote in his con­cur­ring opin­ion.

    He added that state code rec­og­nizes “unborn human life,” and that destroy­ing it — includ­ing frozen embryos — is an affront to God.

    “All human beings bear the image of God, and their lives can­not be destroyed with­out effac­ing his glo­ry,” he wrote.

    He also referred to the writ­ings of a 17th-cen­tu­ry the­olo­gian as evi­dence that peo­ple were cre­at­ed in God’s image.

    “The prin­ci­ple itself — that human life is fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­tinct from oth­er forms of life and can­not be tak­en inten­tion­al­ly with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion — has deep roots that reach back to the cre­ation of man ‘in the image of God,’” he wrote, cit­ing the book of Gen­e­sis.

    ...

    Park­er went on to write that, in pass­ing a bal­lot ini­tia­tive defin­ing life begin­ning at con­cep­tion, “the Peo­ple of Alaba­ma took what was spo­ken of the prophet Jere­mi­ah and applied it to every unborn per­son in this state.”

    “[Alabami­ans] have required us to treat every human being in accor­dance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image,” he wrote in his con­clu­sion.

    ...

    After Park­er was elect­ed to the state’s high court in 2004, he went to Wash­ing­ton to take the oath of office. Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, one of his role mod­els, presided.

    Once on the bench, Park­er rou­tine­ly invoked scrip­ture, crit­i­ciz­ing his peers who didn’t.

    “When judges don’t rule in the fear of the Lord, everything’s falling apart,” he once wrote, accord­ing to a 2014 ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion. “The whole world is com­ing unglued.”

    ...

    Park­er has often expressed sup­port for the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date, a the­o­ry that con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca should use fun­da­men­tal­ist beliefs to influ­ence and run gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion and media, among sev­en key areas of life. Its sup­port­ers have sought to restrict repro­duc­tive care while allow­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion of LGBTQ+ peo­ple for reli­gious beliefs.
    ...

    It’s quite an accom­plish­ment for the domin­ion­ist move­ment. After all, it was over 20 years ago in 2003 when then-Alaba­ma Chief Jus­tice (and CNP mem­ber) Roy Moore was dis­missed after he refused to remove a Ten Com­mand­ments mon­u­ment from the judi­cial build­ing while Park­er was work­ing as Moore’s strate­gist. It’s been quite a suc­cess­ful cou­ple of decades for the domin­ion­ists:

    ...
    Park­er served as an assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al under Jeff Ses­sions, who would go on to become U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. He was an aide to Roy Moore on the state Supreme Court in 2000 until Moore was dis­missed in 2003 for ignor­ing a fed­er­al court order to remove a Ten Com­mand­ments mon­u­ment he had ordered installed in the judi­cial build­ing.
    ...

    It’s also worth not­ing some of the poten­tial­ly con­tro­ver­sial new tech­nolo­gies that could play into the pol­i­tics of this issue. Recall the sto­ry about the grow­ing num­ber of US firms like Genom­ic Pre­dic­tion and the Orchid offer­ing embryo selec­tion ser­vices that veer awful­ly close to eugen­ics ser­vices. And as we’ve also seen, fig­ures in Peter Thiel’s orbit have been quite excit­ed about these ser­vices, like Founders Fund prin­ci­ple Delian Asparouhov who began tout­ing Orchid’s ser­vices as a means of com­pet­ing with Chi­na. Orchid was co-found­ed by for­mer Thiel Fel­low Noor Sid­diqui. Also recall how Ope­nAI co-found Matt Krisiloff start­ed Con­cep­tion, a com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing human eggs from stem cells. And as we’ve seen, part of the promise of this tech­nol­o­gy is the mass cre­ation of large num­bers of eggs, and there­fore embryos, that can be used for genet­ic screen­ing and “opti­mal” embryo selec­tion. Yes, embryos from syn­thet­i­cal­ly cre­at­ed fer­til­ized eggs could become part of this nation­al debate. Which is a reminder that these issues of fetal per­son­hood could cre­ate a rather fas­ci­nat­ing split inside the far right between domin­ion­ists and tran­shu­man­ists fac­tions:

    ...
    The chief jus­tice also tried to swat away con­cerns that the rul­ing would imper­il in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion (IVF) in Alaba­ma, sug­gest­ing that the leg­is­la­ture could restrict IVF embryos to one or two at a time to reduce the num­ber that are destroyed while allow­ing the pro­ce­dure.

    At least three fer­til­i­ty clin­ics have since paused oper­a­tions in the state, and Repub­li­cans nation­wide have sought to dis­tance them­selves from IVF restric­tions.

    Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in the Alaba­ma leg­is­la­ture have been work­ing to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect IVF access.
    ...

    And then we get to the remark­ably timed pod­cast from QAnon domin­ion­ist author John­ny Enlow, uploaded lit­er­al­ly the same day as the rul­ing. Was that a coin­ci­dence? Or a kind of Sev­en Moun­tains vic­to­ry lap?

    ...
    Last week, the same day the Alaba­ma Supreme Court released its embryo deci­sion and Parker’s con­cur­rent rul­ing, the chief jus­tice said in an online broad­cast that “God cre­at­ed gov­ern­ment” and that Chris­tians should take it back from the “pos­ses­sion” of oth­ers.

    The com­ments came dur­ing an inter­view with QAnon sup­port­er John­ny Enlow, author of “The Sev­en Moun­tain Prophe­cy.” Enlow describes Park­er as a “true pio­neer” of the move­ment, while Park­er thanked Enlow for pro­mot­ing the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. The inter­view was report­ed by Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca, a lib­er­al watch­dog group.

    Park­er added in the inter­view that the country’s orig­i­nal form of gov­ern­ment was based on the Bible, a com­mon view of sup­port­ers of the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date, and that its laws should reflect that. Schol­ars have crit­i­cized that inter­pre­ta­tion, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press reports.
    ...

    And in case it’s not clear that Jus­tice Park­er knew who Enlow was before he agreed to come on for an inter­view, Park­er shared with a famil­iar­i­ty with Enlow’s work as a domin­ion­ist author, and even used the inter­view to call for more peo­ple to “step back into these moun­tains right now”:

    Media Mat­ters

    Alaba­ma Supreme Court chief jus­tice spreads Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rhetoric on QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist’s show

    Chief Jus­tice Tom Parker’s recent con­cur­ring opin­ion in a case grant­i­ng rights to embryos drew crit­i­cism for invok­ing reli­gious lan­guage

    Spe­cial Pro­grams Abor­tion Rights & Repro­duc­tive Health

    Writ­ten by Pay­ton Arm­strong
    Pub­lished 02/21/24 11:00 AM EST

    Dur­ing a recent inter­view on the pro­gram of self-pro­claimed “prophet” and QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist John­ny Enlow, Alaba­ma Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice Tom Park­er indi­cat­ed that he is a pro­po­nent of the “Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date,” a the­o­log­i­cal approach that calls on Chris­tians to impose fun­da­men­tal­ist val­ues on all aspects of Amer­i­can life.

    Enlow is a pro-Trump “prophet” and lead­ing pro­po­nent of the “Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date,” a “qua­si-bib­li­cal blue­print for theoc­ra­cy” that asserts that Chris­tians must impose fun­da­men­tal­ist val­ues on Amer­i­can soci­ety by con­quer­ing the “sev­en moun­tains” of cul­tur­al influ­ence in U.S. life: gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, media, reli­gion, fam­i­ly, busi­ness, and enter­tain­ment.

    Enlow has also repeat­ed­ly pushed the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, some­times even con­nect­ing it to the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Per Right Wing Watch, Enlow has claimed that world lead­ers are “satan­ic” pedophiles who “steal blood” and “do sac­ri­fices” and that “there is present­ly no real democ­ra­cy on the plan­et” because over 90 per­cent of world lead­ers are involved in pedophil­ia and are being black­mailed.

    On Feb­ru­ary 16, the Alaba­ma Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are peo­ple, with the same rights as liv­ing chil­dren, and that a per­son can be held liable for destroy­ing them, imper­il­ing in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion treat­ment in the state. In a con­cur­ring opin­ion, Park­er quot­ed the Bible, sug­gest­ed that Alaba­ma had adopt­ed a “the­o­log­i­cal­ly based view of the sanc­ti­ty of life,” and said that “human life can­not be wrong­ful­ly destroyed with­out incur­ring the wrath of a holy God.”

    In the inter­view on Enlow’s pro­gram — which was uploaded the same day as the rul­ing was issued — Park­er claimed that “God cre­at­ed gov­ern­ment” and said it’s “heart­break­ing” that “we have let it go into the pos­ses­sion of oth­ers.” Park­er then invoked the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date, say­ing, “And that’s why he is call­ing and equip­ping peo­ple to step back into these moun­tains right now.”

    Park­er sug­gest­ed a famil­iar­i­ty with Enlow’s work, telling him, “As you’ve empha­sized in the past, we’ve aban­doned those Sev­en Moun­tains and they’ve been occu­pied by the oppo­site side.”

    Park­er dis­cussed his “call” to what Enlow called the “moun­tain of gov­ern­ment,” and lat­er told Enlow that he appre­ci­ates what he’s done by “giv­ing us the overview and the vision that allows us to real­ly con­tem­plate what God is call­ing each of us to for our role on those Sev­en Moun­tains.”

    Enlow praised Park­er, telling him he’s “in such a key place that we don’t want to have any con­ver­sa­tions that hurt you in any kind of way, but we appre­ci­ate who you are, who you are in the king­dom.”

    Park­er also claimed that God “is equip­ping me with some­thing for the very spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion that I’m fac­ing,” and respond­ed affir­ma­tive­ly when Enlow asked if “the holy spir­it is there” when he’s “arbi­trat­ing a ses­sion” and per­form­ing his job as chief jus­tice.

    ...

    Last year, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist media fig­ure Sean Feucht said Park­er had invit­ed him into the court’s cham­bers for a wor­ship ses­sion. Park­er also joined a prayer call in March 2023 with sup­posed prophets and apos­tles, and he prayed that “there will be a grow­ing hunger in the judges of Alaba­ma, and around the nation for more of God. And that they will be recep­tive to his moves toward restora­tion of the judges, so that they can play their fore­cast role in revival in this nation.”

    ———–

    “Alaba­ma Supreme Court chief jus­tice spreads Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rhetoric on QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist’s show” by Pay­ton Arm­strong; Media Mat­ters; 02/21/2024

    Enlow has also repeat­ed­ly pushed the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, some­times even con­nect­ing it to the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Per Right Wing Watch, Enlow has claimed that world lead­ers are “satan­ic” pedophiles who “steal blood” and “do sac­ri­fices” and that “there is present­ly no real democ­ra­cy on the plan­et” because over 90 per­cent of world lead­ers are involved in pedophil­ia and are being black­mailed.”

    A fusion of QAnon and the Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date. That’s the kind of the­ol­o­gy one can expect to find on John­ny Enlow’s pod­cast. It’s not a secret. So when Alaba­ma Supreme Court Jus­tice Tom Park­er decid­ed to make an appear­ance on Enlow’s show, that was­n’t an acci­dent. Not only did Park­er demon­strate a famil­iar­i­ty with Enlow dur­ing the inter­view, but the inter­view itself was post­ed on Feb­ru­ary 16, the exact same day as the Alaba­ma IVF rul­ing. An inter­view where judge Park­er exchanged “Sev­en Moun­tains” domin­ion­ist lan­guage with Enlow. This was like a pair of fel­low domin­ion­ists cel­e­brat­ing the suc­cess of their ongo­ing pow­er grab:

    ...
    On Feb­ru­ary 16, the Alaba­ma Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are peo­ple, with the same rights as liv­ing chil­dren, and that a per­son can be held liable for destroy­ing them, imper­il­ing in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion treat­ment in the state. In a con­cur­ring opin­ion, Park­er quot­ed the Bible, sug­gest­ed that Alaba­ma had adopt­ed a “the­o­log­i­cal­ly based view of the sanc­ti­ty of life,” and said that “human life can­not be wrong­ful­ly destroyed with­out incur­ring the wrath of a holy God.”

    In the inter­view on Enlow’s pro­gram — which was uploaded the same day as the rul­ing was issued — Park­er claimed that “God cre­at­ed gov­ern­ment” and said it’s “heart­break­ing” that “we have let it go into the pos­ses­sion of oth­ers.” Park­er then invoked the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date, say­ing, “And that’s why he is call­ing and equip­ping peo­ple to step back into these moun­tains right now.”

    Park­er sug­gest­ed a famil­iar­i­ty with Enlow’s work, telling him, “As you’ve empha­sized in the past, we’ve aban­doned those Sev­en Moun­tains and they’ve been occu­pied by the oppo­site side.”

    Park­er dis­cussed his “call” to what Enlow called the “moun­tain of gov­ern­ment,” and lat­er told Enlow that he appre­ci­ates what he’s done by “giv­ing us the overview and the vision that allows us to real­ly con­tem­plate what God is call­ing each of us to for our role on those Sev­en Moun­tains.”
    ...

    Is an open embrace of QAnon the­o­ries going to be part of the pub­lic mes­sag­ing of the domin­ion­ist move­ment? Maybe some sort of “we over­threw the gov­ern­ment to save you from the Satan­ic elite pedophiles” mes­sag­ing? We’ll see, but it’s not like Jus­tice Park­er is some com­plete­ly obscure fig­ure who decid­ed to go on a QAnon pod­cast. He’s the Alaba­ma Supreme Court’s Chief Jus­tice. But beyond that, Park­er is some­one who has long been seen by the pro-life move­ment as one of its lead­ing jurist. That’s the pic­ture that emerges in the fol­low­ing 2014 piece about Park­er pub­lished by ProP­ub­li­ca. A pro­file that’s now near­ly 10 years old. And as we’re going to see, even by 2014, Park­er was at that point a cru­cial indi­vid­ual in the push to con­fer per­son­hood rights to fetus­es and embryos. Some­one who repeat­ed­ly used his posi­tion on the bench to push fetal per­son­hood caus­es on cas­es that did­n’t even have any­thing direct­ly to do with repro­duc­tive rights. Or as key Domio­n­ion­ist leader (and CNP board mem­ber) Matt Staver put it at the time, “He’s some­one who real­ly takes time to read his­to­ry and the devel­op­ment of jurisprudence...He’s not a sur­face thinker.”
    You can’t sep­a­rate Park­er from this larg­er move­ment. Which is why we should prob­a­bly view Alaba­ma’s IVF rul­ing, and the QAnon inter­view that came out the same day, as more than just a rul­ing by a con­ser­v­a­tive court. It was also the next step in the long march of orga­nized domin­ion­ism:

    Pro Pub­li­ca

    This Alaba­ma Judge Has Fig­ured Out How to Dis­man­tle Roe v. Wade

    His writ­ings fuel the biggest threat to abor­tion rights in a gen­er­a­tion.

    by Nina Mar­tin
    Octo­ber 10, 2014

    In 2005, the With­er­spoon School of Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy held a con­fer­ence in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Moun­tains. The school’s name was some­thing of a mis­nomer: Rather than grant JDs, With­er­spoon staged sem­i­nars and lec­tures offer­ing lessons in what it sum­ma­rized as “the com­pre­hen­sive bib­li­cal foun­da­tion for our com­mon law and con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­ern­ment.” Its tar­get audi­ence was home­schooled young men. The school itself was a project of Vision Forum, a Texas-based min­istry whose founder was also a leader in the Chris­t­ian Patri­archy move­ment, which preach­es, among oth­er things, that hus­bands should vote for their wives.

    Most sit­ting judges would go to great pains to avoid such a gath­er­ing. But Tom Park­er, then a few months into his first term on the Alaba­ma Supreme Court, glad­ly accept­ed an invi­ta­tion to speak at that year’s With­er­spoon retreat. Before his elec­tion to Alabama’s high­est court, Park­er had been an aide-de-camp to Chief Jus­tice Roy Moore, whose instal­la­tion of a gran­ite Ten Com­mand­ments mon­u­ment in the state judi­cia­ry build­ing had touched off what became for Alaba­ma both a con­sid­er­able embar­rass­ment and a gen­uine con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis. At Parker’s swear­ing-in, he made it clear that he had sought the bench to con­tin­ue his old boss’s spir­i­tu­al fight.

    ...

    The atmos­phere at Parker’s With­er­spoon appear­ance was far warmer, and his remarks there were even more can­did. A DVD of the ses­sion shows him grip­ping the lectern, dressed in a gray suit and blue tie, as he railed against the per­ceived sins of jurists at every lev­el. “It’s the judges who have legal­ized abor­tion and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty … They are shak­ing the very foun­da­tion of our soci­ety.” Park­er made it clear that he had no inten­tion of let­ting legal prece­dent get in his way. “We can­not fall under that trap,” he insist­ed. “We have to stand for what’s right.” The one thing he most wished for the young men before him was that they find a way to gain posi­tions of influ­ence and turn them to God’s pur­pose. No oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so should be shrunk from or wast­ed.

    In the nine years Park­er has now served on the court, he has made the most of his oppor­tu­ni­ties. Child cus­tody dis­putes, for instance, have made good occa­sions to expound on the role of reli­gion in parental rights. (“Because God, not the state, has grant­ed par­ents the author­i­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty to gov­ern their chil­dren, par­ents should be able to do so unfet­tered by state inter­fer­ence,” he wrote in one case.) But Park­er has been the most cre­ative in his relent­less cam­paign to under­mine legal abor­tion. Again and again, he has tak­en cas­es that do not direct­ly con­cern repro­duc­tive rights, or even repro­duc­tive issues, and found ways to use them to argue for full legal sta­tus for the unborn.

    Those efforts have made Park­er a piv­otal fig­ure in the so-called per­son­hood move­ment, which has its roots in a loop­hole in Roe v. Wade. While that 1973 rul­ing was cre­at­ing a broad new right to abor­tion ground­ed in a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed right to pri­va­cy, an often-over­looked pas­sage left an open­ing for those who would seek its undo­ing. Dur­ing oral argu­ments, the jus­tices had asked Roe’s lawyer what would hap­pen if a fetus were held to be a per­son under the Con­sti­tu­tion. “I would have a very dif­fi­cult case,” she had replied. In his major­i­ty opin­ion, Jus­tice Har­ry Black­mun not­ed that the Supreme Court could find no basis for such sta­tus, before adding, “If this sug­ges­tion of per­son­hood is estab­lished, [Roe’s] case, of course, col­laps­es, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guar­an­teed.”

    Roe’s fiercest crit­ics imme­di­ate­ly took up the chal­lenge, launch­ing a push for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment affirm­ing that life begins at con­cep­tion. But that first effort fiz­zled, and it’s only in recent years that a new wave of pro-life activists—many of them born after Roe and edu­cat­ed in fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian settings—have once again seized on per­son­hood as a way not just of weak­en­ing Roe, but of over­turn­ing it. In state after state, they have been push­ing to have their beliefs enshrined in pol­i­cy. This Novem­ber 4, in Col­orado, vot­ers will cast bal­lots on Amend­ment 67, an ini­tia­tive that would include unborn human beings under the def­i­n­i­tion of “per­son” and “child” through­out the state’s crim­i­nal code. North Dakotans, mean­while, will decide on Mea­sure 1, which would alter the state con­sti­tu­tion to rec­og­nize the “inalien­able right to life” at every stage of human devel­op­ment.

    Even if both ini­tia­tives fall short, oth­ers will fol­low. The first one to pass doubtless­ly will then be chal­lenged in court, ignit­ing the poten­tial­ly deci­sive bat­tle that per­son­hood advo­cates real­ly want. Their goal is to get to the U.S. Supreme Court — as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, while con­ser­v­a­tives still dom­i­nate.

    Chris­t­ian-edu­cat­ed lawyers have been prepar­ing for that day, churn­ing out arti­cles pub­lished by Chris­t­ian law jour­nals, which are then cit­ed in briefs sub­mit­ted to courts by Chris­t­ian-right legal orga­ni­za­tions. But giv­en their prove­nance, the impact of those argu­ments has been lim­it­ed. Park­er, a grad­u­ate of Dart­mouth and Van­der­bilt who counts Clarence Thomas as a role mod­el, has the impri­matur of his office behind him, and he has used it to build a body of rea­son­ing that can be cit­ed and re-cit­ed, help­ing to frame and refine the think­ing of oth­er lawyers and judges in the bat­tles ahead. “Now, it’s not just an obscure law-review arti­cle mak­ing these argu­ments,” said Glen Hal­va-Neubauer, a Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tist who stud­ies anti-abor­tion activism. “It’s not just some trea­tise that twen­ty-five of your right-to-life friends know about and nobody else. The main­stream effect is not incon­se­quen­tial.”

    And that, of course, was the idea all along. “What Jus­tice Park­er has done,” said Lynn Pal­trow, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the non­prof­it Nation­al Advo­cates for Preg­nant Women, “is explic­it­ly lay out the roadmap for over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade.”

    The Human Life Amend­ment, as per­son­hood advo­cates’ first big push was com­mon­ly known, was ahead of its time. In the wake of Roe, pro-choice groups — which then includ­ed many cen­trist Repub­li­cans — had the momen­tum. Per­son­hood pro­po­nents hoped in vain that Ronald Reagan’s elec­tion and the GOP’s cap­ture of the Sen­ate in 1980 would turn the tide, but the com­par­a­tive­ly mod­er­ate pro-life main­stream was­n’t ful­ly on board. By the time the Supreme Court reaf­firmed a core right to abor­tion in the land­mark 1992 case Planned Par­ent­hood v. Casey, the move­ment had shift­ed to its own incre­men­tal approach. Tar­get­ing leg­is­la­tures in con­ser­v­a­tive states, it sought tougher penal­ties for fetal homi­cides, and, lat­er, birth cer­tifi­cates for still­born babies. The revised approach alarmed abor­tion-rights advo­cates because it was so emo­tion­al­ly res­o­nant — and effec­tive.

    The basic hold­ing of Roe obvi­ous­ly remains in place, and more than one mil­lion legal abor­tions are per­formed in the Unit­ed States every year. Yet the per­son­hood move­ment has made sig­nif­i­cant inroads. Today, 38 states have fetal-homi­cide statutes that make it a crime to cause the death of an unborn child dur­ing an act of domes­tic vio­lence, for exam­ple, or while dri­ving drunk. At least 15 have laws that make the preg­nan­cy of a homi­cide vic­tim an aggra­vat­ing fac­tor that can lead to the death penal­ty. And more and more juris­dic­tions have begun polic­ing preg­nant women them­selves. In almost every state, women have been arrest­ed or detained for expos­ing their fetus­es to ille­gal drugs; in more than half of them, moth­ers can lose some or even all of their cus­tody rights if they or their new­born tests pos­i­tive for con­trolled sub­stances. In some places, leg­is­la­tors have writ­ten laws express­ly autho­riz­ing such steps. (Tennessee’s new statute goes the fur­thest, allow­ing preg­nant drug-users to be charged with crim­i­nal assault.) More com­mon­ly, it’s con­sta­bles and pros­e­cu­tors who’ve tak­en the ini­tia­tive, rein­ter­pret­ing exist­ing laws to detain and arrest moth­ers. “One clever thing about using drug cas­es this way,” said Sara Zei­gler, a fem­i­nist schol­ar and dean at East­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­si­ty, “is that the aver­age per­son is not going to be at all sym­pa­thet­ic” to a preg­nant woman who gets high. Thanks to moves such as these, the idea that a fetus has rights sep­a­rate from its mother’s has tak­en root in the law and flour­ished, even when the more con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject of fetal per­son­hood is not direct­ly invoked.

    A big rea­son that these piece­meal per­son­hood tri­umphs haven’t trans­lat­ed into some­thing more sweep­ing is because courts haven’t been will­ing to explic­it­ly take up the issue. “If you are a care­ful, strict con­struc­tion­ist kind of judge, you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly con­nect the dots,” Hal­va-Neubauer said. Park­er not only con­nects the dots, “he uses a rock­et launch­er to go after these cas­es and say, ‘Hey, this is a case that could be used to over­rule Roe, and I’m going to show you how.’” In 2011, for exam­ple, Park­er and his fel­low jus­tices heard a case involv­ing a wrong­ful death law­suit brought by a woman who blamed her mis­car­riage on the neg­li­gence of her doc­tors. Under Alaba­ma prece­dent, such suits weren’t allowed unless the fetus had devel­oped to the point where it could sur­vive out­side the womb. But in Hamil­ton v. Scott, the court vot­ed to strike down that lim­it. Park­er wrote the major­i­ty opin­ion.

    Then he wrote some more. As a judge, Park­er has devel­oped the decid­ed­ly unusu­al habit of author­ing con­cur­ring opin­ions to his own major­i­ty rul­ings in cas­es that hold par­tic­u­lar inter­est for him. In his con­cur­rence to Hamil­ton, he cit­ed advances in med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic tech­nol­o­gy as part of a larg­er, painstak­ing argu­ment assert­ing that a cen­ter­piece of Roe — that states can­not ban abor­tion before the point of via­bil­i­ty — was “arbi­trary,” “inco­her­ent,” and “most­ly unsup­port­ed by legal prece­dent.”

    Zei­gler mar­vels at how Park­er has used the con­cur­rence to strate­gic effect. “It’s like he’s writ­ing a law-review arti­cle with­out hav­ing to go through that process, plus he gets a much wider audi­ence,” she said. And unlike a dis­sent, a con­cur­rence con­veys a cer­tain legit­i­ma­cy — the idea that the author is on the win­ning side. “It is much like­li­er to be noticed and cap­tured and repeat­ed in future cas­es.”

    *******

    Mont­gomery, the city where Park­er was raised and where the Alaba­ma Supreme Court sits, wears its faith on its sleeve — and its t‑shirts, and its restau­rant menus, and its license plates. Cross­es are more ubiq­ui­tous than the Amer­i­can flag. Every oth­er block seems to have a church, some­times two or three of them. The Fraz­er Unit­ed Methodist Church, where Park­er wor­ships, is par­tic­u­lar­ly mod­ern and pros­per­ous look­ing, with a TV sta­tion and a play­ground inside the main lob­by. When you park in the immense lot — the church claims a con­gre­ga­tion of 8,000 — you remem­ber where you left your car not by the usu­al Sec­tion A, B or C but by one of the virtues: Love, Self-Con­trol, Patience.

    ...

    As a young lawyer, Park­er led fights to restore God to every­day life in the state — par­tic­u­lar­ly in its schools and text­books. But he often wound up frus­trat­ed, nev­er more so than when a land­mark school prayer case he worked on went down to defeat before the U.S. Supreme Court. He com­plained that the court’s 1985 deci­sion in Wal­lace v. Jaf­free was “the great­est set­back to reli­gious lib­er­ty that has ever occurred in this coun­try.”

    After a stint as a lob­by­ist, dur­ing which he helped estab­lish two think tanks affil­i­at­ed with James Dobson’s huge­ly influ­en­tial Focus on the Fam­i­ly, Park­er became a con­fi­dant of Roy Moore, then a coun­ty judge. When Moore became chief jus­tice of the state Supreme Court in 2000, Park­er served as his legal lieu­tenant, strate­gist and spokesman. And when Moore’s final Ten Com­mand­ments cru­sade end­ed in deba­cle, Park­er was oust­ed, too.

    If unem­ployed, Park­er was hard­ly fin­ished. He went to work at Moore’s Foun­da­tion for Moral Law, a think tank devot­ed “to protect[ing] the Con­sti­tu­tion and protect[ing] the her­itage of our Coun­try.” It pro­mot­ed the far-right strain of Chris­tian­i­ty known as Recon­struc­tion­ism — sup­port­ers believe that the Bible should be the gov­ern­ing text for all areas of civ­il and polit­i­cal life; that America’s Chris­t­ian founders intend­ed it to be a Chris­t­ian land; that there is no law with­out God; that the law and the Con­sti­tu­tion don’t evolve any more than humans do, but are fixed and immutable. The Foun­da­tion was also a cham­pi­on of the new­ly revived per­son­hood move­ment — indeed, it claimed the group Per­son­hood Alaba­ma as one of its projects.

    Park­er won a spot on the state’s top court in 2004. Once elect­ed, he freely recruit­ed the kinds of com­mit­ted, some­what eclec­tic cul­ture com­bat­ants who made up Moore’s cir­cle. For the pow­er­ful behind-the-scenes job of chief of staff, he chose John Eidsmoe, an ex-law pro­fes­sor and author of sev­er­al sem­i­nal Recon­struc­tion­ist works — “the top Bib­li­cal law com­man­der of the era,” accord­ing to Fred­er­ick Clark­son, a jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an of far-right reli­gious move­ments and senior fel­low at Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates.

    Two of Parker’s quirki­est hires were Alex and Brett Har­ris, 16-year-old home­schooled twins from out­side Port­land, Ore., whose blog, Rebe­lu­tion (tagline: “a teenage rebel­lion against low expec­ta­tions”) had made them the Jonas Broth­ers of the Chris­t­ian home­school world. After they blogged about one of his opin­ions, Park­er took them on for a two-month legal intern­ship; despite their lack of train­ing, they quick­ly pro­gressed from fil­ing mem­os to research­ing and draft­ing legal opin­ions. A few months after that, in 2006, Park­er made them the grass­roots direc­tors in his (failed) cam­paign to become chief jus­tice. “They demon­strat­ed a matu­ri­ty com­pa­ra­ble to the law stu­dents we’ve had, and some­times exceed­ing that matu­ri­ty,” Park­er raved.

    Park­er soon gained a kind of celebri­ty in the world of Chris­t­ian talk radio. He appeared at con­fer­ences and con­ven­tions and had lit­tle com­punc­tion about voic­ing his opin­ions in pub­lic forums. “The lib­er­als on the U.S. Supreme Court already look down on the pro-fam­i­ly poli­cies, South­ern her­itage, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty and oth­er bless­ings of our great state,” Park­er declared in one par­tic­u­lar­ly blis­ter­ing op-ed, in which he exco­ri­at­ed his fel­low jus­tices for fol­low­ing that court’s prece­dent and over­turn­ing the death penal­ty for a man con­vict­ed of mur­der as a juve­nile. “We Alabami­ans will nev­er be able to suf­fi­cient­ly appease such estab­lish­ment lib­er­als, so we should stop try­ing and instead stand up for what we believe with­out apol­o­gy… It does no good to pos­sess con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials if you sur­ren­der them before join­ing the bat­tle.”

    Park­er didn’t expect those bat­tles to be easy. But knew that judges had strate­gic weapons at their dis­pos­al that could alter the course of the fight in the long term. Dis­sents and con­cur­rences, for exam­ple, might not have the force of prece­dent, but they could sig­nal new tac­tics, raise new argu­ments — and even­tu­al­ly change minds.

    ...

    ***********

    In 2013, a case land­ed on the Alaba­ma Supreme Court dock­et that pre­sent­ed Park­er with yet anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to attack Roe v. Wade. One of the plain­tiffs, Hope Ankrom, from Cof­fee Coun­ty south of Mont­gomery, had plead­ed guilty after her son test­ed pos­i­tive for cocaine and mar­i­jua­na at birth. The oth­er, Aman­da Kim­brough, from rur­al north­west­ern Alaba­ma, had used metham­phet­a­mine while preg­nant, giv­ing birth 15 weeks pre­ma­ture­ly to a boy who soon died. Fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life in prison, she opt­ed for a plea deal and a 10 year sen­tence in the noto­ri­ous Tutwiler state pen­i­ten­tiary for women. But no Alaba­ma laws specif­i­cal­ly autho­rized the women’s arrests and con­vic­tions. Instead, pros­e­cu­tors had charged them under a felony “chem­i­cal endan­ger­ment” statute enact­ed in 2006 to pro­tect chil­dren from the nox­ious fumes and explo­sive chem­i­cals that make home-based meth labs so dan­ger­ous.

    Lawyers for Ankrom and Kim­brough argued that the state had gross­ly over­reached, point­ing out that leg­is­la­tors had debat­ed — and reject­ed — expand­ing the meth-lab law to cov­er preg­nant women. Park­er, along with five oth­er jus­tices, didn’t buy it. He declared that the chem­i­cal-endan­ger­ment law did indeed apply to fetus­es exposed to drugs in the womb. But again, Park­er didn’t leave it at that. His main opin­ion in Ex Parte Ankron and Kim­brough ran 55 pages. His con­cur­rence ran anoth­er 20.

    This time, Parker’s goal was to estab­lish the many ways that exist­ing statutes rec­og­nize fetus­es as per­sons with legal­ly enforce­able rights. The doc­u­ment is a kind of mas­ter­piece of pro-life rea­son­ing. “He’s some­one who real­ly takes time to read his­to­ry and the devel­op­ment of jurispru­dence,” said Mat Staver, the head of Lib­er­ty Coun­sel and a lead­ing Chris­t­ian legal the­o­rist. “He’s not a sur­face thinker.” Step by step, Park­er lays out his evi­dence: laws that give inher­i­tance rights to unborn chil­dren, laws that ban preg­nant inmates from being exe­cut­ed, laws that give fetus­es legal guardians for the pur­pos­es of pro­tect­ing their inter­ests, laws that allow par­ents to sue for dam­ages if fetus­es are injured or killed as the result of neg­li­gence or some oth­er wrong­ful act. Sev­er­al pages of the con­cur­rence con­sist almost entire­ly of lists of statutes from around the coun­try con­fer­ring fetal rights. “Today, the only major area in which unborn chil­dren are denied legal pro­tec­tion is abor­tion,” he con­clud­ed, “and that denial is only because of the dic­tates of Roe.”

    This past spring, as if to punc­tu­ate its rea­son­ing, the Alaba­ma Supreme Court con­front­ed a vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal case, and, with Park­er again writ­ing the major­i­ty opin­ion, reached a vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal con­clu­sion. In this con­cur­rence, Park­er called on the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the mat­ter of full fetal rights once and for all.

    ...

    Pro-choice advo­cates, not sur­pris­ing­ly, are deeply wor­ried about any ideas that Parker’s writ­ings could give the jus­tices in Wash­ing­ton. “Park­er is point­ing out all the ways the law treats the fetus as a per­son already,” Zei­gler, the fem­i­nist schol­ar, said. “The pro-choice argu­ment, mean­while, is that the per­son­hood of the fetus hinges entire­ly on the women’s per­cep­tion of it.” To the ques­tion of what con­sti­tutes life, she con­tin­ued, “Park­er has answers. The pro-choice side is more, ‘It depends.’ … Peo­ple will real­ly strug­gle with that.”

    ———–

    “This Alaba­ma Judge Has Fig­ured Out How to Dis­man­tle Roe v. Wade” by Nina Mar­tin; Pro Pub­li­ca; 10/10/2014

    “In the nine years Park­er has now served on the court, he has made the most of his oppor­tu­ni­ties. Child cus­tody dis­putes, for instance, have made good occa­sions to expound on the role of reli­gion in parental rights. (“Because God, not the state, has grant­ed par­ents the author­i­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty to gov­ern their chil­dren, par­ents should be able to do so unfet­tered by state inter­fer­ence,” he wrote in one case.) But Park­er has been the most cre­ative in his relent­less cam­paign to under­mine legal abor­tion. Again and again, he has tak­en cas­es that do not direct­ly con­cern repro­duc­tive rights, or even repro­duc­tive issues, and found ways to use them to argue for full legal sta­tus for the unborn.

    Again and again, Jus­tice Park­er found ways to take cas­es that did­n’t even have any­thing direct­ly to do with repro­duc­tive rights and turn them into cas­es about the full legal sta­tus of fetus­es and embryos. And that was already the case in 2014 when this report was writ­ten. It’s been anoth­er decade now of Park­er oper­at­ing as one of the piv­otal fig­ures in this move­ment. Roe is now over­turned but Park­er isn’t done. He’s just get­ting start­ed. But not just Park­er. The whole domin­ion­ist move­ment is just get­ting start­ed. That’s a big part of the con­text of the recent Alaba­ma rul­ing. It was a sig­nal from the pow­er­ful domin­ion­ist wing of the pro-life move­ment that they aren’t remote­ly con­tent with the over­turn­ing of Roe and aren’t plan­ning on set­tling for any polit­i­cal com­pro­mis­es:

    ...
    The atmos­phere at Parker’s With­er­spoon appear­ance was far warmer, and his remarks there were even more can­did. A DVD of the ses­sion shows him grip­ping the lectern, dressed in a gray suit and blue tie, as he railed against the per­ceived sins of jurists at every lev­el. “It’s the judges who have legal­ized abor­tion and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty … They are shak­ing the very foun­da­tion of our soci­ety.” Park­er made it clear that he had no inten­tion of let­ting legal prece­dent get in his way. “We can­not fall under that trap,” he insist­ed. “We have to stand for what’s right.” The one thing he most wished for the young men before him was that they find a way to gain posi­tions of influ­ence and turn them to God’s pur­pose. No oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so should be shrunk from or wast­ed.

    ...

    Those efforts have made Park­er a piv­otal fig­ure in the so-called per­son­hood move­ment, which has its roots in a loop­hole in Roe v. Wade. While that 1973 rul­ing was cre­at­ing a broad new right to abor­tion ground­ed in a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed right to pri­va­cy, an often-over­looked pas­sage left an open­ing for those who would seek its undo­ing. Dur­ing oral argu­ments, the jus­tices had asked Roe’s lawyer what would hap­pen if a fetus were held to be a per­son under the Con­sti­tu­tion. “I would have a very dif­fi­cult case,” she had replied. In his major­i­ty opin­ion, Jus­tice Har­ry Black­mun not­ed that the Supreme Court could find no basis for such sta­tus, before adding, “If this sug­ges­tion of per­son­hood is estab­lished, [Roe’s] case, of course, col­laps­es, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guar­an­teed.”

    ...

    Even if both ini­tia­tives fall short, oth­ers will fol­low. The first one to pass doubtless­ly will then be chal­lenged in court, ignit­ing the poten­tial­ly deci­sive bat­tle that per­son­hood advo­cates real­ly want. Their goal is to get to the U.S. Supreme Court — as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, while con­ser­v­a­tives still dom­i­nate.

    Chris­t­ian-edu­cat­ed lawyers have been prepar­ing for that day, churn­ing out arti­cles pub­lished by Chris­t­ian law jour­nals, which are then cit­ed in briefs sub­mit­ted to courts by Chris­t­ian-right legal orga­ni­za­tions. But giv­en their prove­nance, the impact of those argu­ments has been lim­it­ed. Park­er, a grad­u­ate of Dart­mouth and Van­der­bilt who counts Clarence Thomas as a role mod­el, has the impri­matur of his office behind him, and he has used it to build a body of rea­son­ing that can be cit­ed and re-cit­ed, help­ing to frame and refine the think­ing of oth­er lawyers and judges in the bat­tles ahead. “Now, it’s not just an obscure law-review arti­cle mak­ing these argu­ments,” said Glen Hal­va-Neubauer, a Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tist who stud­ies anti-abor­tion activism. “It’s not just some trea­tise that twen­ty-five of your right-to-life friends know about and nobody else. The main­stream effect is not incon­se­quen­tial.”

    And that, of course, was the idea all along. “What Jus­tice Park­er has done,” said Lynn Pal­trow, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the non­prof­it Nation­al Advo­cates for Preg­nant Women, “is explic­it­ly lay out the roadmap for over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade.”
    ...

    And then we get these addi­tion­al details on Park­er’s ties to the broad­er domin­ion­ist infra­struc­ture. For exam­ple, Park­er was­n’t just Roy Moore’s aid. He was his legal lieu­tenant, strate­gist, and spokesman, which is the kind of role that sug­gests Park­er played a major role in Moore’s deci­sion to install that giant Ten Com­mand­ments stat­ue in the cour­t­house and refuse to remove it. And then, after los­ing his job with Moore fol­low­ing Moore’s ouster, Park­er goes on to work at Moore’s Foun­da­tion for Moral Law think tank. Flash for­ward to 2013, and we find none oth­er than Mat Staver singing Park­er’s prais­es. As Staver put it, “He’s some­one who real­ly takes time to read his­to­ry and the devel­op­ment of jurisprudence...He’s not a sur­face thinker.” And as we’ve seen, Staver is a lead­ing domin­ion­ist. Recall the 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 also an open advo­cate of the theo­crat­ic impo­si­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment. Staver also sits on the advi­so­ry board of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL), which is like ALEC for domin­ion­ism. And let’s not for­get who repeat­ed­ly namechecked Staver as a major influ­ence on his dur­ing dur­ing the keynote address of last year’s NACL gala event: House Speak­er Mike John­son. The point being that when some­one like Staver is singing your prais­es, you’ve clear­ly done a lot to advance the domin­ion­ist cause:

    ...
    After a stint as a lob­by­ist, dur­ing which he helped estab­lish two think tanks affil­i­at­ed with James Dobson’s huge­ly influ­en­tial Focus on the Fam­i­ly, Park­er became a con­fi­dant of Roy Moore, then a coun­ty judge. When Moore became chief jus­tice of the state Supreme Court in 2000, Park­er served as his legal lieu­tenant, strate­gist and spokesman. And when Moore’s final Ten Com­mand­ments cru­sade end­ed in deba­cle, Park­er was oust­ed, too.

    If unem­ployed, Park­er was hard­ly fin­ished. He went to work at Moore’s Foun­da­tion for Moral Law, a think tank devot­ed “to protect[ing] the Con­sti­tu­tion and protect[ing] the her­itage of our Coun­try.” It pro­mot­ed the far-right strain of Chris­tian­i­ty known as Recon­struc­tion­ism — sup­port­ers believe that the Bible should be the gov­ern­ing text for all areas of civ­il and polit­i­cal life; that America’s Chris­t­ian founders intend­ed it to be a Chris­t­ian land; that there is no law with­out God; that the law and the Con­sti­tu­tion don’t evolve any more than humans do, but are fixed and immutable. The Foun­da­tion was also a cham­pi­on of the new­ly revived per­son­hood move­ment — indeed, it claimed the group Per­son­hood Alaba­ma as one of its projects.

    Park­er won a spot on the state’s top court in 2004. Once elect­ed, he freely recruit­ed the kinds of com­mit­ted, some­what eclec­tic cul­ture com­bat­ants who made up Moore’s cir­cle. For the pow­er­ful behind-the-scenes job of chief of staff, he chose John Eidsmoe, an ex-law pro­fes­sor and author of sev­er­al sem­i­nal Recon­struc­tion­ist works — “the top Bib­li­cal law com­man­der of the era,” accord­ing to Fred­er­ick Clark­son, a jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an of far-right reli­gious move­ments and senior fel­low at Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates.

    ...

    In 2013, a case land­ed on the Alaba­ma Supreme Court dock­et that pre­sent­ed Park­er with yet anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to attack Roe v. Wade. One of the plain­tiffs, Hope Ankrom, from Cof­fee Coun­ty south of Mont­gomery, had plead­ed guilty after her son test­ed pos­i­tive for cocaine and mar­i­jua­na at birth. The oth­er, Aman­da Kim­brough, from rur­al north­west­ern Alaba­ma, had used metham­phet­a­mine while preg­nant, giv­ing birth 15 weeks pre­ma­ture­ly to a boy who soon died. Fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life in prison, she opt­ed for a plea deal and a 10 year sen­tence in the noto­ri­ous Tutwiler state pen­i­ten­tiary for women. But no Alaba­ma laws specif­i­cal­ly autho­rized the women’s arrests and con­vic­tions. Instead, pros­e­cu­tors had charged them under a felony “chem­i­cal endan­ger­ment” statute enact­ed in 2006 to pro­tect chil­dren from the nox­ious fumes and explo­sive chem­i­cals that make home-based meth labs so dan­ger­ous.

    Lawyers for Ankrom and Kim­brough argued that the state had gross­ly over­reached, point­ing out that leg­is­la­tors had debat­ed — and reject­ed — expand­ing the meth-lab law to cov­er preg­nant women. Park­er, along with five oth­er jus­tices, didn’t buy it. He declared that the chem­i­cal-endan­ger­ment law did indeed apply to fetus­es exposed to drugs in the womb. But again, Park­er didn’t leave it at that. His main opin­ion in Ex Parte Ankron and Kim­brough ran 55 pages. His con­cur­rence ran anoth­er 20.

    This time, Parker’s goal was to estab­lish the many ways that exist­ing statutes rec­og­nize fetus­es as per­sons with legal­ly enforce­able rights. The doc­u­ment is a kind of mas­ter­piece of pro-life rea­son­ing. “He’s some­one who real­ly takes time to read his­to­ry and the devel­op­ment of jurispru­dence,” said Mat Staver, the head of Lib­er­ty Coun­sel and a lead­ing Chris­t­ian legal the­o­rist. “He’s not a sur­face thinker.” Step by step, Park­er lays out his evi­dence: laws that give inher­i­tance rights to unborn chil­dren, laws that ban preg­nant inmates from being exe­cut­ed, laws that give fetus­es legal guardians for the pur­pos­es of pro­tect­ing their inter­ests, laws that allow par­ents to sue for dam­ages if fetus­es are injured or killed as the result of neg­li­gence or some oth­er wrong­ful act. Sev­er­al pages of the con­cur­rence con­sist almost entire­ly of lists of statutes from around the coun­try con­fer­ring fetal rights. “Today, the only major area in which unborn chil­dren are denied legal pro­tec­tion is abor­tion,” he con­clud­ed, “and that denial is only because of the dic­tates of Roe.”
    ...

    Staver’s influ­ence has­n’t exact­ly waned since he made those com­ments about Park­er over a decade ago. The Speak­er of the House open­ly fol­lows Staver’s lead, after all. Staver, along with the rest of the domin­ion­ists at the CNP, have final­ly achieved their gen­er­a­tional goal of far right lock on the Supreme Court. This is their moment. A moment that could last quite a while. Even longer if Trump man­ages to get reelect­ed and has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stack the court even more. A reelec­tion that is arguably more imper­iled by the GOP’s abor­tion extrem­ism than Trump’s own crim­i­nal­i­ty at this point. Trump real­ly does need that pass from his based. He has to find a way to con­vince the gen­er­al pub­lic that a vote for Trump is NOT a vote for domin­ion­ism, and domin­ion­ists like Staver know it.

    How is this going to play out? It’s going to be inter­est­ing. But don’t be sur­prised if, some­how, Trump ends up get­ting his free pass on this issue. And, in turn, also don’t be sur­prised if we start hear­ing about A LOT more inter­views with QAnon friend­ly pod­cast­ers by Trump sur­ro­gates who are qui­et­ly assur­ing his domin­ion­ist base that the Sev­en Moun­tains are wait­ing for them at the end of the Trumpian rain­bow. Trump has a tricky tightrope to walk, but he real­ly can do it with a lit­tle help from his domin­ion­ist friends. And boy does he have a lot of domin­ion­ist friends, whether or wants to admit it or not.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 26, 2024, 6:33 pm
  19. It’s Don­ald Trump’s Repub­li­can Par­ty. We already knew that. But it’s offi­cial, again, fol­low­ing last week’s Super Tues­day pri­maries and the exit of his last remain­ing pri­ma­ry oppo­nent.

    But for all the atten­tion giv­en to Trump’s cap­ture of the Repub­li­can par­ty at the nation­al lev­el, it’s easy to over­look what just hap­pened in Texas: bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dunn now almost com­plete­ly con­trols the Texas GOP. Or at least he will once all the runoff elec­tions are com­plet­ed. Yes, in a huge rever­sal from 2022 — when 18 out of 19 Dunn-backed can­di­dates for the Texas House last their pri­maries — 11 out of 28 Dunn backed can­di­dates won their pri­maries out­right last week, with anoth­er 8 races going to runoffs. It was a big day for Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in Texas.

    Beyond that, the top tar­get of Dun­n’s ire, Repub­li­can House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan, was note only one of the can­di­dates forced into a runoff again Dunn-back oppo­nent, David Cov­ey, but Cov­ey end­ed up get­ting more votes. Recall how Dun­n’s loathing of Phe­lan is, in part, dri­ven by the fact that Phe­lan con­demned the state Repub­li­can Par­ty’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee for its rejec­tion of a pro­pos­al, in 32–29 vote, to con­demn the asso­ci­a­tion of par­ty mem­bers with Nazis and holo­caust deniers. Orig­i­nal­ly, the res­o­lu­tion was intend­ed to call for a break with Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, foll­wing the report­ing on a sev­en hour meet­ing with Catholic extrem­ist neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes back in Octo­ber at the head­quar­ters of Pale Horse Strate­gies, the polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy of group of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty’s chair­man Jonathan Stick­land. Also recall how anoth­er Dunn-backed group, Defend Texas Free­dom, was behind a series of taste­less ‘Hap­py Ramadan’ Christ­mas Cards sent to Phe­lan’s con­stituents back in Decem­ber accus­ing Phe­lan of ‘pro-Mus­lim’. The exec­u­tive direc­tor of Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, Cary Chesire, was respon­si­ble for Christ­mas mail­ers to Phalen’s con­stituents, accus­ing him of har­bor­ing pro-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments. 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 Fuentes dur­ing the day Fuentes held sev­en hours of meet­ings at Pale Horse Strate­gies. It was­n’t just Dunn who had it out for Phe­lan. His entire net­work of extrem­ist is threat­ened by Phe­lan’s refusal to go along with par­ty’s embrace of Nazis and theocrats. But it’s look­ing like their Phe­lan prob­lem may be close to being solved.

    Dun­n’s grand vic­to­ry was­n’t entire­ly an in-house affair. He had help. For starters, Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott — who is push­ing for a Dunn-backed school pri­va­ti­za­tion scheme that could fun­nel pub­lic mon­ey to pri­vate reli­gious schools — was out there back­ing a num­ber of Dun­n’s can­di­dates. And now that school pri­va­ti­za­tion bill is almost cer­tain to become law.

    Ken Pax­ton, the scan­dal-plagued state attor­ney gen­er­al who nar­row­ly sur­vived an impeach­ment push back in Sep­tem­ber that was sup­port­ed by Speak­er Phe­lan, also hit the cam­paign trail for Dun­n’s can­di­dates, which isn’t sur­pris­ing giv­en the immense sup­port he’s received from Dunn includ­ing pledges to end the careers of Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to impeach.

    Notably, fol­low­ing Pax­ton’s lead was none oth­er than Steve Ban­non and Don­ald Trump, both of whom issued a num­ber of endorse­ments to Dunn-backed can­di­dates. Dun­n’s theo­crat­ic cap­ture of Texas has Trump’s endorse­ment. Theo­crat­ic cap­ture is MAGA-com­pat­i­ble.

    There was one notable Dunn-backed can­di­date who lost their pri­ma­ry bid: Kyle Bie­der­mann. It was­n’t a sur­prise he loat. If any­thing, it was sur­pris­ing Bie­der­mann man­aged to get 43% of the vote con­sid­er­ing the rather con­tro­ver­sial stance he took in the defense of anoth­er Dunn-backed can­di­date a month who was expelled from the House back in May of last year after he was caught sleep­ing with a drunk 19-year-old aide. The spe­cial elec­tion to replace Sla­ton was held back in Jan­u­ary. Dunn-backed Brent Mon­ey nar­row­ly lost to Jill Dut­ton despite a num­ber of high pro­file endorse­ments.

    Mon­ey hand­i­ly defeat­ed Dut­ton on Super Tues­day. In part because he did­n’t make the same mis­take Bie­der­mann made last month at a Tea Par­ty event where Bie­der­mann, in front of a crowd of rough­ly 80 peo­ple, not only defend­ed Slater by point­ing out that 19 is past the age of con­sent in Texas, but went on to accuse the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty of gross hypocrisy and selec­tive­ly enforced pun­ish­ment. Because what Slater did was being done by count­less oth­ers in the Austin state capi­tol grounds all the time and not only are the perps not pun­ished by they are fre­quent­ly reward­ed with pow­er­ful com­mit­tee assign­ments and close friend­ships. Yep. That’s what Bie­der­mann said and it was all cap­tured on video.

    It was­n’t the first time Bie­der­mann found him­self in a polit­i­cal storm. The guy was lit­er­al­ly at the US Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6. Back in 2016, he dressed up as “gay Hitler” and gave Nazi salutes for a food bank fundrais­er. He lat­er down­played crit­i­cism for the cos­tume to “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness”. Bie­der­mann sim­i­lar­ly down­played crit­i­cism over the meet­ings with Nick Fuentes at Pale Horse Strat­e­gy by argu­ing that it was overblown and that “there is lots of things that hap­pen in pol­i­tics that aren’t always kosher.”

    Need­less to say, Bie­der­man­n’s com­ments accus­ing Tex­as­’s elect­ed offi­cials of ram­pant sex with drunk­en young aides did­n’t go over well with his par­ty. And yet, he did man­age to get 43% of the vote. Still, he lost unlike most of the Dunn-backed can­di­dates and it looks like the straw that broke the camel’s back was his deci­sion to defend Slater by high­light­ing a scan­dalous state of affair involv­ing ram­pant sex with drunk aids in the Capi­tol. A sit­u­a­tion where get­ting caught doing it results in more pow­er­ful com­mit­tee assign­ments, which sure sounds like a sta­tus quo of sys­temic black­mail and con­trol. There’s more than a few echoes of the Jef­frey Epstein scan­dal here. Pub­lic air­ing that poten­tial mega-scan­dal out was what did him in.

    And that brings us to anoth­er poten­tial­ly huge aspect of Tim Dun­n’s big win on Tues­day. Because there’s anoth­er con­tro­ver­sial stance cham­pi­oned by Bie­der­mann that won big on Tues­day even though Bie­der­mann lost: As a leg­is­la­tor, Bie­der­mann pro­posed leg­is­la­tion that would have put a refendum on Texas seces­sion to vot­ers. Bryan Sla­ton pro­posed a sim­i­lar bill last year before being expelled.

    This is a good time to recall how the Texas GOP adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tions in both 2020 and 2022 dur­ing their par­ty con­ven­tion call­ing for the pas­sage of a bill in 2023 that would require a ref­er­en­dum on seces­sion. So Bie­der­mann and Slater are two lone nuts. They’re a reflec­tion of where the par­ty is at today and just two of the many Dunn-backed can­di­dates who are on the record in favor of Texas seces­sion, includ­ing the sev­en who won their pri­maries out­right and five who are advanc­ing to runoffs, which includes David Cov­ey, who might replace Speak­er Phalen. As Daniel Miller, pres­i­dent of the Texas Nation­al­ist Move­ment, put it after see­ing the pri­ma­ry results, “This was a big night for us. It means that we are vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed to see the Texas Inde­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum Act filed in the next ses­sion of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture, putting Tex­ans one step clos­er to a vote on TEXIT. It shows that we are win­ning the bat­tle for the future of Texas.” Tim Dun­n’s big win was a win for the Texas seces­sion move­ment too. The Texas GOP will almost cer­tain­ly by in the grips of pro-seces­sion fac­tion by the time the 2024 elec­tion cycle plays out.

    Dis­turbing­ly, a recent poll found that 44 per­cent of Tex­ans were either more like­ly or sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to back seces­sion over the migrant cri­sis. So when the GOP inten­tion­al­ly exac­er­bates the bor­der cri­sis to assist Trump’s cam­paign, it turns out they were pro­mot­ing the Texas seces­sion move­ment too.

    That’s the meta-sto­ry of Tues­day’s huge win for Tim Dun­n’s ques­tion to cap­ture the state Repub­li­can Par­ty and turn Texas into a theoc­ra­cy: Dunn did­n’t just win big. He won big despite the recent Nick Fuentes scan­dal and now Texas is poised to go into full blown seces­sion mode. Dunn isn’t plan­ning on turn­ing the state of Texas into a theoc­ra­cy. He’s plan­ning on turn­ing the inde­pen­dent nation of Texas into a theoc­ra­cy. And he seem­ing has Steven Ban­non’s and Don­ald Trump’s bless­ing:

    Texas Tri­bune

    Amid white suprema­cist scan­dal, far-right bil­lion­aire power­bro­kers see his­toric elec­tion gains in Texas

    All told, 11 of the 28 House can­di­dates sup­port­ed by Tim Dunn and Far­ris Wilks won their pri­maries out­right, and anoth­er eight are head­ed to runoffs this May.

    by Robert Dow­nen
    March 8, 2024
    12 PM Cen­tral

    West Texas oil bil­lion­aires Tim Dunn and Far­ris Wilks entered the 2024 pri­ma­ry elec­tion cycle wound­ed.

    Their polit­i­cal net­work was in the mid­dle of a scan­dal over its ties to white suprema­cists. Repub­li­cans were call­ing on each oth­er to reject the bil­lion­aires’ cam­paign mon­ey. And their ene­mies believed they were vul­ner­a­ble — one bad elec­tion day from los­ing their grip on the state.

    Instead, Dunn and Wilks emerged from Tues­day per­haps stronger than ever — van­quish­ing old polit­i­cal foes, posi­tion­ing their allies for a Novem­ber takeover of the state Leg­is­la­ture, and leav­ing lit­tle doubt as to who is win­ning avicious civ­il war to con­trol the state par­ty.

    In race after race, more mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive incum­bents were trounced by can­di­dates backed by Dunn and Wilks. Their polit­i­cal net­work made good on its vows for vengeance against House Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to impeach their key state ally, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, advanc­ing more fire­brands who cam­paigned against bipar­ti­san­ship and backed anti-LGBTQ+ poli­cies. Tuesday’s elec­tion also paved the way for the like­ly pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion that would allow tax­pay­er mon­ey to fund pri­vate and reli­gious schools — a key pol­i­cy goal for a move­ment that seeks to infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic life.

    All told, 11 of the 28 House can­di­dates sup­port­ed by the two bil­lion­aires won their pri­maries out­right, and anoth­er eight are head­ed to runoffs this May. And, in a sign of how much the state par­ty has moved right­ward, five of their can­di­dates beat incum­bents in rematch­es from 2022 or 2020 — with some House dis­tricts swing­ing by dou­ble-dig­its in their favor. Of the can­di­dates they backed, they donat­ed $75,000 or more to 11 of them — six who won, and four who went to runoffs.

    Tues­day was a stark con­trast from just two years ago, when Dunn and Wilks’ top polit­i­cal fundrais­ing group poured $5.2 mil­lion into a host of long­shot can­di­dates — much more than what they spent in the cur­rent elec­tion cycle. They lost bad­ly that year — 18 of the 19 chal­lengers to Texas House mem­bers they backed were defeat­ed. Their only suc­cess­ful House can­di­date that year was Stan Kitz­man of Pat­ti­son, who top­pled for­mer Rep. Phil Stephen­son of Whar­ton in a runoff.

    Among the tri­umphant on Tues­day was Mitch Lit­tle, aid­ed by at least $153,000 in Dunn and Wilks cash, who defeat­ed Rep. Kro­n­da Thimesch in a cam­paign that focused on Little’s defense of Pax­ton from impeach­ment charges in the Sen­ate tri­al last sum­mer. Three days before he won, Lit­tle appeared at an event in Den­ton Coun­ty with Pax­ton and, among oth­ers, Steve Ban­non, the polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who helped ral­ly the far right behind then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump in 2016.

    And anoth­er Dunn and Wilks can­di­date, David Cov­ey, stunned the state by win­ning more votes than House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan — the No. 1 tar­get of the state’s far-right in part because of his role in the Pax­ton impeach­ment and refusal to ban Democ­rats from House lead­er­ship posi­tions. Phe­lan now faces a runoff from Cov­ey and the prospect of being the first Texas Speak­er since 1972 to lose his pri­ma­ry.

    Cer­tain­ly, Tuesday’s dark-red wave can’t be attrib­uted sole­ly to Dunn and Wilks. Texas GOP pri­maries have his­tor­i­cal­ly been decid­ed by small shares of vot­ers, many of them fur­ther to the right of even the party’s main­stream. This elec­tion cycle, the bil­lion­aires’ tar­gets also over­lapped with an unlike­ly ally, Gov. Greg Abbott, who poured more than $6 mil­lion into his quest to rid the Texas House of Repub­li­cans who defied his calls for school vouch­er leg­is­la­tion last year. (Dunn and Wilks’ polit­i­cal groups sup­port­ed Abbott’s oppo­nent in his 2022 guber­na­to­r­i­al pri­ma­ry.)

    Mean­while, Pax­ton barn­stormed the state as he sought ret­ri­bu­tion against incum­bents who sup­port­ed his impeach­ment. And, per­haps most impor­tant­ly, for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump was active in many con­tests — fol­low­ing the lead of Pax­ton and his oth­er ally, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and offer­ing late endorse­ments that bol­stered right-wing can­di­dates.

    Even so, the bil­lion­aires’ fin­ger­prints appear all over the out­comes. Since Jan­u­ary, they spent more than $3 mil­lion to sup­port can­di­dates through a new polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Tex­ans Unit­ed For a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty. That PAC is a rebrand of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty PAC, which has been at the cen­ter of a polit­i­cal mael­strom since ear­ly Octo­ber.

    ...

    Jonathan Stick­land, then the pres­i­dent of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, was caught host­ing Nick Fuentes, a promi­nent anti­semite and white suprema­cist, prompt­ing Dunn to issue a rare pub­lic state­ment through the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. Stick­land was qui­et­ly removed from his posi­tion with the PAC.

    Sub­se­quent report­ing by The Texas Tri­bune revealed oth­er ties between white suprema­cists and groups fund­ed by Dunn and Wilks, prompt­ing out­cry from some Repub­li­cans and calls for the Texas GOP to dis­tance itself from Stickland’s groups.

    As votes con­tin­ued to tal­ly in the far right’s favor this week, Stick­land returned from a post-scan­dal social media sab­bat­i­cal to gloat.

    ...

    Their strat­e­gy has been to incre­men­tal­ly move the par­ty toward their hard­line views by paint­ing fel­low con­ser­v­a­tives as weak and inef­fec­tu­al — as “RINOs,” or Repub­li­cans in name only — and promis­ing well-fund­ed pri­ma­ry chal­lengers to law­mak­ers who defy their net­work and its aims. With almost end­less wealth, they have poured mil­lions of dol­lars into inex­pe­ri­enced can­di­dates who often lose but advance the far right’s long-term goals by slow­ly nor­mal­iz­ing once-fringe posi­tions, bruis­ing incum­bents, deplet­ing their cam­paign cof­fers and mak­ing them more vul­ner­a­ble in the next elec­tion cycle.

    For years, many Repub­li­cans have denounced the strat­e­gy, not­ing that the state Leg­is­la­ture is rou­tine­ly ranked as the most con­ser­v­a­tive in the coun­try and warn­ing that Dunn and Wilks’ no-ene­mies-to-our-right approach to pol­i­tics would even­tu­al­ly cost the par­ty elec­tions and open the doors to out­right extrem­ists.

    This year’s elec­tions show just how suc­cess­ful the bil­lion­aires have been in pulling the par­ty toward their hard­line views.

    In House Dis­trict 62, Shel­ley Luther, a for­mer hair salon own­er who rose to fame after being jailed for defy­ing COVID-19 lock­down mea­sures, beat Repub­li­can Rep. Reg­gie Smith by 7 per­cent­age points — a stun­ning, 24-point swing from the 2022 pri­ma­ry. Luther has run for office twice and lost. In her last run, she said that she was not com­fort­able with trans­gen­der chil­dren and com­plained that stu­dents shouldn’t be pun­ished for mak­ing fun of them. She received more than $183,000 in sup­port from Tex­ans Unit­ed For a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty this cycle.

    Rep. Lynn Stucky, R‑Denton, is head­ed to a May runoff against Andy Hop­per, who received at least $280,000 in sup­port from Dunn and Wilks this year. It’s the sec­ond time they’ve squared off — Stucky nar­row­ly defeat­ed Hop­per in 2022. Hop­per and his fam­i­ly have close ties to Dunn and Wilks: One of his sons, Sam, works for a con­sult­ing firm that is owned by Stick­land and rebrand­ed after the Fuentes scan­dal.

    Mean­while, Brent Mon­ey pre­vailed in his rematch against Rep. Jill Dut­ton after los­ing to her in a Jan­u­ary spe­cial elec­tion to replace Bryan Sla­ton, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive whose career was bankrolled by Dunn and Wilks until he was unan­i­mous­ly expelled from the House last year for hav­ing sex with a drunk, 19-year-old aide. (Anoth­er Dunn and Wilks-backed can­di­date, Kyle Bie­der­mann, lost on Tues­day to Rep. Ellen Trox­clair, R‑Austin, after defend­ing Sla­ton last month — but still received 43% of votes).

    In House Dis­trict 53, the Dunn and Wilks-backed Wes­ley Vird­ell, a gun rights lob­by­ist, won 60% of votes in his race to replace Rep. Andew Murr, a Junc­tion Repub­li­can who retired last year after lead­ing the House’s failed impeach­ment of Pax­ton — and as Dunn and Wilks groups promised revenge. Two years pri­or, Murr trounced Vird­ell in the GOP pri­ma­ry. Vird­ell and Cov­ey, the chal­lenger to Phe­lan, have both signed a pledge to sup­port a ref­er­en­dum on Texas seces­sion.

    Rep. Jacey Jet­ton, R‑Richmond, was sound­ly defeat­ed by Matt Mor­gan, who was backed by Pax­ton and received more than $75,000 in sup­port from Tex­ans Unit­ed For A Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty this cycle. Mor­gan won by 15 points — a rever­sal from 2020, when he lost by 5 points to Jet­ton.

    And in House Dis­trict 60, Rep. Glenn Rogers lost Tues­day by more than 27 points in anoth­er rematch. His oppo­nent, Mike Olcott, lost to Rogers by 1 point in a 2022 runoff despite sup­port from Wilks and Dunn. Backed this time by the bil­lion­aires and Abbott, Olcott wal­loped Rogers — an out­spo­ken ene­my of the state’s far right.

    Rogers made no secret of who he blamed for his loss, accus­ing Abbott of telling “bla­tant lies” as part of his $6 mil­lion spend­ing spree against House mem­bers who broke with him on school vouch­er leg­is­la­tion last year.

    But the bulk of Rogers’ ire was reserved for Dunn and Wilks — the “two bil­lion­aire, ‘Chris­t­ian’ nation­al­ist pow­er bro­kers that run this state.”

    “His­to­ry will prove that our cur­rent state gov­ern­ment is the most cor­rupt ever and is ‘bought’ by a few rad­i­cal domin­ion­ist bil­lion­aires seek­ing to destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pri­va­tize our pub­lic schools and cre­ate a Theoc­ra­cy that is both un-Amer­i­can and un-Tex­an,” Rogers wrote in a Wednes­day op-ed in the Weath­er­ford Demo­c­rat. “May God save Texas!”

    ————

    “Amid white suprema­cist scan­dal, far-right bil­lion­aire power­bro­kers see his­toric elec­tion gains in Texas” by Robert Dow­nen; Texas Tri­bune; 03/08/2024

    “Instead, Dunn and Wilks emerged from Tues­day per­haps stronger than ever — van­quish­ing old polit­i­cal foes, posi­tion­ing their allies for a Novem­ber takeover of the state Leg­is­la­ture, and leav­ing lit­tle doubt as to who is win­ning avicious civ­il war to con­trol the state par­ty.”

    The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist wing of the Texas GOP is now stroner than ever fol­low­ing this weeks pri­maries. One mod­er­ate Repub­li­can after anoth­er went down, to be replaced by a Dunn-backed extrem­ist. And keep in mind that ‘mod­er­ate’ is a rel­a­tive term here. It’s not like cen­trists were los­ing. They just weren’t extreme enough and/or behold­en enough to avoid Dun­n’s wrath. The theocrats won. Or as out­go­ing Rep. Glenn Rogers put it, “His­to­ry will prove that our cur­rent state gov­ern­ment is the most cor­rupt ever and is ‘bought’ by a few rad­i­cal domin­ion­ist bil­lion­aires seek­ing to destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pri­va­tize our pub­lic schools and cre­ate a Theoc­ra­cy that is both un-Amer­i­can and un-Texan...May God save Texas!” Yes, may God save Texas from the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism theo­crat­ic fas­cists that are about to take unchecked con­trol of the state’s gov­ern­ment:

    ...
    In race after race, more mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive incum­bents were trounced by can­di­dates backed by Dunn and Wilks. Their polit­i­cal net­work made good on its vows for vengeance against House Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to impeach their key state ally, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, advanc­ing more fire­brands who cam­paigned against bipar­ti­san­ship and backed anti-LGBTQ+ poli­cies. Tuesday’s elec­tion also paved the way for the like­ly pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion that would allow tax­pay­er mon­ey to fund pri­vate and reli­gious schools — a key pol­i­cy goal for a move­ment that seeks to infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic life.

    ...

    Cer­tain­ly, Tuesday’s dark-red wave can’t be attrib­uted sole­ly to Dunn and Wilks. Texas GOP pri­maries have his­tor­i­cal­ly been decid­ed by small shares of vot­ers, many of them fur­ther to the right of even the party’s main­stream. This elec­tion cycle, the bil­lion­aires’ tar­gets also over­lapped with an unlike­ly ally, Gov. Greg Abbott, who poured more than $6 mil­lion into his quest to rid the Texas House of Repub­li­cans who defied his calls for school vouch­er leg­is­la­tion last year. (Dunn and Wilks’ polit­i­cal groups sup­port­ed Abbott’s oppo­nent in his 2022 guber­na­to­r­i­al pri­ma­ry.)

    ...

    And in House Dis­trict 60, Rep. Glenn Rogers lost Tues­day by more than 27 points in anoth­er rematch. His oppo­nent, Mike Olcott, lost to Rogers by 1 point in a 2022 runoff despite sup­port from Wilks and Dunn. Backed this time by the bil­lion­aires and Abbott, Olcott wal­loped Rogers — an out­spo­ken ene­my of the state’s far right.

    Rogers made no secret of who he blamed for his loss, accus­ing Abbott of telling “bla­tant lies” as part of his $6 mil­lion spend­ing spree against House mem­bers who broke with him on school vouch­er leg­is­la­tion last year.

    But the bulk of Rogers’ ire was reserved for Dunn and Wilks — the “two bil­lion­aire, ‘Chris­t­ian’ nation­al­ist pow­er bro­kers that run this state.”

    “His­to­ry will prove that our cur­rent state gov­ern­ment is the most cor­rupt ever and is ‘bought’ by a few rad­i­cal domin­ion­ist bil­lion­aires seek­ing to destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pri­va­tize our pub­lic schools and cre­ate a Theoc­ra­cy that is both un-Amer­i­can and un-Tex­an,” Rogers wrote in a Wednes­day op-ed in the Weath­er­ford Demo­c­rat. “May God save Texas!”
    ...

    But it’s not just the scale of Dun­n’s vic­to­ry. It’s the dra­mat­ic swing from just two years ago. Dou­bling and tripling down on Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism worked. That’s what the Texas GOP vot­ers want. And even in the racs where the Dunn-backed can­di­dates lost, there’s always the next elec­tion, which will inevitably take place in a polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment where the extrem­ism of today is increas­ing­ly nor­mal­ized. Dunn has been play­ing the ‘long game’ for a long time now, and has plen­ty of time left to com­plete his cap­ture of the state:

    ...
    All told, 11 of the 28 House can­di­dates sup­port­ed by the two bil­lion­aires won their pri­maries out­right, and anoth­er eight are head­ed to runoffs this May. And, in a sign of how much the state par­ty has moved right­ward, five of their can­di­dates beat incum­bents in rematch­es from 2022 or 2020 — with some House dis­tricts swing­ing by dou­ble-dig­its in their favor. Of the can­di­dates they backed, they donat­ed $75,000 or more to 11 of them — six who won, and four who went to runoffs.

    Tues­day was a stark con­trast from just two years ago, when Dunn and Wilks’ top polit­i­cal fundrais­ing group poured $5.2 mil­lion into a host of long­shot can­di­dates — much more than what they spent in the cur­rent elec­tion cycle. They lost bad­ly that year — 18 of the 19 chal­lengers to Texas House mem­bers they backed were defeat­ed. Their only suc­cess­ful House can­di­date that year was Stan Kitz­man of Pat­ti­son, who top­pled for­mer Rep. Phil Stephen­son of Whar­ton in a runoff.

    ...

    Their strat­e­gy has been to incre­men­tal­ly move the par­ty toward their hard­line views by paint­ing fel­low con­ser­v­a­tives as weak and inef­fec­tu­al — as “RINOs,” or Repub­li­cans in name only — and promis­ing well-fund­ed pri­ma­ry chal­lengers to law­mak­ers who defy their net­work and its aims. With almost end­less wealth, they have poured mil­lions of dol­lars into inex­pe­ri­enced can­di­dates who often lose but advance the far right’s long-term goals by slow­ly nor­mal­iz­ing once-fringe posi­tions, bruis­ing incum­bents, deplet­ing their cam­paign cof­fers and mak­ing them more vul­ner­a­ble in the next elec­tion cycle.

    For years, many Repub­li­cans have denounced the strat­e­gy, not­ing that the state Leg­is­la­ture is rou­tine­ly ranked as the most con­ser­v­a­tive in the coun­try and warn­ing that Dunn and Wilks’ no-ene­mies-to-our-right approach to pol­i­tics would even­tu­al­ly cost the par­ty elec­tions and open the doors to out­right extrem­ists.
    ...

    And that dra­mat­ic swing in Dun­n’s favor, of course, hap­pened just months after the now noto­ri­ous 7 hour long meet­ing held with top Dunn strate­gist Jonathan Stick­land with Catholic extrem­ist neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. And as we also saw, Matt Rinal­di, the Dunn-backed chair­man of the Texas Repub­li­can exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, hap­pened to be at the Pale Horse Strate­gies office at the time of Fuentes’s vis­it. This was, of course, fol­lowed up with exec­u­tive com­mit­tee vot­ing 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. This was­n’t just a scan­dal for Dunn and Stick­land. It was a scan­dal that exposed how the same par­ty lead­ers loy­al to Dunn were engag­ing in direct rela­tions with overt Nazis. And that’s the fac­tion that’s now more pow­er­ful than ever. If any­thing, the les­son from this is that cavort­ing with neo-Nazis is good pol­i­tics for Texas Repub­li­cans. It’s hard to take away a dif­fer­ent les­son from this:

    ...
    Even so, the bil­lion­aires’ fin­ger­prints appear all over the out­comes. Since Jan­u­ary, they spent more than $3 mil­lion to sup­port can­di­dates through a new polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Tex­ans Unit­ed For a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty. That PAC is a rebrand of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty PAC, which has been at the cen­ter of a polit­i­cal mael­strom since ear­ly Octo­ber.

    ...

    Jonathan Stick­land, then the pres­i­dent of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, was caught host­ing Nick Fuentes, a promi­nent anti­semite and white suprema­cist, prompt­ing Dunn to issue a rare pub­lic state­ment through the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. Stick­land was qui­et­ly removed from his posi­tion with the PAC.

    Sub­se­quent report­ing by The Texas Tri­bune revealed oth­er ties between white suprema­cists and groups fund­ed by Dunn and Wilks, prompt­ing out­cry from some Repub­li­cans and calls for the Texas GOP to dis­tance itself from Stickland’s groups.

    As votes con­tin­ued to tal­ly in the far right’s favor this week, Stick­land returned from a post-scan­dal social media sab­bat­i­cal to gloat.

    ...

    Rep. Lynn Stucky, R‑Denton, is head­ed to a May runoff against Andy Hop­per, who received at least $280,000 in sup­port from Dunn and Wilks this year. It’s the sec­ond time they’ve squared off — Stucky nar­row­ly defeat­ed Hop­per in 2022. Hop­per and his fam­i­ly have close ties to Dunn and Wilks: One of his sons, Sam, works for a con­sult­ing firm that is owned by Stick­land and rebrand­ed after the Fuentes scan­dal.
    ...

    And Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott was­n’t the only polit­i­can to align with Dun­n’s fac­tion in this year’s pri­maries. The near­ly-impeached state attor­ney gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton — a key Dunn ally — was barn­storm­ing the state. But he was­n’t alone, with both Steven Ban­non and Don­ald Trump ampli­fy­ing Pax­ton’s endorse­ments. Which is a major reminder that Tim Dun­n’s cap­ture of the Texas GOP isn’t some quixot­ic quest of a lone bil­lion­aire. He’s got MAGA world back­ing him up:

    ...
    Among the tri­umphant on Tues­day was Mitch Lit­tle, aid­ed by at least $153,000 in Dunn and Wilks cash, who defeat­ed Rep. Kro­n­da Thimesch in a cam­paign that focused on Little’s defense of Pax­ton from impeach­ment charges in the Sen­ate tri­al last sum­mer. Three days before he won, Lit­tle appeared at an event in Den­ton Coun­ty with Pax­ton and, among oth­ers, Steve Ban­non, the polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who helped ral­ly the far right behind then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump in 2016.

    ...

    Mean­while, Pax­ton barn­stormed the state as he sought ret­ri­bu­tion against incum­bents who sup­port­ed his impeach­ment. And, per­haps most impor­tant­ly, for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump was active in many con­tests — fol­low­ing the lead of Pax­ton and his oth­er ally, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and offer­ing late endorse­ments that bol­stered right-wing can­di­dates.

    ...

    Rep. Jacey Jet­ton, R‑Richmond, was sound­ly defeat­ed by Matt Mor­gan, who was backed by Pax­ton and received more than $75,000 in sup­port from Tex­ans Unit­ed For A Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty this cycle. Mor­gan won by 15 points — a rever­sal from 2020, when he lost by 5 points to Jet­ton.
    ...

    And that dra­mat­ic swing towards far right can­di­dates even hap­pened with Shel­ley Luther, a can­di­date who com­plained that stu­dents should­n’t be pun­ished for mak­ing fun of trans­gen­der chil­dren. This is a month after the death of non-bina­ry Okla­homa stu­dent Nex Bene­dict appar­ent­ly after being jumped by three teenage girls in a school bath­room. In oth­er words, cru­el­ty is a hot polit­i­cal com­mod­i­ty right now in the Texas GOP. Expect a lot more of that:

    ...
    In House Dis­trict 62, Shel­ley Luther, a for­mer hair salon own­er who rose to fame after being jailed for defy­ing COVID-19 lock­down mea­sures, beat Repub­li­can Rep. Reg­gie Smith by 7 per­cent­age points — a stun­ning, 24-point swing from the 2022 pri­ma­ry. Luther has run for office twice and lost. In her last run, she said that she was not com­fort­able with trans­gen­der chil­dren and com­plained that stu­dents shouldn’t be pun­ished for mak­ing fun of them. She received more than $183,000 in sup­port from Tex­ans Unit­ed For a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty this cycle.
    ...

    And then there’s the fact that the biggest tar­get of Dun­n’s ire and the one per­son stand­ing in the way of Dun­n’s com­plete cap­ture of the state par­ty — House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan — was not only forced into a run off but actu­al­ly got less votes than his Dunn-backed chal­lenger, David Cov­ey. Recall how the exec­u­tive direc­tor the Dunn-backed groupt Tex­ans for Strong Bor­ders, Cary Chesire, was respon­si­ble for Christ­mas mail­ers to 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 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, was the fig­ure seen chauf­feur­ing Catholic Nazi Nick Fuentes dur­ing the day Fuentes the now infa­mous­ly held meet­ings at Pale Horse Strate­gies, the polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm of Defend Texas Liberty’s now-for­mer pres­i­dent Jonathan Stick­land. Phe­lan is being suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en down by the polit­i­cal allies of Nick Fuentes. The Nazis won. But also note how Cov­ey is one of the many Dunn backed can­di­dates who have signed a ref­er­en­dum to sup­port Tex­as­’s seces­sion for the US. This is big­ger than just the cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. They’re aim­ing to cap­ture Texas:

    ...
    And anoth­er Dunn and Wilks can­di­date, David Cov­ey, stunned the state by win­ning more votes than House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan — the No. 1 tar­get of the state’s far-right in part because of his role in the Pax­ton impeach­ment and refusal to ban Democ­rats from House lead­er­ship posi­tions. Phe­lan now faces a runoff from Cov­ey and the prospect of being the first Texas Speak­er since 1972 to lose his pri­ma­ry.

    ...

    In House Dis­trict 53, the Dunn and Wilks-backed Wes­ley Vird­ell, a gun rights lob­by­ist, won 60% of votes in his race to replace Rep. Andew Murr, a Junc­tion Repub­li­can who retired last year after lead­ing the House’s failed impeach­ment of Pax­ton — and as Dunn and Wilks groups promised revenge. Two years pri­or, Murr trounced Vird­ell in the GOP pri­ma­ry. Vird­ell and Cov­ey, the chal­lenger to Phe­lan, have both signed a pledge to sup­port a ref­er­en­dum on Texas seces­sion.
    ...

    And then we get to one of the more reveal­ing sto­ries about the true nature of this ‘Chris­t­ian’ cap­ture of the Texas GOP: the expelling of rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bryan Sla­ton over hav­ing sex with a drunk 19-year-old aide. After los­ing in Jan­u­ary’s spe­cial elec­tion to replace Sla­ton, Dunn-backed can­di­date Brent Mon­ey pre­vailed. But the con­tro­ver­sy did ulti­mate­ly cost Dun­n’s fac­tion in a dif­fer­ent race. Kyle Bie­der­mann lost after defend­ing Sla­ton a month ago. And as we’re going to see, it was a hel­lu­va defense:

    ...
    Mean­while, Brent Mon­ey pre­vailed in his rematch against Rep. Jill Dut­ton after los­ing to her in a Jan­u­ary spe­cial elec­tion to replace Bryan Sla­ton, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive whose career was bankrolled by Dunn and Wilks until he was unan­i­mous­ly expelled from the House last year for hav­ing sex with a drunk, 19-year-old aide. (Anoth­er Dunn and Wilks-backed can­di­date, Kyle Bie­der­mann, lost on Tues­day to Rep. Ellen Trox­clair, R‑Austin, after defend­ing Sla­ton last month — but still received 43% of votes).
    ...

    So how exact­ly did for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bie­der­mann defend Sla­ton’s sex with a drunk 19-year-old aide? Well, let’s just say it was­n’t a root­ed in for­give­ness and grace. Nope, Bie­der­mann instead went on a rant dur­ing a Tea Par­ty event about how what Sta­ton did is done all the time by oth­er in the state Capi­tol and that the whole thing was selec­tive pun­ish­ment. As Bie­der­man put it, “Affairs run ram­pant in the Austin swamp,” and assert­ed that House mem­bers who have been accused of extra­mar­i­tal affairs have been “reward­ed with pow­er­ful com­mit­tee assign­ments and close friend­ships.” But it’s not just affairs that Bie­der­mann was alleg­ing. In response to some­one point­ing out to Bie­der­mann that, “He had sex with an under­age per­son,” Bie­der­mann replied, “Want me to tell you how many peo­ple have done that in the House?...Let me tell you how many peo­ple have done that in the Capi­tol and noth­ing hap­pens to them.” Bie­der­mann did­n’t just defend Sla­ton. He accused the Texas leg­is­la­ture of engag­ing in, and reward­ing with more pow­er, the same kind of behav­ior reg­u­lar­ly. Which, again, kind of describes a sys­tem for black­mail-based con­trol. Once your caught, you can either take the pro­mo­tion — and do what you’re told by the peo­ple with the tape — or get exposed and have your career end­ed.

    And giv­en that he’s talk­ing about peo­ple get­ting pow­er­ful com­mit­tee assign­ments, odds are he was specif­i­cal­ly talk­ing about Repub­li­cans. That’s all part of the con­text of this cap­ture of the Texas GOP be a ‘Chris­t­ian’ nation­al­ist move­ment. One of the few Dunn-backed can­di­dates to lose this year was the guy who defend­ed the guy who slept with his drunk 19-year-old aide by point­ing out that the rest of the par­ty is doing the same thing all the time:

    Texas Tri­bune

    Texas House can­di­date Kyle Bie­der­mann blasts expul­sion of Bryan Sla­ton, removed for hav­ing sex with a drunk intern

    In a state­ment, Bie­der­mann said the point he was try­ing to make was that lead­ers “selec­tive­ly pun­ish impro­pri­ety.”

    by Karen Brooks Harp­er and Robert Dow­nen
    Feb. 8, 2024
    2 PM Cen­tral

    Kyle Bie­der­mann, a for­mer Texas state rep­re­sen­ta­tive run­ning to unseat a fel­low Repub­li­can in the March pri­ma­ry, blast­ed the House for expelling for­mer Rep. Bryan Sla­ton, who had sex with a 19-year old intern after ply­ing her with alco­hol.

    “Was he con­vict­ed? What was his crime? Is it a crime to have sex with a 19-year-old woman?” Bie­der­mann said in a video cap­tured from a Kendall Coun­ty Tea Par­ty meet­ing this week. “In your house, not at the Capi­tol.”

    Sla­ton, a Royse City Repub­li­can who is mar­ried, was the first mem­ber of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture to be removed from office since 1927. His ouster came after a month­s­long inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion by the House Gen­er­al Inves­ti­gat­ing Com­mit­tee that stemmed from com­plaints from Capi­tol employ­ees. Every mem­ber of the GOP-dom­i­nat­ed House vot­ed to remove him, includ­ing House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan, who rarely casts votes.

    In a state­ment, Bie­der­mann said the point he was try­ing to make was that lead­ers “selec­tive­ly pun­ish impro­pri­ety.”

    “Affairs run ram­pant in the Austin swamp,” he said, adding that House mem­bers who have been accused of extra­mar­i­tal affairs have been “reward­ed with pow­er­ful com­mit­tee assign­ments and close friend­ships.”

    The remarks about Sla­ton were cap­tured in a video obtained by The Texas Tri­bune on Thurs­day, but it does not show Biedermann’s face. Wal­ly Kin­ney, who attend­ed the meet­ing and can be heard ask­ing ques­tions, con­firmed that Bie­der­mann is the man heard speak­ing in the video.

    Kin­ney, who is a sup­port­er of Biedermann’s pri­ma­ry oppo­nent Rep. Ellen Trox­clair, esti­mat­ed that 75 peo­ple were at the Kendall Coun­ty Tea Par­ty meet­ing in Boerne where Bie­der­mann ques­tioned the legal basis for Slaton’s removal and sug­gest­ed he was tar­get­ed for being at odds with those in pow­er.

    “If you’re not part of the lead­er­ship, like Bryan Sla­ton, you’re out in 24 hours,” Bie­der­mann said.

    ...

    “He had sex with an under­age per­son.” Kin­ney, who is now chair of the Texas State Secu­ri­ties Board, could be heard say­ing in the video.

    “Want me to tell you how many peo­ple have done that in the House?” Bie­der­mann inter­rupts.

    Bie­der­mann stressed that it’s not ille­gal to have sex with some­one who is 19 — which is past the age of con­sent, but beneath the legal age to drink alco­hol.

    “Let me tell you how many peo­ple have done that in the Capi­tol and noth­ing hap­pens to them,” he added, with­out nam­ing names.

    Bie­der­mann stressed that Sla­ton had not been con­vict­ed of any­thing and his actions rep­re­sent behav­ior that is per­va­sive through­out the Capi­tol with no reper­cus­sions for most.

    “Unless you’re one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive reps in the House. Then no tri­al, no con­vic­tion, no noth­ing. You’re gone in 24 hours,” Bie­der­mann said.

    ...

    “Of the 75 or 80 peo­ple in that room,“probably 60 of them were real strong far-right Bie­der­mann peo­ple,” Kin­ney, a long­time GOP vol­un­teer and activist, told the Tri­bune on Thurs­day. “But what he said there, nobody in their right mind wants you to be defend­ing Sla­ton.”

    Trox­clair took aim at Bie­der­mann on social media as an account of the video was mak­ing the rounds on Tues­day.

    “Dis­gust­ing,” Trox­clair post­ed on her X account. “Kyle is PART of the swamp, not fight­ing it. A char­la­tan who lies about endorse­ments, claims cred­it for the work of oth­ers, and defends mar­ried men get­ting interns drunk to sleep with them.”

    Bie­der­mann has been known to court con­tro­ver­sy. The Fred­er­icks­burg hard­ware store own­er was out­side the U.S. Capi­tol dur­ing the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion, sent let­ters to Mus­lim lead­ers in the state to sur­vey their sup­port for a ter­ror­ist group and once dressed up as “gay Hitler” for a cos­tume par­ty that was rais­ing funds for a local food bank.

    A pho­to of the cos­tumein which Bie­der­mann is doing a Nazi salute — resur­faced dur­ing his 2016 run for the Texas House. Bie­der­mann down­played crit­i­cisms of the pho­to at the time, instead con­demn­ing “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.”

    He ulti­mate­ly won his race with key back­ing from right-wing groups such as Empow­er Tex­ans and, as a leg­is­la­tor, pro­posed a bill that would have put a ref­er­en­dum on Texas seces­sion to vot­ers. Sla­ton, whose polit­i­cal career was also bankrolled by the West Texas oil bil­lion­aires behind Empow­er Tex­ans, pro­posed a sim­i­lar bill before his expul­sion from the Texas House last year.

    In 2021, Bie­der­mann announced that he would not seek reelec­tion, writ­ing that he want­ed to spend more time with his fam­i­ly. He launched his chal­lenge to Trox­clair last year, and in Novem­ber was a fea­tured speak­er at a con­fer­ence held by the Texas seces­sion­ist move­ment.

    Cam­paign finance records show that Biedermann’s lat­est bid has been fund­ed most­ly by a $75,000 dona­tion from Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty, a new polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that is fund­ed by Far­ris Wilks and Tim Dunn, the two West Texas oil bil­lion­aires who bankrolled Empow­er Tex­ans. Dunn and Wilks are also the pri­ma­ry fun­ders of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty — a pow­er­ful group that has been under fire since Octo­ber, when its leader met with Nick Fuentes, a white suprema­cist who has fan­ta­sized about mar­ry­ing a 16-year-old when he is 30.

    Bie­der­mann con­demned the meet­ing in a Novem­ber inter­view but said reac­tion to it was overblown and that “there is lots of things that hap­pen in pol­i­tics that aren’t always kosher.”

    ———–

    “Texas House can­di­date Kyle Bie­der­mann blasts expul­sion of Bryan Sla­ton, removed for hav­ing sex with a drunk intern” by Karen Brooks Harp­er and Robert Dow­nen; Texas Tri­bune; 02/08/2024

    “In a state­ment, Bie­der­mann said the point he was try­ing to make was that lead­ers “selec­tive­ly pun­ish impro­pri­ety.””

    He’s not con­don­ing Sla­ton’s behav­ior. He’s con­demn­ing the hypocrisy and selec­tive pun­ish­ment. That’s the case Kyle Bie­der­mann made just a month before last weeks pri­maries. It was lit­er­al­ly an ‘every­body does this’ defense of Sla­ton. Which did­n’t seem to go over well with his Tea Par­ty audi­ence:

    ...
    “Affairs run ram­pant in the Austin swamp,” he said, adding that House mem­bers who have been accused of extra­mar­i­tal affairs have been “reward­ed with pow­er­ful com­mit­tee assign­ments and close friend­ships.”

    ...

    “If you’re not part of the lead­er­ship, like Bryan Sla­ton, you’re out in 24 hours,” Bie­der­mann said.

    ...

    “He had sex with an under­age per­son.” Kin­ney, who is now chair of the Texas State Secu­ri­ties Board, could be heard say­ing in the video.

    “Want me to tell you how many peo­ple have done that in the House?” Bie­der­mann inter­rupts.

    Bie­der­mann stressed that it’s not ille­gal to have sex with some­one who is 19 — which is past the age of con­sent, but beneath the legal age to drink alco­hol.

    “Let me tell you how many peo­ple have done that in the Capi­tol and noth­ing hap­pens to them,” he added, with­out nam­ing names.

    Bie­der­mann stressed that Sla­ton had not been con­vict­ed of any­thing and his actions rep­re­sent behav­ior that is per­va­sive through­out the Capi­tol with no reper­cus­sions for most.

    “Unless you’re one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive reps in the House. Then no tri­al, no con­vic­tion, no noth­ing. You’re gone in 24 hours,” Bie­der­mann said.
    ...

    Not sur­pris­ing­ly, it turns out Bie­der­mann was not only at the US Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6, but he has a his­to­ry of far right provo­ca­tions like dress­ing up as “gay Hitler” for a cos­tume par­ty and doing Nazi salutes to raise mon­ey for a local food bank. And as we should expect, while Bie­der­man con­demned the Octo­ber Pale Horse Strate­gies meet­ing with Nick Fuentes, he also argued it was overblown and that there is lots of things that hap­pen in pol­i­tics that aren’t always kosher.” It’s not hard to see why he had Dun­n’s back­ing:

    ...
    Bie­der­mann has been known to court con­tro­ver­sy. The Fred­er­icks­burg hard­ware store own­er was out­side the U.S. Capi­tol dur­ing the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion, sent let­ters to Mus­lim lead­ers in the state to sur­vey their sup­port for a ter­ror­ist group and once dressed up as “gay Hitler” for a cos­tume par­ty that was rais­ing funds for a local food bank.

    A pho­to of the cos­tumein which Bie­der­mann is doing a Nazi salute — resur­faced dur­ing his 2016 run for the Texas House. Bie­der­mann down­played crit­i­cisms of the pho­to at the time, instead con­demn­ing “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.”

    ...

    Cam­paign finance records show that Biedermann’s lat­est bid has been fund­ed most­ly by a $75,000 dona­tion from Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty, a new polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that is fund­ed by Far­ris Wilks and Tim Dunn, the two West Texas oil bil­lion­aires who bankrolled Empow­er Tex­ans. Dunn and Wilks are also the pri­ma­ry fun­ders of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty — a pow­er­ful group that has been under fire since Octo­ber, when its leader met with Nick Fuentes, a white suprema­cist who has fan­ta­sized about mar­ry­ing a 16-year-old when he is 30.

    Bie­der­mann con­demned the meet­ing in a Novem­ber inter­view but said reac­tion to it was overblown and that “there is lots of things that hap­pen in pol­i­tics that aren’t always kosher.”
    ...

    And as we can also see, we can include Bie­der­mann in the pro-seces­sion cau­cus. In fact, he was a fea­ture speak­er at a con­fer­ence back in Novem­ber for the Texas seces­sion­ist move­ment. And look how pro­posed a sim­i­lar pro-seces­sion bill before his expul­sion: Bryan Sla­ton:

    ...
    He ulti­mate­ly won his race with key back­ing from right-wing groups such as Empow­er Tex­ans and, as a leg­is­la­tor, pro­posed a bill that would have put a ref­er­en­dum on Texas seces­sion to vot­ers. Sla­ton, whose polit­i­cal career was also bankrolled by the West Texas oil bil­lion­aires behind Empow­er Tex­ans, pro­posed a sim­i­lar bill before his expul­sion from the Texas House last year.

    In 2021, Bie­der­mann announced that he would not seek reelec­tion, writ­ing that he want­ed to spend more time with his fam­i­ly. He launched his chal­lenge to Trox­clair last year, and in Novem­ber was a fea­tured speak­er at a con­fer­ence held by the Texas seces­sion­ist move­ment.
    ...

    So with all these Dunn-backed can­di­dates turn­ing out to be pro-seces­sion, we have to ask if seces­sion is part of the Dunn agen­da. With that answer being obvi­ous­ly, yes, seces­sion is very much a part of the agen­da, as the Dal­las Morn­ing News was warn­ing vot­ers days before last week’s pri­maries. The agen­da is clear, thanks to all the can­di­dates who have signed the “Take Texas Back” pledge to sup­port seces­sion moves. More than just Wes­ley Vird­ell and David Cov­ey as we saw above. Shel­ley Luther, Andy Hop­per, and Mitch Lit­tle too. Along with Kyle Bie­der­mann, of course. One Dunn-backed can­di­date after anoth­er signed the pledge. Because Tim Dunn isn’t just try­ing to cap­ture Tex­as­’s pol­i­tics. Texas is slat­ed to be Dun­n’s Chris­t­ian fief­dom by the time he’s done:

    Dal­las Morn­ing News

    Texas vot­ers, beware of pro-seces­sion can­di­dates

    Some Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry can­di­dates have signed an unpa­tri­ot­ic pledge to “take Texas back.”

    By Dal­las Morn­ing News Edi­to­r­i­al
    2:00 AM on Mar 2, 2024

    Today is Texas Inde­pen­dence Day. It’s a day that marks our state’s inde­pen­dence from Mex­i­co in 1836 and the begin­ning of the Repub­lic of Texas, which soon became part of the Unit­ed States.

    But there are some who take Texas’ famous inde­pen­dent streak a bridge too far. As Super Tues­day approach­es, Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers in Texas should beware. A wor­ry­ing num­ber of can­di­dates for the Texas House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­er offices have signed the “Take Texas Back” pledge that makes them promise to advance leg­is­la­tion to help Texas secede from the Unit­ed States under cer­tain con­di­tions.

    ...

    The pledge asks can­di­dates to promise that if elect­ed, they will place the inter­ests of Texas before any nation or polit­i­cal enti­ty. By sign­ing the pledge, can­di­dates promise to advance leg­is­la­tion to call for a ref­er­en­dum for Tex­ans to assert their sta­tus as an inde­pen­dent nation, if a major­i­ty of res­i­dents are inter­est­ed.

    Over 150 peo­ple have signed the pledge so far, includ­ing mul­ti­ple GOP can­di­dates in North Texas. Among them are state House Dis­trict 65 can­di­date Mitch Lit­tle, one of Ken Paxton’s attor­neys dur­ing impeach­ment tri­al who is now try­ing to unseat incum­bent Kro­n­da Thimesch of Lewisville, and Daren Meis, oppos­ing incum­bent Jeff Leach of Allen in state House Dis­trict 67. Can­di­dates Andy Hop­per in Dis­trict 64 and Shel­ley Luther in Dis­trict 62 have also signed on.

    Many of these sig­na­to­ries, like Hop­per and Luther, are also major ben­e­fi­cia­ries of cam­paign dona­tions from a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee called Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty.. The influ­en­tial PAC that has pumped mil­lions of dol­lars into state­house races this pri­ma­ry sea­son is fund­ed by West Texas oil bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn. If mon­ey could talk, Dunn’s con­tri­bu­tions are artic­u­lat­ing an extreme new form of con­ser­vatism where it’s nor­mal to dis­avow the Unit­ed States in the name of free­dom in Texas.

    ...

    ———-


    Texas vot­ers, beware of pro-seces­sion can­di­dates” By Dal­las Morn­ing News Edi­to­r­i­al; Dal­las Morn­ing News; 03/02/2024

    “But there are some who take Texas’ famous inde­pen­dent streak a bridge too far. As Super Tues­day approach­es, Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers in Texas should beware. A wor­ry­ing num­ber of can­di­dates for the Texas House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­er offices have signed the “Take Texas Back” pledge that makes them promise to advance leg­is­la­tion to help Texas secede from the Unit­ed States under cer­tain con­di­tions.

    It is indeed quite wor­ry­ing to see one can­di­date after anoth­er sign that pledge. Much more wor­ry­ing now that so many of them won their pri­maries and are almost cer­tain to get elect­ed in Tex­as­’s hyper-ger­ry­man­dered dis­tricts. Dunn clear­ly sup­ports seces­sion. And he’s play­ing a long game to get it:

    ...
    The pledge asks can­di­dates to promise that if elect­ed, they will place the inter­ests of Texas before any nation or polit­i­cal enti­ty. By sign­ing the pledge, can­di­dates promise to advance leg­is­la­tion to call for a ref­er­en­dum for Tex­ans to assert their sta­tus as an inde­pen­dent nation, if a major­i­ty of res­i­dents are inter­est­ed.

    Over 150 peo­ple have signed the pledge so far, includ­ing mul­ti­ple GOP can­di­dates in North Texas. Among them are state House Dis­trict 65 can­di­date Mitch Lit­tle, one of Ken Paxton’s attor­neys dur­ing impeach­ment tri­al who is now try­ing to unseat incum­bent Kro­n­da Thimesch of Lewisville, and Daren Meis, oppos­ing incum­bent Jeff Leach of Allen in state House Dis­trict 67. Can­di­dates Andy Hop­per in Dis­trict 64 and Shel­ley Luther in Dis­trict 62 have also signed on.

    Many of these sig­na­to­ries, like Hop­per and Luther, are also major ben­e­fi­cia­ries of cam­paign dona­tions from a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee called Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty.. The influ­en­tial PAC that has pumped mil­lions of dol­lars into state­house races this pri­ma­ry sea­son is fund­ed by West Texas oil bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn. If mon­ey could talk, Dunn’s con­tri­bu­tions are artic­u­lat­ing an extreme new form of con­ser­vatism where it’s nor­mal to dis­avow the Unit­ed States in the name of free­dom in Texas.
    ...

    And Daniel Miller, pres­i­dent of the pro-inde­pen­dence Texas Nation­al­ist Move­ment, crowed fol­low­ing Tues­day’s vic­to­ries, “This was a big night for us. It means that we are vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed to see the Texas Inde­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum Act filed in the next ses­sion of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture, putting Tex­ans one step clos­er to a vote on TEXIT. It shows that we are win­ning the bat­tle for the future of Texas.”:

    Newsweek

    Texas Nation­al­ists Cel­e­brate as Inde­pen­dence Vote ‘Vir­tu­al­ly Guar­an­teed’

    By James Bick­er­ton
    US News Reporter

    Pub­lished Mar 08, 2024 at 10:37 AM EST
    Updat­ed Mar 08, 2024 at 5:27 PM EST

    Tex­an nation­al­ists are cel­e­brat­ing a string of vic­to­ries in Tues­day’s pri­ma­ry elec­tions, which means leg­is­la­tion call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on Texas becom­ing an inde­pen­dent state is “vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed” to appear before the state leg­is­la­ture, accord­ing to a lead­ing cam­paign­er.

    Daniel Miller, pres­i­dent of the pro-inde­pen­dence Texas Nation­al­ist Move­ment, made the claim. The TNM orga­nizes the “Texas First Pledge,” which encour­ages can­di­dates for office in the state to declare their back­ing for a for­mal inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum.

    Accord­ing to a list released by the TNM, sev­en can­di­dates who had signed the “Texas First Pledge” advanced to the gen­er­al elec­tion on Tues­day, with anoth­er five mak­ing it to run-off elec­tions.

    Sig­na­to­ries to the “Texas First Pledge” vow to “vote for leg­is­la­tion and res­o­lu­tions to call for a vote on Texas reassert­ing its sta­tus as an inde­pen­dent nation in every term that I am elect­ed until such a ref­er­en­dum is held.”

    They also pledge that if a major­i­ty of Tex­ans vote for inde­pen­dence in a ref­er­en­dum, they will “work toward a fair and expe­di­ent sep­a­ra­tion of Texas from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, plac­ing the inter­ests of Tex­ans first.”

    The sev­en can­di­dates list­ed by the TNM as “Texas First Pledge” sig­na­to­ries who advanced to the gen­er­al elec­tion are Joseph L. Tra­han, Steve Toth, Janis Holt, Wes­ley Vird­ell, Shel­ley Luther, Mitch Lit­tle and Ben Mostyn. All sev­en are Repub­li­cans, with Tra­han run­ning for the Texas Sen­ate while the oth­er six are tar­get­ing the state’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

    In addi­tion, sig­na­to­ries David Cov­ey, Andy Hop­per, Sum­mara Kan­w­al, Lea Sim­mons, and David Lowe, all Repub­li­cans, advanced to the run-off elec­tion.

    Speak­ing to Newsweek, Miller said: “This was a big night for us. It means that we are vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed to see the Texas Inde­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum Act filed in the next ses­sion of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture, putting Tex­ans one step clos­er to a vote on TEXIT. It shows that we are win­ning the bat­tle for the future of Texas.”

    A Texas Inde­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum Act, call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on whether Texas should “reassert its sta­tus as an inde­pen­dent nation,” was pro­posed by then-Repub­li­can state Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bryan Sla­ton in 2023 but failed to pass the com­mit­tee stage.

    ...

    A sur­vey of 814 eli­gi­ble vot­ers in Texas con­duct­ed exclu­sive­ly for Newsweek by Red­field & Wilton Strate­gies between Feb­ru­ary 1 and 3 found 23 per­cent of respon­dents would vote for Texas to be an “inde­pen­dent coun­try” in a hypo­thet­i­cal inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum, ver­sus 67 per­cent for “a state with­in the Unit­ed States.”

    The sur­vey also found that 44 per­cent of Tex­ans were either more like­ly or sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to back inde­pen­dence due to the ongo­ing migrant cri­sis on the south­ern bor­der. This con­trast­ed with 35 per­cent who said it made them “nei­ther more nor less like­ly” to back seces­sion from the U.S. and 16 per­cent who replied it makes them less like­ly to sup­port inde­pen­dence.

    Ten­sions between Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion surged in Jan­u­ary after the Supreme Court ruled fed­er­al agents could remove razor wire placed along the Tex­an-Mex­i­can bor­der. In response, Abbott claimed Texas was being “invad­ed” and invoked the state’s “con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty to defend and pro­tect itself.”

    ———–

    “Texas Nation­al­ists Cel­e­brate as Inde­pen­dence Vote ‘Vir­tu­al­ly Guar­an­teed’ ” By James Bick­er­ton; Newsweek; 03/08/2024

    “A Texas Inde­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum Act, call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on whether Texas should “reassert its sta­tus as an inde­pen­dent nation,” was pro­posed by then-Repub­li­can state Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bryan Sla­ton in 2023 but failed to pass the com­mit­tee stage.”

    In 2022, the Texas GOP adopts a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for the pas­sage of a bill that was trig­ger a ref­er­en­dum on inde­pen­dence and in 2023 that’s exact­ly what Bryan Sla­ton did. The res­o­lu­tion did­n’t make it out of com­mit­ted because the Texas GOP was­n’t ful­ly unit­ed on the issue. But it’s going to be a lot more unit­ed after the 2024 elec­tion cycle plays out and all these Dunn-backed pro-seces­sion can­di­dates win their races. An inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum is vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed at this point:

    ...
    Accord­ing to a list released by the TNM, sev­en can­di­dates who had signed the “Texas First Pledge” advanced to the gen­er­al elec­tion on Tues­day, with anoth­er five mak­ing it to run-off elec­tions.

    ...

    The sev­en can­di­dates list­ed by the TNM as “Texas First Pledge” sig­na­to­ries who advanced to the gen­er­al elec­tion are Joseph L. Tra­han, Steve Toth, Janis Holt, Wes­ley Vird­ell, Shel­ley Luther, Mitch Lit­tle and Ben Mostyn. All sev­en are Repub­li­cans, with Tra­han run­ning for the Texas Sen­ate while the oth­er six are tar­get­ing the state’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

    In addi­tion, sig­na­to­ries David Cov­ey, Andy Hop­per, Sum­mara Kan­w­al, Lea Sim­mons, and David Lowe, all Repub­li­cans, advanced to the run-off elec­tion.

    Speak­ing to Newsweek, Miller said: “This was a big night for us. It means that we are vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed to see the Texas Inde­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum Act filed in the next ses­sion of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture, putting Tex­ans one step clos­er to a vote on TEXIT. It shows that we are win­ning the bat­tle for the future of Texas.”
    ...

    And note the dis­turb­ing dynam­ic between this issue and the con­tem­po­rary GOP’s fix­a­tion with ‘ille­gal immi­grant’: polls show Tex­ans are more like­ly to sup­port inde­pen­dence due to the migrant cri­sis at the bor­der. So the more the GOP allied media fix­ate on the ‘migrant super cri­sis’ nar­ra­tive, the more we can expect sup­port of seces­sion to grow:

    ...
    A sur­vey of 814 eli­gi­ble vot­ers in Texas con­duct­ed exclu­sive­ly for Newsweek by Red­field & Wilton Strate­gies between Feb­ru­ary 1 and 3 found 23 per­cent of respon­dents would vote for Texas to be an “inde­pen­dent coun­try” in a hypo­thet­i­cal inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum, ver­sus 67 per­cent for “a state with­in the Unit­ed States.”

    The sur­vey also found that 44 per­cent of Tex­ans were either more like­ly or sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to back inde­pen­dence due to the ongo­ing migrant cri­sis on the south­ern bor­der. This con­trast­ed with 35 per­cent who said it made them “nei­ther more nor less like­ly” to back seces­sion from the U.S. and 16 per­cent who replied it makes them less like­ly to sup­port inde­pen­dence.
    ...

    Giv­en the role immi­gra­tion fears play in the pol­i­tics of seces­sion, it’s hard to imag­ine a politi­cian at this point who is more effec­tive at dri­ving Texas vot­ers into the arms of seces­sion move­ment than Don­ald Trump. Again, don’t for­get how the Texas GOP adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion in 2020 too call­ing for a seces­sion res­o­lu­tion, dur­ing Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. It’s not like we can expect Tex­as­’s inde­pen­dence move­ment to sub­side should Trump win in Novem­ber. This is Tim Dun­n’s smash and grab moment. And if things keep going his way, he could end up with whole state of Texas. Or, rather, the whole inde­pen­dent Christ’s King­dom of Dunn­land, or what­ev­er name his well paid, and pos­si­bly black­mailed, min­ions come up with.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 10, 2024, 11:58 pm
  20. It’s not a cabal. Cer­tain­ly not. It’s a civic fra­ter­nal orga­ni­za­tion. Like the Masons. Noth­ing more.

    That’s the pub­lic face being put on the Soci­ety for Amer­i­can Civic Renew­al (SACR), an enti­ty we first start­ed hear­ing about last year and that we’re learn­ing a lot more about thanks to some new reports. Recall how we first learned about SACR last year, seem­ing­ly led by the wealthy own­er of a sham­poo com­pa­ny, Charles Hay­wood. As we saw, Hay­wood has made calls for an ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’ on plat­forms like the Clare­mont Insti­tute’s The Amer­i­can Mind pod­cast. Hay­wood is now open­ly plan­ning on becom­ing an Amer­i­can ‘war­lord’ oper­at­ing an ‘armed patron­age net­work’ in the event of the break­down of gov­ern­ment rule. Hay­wood added that the “pos­si­bil­i­ties involv­ing vio­lence” that ‘APNs’ might face include “more-or-less open war­fare with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, or some sub­set or rem­nant of it”.. Yes, an armed patron­age net­work of war­lords. That’s what SACR is prepar­ing for.

    Well, not just that. They aren’t going to be any old net­work of war­lords. These will be theo­crat­ic war­lords ded­i­cat­ed to a par­tic­u­lar vision of a patri­ar­chal Chris­t­ian-based soci­ety that has reject­ed vir­tu­al­ly all of the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al ‘pro­gres­sivism’ that has infect­ed Amer­i­can soci­ety from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry onward. This will be a armed patron­age net­work based on a 19th cen­tu­ry vision of what con­sti­tutes Nat­ur­al Law.

    Oh, and it will be very white, of course. How white? Well, check out the the oth­er mod­el appar­ent­ly embraced by SACR: the Afrikan­er Broeder­bond. SACR isn’t just bor­row­ing from the Broad­er­bond from an oper­a­tional stand­point. Hay­wood is a big fan of The Camp of the Saints. And as Hay­wood has writ­ten, “the goal of the Left was always total expro­pri­a­tion of white peo­ple and then, if at all pos­si­ble, their exter­mi­na­tion, a goal made explic­it by many pow­er­ful peo­ple in 2020...How, giv­en this his­to­ry, should white Amer­i­cans respond?” With SACR obvi­ous­ly being Hay­wood’s response.

    But, of course, this isn’t just a sto­ry about a lone fas­cist wannabe war­lord. Hay­wood has friends. The same ‘usu­al sus­pect’ friends we’ve seen pop­ping up repeat­ed­ly in schemes to seize con­trol. In par­tic­u­lar, friends at the Clare­mont Insti­tute, the once main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive insti­tu­tion that has ful­ly embraced both the insur­rec­tionary ‘pol­i­tics’ of the Trump era but also the Sched­ule F purge pol­i­tics that is promised for the future Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tions. In fact, Clare­mont Insti­tute pres­i­dent, Ryan P. Williams, sits on SACR’s board.

    Anoth­er now-famil­iar fig­ure who is deeply involved with the SACR efforts hap­pens to be Scott Yenor, the Ida­ho State pro­fes­sor who made nation­al news in 2021 over his argu­ments that fem­i­nism had made women “more med­icat­ed, med­dle­some and quar­rel­some than women need to be.” Recall how Yenor’s emails, sent as an employ­ee of pub­lic insti­tu­tions, were obtained by the New York Times, show­ing how Yenor was com­mu­ni­cat­ing in ear­ly 2021 with a world of cranky elder­ly bil­lion­aires con­cerned about what ‘wokeism’ will do to their grand­chil­dren and reel­ing from the real­i­ty of the 2020 elec­tion loss and the shock of the George Floyd protests. A pow­er­ful net­work of wealthy extrem­ists in des­per­ate need of a mes­sage that would win over vot­ers and ener­gize the con­ser­v­a­tive base. The Clare­mont Institute’s chair­man, Thomas D. Klin­gen­stein — who is also a New York investor and major Repub­li­can donor — decried how, “rhetor­i­cal­ly, our side is get­ting absolute­ly murdered...We have not even come up with an agreed-on name for the ene­my.” But they found a name for “the ene­my” thanks to Chris Rufo: “Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry”. Chris Rufo is a senior fel­low at the Clare­mont Insti­tute In Feb­ru­ary of 2023, Yenor was tapped to served as the head of the Clare­mont Insti­tute’s spe­cial Flori­da branch, which has been lead­ing Ron DeSan­tis’s ‘anti-DEI’ cru­sade in Flori­da’s pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties. You can’t sep­a­rate Scott Yenor from the Clare­mont Insti­tute and the con­ser­v­a­tive move­men­t’s ongo­ing insti­tu­tion­al purge oper­a­tions at this point.

    And that brings there’s anoth­er fel­low trav­el­er who is cru­cial to keep in mind with this sto­ry: Cur­tis “Men­cious Mold­bug” Yarvin, one of the lead­ing lights of ‘Dark Enlight­en­ment’ and who has been push­ing for a soci­ety-wide ‘Sched­ule F’ purge of ‘the Left’ from all major insti­tu­tions, pub­lic and pri­vate. It’s that embrace of Yarv­in’s post-democ­ra­cy world­view by the main­stream Clare­mont Insti­tute that is the meta-sto­ry here. SACR being a man­i­fes­ta­tion of this alliance is the key con­text to keep in mind when read­ing about SACR’s Broeder­bond ambi­tions.

    For exam­ple, recall how:

    * Charles Hay­wood was one of the fig­ures who showed in in con­nec­tion with one of the more incrim­i­nat­ing sto­ries about what the Clare­mont Insti­tute was up to dur­ing this peri­od. That would be the “79 Days to Inau­gu­ra­tion” report joint­ly pre­pared by the Clare­mont Insti­tute and the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foundation’s (TPPF) in mid-Octo­ber 2020. A report that gamed out dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios for how the 2020 elec­tion might play out, includ­ing a sce­nario with­out a clear vic­to­ry that involved large street protests by ‘antifa’ and oth­er left-wing groups try­ing to dis­rupt the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote on Jan 6, and a result­ing mass crack­down on ‘the left’ by the gov­ern­ment in response. A response that includ­ed dep­u­tiz­ing groups like the Oath Keep­ers and Three Per­centers so they could assist in the left­wing crack­down. Haywood’s pres­ence in this milieu was notable since he was known for call­ing for an “Amer­i­can Cae­sar”.. And when we see the TPPF involved with fas­cist pol­i­tics, don’t for­get Texas bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dun­n’s ties to the TPPF.

    * Recall Sen­a­tor Tom Cot­ton’s June 2020 New York Times op-ed call­ing for the use of the mil­i­tary against pro­test­ers dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion — eerie echoes of Rex84 — as not just a viable option but a con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion? Keep in mind Cot­ton won a Clare­mont Insti­tute fel­low­ship dur­ing his time at Har­vard.

    * Not only did Clare­mont fig­ures Math­ew Spald­ing, Charles Kesler, and Chris Rufo all join the board of New Col­lege as part of Ron DeSan­tis’s ide­o­log­i­cal purge of the uni­ver­si­ty, the Clare­mont Insti­tute set up its first out-of-state out­post in Flori­da to help lead this effort. Oh, and it turns out the DeSan­tis staffer who was caught insert­ing Nazi imagery into DeSan­tis cam­paign videos, Nate Hochman, was a Clare­mont alum. That out-of-state out­post was, of course, head­ed up by Scott Yenor.

    * As an exam­ple of how deeply inter­twined these efforts are with the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and its many theo­crat­ic inter­ests, recall the “Civic Alliance” project push­ing the “Amer­i­can Birthright” cur­ricu­lum ‘tem­plate’ on state leg­is­la­tures and gov­er­nors. As we saw, the “Amer­i­can Birthright” cur­ricu­lum was launched by the CNP-affil­i­at­ed Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Schol­ars (NAS) and assem­bled by a kind of insti­tu­tion­al who’s‑who of the right-wing US think-tanks, includ­ing the Clare­mont Insti­tute, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil (FRC) and the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute (all with CNP mem­bers in their lead­er­ship), along with a num­ber of oth­er CNP mem­bers like CNP co-founder Richard Viguerie. Oth­er coau­thors, con­sul­tants, and board mem­bers involved with the cre­ation of the “Amer­i­can Birthright” cur­ricu­lum include mul­ti­ple staffers asso­ci­at­ed with Hills­dale and Mari Barke, whose hus­band runs one of Hills­dale College’s char­ter school. The “Amer­i­can Birthright” cur­ricu­lum cites Hillsdale’s “1776 Cur­ricu­lum.” And when Flori­da gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis unveiled the new Flori­da edu­ca­tion­al stan­dards focused on fight­ing ‘wok­e­ness’ in pub­lic schools, it was none oth­er than Hills­dale Col­lege that his admin­is­tra­tion con­sult­ed with in cre­at­ing the new stan­dards. The Clare­mont Institute’s Co-Founder Dr. Lar­ry P. Arnn, and for­mer Exec­u­tive VP, Dou­glas A. Jef­frey, both show up on the CNP mem­ber list. ALEC’s CEO Ann Nel­son also shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list.

    * It was the Clare­mont Institute’s John East­man who played a key role in for­mu­lat­ing a num­ber of dif­fer­ent legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for over­turn­ing the 2020 elec­tion results. Also recall how Clare­mont con­tin­ued to embrace East­man long after Jan­u­ary 6 and even fea­tured him in a 2021 event on “Elec­tion Integri­ty and the Future of Amer­i­can Repub­li­can Gov­ern­ment.”. East­man was the found­ing direc­tor of the Clare­mont Institute‘s Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Jurispru­dence. And don’t for­get how the Clare­mont Insti­tute released an inter­view of East­man in August of 2023 where East­man open­ly admits that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion real­ly was engaged in what amount to rev­o­lu­tion­ary actions. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary actions that he framed as being in keep­ing with same under­ly­ing fight for free­dom and democ­ra­cy that ani­mat­ed the Found­ing Fathers’ 1776 Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. A fight against a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment that every pop­u­lace inher­ent­ly pos­sess­es.

    * Recall how, in Jan­u­ary of this year, the Clare­mont Insti­tute was open­ly threat­en­ing Texas gov­er­nor Greg Abbot that if he has any nation­al polit­i­cal ambi­tions he had bet­ter defy the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and the Supreme Court on the migrant cri­sis on the South­ern bor­der and insti­tute a harsh­er state-lev­el response in defi­ance of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. As Jere­my Carl, a Clare­mont senior fel­low, put it, 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.”.

    * As an exam­ple of Hay­wood’s ties to eugen­ics-ori­ent­ed move­ments that tend to be hyper-alarmed by falling birth rates of whites, recall how Hay­wood was one of the fea­tured speak­ers at the “Natal­ist Con­fer­ence” in Austin, Texas, back in Decem­ber.

    * The Clare­mont Insti­tute start­ing pub­lish­ing the writ­ings of Cur­tis “Men­cious Mold­bug” Yarvin back in 2019. Writ­ings that were call­ing for a kind of Sched­ule F purge that goes far beyond pub­lic insti­tu­tions.

    * Recall how Yarvin is hap­py to share all sort of view on the ‘Amer­i­can Casear’ idea and has been giv­en a promi­nent plat­form to share his ideas after The Amer­i­can Mind online pub­li­ca­tion of the Clare­mont Insti­tute began pub­lish­ing his essays back in 2019. As Yarvin described in a May 2021 pod­cast on the Amer­i­can Mind, an online pub­li­ca­tion of the Clare­mont Insti­tute, with Michael Anton — the author of 2016 ‘Flight 93’ essay who went on to serve on Trump’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil for a year — the US is primed for a leader to run on the plat­form of sav­ing the coun­try by declar­ing a nation­al emer­gency and wield­ing emer­gency pow­er purge the gov­ern­ment and soci­ety of the pro­gres­sive order. Then, on the first day of tak­ing office, this fig­ures should declare a nation­al emer­gency and then using those emer­gency pow­ers to take con­trol of the Nation Guard and engage is a far right mil­i­tary-enforced purge ‘The Left’ from insti­tu­tions and pub­lic life. The hypo­thet­i­cal Amer­i­can Cae­sar would rely on fas­cist inno­va­tions like apps that could be used to orga­nize mobs of back­ers who would swarm the gov­ern­ment agen­cies that don’t car­ry out this agen­da. That was Cur­tis Yarv­in’s vision he shared one a Clare­mont Insti­tute Pod­cast with Michael Anton back in 2021. And here we are in 2024, with Trump as the GOP nom­i­nee run­ning on a plat­form of purg­ing his ‘Deep State’ ene­mies and ‘jok­ing’ about being a dic­ta­tor on the first day of office. So far Yarv­in’s Amer­i­can Cae­sar sce­nario is more or less play­ing out.

    * Final­ly, regard­ing the Clare­mont Insti­tute and Michael Anton, recall how the Clare­mont Insti­tute not only pub­lished the ‘Flight 93’ essay in the Clare­mont Review of Books by Michael Anton argu­ing in favor of vot­ing for Trump, but also puts out the Amer­i­can Mind pub­li­ca­tion that, back in March of 2021, argued that “most peo­ple liv­ing in the Unit­ed States today—certainly more than half—are not Amer­i­cans in any mean­ing­ful sense of the term,” and that con­ser­v­a­tives should “accept the fact that what we need is a counter-rev­o­lu­tion.””.

    As we’re going to see, in Octo­ber 2022, Hay­wood appeared on Anton’s The Amer­i­can Mind pod­cast to again dis­cuss an ‘Amer­i­can Ceasar’ sce­nario. Dur­ing the pod­cast, Hay­wood refers to the ‘secret event’ that brought them togeth­er. Hay­wood con­cludes with the call for a “nation­al divorce” an obvi­ous ref­er­ence to seces­sion.

    That’s all part of the con­text of this big update we just got on SACR and its Afrikan­er Broeder­bond mod­el for drag­ging the US back to the 19th cen­tu­ry. This is very much Charles Hay­wood’s ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’ project. But it’s not just his alone. Hay­wood has help. Exten­sive qua­si-secret help from the Clare­mont Insti­tute and its many pow­er­ful allies.

    But Hay­wood does­n’t just have help. He has a tem­plate. The same tem­plate pro­vid­ed to the world by Cur­tis Yarvin back in 2021, when the Clare­mont Insti­tute’s The Amer­i­can Mind pod­cast decid­ed to invite Yarvin on for an exten­sive dis­cus­sion on the need to over­throw soci­ety and impose strong-man rule. To save Amer­i­ca, of course. So before we dive into the big new SACR update, it’s worth tak­ing anoth­er look at that remark­able May 2021 inter­view. Because, so far, it’s turn­ing out to e Curt Yarv­in’s polit­i­cal future for the Unit­ed States, and we’re all just liv­ing in it:

    The Week

    The intel­lec­tu­al right con­tem­plates an ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’

    Jan. 6 was a bad­ly planned rehearsal for the real deal

    By Damon Link­er
    pub­lished July 28, 2021

    How does ide­o­log­i­cal change hap­pen? Why do cer­tain polit­i­cal ideas and pos­si­bil­i­ties that appear out­ra­geous and even unthink­able at one moment in his­to­ry come to be con­sid­ered options worth tak­ing seri­ous­ly? What caus­es the Over­ton win­dow to shift dra­mat­i­cal­ly in one direc­tion or anoth­er?

    ...

    The GOP has shed a lot of vot­ers (as a share of the elec­torate) since its high-water mark in 1984. But with the rise of Don­ald Trump, the shape of the par­ty’s coali­tion also began to change. Some of the shift has been class-based, with white and Lati­no vot­ers lack­ing a col­lege degree flock­ing to the Repub­li­can Par­ty and high­ly edu­cat­ed urban and sub­ur­ban vot­ers flee­ing it.

    But Trump also active­ly court­ed the right-wing fringe — the mili­tia move­ment, qua­si-para­mil­i­tary groups like the Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, overt racists, and out­right xeno­phobes. These vot­ers are a tiny por­tion of the par­ty, but they punch above their weight, as we learned on Jan. 6, when a small hand­ful of these extrem­ists took the lead in ini­ti­at­ing the may­hem and vio­lence on Capi­tol Hill that after­noon while most of the intrud­ers sim­ply fol­lowed along rather clue­less­ly. (This point, along with much else in this col­umn, is elab­o­rat­ed with depth and insight in the “After­math of Jan­u­ary 6th” episode of the con­sis­tent­ly excel­lent Know Your Ene­my pod­cast.)

    With most Repub­li­can office­hold­ers and media per­son­al­i­ties refus­ing to con­demn the actions of the insur­rec­tionary mob that invad­ed the Capi­tol to stop con­gres­sion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the 2020 elec­tion results — or Trump’s deci­sive role in incit­ing that mob — and some of them instead endors­ing an evi­dence-free con­spir­a­cy involv­ing the “deep state” and the FBI, the GOP has ver­i­fied that the Over­ton win­dow has shift­ed sharply to the right. What would have until quite recent­ly been con­sid­ered unac­cept­able forms of polit­i­cal dis­sent have been legit­imized. That’s how the once unthink­able becomes a new nor­mal.

    A par­al­lel process of line-shift­ing has been unfold­ing among con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als, most of whom respond­ed to the launch of Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign six years ago with a mix­ture of dis­gust and increduli­ty. The dis­missal did­n’t last. While many shift­ed to the cen­ter and refused to endorse Trump’s hos­tile takeover of the par­ty, plen­ty of oth­ers went along with it, adjust­ing their pri­or posi­tions to bring them into align­ment with the nom­i­nee on pol­i­cy and atti­tude. No com­men­ta­tor did so with more enthu­si­asm or pop­u­lar impact than Michael Anton.

    A for­mer direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for New York May­or Rudy Giu­liani (where he was briefly my boss) and for­mer speech­writer for Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleez­za Rice, Anton penned the most noto­ri­ous and rhetor­i­cal­ly scald­ing case for sup­port­ing Trump. Pub­lished in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber 2016 in the Clare­mont Review of Books online, “The Flight 93 Elec­tion” por­trayed Trump as a final, last-ditch oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­ser­v­a­tives to wrest con­trol of the coun­try back from those (like Hillary Clin­ton) who aimed at noth­ing less than its thor­ough­go­ing destruc­tion. Rush Lim­baugh paid trib­ute to the pow­er of the argu­ment (and ampli­fied it for a vast­ly larg­er audi­ence) by read­ing the essay aloud, para­graph by para­graph, on his radio show. In doing so, Anton, with Lim­baugh­’s help, gave legions of Trump-skep­ti­cal con­ser­v­a­tives per­mis­sion to vote, even to express out­right enthu­si­asm, for the untest­ed right-wing pop­ulist.

    After Trump’s vic­to­ry, Anton went on to serve the new pres­i­dent on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. That last­ed a lit­tle more than a year. Once he had left the White House, Anton returned to writ­ing and speak­ing pub­licly in defense of Trump and in favor of his re-elec­tion. Two months before the 2020 vote, he pre­dict­ed an attempt­ed “coup” from the left if Demo­c­rat Joe Biden did­n’t pre­vail. When events unfold­ed in pre­cise­ly the oppo­site way — with Trump los­ing the vote, refus­ing to accept the result, and attempt­ing a hap­less coup of his own to stay in pow­er — Anton said noth­ing to acknowl­edge either the irony or the error. Quite the oppo­site, in fact. In the months since Trump left office, Anton has been doing his best to throw open the doors of the con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­al world to ideas once con­sid­ered far too extreme for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.

    How extreme? So extreme that in late May, Anton set aside near­ly two hours on his Clare­mont Insti­tute pod­cast (“The Stakes”) for an an eru­dite, wide-rang­ing dis­cus­sion with self-described monar­chist Cur­tis Yarvin about why the Unit­ed States needs an “Amer­i­can Cae­sar” to seize con­trol of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and pre­cise­ly how such a would-be dic­ta­tor could accom­plish the task.

    With this con­ver­sa­tion, Anton seems eager to shift the Over­ton win­dow far beyond any­thing resem­bling lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. In its place, he would sub­sti­tute an elab­o­rate, his­tor­i­cal­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for tyran­ny.

    It’s impor­tant right at the out­set to make a few things clear about the Anton-Yarvin con­ver­sa­tion. First, Anton does­n’t explic­it­ly endorse Yarv­in’s most out­landish ideas, which blend a far-right love of unlim­it­ed exec­u­tive pow­er with the tech­no-utopi­anism of Sil­i­con Val­ley. (Yarvin cre­at­ed the Urbit dig­i­tal plat­form and co-found­ed the tech com­pa­ny Tion, while also gain­ing con­sid­er­able noto­ri­ety with the alt-right blog “Unqual­i­fied Reser­va­tions,” writ­ten under the pen name Men­cius Mold­bug.) In fact, at sev­er­al points Anton goes out of his way to declare in a tone of mock seri­ous­ness that as some­one affil­i­at­ed with the Clare­mont Insti­tute, which has long advo­cat­ed for a return to the prin­ci­ples of the Amer­i­can found­ing (includ­ing the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence’s denun­ci­a­tions of monar­chi­cal tyran­ny), he can’t stand behind Yarv­in’s sym­pa­thy for dic­ta­tor­ship. Yet it’s also true that at no point does Anton offer a sub­stan­tive cri­tique of Yarv­in’s argu­ments and asser­tions. He mere­ly express­es prag­mat­ic or tac­ti­cal objec­tions, as if the pri­ma­ry fault in Yarv­in’s ideas is that they are unre­al­is­tic.

    Then there’s the mat­ter of ter­mi­nol­o­gy. I have described Anton’s con­ver­sa­tion with Yarvin as help­ing to shift the Over­ton win­dow away from lib­er­al democ­ra­cy and toward a defense of tyran­ny. Yet this isn’t how either man under­stands the Amer­i­can present. Rather, they agree ear­ly on in the pod­cast (around minute 24) that the cur­rent Amer­i­can “regime” is most accu­rate­ly described as a “theo­crat­ic oli­garchy” in which an elite class of pro­gres­sive “priests” ensconced in the bureau­cra­cies of the admin­is­tra­tive state, and at Har­vard, The New York Times, and oth­er lead­ing insti­tu­tions of civ­il soci­ety, pro­mul­gate and enforce their own ver­sion of “real­i­ty.” Anton and Yarvin treat this asser­tion as giv­en and then pro­ceed to talk through how this theo­crat­ic oli­garchy might be over­turned. (One of their sub­stan­tive dis­agree­ments con­cerns how long this regime might last if it’s not direct­ly chal­lenged. Anton is hope­ful it will col­lapse of its own incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion, while Yarvin thinks the cur­rent “clown world” could con­tin­ue onward for decades or even a cen­tu­ry, with the Unit­ed States slow­ly decay­ing into some­thing resem­bling a Third World coun­try.)

    Once the con­ver­sa­tion real­ly gets going (around minute 45), Yarvin makes clear that he has a high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic take on Amer­i­can his­to­ry. In his view, rough­ly every 75 years, a “Cae­sar” seizes dic­ta­to­r­i­al pow­ers and insti­tutes “sub­stan­tive regime changes.” George Wash­ing­ton did this in 1789. Abra­ham Lin­coln did it again in 1861. And FDR did it last in 1933, speak­ing in the clos­ing pas­sages of his First Inau­gur­al Address about the nation­al emer­gency of the Great Depres­sion and the need to wield unprece­dent­ed gov­ern­ment pow­er to com­bat it, which he did with the New Deal. The U.S. today is over­due for its next polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion — one that would set­tle the coun­try’s “cold civ­il war” from above.

    Yarv­in’s top choice to become the next Amer­i­can Cae­sar is Elon Musk, though both men acknowl­edge that he’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly inel­i­gi­ble for the role because he was born in South Africa. This pro­vides an occa­sion for them both to joke about how great it would be for him to run, win, and demand to be made pres­i­dent any­way, in defi­ance of the Con­sti­tu­tion. (Anton makes sure to clar­i­fy that their jovial chit-chat about fla­grant­ly dis­re­gard­ing the let­ter of the Con­sti­tu­tion is “not an endorse­ment” of actu­al­ly doing so. Lat­er on, they like­wise joke about how great it would have been for Trump to declare him­self the per­son­al embod­i­ment of the “liv­ing Con­sti­tu­tion.”)

    ...

    The trick, for Yarvin, is for the would-be Amer­i­can Cae­sar to exer­cise emer­gency pow­ers from day one. How? Cae­sar should run for pres­i­dent promis­ing to do pre­cise­ly this, and then announce the nation­al emer­gency in his inau­gur­al address, encour­ag­ing every state gov­ern­ment to do the same. Tak­ing advan­tages of “ambi­gu­i­ties” in the Con­sti­tu­tion, he will imme­di­ate­ly act to fed­er­al­ize the nation­al guard around the coun­try and wel­come back­up from sym­pa­thet­ic mem­bers of the police (who will wear arm­bands to sig­nal their sup­port for Cae­sar).

    When fed­er­al agen­cies refuse to go along, Yarvin sug­gests, Cae­sar (whom he now begins refer­ring to as “Trump”) will use a “Trump app” to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with his 80 mil­lion sup­port­ers on their smart phones, using noti­fi­ca­tions to tell them that “this agency isn’t fol­low­ing my instruc­tions,” which will prompt them to ral­ly at the prop­er build­ing, with the crowd “steered around by a joy­stick by Trump him­self,” form­ing a “human bar­ri­cade around every fed­er­al build­ing, sup­port­ing Trump’s law­ful author­i­ty.” Where maybe 20,000 peo­ple stormed the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, mil­lions respond­ing to the Trump app would be much more effec­tive — a mod­ern-day ver­sion of the para­mil­i­tary groups that ensured Lin­col­n’s safe­ty dur­ing the hard-fought, dan­ger­ous 1860 cam­paign for pres­i­dent that pre­ced­ed the Civ­il War (and the pres­i­den­t’s sub­se­quent sus­pen­sion of habeas cor­pus and shut­ter­ing of hun­dreds of news­pa­pers).

    When Anton asks how Trump-Cae­sar should respond to Har­vard, The New York Times, and the rest of the theo­crat­ic oli­garchy blar­ing air-raid sirens about the impo­si­tion of dic­ta­tor­ship, Yarvin indi­cates that it would be essen­tial to “smash it” with one blow. To sug­gest that Cae­sar should be required to deal with “some­one else’s depart­ment of real­i­ty is man­i­fest­ly absurd.” Going on, Yarvin explains that “when Cae­sar cross­es the Rubi­con, he does­n’t sit around get­ting his feet wet, fish­ing. He march­es straight across the Rubi­con” and uses “all force avail­able.” Once that hap­pens, the whole world can be “remade.”

    The pod­cast con­cludes with Anton quot­ing anoth­er Clare­mont writer (Ange­lo Codev­il­la) on how Trump dropped “the lead­er­ship of the deplorables,” which is wait­ing to be picked up by some­one “who will make Trump seem mod­er­ate.” Yarvin responds approv­ing­ly with a quote by Ser­bian dic­ta­tor and indict­ed geno­ci­dal war crim­i­nal Slo­bo­dan Miloše­vic, who said the goal should be that “no one will dare to beat you any­more.”

    ...

    The indis­putable fact is that a lead­ing and long­stand­ing con­ser­v­a­tive insti­tute in the Unit­ed States hosts a pod­cast by some­one who served as a senior offi­cial in the pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion of a man who may run again for the nation’s high­est office in a few years. And on an episode of that pod­cast, this for­mer offi­cial and his invit­ed guest genial­ly rehearsed argu­ments about why a future pres­i­dent would be jus­ti­fied in turn­ing him­self into a tyrant, and how he could set about accom­plish­ing this task.

    Which means that on the star­board side of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, the Over­ton win­dow has now shift­ed far beyond the bound­aries of demo­c­ra­t­ic self-gov­ern­ment to a place broad­ly coter­mi­nous with fas­cism.

    ————

    “The intel­lec­tu­al right con­tem­plates an ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’ ” By Damon Link­er; The Week; 07/28/2021

    “The indis­putable fact is that a lead­ing and long­stand­ing con­ser­v­a­tive insti­tute in the Unit­ed States hosts a pod­cast by some­one who served as a senior offi­cial in the pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion of a man who may run again for the nation’s high­est office in a few years. And on an episode of that pod­cast, this for­mer offi­cial and his invit­ed guest genial­ly rehearsed argu­ments about why a future pres­i­dent would be jus­ti­fied in turn­ing him­self into a tyrant, and how he could set about accom­plish­ing this task.

    There were a lot of ques­tions implic­it­ly raised by the Clare­mont Insti­tute’s deci­sion to have Michael Anton host Cur­tis Yarvin for a dis­cus­sion on the need for an Amer­i­can Ceasar back in May of 2021. But we don’t have to ask whether or not it hap­pened. It hap­pened. This main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive insti­tu­tion real­ly did host Yarvin to have this dis­cus­sion just four months after Jan­u­ary 6. And this was almost three years ago. Three years dur­ing which Yarv­in’s pre­dic­tions — like some­one run­ning for office on a plat­form of rul­ing as a dic­ta­tor — have large­ly played out:

    ...
    The trick, for Yarvin, is for the would-be Amer­i­can Cae­sar to exer­cise emer­gency pow­ers from day one. How? Cae­sar should run for pres­i­dent promis­ing to do pre­cise­ly this, and then announce the nation­al emer­gency in his inau­gur­al address, encour­ag­ing every state gov­ern­ment to do the same. Tak­ing advan­tages of “ambi­gu­i­ties” in the Con­sti­tu­tion, he will imme­di­ate­ly act to fed­er­al­ize the nation­al guard around the coun­try and wel­come back­up from sym­pa­thet­ic mem­bers of the police (who will wear arm­bands to sig­nal their sup­port for Cae­sar).

    When fed­er­al agen­cies refuse to go along, Yarvin sug­gests, Cae­sar (whom he now begins refer­ring to as “Trump”) will use a “Trump app” to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with his 80 mil­lion sup­port­ers on their smart phones, using noti­fi­ca­tions to tell them that “this agency isn’t fol­low­ing my instruc­tions,” which will prompt them to ral­ly at the prop­er build­ing, with the crowd “steered around by a joy­stick by Trump him­self,” form­ing a “human bar­ri­cade around every fed­er­al build­ing, sup­port­ing Trump’s law­ful author­i­ty.” Where maybe 20,000 peo­ple stormed the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, mil­lions respond­ing to the Trump app would be much more effec­tive — a mod­ern-day ver­sion of the para­mil­i­tary groups that ensured Lin­col­n’s safe­ty dur­ing the hard-fought, dan­ger­ous 1860 cam­paign for pres­i­dent that pre­ced­ed the Civ­il War (and the pres­i­den­t’s sub­se­quent sus­pen­sion of habeas cor­pus and shut­ter­ing of hun­dreds of news­pa­pers).
    ...

    And that look back at that omi­nous May 2021 inter­view of Yarvin on the Clare­mont Insti­tute’s Amer­i­can Minds pod­cast brings us the fol­low­ing major update on the Soci­ety for Amer­i­can Civic Renew­al (SACR). The kind of update that makes it abun­dant­ly clear that that Cur­tis Yarv­in’s ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’ dream sce­nario is a dream shared by a num­ber of oth­er fig­ures in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, with the Clare­mont Insti­tute oper­at­ing as a kind of shad­ow orga­niz­ing force. Not only do we find fig­ures like Scott Yenor — who took up a lead­ing role in Clare­mon­t’s Flori­da-based oper­a­tions for Ron DeSan­tis’s anti-woke purge back in Feb­ru­ary of 2023 — but Clare­mont pres­i­dent Ryan P. Williams sits on SACR’s board.

    And as we’re going to see, while the cre­ation of 19th cen­tu­ry-style theoc­ra­cy appears to be the group’s over­all goal of the group, there’s anoth­er mod­el they envi­sion for achiev­ing that goal: the Afrikan­er Broeder­bond. Yep, and if it’s not clear that this group’s embrace of the Broeder­bond mod­el includes its white suprema­cy, it turns out Charles Hay­wood is a big fan of The Camp of the Saints. “The goal of the Left was always total expro­pri­a­tion of white peo­ple and then, if at all pos­si­ble, their exter­mi­na­tion, a goal made explic­it by many pow­er­ful peo­ple in 2020,” Hay­wood wrote at one point. “How, giv­en this his­to­ry, should white Amer­i­cans respond?” With SACR obvi­ous­ly being the response to that per­ceived exter­mi­na­tion­ist threat by ‘the Left’ against ‘white peo­ple’. An Amer­i­can Broeder­bond:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    Inside A Secret Soci­ety Of Promi­nent Right-Wing Chris­t­ian Men Prep­ping For A ‘Nation­al Divorce’

    A trove of doc­u­ments obtained by TPM reveal the society’s inner work­ings.

    By Josh Koven­sky
    March 9, 2024 6:53 a.m.

    A secret, men-only right-wing soci­ety with mem­bers in influ­en­tial posi­tions around the coun­try is on a cru­sade: to recruit a Chris­t­ian gov­ern­ment that will form after the right achieves regime change in the Unit­ed States, poten­tial­ly via a “nation­al divorce.”

    It sounds like the stuff of fan­ta­sy, but it’s real. The group is called the Soci­ety for Amer­i­can Civic Renew­al (the acronym is pro­nounced “sack­er” by its mem­bers). It is open to new recruits, pro­vid­ed you meet a few cri­te­ria: you are male, a “trini­tar­i­an” Chris­t­ian, het­ero­sex­u­al, an “un-hyphen­at­ed Amer­i­can,” and can answer ques­tions about Trump, the Repub­li­can Par­ty, and Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in the right way. One chap­ter leader wrote to a prospec­tive mem­ber that the group aimed to “secure a future for Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.”

    It’s an uncan­ny mim­ic­ry of the clan­des­tine engine that, in the right-wing’s fur­thest imag­in­ings, has dri­ven recent social changes and left them feel­ing iso­lat­ed and under siege: a shad­owy net­work occu­py­ing the com­mand­ing heights of busi­ness, pol­i­tics, and cul­ture, open only to a select, elite few, com­mit­ted to reshap­ing the Unit­ed States to align it with the group’s rad­i­cal val­ues.

    The men TPM has iden­ti­fied as behind this group — and they are all men — have a few things in com­mon. They’re all a cer­tain kind of devout Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion­al­ist. They are white. They have means, finan­cial and social, and are engaged in pol­i­tics.

    Until TPM began report­ing this sto­ry sev­er­al weeks ago, the mem­ber­ship of the group had remained large­ly secret. Its exis­tence was known and has been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on by The Guardian, but the details of the group’s mis­sion, mem­ber­ship cri­te­ria, board, and inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions remained out­side of pub­lic view. Begin­ning late Thurs­day, some of the lead­ing mem­bers of the group iden­ti­fied by TPM through our report­ing came for­ward pub­licly to acknowl­edge their mem­ber­ships in the orga­ni­za­tion and pub­lished an inter­nal doc­u­ment that TPM had already obtained. They said they were doing so in antic­i­pa­tion of anoth­er sto­ry by The Guardian.

    The mem­bers iden­ti­fied by TPM don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fit the pro­file of the dis­af­fect­ed, dis­grun­tled lon­er or the amped-up, testos­terone-fueled mili­tia types often found on the para­noid right-wing fringe. TPM’s report­ing has iden­ti­fied as SACR mem­bers the pres­i­dent of the influ­en­tial, Trump-aligned Clare­mont Insti­tute, Har­vard Law grads, and lead­ing busi­ness­men in com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered across Amer­i­ca.

    The group speaks earnest­ly about itself and tries to down­play its more con­tro­ver­sial views. It is, the group’s lead­ers say, mere­ly anoth­er in a long line of fra­ter­nal orga­ni­za­tions that try to fos­ter civic engage­ment. But there’s a lot that’s almost zany about the group’s aims and activ­i­ties. An Ida­ho chap­ter sought to fight back against mar­riage equal­i­ty by mak­ing stick­ers rep­re­sent­ing tra­di­tion­al mar­riage to com­pete with the rain­bow, pro-LGBTQ-rights sym­bols which adorned cof­fee shops in the area. In anoth­er episode, that chap­ter sup­port­ed a quixot­ic bid to court wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donors into fund­ing a web­site focused on unearthing the spread of DEI in Ida­ho. The man who incor­po­rat­ed the nation­al umbrel­la group is an Indi­ana sham­poo tycoon who refers to him­self as “max­i­mum leader” and blogs about Rhode­sian anti-gueril­la tac­tics and how the must-read dystopi­an fic­tion nov­el for white suprema­cists, The Camp of the Saints, is actu­al­ly a vision of America’s present.

    Group mem­bers hold a dis­tinct vision of Amer­i­ca as a lat­ter-day ancient Rome: a crum­bling, deca­dent empire that could soon be replaced by a Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy. To join, the group demands faith­ful­ness, virtue, and “align­ment,” which it describes as “def­er­ence to and accep­tance of the wis­dom of our Amer­i­can and Euro­pean Chris­t­ian fore­bears in the polit­i­cal realm, a tra­di­tion­al under­stand­ing of patri­ar­chal lead­er­ship in the house­hold, and accep­tance of tra­di­tion­al Nat­ur­al Law in ethics more broad­ly.” More prac­ti­cal­ly, mem­bers must be able to con­tribute either influ­ence, capa­bil­i­ty, or wealth in help­ing SACR fur­ther its goals.

    ...

    Once in the group, the state­ment says, mem­bers can expect perks: “direct pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for mem­bers, espe­cial­ly in busi­ness,” and help in advance­ment “in all areas of life” from oth­er mem­bers.

    It’s a vision of soci­ety which doesn’t just extend back before the Oberge­fell deci­sion on same-sex mar­riage or before the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion of the ‘60s and ‘70s, before the Civ­il Rights move­ment or even before World War II. It goes back fur­ther, beyond liv­ing mem­o­ry: to the late 19th cen­tu­ry, before the Pro­gres­sive Era opened the flood­gates to what the group regards as a long cor­rup­tion of America’s found­ing prin­ci­ples.

    Unmask­ing A Secret Soci­ety

    TPM first began report­ing on SACR in Jan­u­ary. Though the group’s mem­ber­ship rolls are secret, some of its activ­i­ties are out in the open. It main­tains a web­site, all in crim­son, in which it adver­tis­es its “mark,” and calls on mem­bers to rebuild the “fron­tier-con­quer­ing spir­it of Amer­i­ca.”

    An ear­ly report­ing break­through came when we were able to iden­ti­fy a Boise State Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and Clare­mont offi­cial named Scott Yenor as a pos­si­ble mem­ber of SACR because he appeared on incor­po­ra­tion papers for the group’s Boise lodge. Yenor is a char­ac­ter in his own right, attract­ing pub­lic atten­tion for a Novem­ber 2021 blow-up when he sug­gest­ed that elite pro­fes­sions like law and med­i­cine stop recruit­ing women into their ranks.

    Because Boise State is a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty, TPM was able to obtain via pub­lic records requests in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary a trove of Yenor’s office emails that men­tion SACR. The trove includ­ed inter­nal SACR cor­re­spon­dence, doc­u­ments, and oth­er mate­ri­als from when the group was first being con­ceived in late 2020, was found­ed the fol­low­ing year, and began to grow.

    The trove reveals SACR’s core mis­sion: to cre­ate a mini-state with­in a state, com­posed entire­ly of Protes­tant, Catholic, and Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian men. It’s explic­it­ly patri­ar­chal, demand­ing that group mem­bers assume a dom­i­nant role at home, and cel­e­brates the use of force and exis­tence of author­i­ty. Amid all the hear­ken­ing back to the found­ing fathers, America’s first prin­ci­ples, and patri­o­tism, there are few men­tions of democ­ra­cy in the mate­ri­als TPM reviewed.

    Using the Yenor email trove as a start­ing point, TPM was able to con­firm that Yenor is a SACR mem­ber, to iden­ti­fy oth­er mem­bers of SACR, includ­ing promi­nent peo­ple like the pres­i­dent of the Clare­mont Insti­tute, and to map oth­er chap­ters of SACR around the coun­try and locate incor­po­ra­tion papers for them, which yield­ed the iden­ti­ties of oth­er poten­tial SACR mem­bers.

    ...

    [see Yenor emails]

    TPM con­tin­ued to report the sto­ry, expand­ing it beyond the Yenor emails, until this week, when it began reach­ing out direct­ly to the SACR lead­ers it had been able to iden­ti­fy. It’s not clear whether it was TPM’s out­reach or that of The Guardian, as the SACR lead­ers have since sug­gest­ed, that prompt­ed them to go pub­lic. Regard­less, some key fig­ures in the group began to reveal their mem­ber­ships pub­licly in advance of the antic­i­pat­ed news cov­er­age.

    Nate Fis­ch­er, a mem­ber in Texas, post­ed a tweet Thurs­day evening warn­ing of an immi­nent sto­ry from The Guardian and out­ing him­self as a mem­ber. Fis­ch­er said that SACR’s pre­vi­ous prac­tice of secre­cy was due to “the envi­ron­ment of 2020–21” when the group was first being orga­nized.

    The prospect of impend­ing news sto­ries — and Fischer’s tweet — spurred oth­er group mem­bers to also reveal them­selves on Twit­ter into Fri­day. That includ­ed Ryan P. Williams, pres­i­dent of the Clare­mont Insti­tute and a SACR board mem­ber, and Andrew Beck, a brand con­sul­tant.

    In a Fri­day phone call with TPM, Williams denied that the group was “some cabal with the aim of tak­ing over the fed­er­al estab­lish­ment” and said that it only sought to cre­ate a “com­mon cit­i­zen­ship” of the “Amer­i­can­ized and assim­i­lat­ed as the best recipe for a large, mul­tira­cial, mul­ti-eth­nic repub­lic.”

    When asked why SACR doc­u­ments show that it aims to staff an “aligned future regime” with mem­bers, Williams said that the new regime would be a “U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion­al order brought much clos­er to its ori­gins after about a cen­tu­ry of what we regard as its cor­rup­tion and under­min­ing by pro­gres­sivism, which I regard as anti-con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist in its roots and its evo­lu­tion.”

    “This shouldn’t be regard­ed as any­thing rad­i­cal or new,” Williams said. “It’s in a long line of tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can civic orga­ni­za­tions of like-mind­ed men wor­ried about the direc­tion of their coun­try.”

    ...

    The self-out­ing by key fig­ures in SACR did not make pub­lic all of the mate­ri­als that TPM obtained through its report­ing, includ­ing the trove of Yenor emails and cer­tain inter­nal orga­ni­za­tion­al doc­u­ments. What fol­lows is what TPM learned from that report­ing, and inter­views with some of the SACR fig­ures who appeared in the doc­u­ments.

    Howdy Doo­dy Men

    SACR stands out in the pan­theon of right-wing extrem­ists not nec­es­sar­i­ly due to the exclu­siv­i­ty of its mem­ber­ship — there are mili­tias and groups across the coun­try which are men only and Chris­t­ian only, either de fac­to or by rule.

    What sets SACR apart is that its mem­bers come from and are recruit­ed from the upper crust of Amer­i­can soci­ety. They are wealthy — inde­pen­dent wealth is a require­ment for mem­ber­ship, per doc­u­ments TPM obtained. And they are cre­den­tialed.

    SACR offers a redoubt for pow­er­ful peo­ple who take the cul­ture war extreme­ly seri­ous­ly and believe in their bones that hem­or­rhag­ing church mem­ber­ship, the Oberge­fell deci­sion on same-sex mar­riage, and the ebbing sta­tus of Chris­t­ian men in Amer­i­can soci­ety are an exis­ten­tial threat to their vision for Amer­i­ca, and who have the means to build a soci­ety on a dif­fer­ent path.

    Orga­nized as a 501©10, Williams described SACR as anal­o­gous in struc­ture to the Masons or Moose lodges — a nation­al super­struc­ture with chap­ters around the coun­try, some pub­lic and some not. Its mem­bers are, as a rule, secret. But those mem­bers who have incor­po­rat­ed chap­ters, as TPM dis­cov­ered, end up iden­ti­fied in pub­lic records.

    In an inter­view, Williams told TPM that SACR emerged from con­ver­sa­tions between him­self, self-described “indus­tri­al­ist” Charles Hay­wood, and oth­ers around Clare­mont in 2020. Skyler Kressin, an Ida­ho accoun­tant, and Fis­ch­er, also par­tic­i­pat­ed. The idea, Williams said, came about amid con­ver­sa­tions about “civic projects and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism and the state of Amer­i­ca.”

    Part of the schol­ar­ly project of the Clare­mont Insti­tute has been to lament the rise, real­ly since the late 19th cen­tu­ry, of a cer­tain dif­fer­ent way of think­ing about pol­i­tics and how to do gov­ern­ment out­side, we would argue, the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion­al tra­di­tion,” he said.

    ...

    Hay­wood has laid out an elab­o­rate cos­mol­o­gy of America’s place in time, and his own place in Amer­i­ca, through hun­dreds of blog posts he’s writ­ten on his web­site, The Wor­thy House. To Hay­wood, Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is a house of cards wait­ing to be blown over — run by a cabal that he describes as the “brawn­do tyran­ny,” refer­ring to the ener­gy drink from the 2006 cult clas­sic movie Idioc­ra­cy. Hay­wood says he can see what will like­ly come next: a new feu­dal­ism, an arch­i­pel­ago of local “armed patron­age net­works,” a vision inspired by the groups white set­tler farm­ers formed in south­ern Africa as Blacks strug­gled for major­i­ty rule.

    On the blog where he explains these ideas, Hay­wood refers to him­self as “max­i­mum leader.”

    In Octo­ber 2022, Hay­wood appeared on a pod­cast with with for­mer Trump offi­cial and “Flight 93” essay Michael Anton and oth­ers for a dis­cus­sion about cae­sarism — the idea that a strong­man is need­ed to solve America’s prob­lems. After refer­ring to an unspec­i­fied “secret event” that brought the group togeth­er, Hay­wood said that he “whole­heart­ed­ly” endorsed “nation­al divorce” as a solu­tion to the country’s prob­lems.

    Since sell­ing his sham­poo man­u­fac­tur­ing firm in Sep­tem­ber 2020, Hay­wood has mobi­lized. His non­prof­it, the Howdy Doo­dy Good Times Foun­da­tion, began to con­tribute to the Clare­mont Insti­tute.

    Howdy Doo­dy has con­tributed mon­ey to SACR as well. Over the fol­low­ing year, a chap­ter in Dal­las, Texas, and three in Ida­ho were found­ed. Hay­wood has said that addi­tion­al chap­ters exist; Williams put the total num­ber at beneath one dozen.

    Among the emails obtained by TPM are ones that show the organization’s reach. In one Jan­u­ary 2023 exchange, Hay­wood cc’ed a group of peo­ple while ask­ing for a board meet­ing to dis­cuss SACR finances. The men on the exchange do not appear to be down on their luck.

    Fis­ch­er, a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist who leads the group’s Dal­las chap­ter, grad­u­at­ed from Har­vard Law. Fis­ch­er has described lead­ing a pri­vate equi­ty career invest­ing in apart­ment com­plex­es dis­tressed after the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis.

    Also cc-ed was Williams, the Clare­mont pres­i­dent. Williams con­firmed his involve­ment in the group on Fri­day on Twit­ter, writ­ing, “may 1,000 chap­ters bloom and flour­ish.” Clare­mont came into nation­al con­scious­ness in 2021 because it was where Trump co-defen­dant and co-con­spir­a­tor John East­man, the attor­ney who played a key role in the 2020 elec­tion sub­ver­sion effort, works as a senior fel­low.

    Under Williams’ lead­er­ship, Clare­mont has become well-known for a vision of Amer­i­ca in which the coun­try as we know it is all but lost, set to be replaced by a “regime” that its lead­ers hope to craft to come after the cur­rent, “cold civ­il war” con­cludes. While intro­duc­ing anoth­er pod­cast dis­cus­sion between Hay­wood and Anton, Williams called Hay­wood a “friend of recent years” who was will­ing to dis­cuss the country’s “decay­ing repub­lic.”

    ...

    It’s not only about the repub­lic. Inter­nal SACR mes­sages show that the group envi­sions itself as stew­ards of a hard brand of Chris­tian­i­ty. Yenor, in one mes­sage that he planned to use for recruit­ment, summed it up: “Our belief is that the country’s track is unsus­tain­able, and the only way to secure a future for Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies is to keep and take back space now closed to Chris­tians.”

    Who is un-SACR?

    Who is exclud­ed, in some sense, reveals more about SACR than who is allowed in.

    The group bans any­one who is not Chris­t­ian: Jews, Mus­lims, Hin­dus, and oth­ers. But it goes fur­ther than that and bars “non-trini­tar­i­an” Chris­tians; Mor­mons, Jeho­vah Wit­ness­es, Chris­t­ian Sci­en­tists, and oth­ers can­not be SACR mem­bers.

    [see SACR doc­u­ment]

    Williams said that the reli­gious exclu­siv­i­ty came from the “long and robust tra­di­tion of the inter­sec­tion between Trini­tar­i­an Chris­tian­i­ty in a broad sort of ecu­meni­cal sense and Amer­i­can civic lead­er­ship and states­man­ship.”

    “Too much ecu­menism is some­times coun­ter­pro­duc­tive in these sorts of ven­tures,” he added. “Which is not to say that we don’t of course have noth­ing but tol­er­a­tion in the great Amer­i­can tra­di­tion for all faiths as long as they’re gen­uine­ly — as long as they are not hos­tile to Amer­i­can prin­ci­ples and notions of nat­ur­al rights and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism.”

    Women are not allowed in SACR, what­ev­er their faith. The group empha­sizes a tra­di­tion­al role for the man in the house­hold, a robust and mus­cu­lar exer­cise of tem­po­ral author­i­ty by men, and the force­ful appli­ca­tion of male domin­ion in civic affairs.

    Yenor, the Boise State pro­fes­sor, told TPM in a text that the group’s exclu­siv­i­ty was a way “to bring men togeth­er for real com­mu­ni­ty and fra­ter­ni­ty,” allow­ing mem­bers to “build each oth­er up and encour­age respon­si­bil­i­ty” in pub­lic and pri­vate life.

    [see SACR mem­ber­ship and recruit­ing guide]

    A “SACR Mem­ber­ship Cri­te­ria & Recruit­ing Guide” obtained via TPM’s pub­lic records requests shows ques­tions that the group puts to prospec­tive mem­bers.

    * What are your thoughts on the Repub­li­can Par­ty?
    * What are your thoughts on “Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism”?
    * Com­ment on the Trump pres­i­den­cy and what it entails for the future.
    * Describe the dynam­ic of your house­hold in terms of your role and that of your wife.
    * Describe your church com­mu­ni­ty and your and your family’s involve­ment there

    [see SACR mem­ber­ship vet­ting guide]

    Oth­er cri­te­ria for mem­ber­ship include faith­ful­ness (“adher­ence to tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics”), virtue (“restraint and self-denial; house­hold man­age­ment; lead­er­ship and order­li­ness”), and align­ment, defined as: “def­er­ence to and accep­tance of the wis­dom of our Amer­i­can and Euro­pean Chris­t­ian fore­bears in the polit­i­cal realm, a tra­di­tion­al under­stand­ing of patri­ar­chal lead­er­ship in the house­hold, and an accep­tance of tra­di­tion­al Nat­ur­al Law in ethics more broad­ly.”

    Final­ly, mem­bers are asked to pos­sess one of these three qual­i­ties: influ­ence, capa­bil­i­ty (“any skill con­ducive to the tech­ni­cal work of pro­duc­tive entre­pre­neur­ship; law­fare; cyber­se­cu­ri­ty”), or wealth.

    [see SACR rules for gath­er­ing]

    If you make it in, you’re asked to pay reg­u­lar dues and appear at meet­ings once a month. Chap­ter mem­bers’ names are hid­den, as are “nation­al or Chap­ter ini­tia­tives.”

    Fis­ch­er post­ed a copy of a mis­sion state­ment and objec­tives already pre­vi­ous­ly obtained by TPM on Twit­ter Thurs­day evening. The group has pub­lic and non-pub­lic descrip­tions of its pur­pose and goals. In an “inter­nal” ver­sion of the mis­sion state­ment, SACR says “we are un-hyphen­at­ed Amer­i­cans and we believe in a par­tic­u­lar Chris­tian­i­ty that is not blurred by mod­ernist philoso­phies.”

    “We are will­ing to act deci­sive­ly to secure per­ma­nent­ly, as much as any­thing is per­ma­nent, the polit­i­cal and social dom­i­nance of that ide­al,” the doc­u­ment says.

    Why the big secret?

    Per­haps the most star­tling ele­ment of SACR is one of its long-term objec­tives. Per the mis­sion state­ment obtained by TPM, SACR aims to have its mem­bers form the gov­ern­ment of an “aligned future regime.”

    “They would be next generation—not found­ing par­tic­i­pants, but those who joined as the project of civic renew­al grows deep roots,” the doc­u­ment reads. “That is, men who ‘grow up in the sys­tem.’”

    Oth­er goals include pro­vid­ing “pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for mem­bers, espe­cial­ly in busi­ness,” and to both “coor­di­nate allied fra­ter­nal net­works” and “defend fra­ter­nal net­works … against attacks by those opposed to civic renew­al, and strong­ly deter such attacks.”

    In Yenor’s Boise chap­ter, SACR mem­bers attempt­ed to craft a “State­ment on Mar­riage” in which local church lead­ers would pro­claim an “inten­tion­al effort to cel­e­brate the ben­e­fits of fam­i­ly life” because the “cul­ture is hos­tile to Chris­t­ian mar­riage.” To do that, the group would “pro­mote mar­riage pub­licly through a pro-mar­riage stick­er” to be spread around the Boise region.

    ...

    After The Guardian pub­lished its ini­tial sto­ry on the group over the sum­mer, a small con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed among evan­gel­i­cals who regard­ed Haywood’s views as dan­ger­ous and the prospect of a cer­tain strain of Chris­tian­i­ty tak­ing con­trol of the gov­ern­ment as trou­bling.

    Fis­ch­er hit back in a pod­cast appear­ance, describ­ing SACR as a “big-tent thing where men get togeth­er.”

    “So the local chap­ters or lodges will have a meet­ing and maybe 15 guys get togeth­er and a speak­er comes in and talks about some­thing polit­i­cal, some­times it’s a polit­i­cal can­di­date or what­ev­er. And then we learn and some­times we just hang out,” he said. “There’s no sort of great secre­cy asso­ci­at­ed with it. There’s a lit­tle degree of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty because there’s guys there who are at com­pa­nies where even being asso­ci­at­ed with a group that is all men would be seen as sus­pi­cious.”

    SACR and its mem­bers harp on the idea that Amer­i­ca is in a fatal stage of rot, and that they are an oppressed peo­ple wait­ing to rise up on behalf of a silent major­i­ty.

    The SACR web­site speaks to the deeply held griev­ance and sense of a lack of mas­cu­line pur­pose which ani­mates the group. SACR exists, the web­site says, because “a man is no longer encour­aged to fly to the stars,” because “those who rule today spit on such ambi­tions; they cor­rupt the sinews of Amer­i­ca.”

    ...

    At the end of the day, SACR’s mem­bers are not oppressed. Clare­mont is free to pub­lish what­ev­er it likes — it’s wide­ly seen as tremen­dous­ly influ­en­tial on the right gen­er­al­ly and in MAGA cir­cles specif­i­cal­ly. SACR chap­ters can meet; Hay­wood can blog — in fact, on Tues­day he wrote an encomi­um to The Camp of the Saints, a 1970s French nov­el in which a horde of Indi­an immi­grants over­whelms, degrades, and exter­mi­nates the white West.

    “The goal of the Left was always total expro­pri­a­tion of white peo­ple and then, if at all pos­si­ble, their exter­mi­na­tion, a goal made explic­it by many pow­er­ful peo­ple in 2020,” Hay­wood wrote. “How, giv­en this his­to­ry, should white Amer­i­cans respond?”

    SACR may be his answer. In emails from Novem­ber 2020, Yenor wrote to Skyler Kressin, the head of the SACR chap­ter in Coeur d’Alene, Ida­ho, and on the group’s nation­al board.

    Yenor sent a screen­shot of an Ama­zon link to “The Super Afrikan­ers,” a 1979 non­fic­tion account of the Afrikan­er Broeder­bond, a semi-secret soci­ety which ruled South Africa under apartheid.

    “That good?” Yenor titled the sub­ject line, high­light­ing the book — long out of print — and its $95.62 price.

    “That’s the one,” Kressin replied.

    South Africa, with its visions of white set­tlers dri­ven away from sta­tus and wealth, appear con­sis­tent­ly in Haywood’s writ­ings, and in Fischer’s as well. The Broeder­bond, an Afrikan­er-only, Calvin­ist-only group of elites which func­tioned as a series of hun­dreds of inde­pen­dent “cells” across the coun­try, offers an eerie reflec­tion of SACR’s struc­ture. Williams told TPM that the Afrikan­er Broeder­bond came up in con­ver­sa­tions over what SACR would be, but denied that it served as a mod­el for the group.

    The griev­ance, per­ceived loss of sta­tus, and lack of meta­phys­i­cal mean­ing that these men feel are very real, to them. But there’s enough in America’s own his­to­ry to under­stand the aims and tra­di­tion in which SACR is oper­at­ing.

    Cor­rec­tion: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this arti­cle misiden­ti­fied writer and pol­i­cy researcher Aaron Renn as a “self-iden­ti­fied Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist.” Renn does not describe him­self as a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist but rather has been a crit­ic of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. We regret the error.

    ———-

    “Inside A Secret Soci­ety Of Promi­nent Right-Wing Chris­t­ian Men Prep­ping For A ‘Nation­al Divorce’” By Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 03/09/2024

    “It sounds like the stuff of fan­ta­sy, but it’s real. The group is called the Soci­ety for Amer­i­can Civic Renew­al (the acronym is pro­nounced “sack­er” by its mem­bers). It is open to new recruits, pro­vid­ed you meet a few cri­te­ria: you are male, a “trini­tar­i­an” Chris­t­ian, het­ero­sex­u­al, an “un-hyphen­at­ed Amer­i­can,” and can answer ques­tions about Trump, the Repub­li­can Par­ty, and Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in the right way. One chap­ter leader wrote to a prospec­tive mem­ber that the group aimed to “secure a future for Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.””

    The ‘armed patron­age net­work’ we were first warned about last year has a name: the Soci­ety for Amer­i­can Civic Renew­al (SACR). But we’re now learn­ing a lot more about the secre­tive group thanks, in large part, to Boise State Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Scott Yenor’s pub­licly dis­cov­er­able emails, the gift that keeps on giv­ing. And as those emails reveal, the goals of SACR don’t just include plan­ning for the cre­ation of ‘armed patron­age net­work’ to take con­trol in the event of a col­lapse of the US gov­ern­ment, but also includes the core mis­sion of cre­at­ing a mini-state with­in a state. Or rather, the cre­ation of a mini-patri­ar­chal theoc­ra­cy with­in a state, which will pre­sum­ably qui­et­ly lay the ground­work for that even­tu­al peri­od of col­lapse a ‘civic renew­al’:

    ...
    TPM first began report­ing on SACR in Jan­u­ary. Though the group’s mem­ber­ship rolls are secret, some of its activ­i­ties are out in the open. It main­tains a web­site, all in crim­son, in which it adver­tis­es its “mark,” and calls on mem­bers to rebuild the “fron­tier-con­quer­ing spir­it of Amer­i­ca.”

    An ear­ly report­ing break­through came when we were able to iden­ti­fy a Boise State Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and Clare­mont offi­cial named Scott Yenor as a pos­si­ble mem­ber of SACR because he appeared on incor­po­ra­tion papers for the group’s Boise lodge. Yenor is a char­ac­ter in his own right, attract­ing pub­lic atten­tion for a Novem­ber 2021 blow-up when he sug­gest­ed that elite pro­fes­sions like law and med­i­cine stop recruit­ing women into their ranks.

    Because Boise State is a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty, TPM was able to obtain via pub­lic records requests in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary a trove of Yenor’s office emails that men­tion SACR. The trove includ­ed inter­nal SACR cor­re­spon­dence, doc­u­ments, and oth­er mate­ri­als from when the group was first being con­ceived in late 2020, was found­ed the fol­low­ing year, and began to grow.

    The trove reveals SACR’s core mis­sion: to cre­ate a mini-state with­in a state, com­posed entire­ly of Protes­tant, Catholic, and Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian men. It’s explic­it­ly patri­ar­chal, demand­ing that group mem­bers assume a dom­i­nant role at home, and cel­e­brates the use of force and exis­tence of author­i­ty. Amid all the hear­ken­ing back to the found­ing fathers, America’s first prin­ci­ples, and patri­o­tism, there are few men­tions of democ­ra­cy in the mate­ri­als TPM reviewed.
    ...

    And what does the vision for soci­ety renew­al entail? A return to 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. It’s not just a roll­back of the civ­il rights era. It’s a roll­back of the 20th cen­tu­ry. But also a roll­back of much of Chris­tian­i­ty. Only a “par­tic­u­lar Chris­tian­i­ty that is not blurred by mod­ernist philoso­phies” will be accept as authen­tic:

    ...
    It’s a vision of soci­ety which doesn’t just extend back before the Oberge­fell deci­sion on same-sex mar­riage or before the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion of the ‘60s and ‘70s, before the Civ­il Rights move­ment or even before World War II. It goes back fur­ther, beyond liv­ing mem­o­ry: to the late 19th cen­tu­ry, before the Pro­gres­sive Era opened the flood­gates to what the group regards as a long cor­rup­tion of America’s found­ing prin­ci­ples.

    ...

    In an inter­view, Williams told TPM that SACR emerged from con­ver­sa­tions between him­self, self-described “indus­tri­al­ist” Charles Hay­wood, and oth­ers around Clare­mont in 2020. Skyler Kressin, an Ida­ho accoun­tant, and Fis­ch­er, also par­tic­i­pat­ed. The idea, Williams said, came about amid con­ver­sa­tions about “civic projects and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism and the state of Amer­i­ca.”

    Part of the schol­ar­ly project of the Clare­mont Insti­tute has been to lament the rise, real­ly since the late 19th cen­tu­ry, of a cer­tain dif­fer­ent way of think­ing about pol­i­tics and how to do gov­ern­ment out­side, we would argue, the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion­al tra­di­tion,” he said.

    ...

    Fis­ch­er post­ed a copy of a mis­sion state­ment and objec­tives already pre­vi­ous­ly obtained by TPM on Twit­ter Thurs­day evening. The group has pub­lic and non-pub­lic descrip­tions of its pur­pose and goals. In an “inter­nal” ver­sion of the mis­sion state­ment, SACR says “we are un-hyphen­at­ed Amer­i­cans and we believe in a par­tic­u­lar Chris­tian­i­ty that is not blurred by mod­ernist philoso­phies.”

    “We are will­ing to act deci­sive­ly to secure per­ma­nent­ly, as much as any­thing is per­ma­nent, the polit­i­cal and social dom­i­nance of that ide­al,” the doc­u­ment says.
    ...

    But it’s not just the stat­ed goals of the group that makes it so dis­turb­ing. It’s the fact that it’s so inter­twined with the Clare­mont Insti­tute, which has become a nexus point for far right extrem­ism and the main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. Ryan P. Williams, pres­i­dent of the Clare­mont Insti­tute, sits on SACR’s board and con­firmed to reporters that the new regime this Amer­i­can Cae­sar would help ush­er in would be a “U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion­al order brought much clos­er to its ori­gins after about a cen­tu­ry of what we regard as its cor­rup­tion and under­min­ing by pro­gres­sivism, which I regard as anti-con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist in its roots and its evo­lu­tion.” Pro­gres­sivism is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and only by tear­ing it up, root and branch, can the US return to its con­sti­tu­tion­al found­ings. So says the pres­i­dent of the Clare­mont Insti­tute, today’s lead­ing insti­tu­tion for the pro­mo­tion of post-demo­c­ra­t­ic con­ser­v­a­tive thought in the US:

    ...
    The prospect of impend­ing news sto­ries — and Fischer’s tweet — spurred oth­er group mem­bers to also reveal them­selves on Twit­ter into Fri­day. That includ­ed Ryan P. Williams, pres­i­dent of the Clare­mont Insti­tute and a SACR board mem­ber, and Andrew Beck, a brand con­sul­tant.

    ...

    When asked why SACR doc­u­ments show that it aims to staff an “aligned future regime” with mem­bers, Williams said that the new regime would be a “U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion­al order brought much clos­er to its ori­gins after about a cen­tu­ry of what we regard as its cor­rup­tion and under­min­ing by pro­gres­sivism, which I regard as anti-con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist in its roots and its evo­lu­tion.”

    “This shouldn’t be regard­ed as any­thing rad­i­cal or new,” Williams said. “It’s in a long line of tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can civic orga­ni­za­tions of like-mind­ed men wor­ried about the direc­tion of their coun­try.”

    ...

    Also cc-ed was Williams, the Clare­mont pres­i­dent. Williams con­firmed his involve­ment in the group on Fri­day on Twit­ter, writ­ing, “may 1,000 chap­ters bloom and flour­ish.” Clare­mont came into nation­al con­scious­ness in 2021 because it was where Trump co-defen­dant and co-con­spir­a­tor John East­man, the attor­ney who played a key role in the 2020 elec­tion sub­ver­sion effort, works as a senior fel­low.

    Under Williams’ lead­er­ship, Clare­mont has become well-known for a vision of Amer­i­ca in which the coun­try as we know it is all but lost, set to be replaced by a “regime” that its lead­ers hope to craft to come after the cur­rent, “cold civ­il war” con­cludes. While intro­duc­ing anoth­er pod­cast dis­cus­sion between Hay­wood and Anton, Williams called Hay­wood a “friend of recent years” who was will­ing to dis­cuss the country’s “decay­ing repub­lic.”

    ...

    Per­haps the most star­tling ele­ment of SACR is one of its long-term objec­tives. Per the mis­sion state­ment obtained by TPM, SACR aims to have its mem­bers form the gov­ern­ment of an “aligned future regime.”

    “They would be next generation—not found­ing par­tic­i­pants, but those who joined as the project of civic renew­al grows deep roots,” the doc­u­ment reads. “That is, men who ‘grow up in the sys­tem.’”
    ...

    And then there’s the role the Clare­mont Insti­tute’s media out­lets have played in pro­mot­ing these ideas. We saw about how Michael Anton host­ed Cur­tis Yarvin back in May of 2021 for a dis­cus­sion on an ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’ and the monar­chy. And then there was the Octo­ber 2022 inter­view by Anton for Charles Hay­wood for anoth­er ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’ dis­cus­sion, which includ­ed Hay­wood’s call for a “nation­al divorce”. And note what else Hay­wood men­tioned dur­ing his con­ver­sa­tion with Anton: an unspec­i­fied “secret event” that brought the group togeth­er:

    ...
    In Octo­ber 2022, Hay­wood appeared on a pod­cast with with for­mer Trump offi­cial and “Flight 93” essay Michael Anton and oth­ers for a dis­cus­sion about cae­sarism — the idea that a strong­man is need­ed to solve America’s prob­lems. After refer­ring to an unspec­i­fied “secret event” that brought the group togeth­er, Hay­wood said that he “whole­heart­ed­ly” endorsed “nation­al divorce” as a solu­tion to the country’s prob­lems.
    ...

    And that brings us to the dis­tin­guished nature of the known SACR mem­bers. Dis­tin­guished in the sense that they are all quite wealthy and not real­ly fac­ing any sort of dis­crim­i­na­tion at all, oth­er than per­haps the kind of dis­crim­i­na­tion one might face when they share how they want to impose a patri­ar­chal theoc­ra­cy on every­one. And as we can see, these wealthy mem­bers aren’t just sup­pose to put their resources towards help­ing the group’s theo­crat­ic cause become a real­i­ty. They are also meant to just help each oth­er in gen­er­al in areas includ­ed busi­ness but also defend­ing each oth­er from vague threats. It’s fas­cist net­work­ing, pre­sum­ably in antic­i­pa­tion of the ‘war­lord’ phase of this plan when the ‘armed patron­age net­works’ we’ve read about spring into action:

    ...
    It’s an uncan­ny mim­ic­ry of the clan­des­tine engine that, in the right-wing’s fur­thest imag­in­ings, has dri­ven recent social changes and left them feel­ing iso­lat­ed and under siege: a shad­owy net­work occu­py­ing the com­mand­ing heights of busi­ness, pol­i­tics, and cul­ture, open only to a select, elite few, com­mit­ted to reshap­ing the Unit­ed States to align it with the group’s rad­i­cal val­ues.

    ...

    The mem­bers iden­ti­fied by TPM don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fit the pro­file of the dis­af­fect­ed, dis­grun­tled lon­er or the amped-up, testos­terone-fueled mili­tia types often found on the para­noid right-wing fringe. TPM’s report­ing has iden­ti­fied as SACR mem­bers the pres­i­dent of the influ­en­tial, Trump-aligned Clare­mont Insti­tute, Har­vard Law grads, and lead­ing busi­ness­men in com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered across Amer­i­ca.

    ...

    Group mem­bers hold a dis­tinct vision of Amer­i­ca as a lat­ter-day ancient Rome: a crum­bling, deca­dent empire that could soon be replaced by a Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy. To join, the group demands faith­ful­ness, virtue, and “align­ment,” which it describes as “def­er­ence to and accep­tance of the wis­dom of our Amer­i­can and Euro­pean Chris­t­ian fore­bears in the polit­i­cal realm, a tra­di­tion­al under­stand­ing of patri­ar­chal lead­er­ship in the house­hold, and accep­tance of tra­di­tion­al Nat­ur­al Law in ethics more broad­ly.” More prac­ti­cal­ly, mem­bers must be able to con­tribute either influ­ence, capa­bil­i­ty, or wealth in help­ing SACR fur­ther its goals.

    ...

    SACR stands out in the pan­theon of right-wing extrem­ists not nec­es­sar­i­ly due to the exclu­siv­i­ty of its mem­ber­ship — there are mili­tias and groups across the coun­try which are men only and Chris­t­ian only, either de fac­to or by rule.

    What sets SACR apart is that its mem­bers come from and are recruit­ed from the upper crust of Amer­i­can soci­ety. They are wealthy — inde­pen­dent wealth is a require­ment for mem­ber­ship, per doc­u­ments TPM obtained. And they are cre­den­tialed.

    ...

    Among the emails obtained by TPM are ones that show the organization’s reach. In one Jan­u­ary 2023 exchange, Hay­wood cc’ed a group of peo­ple while ask­ing for a board meet­ing to dis­cuss SACR finances. The men on the exchange do not appear to be down on their luck.

    Fis­ch­er, a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist who leads the group’s Dal­las chap­ter, grad­u­at­ed from Har­vard Law. Fis­ch­er has described lead­ing a pri­vate equi­ty career invest­ing in apart­ment com­plex­es dis­tressed after the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis.

    ...

    Oth­er goals include pro­vid­ing “pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for mem­bers, espe­cial­ly in busi­ness,” and to both “coor­di­nate allied fra­ter­nal net­works” and “defend fra­ter­nal net­works … against attacks by those opposed to civic renew­al, and strong­ly deter such attacks.”
    ...

    And then we get this clar­i­ty on what exact­ly Hay­wood was think­ing of in terms of these ‘Armed Patron­age Net­works’ and the “pos­si­bil­i­ties involv­ing vio­lence” that could include “more-or-less open war­fare with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, or some sub­set or rem­nant of it.” He’s think­ing about the Afrikan­er Broeder­bond. And he’s appar­ent­ly adopt­ed the ‘whites are under assault’ world­view to go along with it. The guy is a Camp and the Saints fan. Hay­wood isn’t hid­ing his sym­pa­thies. But it’s note just Hay­wood. This whole net­work has been chat­ter­ing about the Broeder­bond, as evi­dence by Scott Yenor posts back in Novem­ber of 2020. Yes, this Broeder­bond talk was in antic­i­pa­tion to Jan­u­ary 6:

    ...
    Hay­wood has laid out an elab­o­rate cos­mol­o­gy of America’s place in time, and his own place in Amer­i­ca, through hun­dreds of blog posts he’s writ­ten on his web­site, The Wor­thy House. To Hay­wood, Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is a house of cards wait­ing to be blown over — run by a cabal that he describes as the “brawn­do tyran­ny,” refer­ring to the ener­gy drink from the 2006 cult clas­sic movie Idioc­ra­cy. Hay­wood says he can see what will like­ly come next: a new feu­dal­ism, an arch­i­pel­ago of local “armed patron­age net­works,” a vision inspired by the groups white set­tler farm­ers formed in south­ern Africa as Blacks strug­gled for major­i­ty rule.

    On the blog where he explains these ideas, Hay­wood refers to him­self as “max­i­mum leader.”

    ...

    At the end of the day, SACR’s mem­bers are not oppressed. Clare­mont is free to pub­lish what­ev­er it likes — it’s wide­ly seen as tremen­dous­ly influ­en­tial on the right gen­er­al­ly and in MAGA cir­cles specif­i­cal­ly. SACR chap­ters can meet; Hay­wood can blog — in fact, on Tues­day he wrote an encomi­um to The Camp of the Saints, a 1970s French nov­el in which a horde of Indi­an immi­grants over­whelms, degrades, and exter­mi­nates the white West.

    “The goal of the Left was always total expro­pri­a­tion of white peo­ple and then, if at all pos­si­ble, their exter­mi­na­tion, a goal made explic­it by many pow­er­ful peo­ple in 2020,” Hay­wood wrote. “How, giv­en this his­to­ry, should white Amer­i­cans respond?”

    SACR may be his answer. In emails from Novem­ber 2020, Yenor wrote to Skyler Kressin, the head of the SACR chap­ter in Coeur d’Alene, Ida­ho, and on the group’s nation­al board.

    Yenor sent a screen­shot of an Ama­zon link to “The Super Afrikan­ers,” a 1979 non­fic­tion account of the Afrikan­er Broeder­bond, a semi-secret soci­ety which ruled South Africa under apartheid.

    “That good?” Yenor titled the sub­ject line, high­light­ing the book — long out of print — and its $95.62 price.

    “That’s the one,” Kressin replied.

    South Africa, with its visions of white set­tlers dri­ven away from sta­tus and wealth, appear con­sis­tent­ly in Haywood’s writ­ings, and in Fischer’s as well. The Broeder­bond, an Afrikan­er-only, Calvin­ist-only group of elites which func­tioned as a series of hun­dreds of inde­pen­dent “cells” across the coun­try, offers an eerie reflec­tion of SACR’s struc­ture. Williams told TPM that the Afrikan­er Broeder­bond came up in con­ver­sa­tions over what SACR would be, but denied that it served as a mod­el for the group.
    ...

    An Amer­i­can ‘South Africa’ expe­ri­ence, where a pow­er­ful minor­i­ty of white war­lords wield pow­er through vio­lence force against any­one who pos­es a threat to their rule. This is obvi­ous­ly the plan. They aren’t ready to admit it quite yet, but we don’t real­ly have to won­der too much about whether or not they are seri­ous. They were lit­er­al­ly chat­ting about the Broeder­bond in Novem­ber of 2020, the month when the plot­ting for Jan­u­ary 6 start­ing seri­ous­ly get­ting under­way.

    But, again, don’t for­get that the schem­ing for some sort of post-con­sti­tu­tion­al order did­n’t start with Don­ald Trump’s 2020 elec­tion loss. Hay­wood was one of the fig­ures involved with the “79 Days to Inau­gu­ra­tion” report joint­ly pre­pared by the Clare­mont Insti­tute and the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foundation’s (TPPF) in mid-Octo­ber 2020. A report that was envi­sion­ing a kind of Rex84 crack­down by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion on ‘the Left’. They were already think­ing about a post-con­sti­tu­tion­al order even if Trump won. In oth­er words, this is some­thing this net­work has spent a lot of tim­ing think­ing about. And with the cre­ation of SACR, we can see that they’ve moved past the ‘think­ing about’ phase of mak­ing this post-con­sti­tu­tion­al order a real­i­ty. With Trump as the can­di­date run­ning on a plat­form of declar­ing a nation­al emer­gency and becom­ing dic­ta­tor on day one, the plan is already oper­a­tional.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 18, 2024, 6:09 pm
  21. The Trump Bible has arrived. Yes, it’s a bad joke. Too sur­re­al to be real. And yet it is oh so real. And omi­nous. This is what Trumpian Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is going to look like, after all. It’s a joke but it’s also a pre­view. The Trump expe­ri­ence is steadi­ly trans­form­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty in the Unit­ed States into a cult of per­son­al­i­ty.

    A high­ly politi­cized cult of per­son­al­i­ty with a broad array of poten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries should this cult suc­ceed, most notably the Domin­ion­ist move­ments under the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) that have long desired to see a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist takeover of the Unit­ed States. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing set of arti­cles about one of the grow­ing move­ments ded­i­cat­ed to see­ing this Trump-cen­tric Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion to its log­i­cal end in the form of full blown Domin­ion­ist theoc­ra­cy. A move­ment focused on con­vert­ing Chris­t­ian pas­tors into more than just pas­tors but rev­o­lu­tion­ary polit­i­cal change agents who will lead their con­gre­ga­tions into right­eous bat­tle — polit­i­cal bat­tle or lit­er­al bat­tle should the time come — in the name of Chris­tian­i­ty and Don­ald Trump. A move­ment focused on turn­ing ‘Stop the Steal’ elec­tion theft slo­ga­neer­ing into a theo­crat­ic call­ing: the Black Robe Reg­i­ment.

    It’s also a move­ment that, like so much of the con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in the US, is ulti­mate­ly root­ed in ahis­tor­i­cal read­ings of his­to­ry. As we’ve see, much of the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment in the US is pred­i­cat­ed on the ‘his­to­ry’ taught by pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. And sure enough, as we’re going to see, the Black Robe Reg­i­ment is not only based on a myth­i­cal group of pas­tors who fought in the US Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, but it was David Bar­ton who helped pop­u­lar­ize the idea with Glenn Beck back in 2007. Var­i­ous pas­tors tried to cre­ate their own rein­car­nat­ed ver­sions of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment in the fol­low­ing years, but the move­ment nev­er real­ly took off. Until the 2020 elec­tion and the “Stop the Steal” hys­te­ria that gripped the GOP. At that point, not only was the ground fer­tile for a flour­ish­ing of “black robe” chap­ters but it was done with an explic­it Trump-cen­tric the­ol­o­gy. The alleged theft of the 2020 elec­tion from Don­ald Trump is part and par­cel with the US turn­ing away from the Bible and the his­tor­i­cal cen­tral role Chris­tian­i­ty is sup­posed to play over US soci­ety and gov­ern­ment.

    A num­ber of the fig­ures involved with the Black Robe Reg­i­ment are peo­ple we’ve heard plen­ty about already. For starters, Gen­er­al Michael Fly­nn — some­one who has been extreme­ly open about his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist designs — appears to be play­ing a major role in recruit­ing pas­tors into Black Robe Reg­i­ment led by Pas­tor Bill Cook. By Novem­ber of 2022, Fly­nn and Cook had 150 pas­tors who were will­ing to sign their Black Robe Reg­i­ment pledge. For­mer con­gress­man Allen West and Roger Stone appear to be sup­port­ers. Cook also claims to have dis­cussed his move­ment with Eric Trump.

    A num­ber of pas­tors who were direct­ly involved with ril­ing up crowds at “Stop the Steal” ral­lies at the Cap­i­tal in the lead up to Jan­u­ary 6 are play­ing lead­ing roles as Black Robe Reg­i­ment recruiters. Bill Cook also spoke at Stop the Steal ral­lies, at times where an Oath Keep­ers shirt. Oth­er Black Robe pas­tors who spoke at these ral­lies include Greg Locke, Joshua Feuer­stein, and Ken Peters.

    As we’re going to see, Ken Peters isn’t just try­ing to build his own chap­ter of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment. He’s also the head of the “Patri­ot Church” move­ment, which appears to be his term for church­es that take a mil­i­tant approach to pol­i­tics and specif­i­cal­ly Don­ald Trump. Peter­s’s net­work of Patri­ot Church­es seems to be based on some sort of fran­chise mod­el, where church­es can join the Patri­ot Church net­work for the cost of a 10% cut of their rev­enues. Dona­tions pre­sum­ably increase after a church basi­cal­ly ded­i­cates itself to Trump.

    As we also saw, we don’t have to look to hard to find Peter­s’s theo­crat­ic. 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 Ken Peters. 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.” And as we also saw, when he was work­ing as a lawyer for the ADF, House Speak­er Mike John­son has a his­to­ry of serv­ing as the legal defense for Storms in rela­tion to his anti-abor­tion activism.

    Flash for­ward to Jan­u­ary of this year, and we find Bill Cook opin­ing about how ‘all this elec­tion fraud’ could be ‘cured’ if a few peo­ple sud­den­ly dropped dead. By God’s will, of course. He was­n’t open­ly call­ing for some­one to mur­der elec­tion work­ers. But he was open­ly sug­gest­ing to his fol­low­ers that a few dead elec­tion work­ers might solve every­thing. And that was back in Jan­u­ary, 10 months before the elec­tion. What kind of rhetoric can we expect from the grow­ing num­ber of “Black Robe Reg­i­ment” pas­tors present today? And how many are these even? We don’t real­ly know. We just know that the most extreme ele­ments of the Trump-cen­tric theocrats who brought us Jan­u­ary 6 have man­aged to rebrand their Trump-cen­tric theo­crat­ic move­ment as the mod­ern day rebirth of a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War myth. A Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War myth that could come in awful­ly handy should the 2024 elec­tion devolved into some­thing much big­ger and much worse than Jan­u­ary 6:

    Vice News

    These Pas­tors Are Telling Peo­ple Trump Is Still Pres­i­dent and Are Ready for War

    The Patri­ot Church move­ment wants to put Chris­tian­i­ty back at the heart of Amer­i­can life... and Don­ald Trump back in the White House.

    by David Gilbert
    Octo­ber 25, 2021, 12:19pm

    Pas­tor Ken Peters believes he’s on a mis­sion from God—with a Trumpian twist: Besides preach­ing Bible vers­es and tend­ing to his flock in Ten­nessee, he’s spread­ing the lie that for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had the 2020 elec­tion stolen from him.

    Peters is the head of a year-old move­ment called the Patri­ot Church, a net­work of four—soon to be six—churches that appear to put the wor­ship of Trump on par with wor­ship­ping God.

    To accom­plish his pri­ma­ry mis­sion of putting Chris­tian­i­ty back at the heart of Amer­i­can life, Peters looks to the past for inspi­ra­tion. He’s guid­ed by the words of the Found­ing Fathers, for exam­ple, but he also takes inspi­ra­tion from a group of rad­i­cal preach­ers known as the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment.

    Dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, these pas­tors “arose and led their con­gre­ga­tions into the bat­tle for free­dom,” accord­ing to a web­site ded­i­cat­ed to a mod­ern-day ver­sion of the orga­ni­za­tion.

    ...

    The myth­ic Black-Robed Reg­i­ment is a fic­tion. The belief that there were groups of Chris­t­ian min­is­ters who took up arms against the British and led their con­gre­gants to war is based on thin­ly sourced and mis­in­ter­pret­ed sto­ries. The claims made by those who ascribe to the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment today have been wide­ly debunked, and even the name itself is a mis­quo­ta­tion.

    But fic­ti­tious or not, Peters and a grow­ing num­ber of pas­tors like him are now using the myth of the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment as a ral­ly­ing cry, spread­ing the lie about stolen elec­tions to inflame and incite their con­gre­ga­tions to be pre­pared for a com­ing civ­il war, a bat­tle of good ver­sus evil where they fight back against what they see as the tyran­ny of the left.

    “If the truth is sup­pressed and cov­ered up, then that ulti­mate­ly will lead to vio­lence,” Peters told VICE News. “It could end up bad, you know, a lot of things end up rough and vio­lent. We hope it does­n’t, but we can’t be so afraid of a vio­lent out­come that we allow the left to cheat their way to destroy­ing this coun­try.”

    Peters is among a grow­ing cohort of rad­i­cal and extreme pas­tors who, inspired by Trump, embrace con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and blast lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion from the pul­pit. For these pas­tors, the divide between church and state doesn’t exist. They see their role as one of a wartime gen­er­al fight­ing against every­thing from Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, to crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, to gay mar­riage, abor­tion, and trans­gen­der rights. And increas­ing­ly, they see vio­lence as an inevitable out­come.

    “I don’t want a civ­il war, but we’ve got to stand up for what we believe in,” Peters said.

    Peters, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion preach­er based in Knoxville, Ten­nessee, found­ed the Patri­ot Church move­ment in Sep­tem­ber 2020 because he saw the coun­try mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from its ori­gins as a Chris­t­ian nation, fueled by a per­ceived cen­sor­ship of con­ser­v­a­tive opin­ion.

    “If we don’t speak, then the oth­er side, the left, con­trols the nar­ra­tive,” Peters said. “I mean, they are the main­stream media: They own Face­book, they own Twit­ter, they own so many things, and they con­trol the nar­ra­tive. And if the preach­ers don’t speak, my good­ness, that’s all we got.”

    ...

    “I think Trump exposed some of the silent cul­ture war that was going on. When he came into the pres­i­den­cy, I think he exposed what was hap­pen­ing under­neath. And so I think Pres­i­dent Trump was a part of me estab­lish­ing this move­ment called Patri­ot Church,” Peters said.

    Like the wider Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment, Peters wants to see a return to the val­ue he believes the Found­ing Fathers built the coun­try on and inscribed in the Con­sti­tu­tion. As the num­ber of peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as white evan­gel­i­cals con­tin­ues to dwin­dle, Peters feels com­pelled to speak out from the pul­pit.

    ...

    “I think most preach­ers are weak and spine­less and they should be lead­ing the Girl Scouts and not being behind pul­pits.” Peters said. “I think today is the day where we need preach­ers with a back­bone, with the courage to say what we believe, the foun­da­tion of our nation was based on Judeo-Chris­t­ian val­ues, and we let that slip away, I think much in part because of spine­less, weak, and fear­ful cow­ard­ly preach­ers.”

    Peters describes his orga­ni­za­tion as a “turnkey oper­a­tion” for pas­tors who are will­ing to get on-board the Trump train, and preach from the pul­pit that the “Trump was ripped off of the last elec­tion.”

    For a 10% cut of church earn­ings, Peters will bring pas­tors into the fold, pro­mote their church­es, help them with tax fil­ings as well as ensur­ing they’re stick­ing to the nar­ra­tive he wants to pro­mote.

    Today, in addi­tion to Peters’ home church in Knoxville, Ten­nessee, there are two Patri­ot Church cam­pus­es in Wash­ing­ton state, in Spokane and Moses Lake, and one in Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia.

    Peters said he was get­ting ready to bring two more Patri­ot Church loca­tions into the fold next month, adding that a lot more pas­tors want to get on board.

    ...

    While Peters’ oper­a­tion is still rel­a­tive­ly small, he’s not alone in his effort to use Trump’s lie about stolen elec­tions to incite his con­gre­ga­tion to take action to wrest back con­trol of the nation.

    In August, far-right preach­er and founder of America’s Church, Pas­tor Joshua Feuer­stein, orga­nized Amer­i­ca Revival, which was a mix­ture of tent revival, megachurch show­case, and polit­i­cal ral­ly. Dur­ing the event, Feuer­stein dis­missed Pres­i­dent Biden as a senile old man and com­pared Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris to Jezebel.

    To ham­mer home the elec­tion fraud con­spir­a­cy, a group of women dressed in shirts spelling out “TRUMP WON” posed for pho­tographs with atten­dees.

    At anoth­er point, the head of a pro-Trump insur­ance com­pa­ny told those attend­ing that they would win an AR-15 assault rifle just by tex­ting their num­ber to his com­pa­ny: “You come to wor­ship Jesus and leave with a gun,” he told wor­ship­pers accord­ing to a report by Reli­gion News. “Amen.”

    Also in atten­dance at the America’s Revival fes­ti­val was Greg Locke, head of the Glob­al Vision Bible Church in Mount Juli­et, Ten­nessee, just a cou­ple of hours east of Peters’ church in Knoxville.

    Locke has gained notoriety—and earned a Twit­ter ban—for spout­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the elec­tion and QAnon from his pul­pit to an increas­ing­ly large con­gre­ga­tion.

    ...

    Locke is also an adher­ent to the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment move­ment and while it is based on events that nev­er real­ly hap­pened, it has been per­co­lat­ing among right-wing evan­gel­i­cals for some time now.

    The mod­ern-day move­ment began in 2007, when Chuck Bald­win, a Flori­da pas­tor, launched his own ver­sion of the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment, promis­ing a right-wing return to a fic­ti­tious 18th-cen­tu­ry world.

    Then the move­ment gained steam when it was dis­cussed by Glenn Beck, the con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, and evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal activist David Bar­ton.

    Bar­ton also wrote an arti­cle enti­tled “The Orig­i­nal Black Robe Reg­i­ment” but accord­ing to his­to­ri­an JL Bell, Bar­ton is “noto­ri­ous for dis­tort­ing his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to sup­port his Chris­tian­ist view of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion.” Bell dis­sect­ed Barton’s evi­dence for claim­ing the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment exist­ed and found it didn’t hold water.

    But the myth has per­sist­ed and today there are a num­ber of Black Robed Reg­i­ment groups dot­ted across the U.S.

    One of the most promi­nent is led by Pas­tor Dan Fish­er, who dress­es like a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War sol­dier and like Peters, argues that pas­tors should preach patri­o­tism from the pul­pit and take up arms and lead their con­gre­ga­tions to war to defend those ideals.

    Fish­er recent­ly spoke at a con­fer­ence orga­nized by the Rod of Iron Min­istries, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church spin­off where con­gre­gants wor­ship with AR-15 and which has just bought a size­able plot of land in Ten­nessee to build a train­ing cen­ter.

    The head of the church, Pas­tor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, has also been seen wear­ing a bik­er jack­et with a patch Black Robed Reg­i­ment writ­ten on it.

    Mean­while, Pas­tor Bill Cook leads anoth­er group, called America’s Black Robe Reg­i­ment. Cook gained noto­ri­ety last year when, weeks before the Cap­ti­ol riots, he wore an Oath Keep­ers T‑shirt while speak­ing at a pro-Trump “prayer ral­ly” on the Nation­al Mall orga­nized by Jeri­cho March—a pro-Trump Chris­t­ian group focused on “elec­tion integrity”—and Stop the Steal. Hours lat­er on the same stage, Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes threat­ened bloody civ­il war if Trump did not stay in pow­er.

    While pre­vi­ous incar­na­tions of the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment have been viewed as some sort of live action role-play­ing escapade, fol­low­ing the attack on the Capi­tol, where dozens of insur­rec­tion­ists help his signs with Chris­t­ian mes­sages, the threat posed by these pas­tors is obvi­ous to experts.

    “This ‘Black-Robed Reg­i­ment’ routine—dressing in the garb of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary era and specif­i­cal­ly evok­ing the image of Amer­i­can min­is­ters wag­ing that war—is not pas­sive his­tor­i­cal cos­play. It is advo­ca­cy for insur­rec­tion,” Thomas Lecaque, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Grand View Uni­ver­si­ty in Des Moines, and J L Tom­lin, a lec­tur­er of ear­ly Amer­i­can his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas, wrote this week in the Wash­ing­ton Post.

    But not every­one agrees that preach­ers like Peters and Locke pose a threat to the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty and wider soci­ety.

    “I think they’re not only in the minor­i­ty, I think they’re an anom­aly. In fact, I’m find­ing the exact oppo­site is tak­ing place,” Ralph Reed, the evan­gel­i­cal leader who head­ed up the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion through the ear­ly 1990s, told VICE News.

    Reed, now chair­man of the influ­en­tial Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion lob­by­ing group, pledged loy­al­ty to Trump imme­di­ate­ly after he nabbed the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion in 2016. Togeth­er with oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers like Franklin Gra­ham, Jer­ry Fal­well Jr., Robert Jef­fress and Paula White, he became a key part in secur­ing the white evan­gel­i­cal vot­ing bloc for the pres­i­dent.

    Now, fol­low­ing Trump’s defeat, he wants to reframe the con­ver­sa­tion about evan­gel­i­cals away from the for­mer president’s spread­ing of con­spir­a­cies and lies relat­ed to elec­tion fraud, and focus instead on the pos­i­tive work hap­pen­ing in evan­gel­i­cal church­es across the coun­try.

    And while Reed is cer­tain­ly cor­rect in his asser­tion that pas­tors like Peters are way in the minor­i­ty, his claim that he has not heard peo­ple talk­ing about Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ideas, elec­tion fraud lies, or QAnon con­spir­a­cies in his group’s deal­ings with “tens of thou­sands, if not hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple” in the com­mu­ni­ty, seems strange.

    A recent sur­vey by the Wash­ing­ton-based Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute found that a quar­ter of all white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants agree that the gov­ern­ment, media, and finan­cial worlds in the U.S. are con­trolled by a group of dev­il-wor­ship­ping pedophiles—a key QAnon con­spir­a­cy.

    ...

    ———-

    “These Pas­tors Are Telling Peo­ple Trump Is Still Pres­i­dent and Are Ready for War” by David Gilbert; Vice; 10/25/2021

    But fic­ti­tious or not, Peters and a grow­ing num­ber of pas­tors like him are now using the myth of the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment as a ral­ly­ing cry, spread­ing the lie about stolen elec­tions to inflame and incite their con­gre­ga­tions to be pre­pared for a com­ing civ­il war, a bat­tle of good ver­sus evil where they fight back against what they see as the tyran­ny of the left.”

    As we’ve seen, Ken Peters is the kind of pas­tor for which some­thing like the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment is a nat­ur­al fit. He’s a far right pro-insur­rec­tionary rad­i­cal who start­ed a “Patri­ot Church” move­ment focused on ele­vat­ing Don­ald Trump’s polit­i­cal and legal bat­tles into a kind of Bib­li­cal God-ordained spir­i­tu­al war­fare. But he’s not the only one. Peters is a sign of things to come as Chris­tian­i­ty’s embrace of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism deep­ens:

    ...
    Peters is the head of a year-old move­ment called the Patri­ot Church, a net­work of four—soon to be six—churches that appear to put the wor­ship of Trump on par with wor­ship­ping God.

    To accom­plish his pri­ma­ry mis­sion of putting Chris­tian­i­ty back at the heart of Amer­i­can life, Peters looks to the past for inspi­ra­tion. He’s guid­ed by the words of the Found­ing Fathers, for exam­ple, but he also takes inspi­ra­tion from a group of rad­i­cal preach­ers known as the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment.

    Dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, these pas­tors “arose and led their con­gre­ga­tions into the bat­tle for free­dom,” accord­ing to a web­site ded­i­cat­ed to a mod­ern-day ver­sion of the orga­ni­za­tion.

    ...

    The myth­ic Black-Robed Reg­i­ment is a fic­tion. The belief that there were groups of Chris­t­ian min­is­ters who took up arms against the British and led their con­gre­gants to war is based on thin­ly sourced and mis­in­ter­pret­ed sto­ries. The claims made by those who ascribe to the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment today have been wide­ly debunked, and even the name itself is a mis­quo­ta­tion.

    ...

    Peters, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion preach­er based in Knoxville, Ten­nessee, found­ed the Patri­ot Church move­ment in Sep­tem­ber 2020 because he saw the coun­try mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from its ori­gins as a Chris­t­ian nation, fueled by a per­ceived cen­sor­ship of con­ser­v­a­tive opin­ion.

    “If we don’t speak, then the oth­er side, the left, con­trols the nar­ra­tive,” Peters said. “I mean, they are the main­stream media: They own Face­book, they own Twit­ter, they own so many things, and they con­trol the nar­ra­tive. And if the preach­ers don’t speak, my good­ness, that’s all we got.”
    ...

    And note how the kind of lan­guage Peters was using back in 2021, warn­ing of polit­i­cal vio­lence and civ­il war if Trump isn’t rein­stat­ed in office, is awful­ly sim­i­lar to the kind of “blood­bath” warn­ings we’re hear­ing from Trump on the cam­paign trail today. Trump and Peters are speak­ing the same bare­ly cod­ed lan­guage:

    ...
    “If the truth is sup­pressed and cov­ered up, then that ulti­mate­ly will lead to vio­lence,” Peters told VICE News. “It could end up bad, you know, a lot of things end up rough and vio­lent. We hope it does­n’t, but we can’t be so afraid of a vio­lent out­come that we allow the left to cheat their way to destroy­ing this coun­try.”

    Peters is among a grow­ing cohort of rad­i­cal and extreme pas­tors who, inspired by Trump, embrace con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and blast lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion from the pul­pit. For these pas­tors, the divide between church and state doesn’t exist. They see their role as one of a wartime gen­er­al fight­ing against every­thing from Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, to crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, to gay mar­riage, abor­tion, and trans­gen­der rights. And increas­ing­ly, they see vio­lence as an inevitable out­come.

    “I don’t want a civ­il war, but we’ve got to stand up for what we believe in,” Peters said.
    ...

    Also note this rather creepy fran­chise-like struc­ture for Peter­s’s Patri­ot Church oper­a­tion: pas­tors can join for the price of a 10% cut of the church’s earn­ings. The idea is pre­sum­ably that join­ing the Patri­ot Church orga­ni­za­tion and mak­ing the church an overt­ly pro-Trump enti­ty will increase dona­tions:

    ...
    Peters describes his orga­ni­za­tion as a “turnkey oper­a­tion” for pas­tors who are will­ing to get on-board the Trump train, and preach from the pul­pit that the “Trump was ripped off of the last elec­tion.”

    For a 10% cut of church earn­ings, Peters will bring pas­tors into the fold, pro­mote their church­es, help them with tax fil­ings as well as ensur­ing they’re stick­ing to the nar­ra­tive he wants to pro­mote.

    Today, in addi­tion to Peters’ home church in Knoxville, Ten­nessee, there are two Patri­ot Church cam­pus­es in Wash­ing­ton state, in Spokane and Moses Lake, and one in Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia.

    Peters said he was get­ting ready to bring two more Patri­ot Church loca­tions into the fold next month, adding that a lot more pas­tors want to get on board.
    ...

    And when we see oth­er pas­tors join­ing this Trump-cen­tric Chris­t­ian move­ment like Pas­tors Joshua Feuer­stein, Greg Locke, or Bill Cook, recall how both Locke and Feuer­stein joined Peters in ril­ing up crowds at the “Stop the Steal” events in the days and hours lead­ing up the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. That’s on top of Cook speak­ing at these events while wear­ing an Oath Keep­ers t‑shirt. It’s a reminder that the ‘stolen elec­tion’ ral­ly­ing cry is the com­mon thread con­nect­ing all of these increas­ing­ly rad­i­cal pas­tors. All of the ingre­di­ents need­ed to pro­mote a theo­crat­ic pow­er grab, from a divine­ly inspired fig­ure in Trump to the per­ceived loss of the god-ordained Chris­t­ian dom­i­na­tion of US soci­ety through theft, can be found in this nar­ra­tive:

    ...
    While Peters’ oper­a­tion is still rel­a­tive­ly small, he’s not alone in his effort to use Trump’s lie about stolen elec­tions to incite his con­gre­ga­tion to take action to wrest back con­trol of the nation.

    In August, far-right preach­er and founder of America’s Church, Pas­tor Joshua Feuer­stein, orga­nized Amer­i­ca Revival, which was a mix­ture of tent revival, megachurch show­case, and polit­i­cal ral­ly. Dur­ing the event, Feuer­stein dis­missed Pres­i­dent Biden as a senile old man and com­pared Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris to Jezebel.

    ...

    Also in atten­dance at the America’s Revival fes­ti­val was Greg Locke, head of the Glob­al Vision Bible Church in Mount Juli­et, Ten­nessee, just a cou­ple of hours east of Peters’ church in Knoxville.

    Locke has gained notoriety—and earned a Twit­ter ban—for spout­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the elec­tion and QAnon from his pul­pit to an increas­ing­ly large con­gre­ga­tion.

    ...

    Locke is also an adher­ent to the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment move­ment and while it is based on events that nev­er real­ly hap­pened, it has been per­co­lat­ing among right-wing evan­gel­i­cals for some time now.

    ...

    Mean­while, Pas­tor Bill Cook leads anoth­er group, called America’s Black Robe Reg­i­ment. Cook gained noto­ri­ety last year when, weeks before the Cap­ti­ol riots, he wore an Oath Keep­ers T‑shirt while speak­ing at a pro-Trump “prayer ral­ly” on the Nation­al Mall orga­nized by Jeri­cho March—a pro-Trump Chris­t­ian group focused on “elec­tion integrity”—and Stop the Steal. Hours lat­er on the same stage, Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes threat­ened bloody civ­il war if Trump did not stay in pow­er.
    ...

    But the move­ment to cre­ate some sort of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Black Robe Reg­i­ment did­n’t start in the lead up to Jan­u­ary 6. It began in 2007 when Flori­da pas­tor Chuck Bald­win launched his own ver­sion of the group. Recall how Chuck Bald­win has a his­to­ry of rail­ing against the Zion­ist con­trol of Amer­i­ca and even spoke at a 2017 “Seces­sion Day” event at the Roy Moore Foun­da­tion. A League of the South board mem­ber also spoke at the event. Then, Glenn Beck and key Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton picked up the Black-Robed baton. And when we see David Bar­ton talk­ing about some­thing, we know it’s not just a fringe ele­ment of the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment that’s inter­est­ed. Bar­ton is like a liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ‘main­stream’:

    ...
    The mod­ern-day move­ment began in 2007, when Chuck Bald­win, a Flori­da pas­tor, launched his own ver­sion of the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment, promis­ing a right-wing return to a fic­ti­tious 18th-cen­tu­ry world.

    Then the move­ment gained steam when it was dis­cussed by Glenn Beck, the con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, and evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal activist David Bar­ton.

    Bar­ton also wrote an arti­cle enti­tled “The Orig­i­nal Black Robe Reg­i­ment” but accord­ing to his­to­ri­an JL Bell, Bar­ton is “noto­ri­ous for dis­tort­ing his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to sup­port his Chris­tian­ist view of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion.” Bell dis­sect­ed Barton’s evi­dence for claim­ing the Black-Robed Reg­i­ment exist­ed and found it didn’t hold water.
    ...

    And then there’s the con­gre­ga­tions like the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church spin­off Rod of Iron Min­istries. This is a good time to recall how Trump spent the 20th anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks giv­ing the keynote address at the “Ral­ly of Hope Think Tank” event orga­nized by Hak Ja Han Moon, wid­ow of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church founder Sun Myung Moon. Newt Gin­grich also appeared on video at the event. This was all fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar event months ear­li­er that includ­ed appear­ances by both Mike Pom­peo and Mike Pence. It should­n’t be a sur­prise to learn the Rod of Iron Min­istries had Black-Robe Pas­tor Dan Fish­er speak­er at their events:

    ...
    But the myth has per­sist­ed and today there are a num­ber of Black Robed Reg­i­ment groups dot­ted across the U.S.

    One of the most promi­nent is led by Pas­tor Dan Fish­er, who dress­es like a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War sol­dier and like Peters, argues that pas­tors should preach patri­o­tism from the pul­pit and take up arms and lead their con­gre­ga­tions to war to defend those ideals.

    Fish­er recent­ly spoke at a con­fer­ence orga­nized by the Rod of Iron Min­istries, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church spin­off where con­gre­gants wor­ship with AR-15 and which has just bought a size­able plot of land in Ten­nessee to build a train­ing cen­ter.

    The head of the church, Pas­tor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, has also been seen wear­ing a bik­er jack­et with a patch Black Robed Reg­i­ment writ­ten on it.
    ...

    And then we get to the laugh­able dis­missal of the whole move­ment by promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal leader and CNP mem­ber Ralph Reed. Reed, of course, was one of major evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to give Don­ald Trump his bless­ings back in May of 2016, effec­tive­ly telling devout Chris­tians that they should­n’t have qualms about vot­ing for a man of Trump’s char­ac­ter. This is a good time to recall how Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and Jack Abramoff got togeth­er to scam Native Amer­i­can tribes. Reed dis­miss­es all of this Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism stuff as a com­plete fringe move­ment that he has­n’t even heard about. Very disin­gen­u­ous­ly, which is true to form for a leader like Reed:

    ...
    But not every­one agrees that preach­ers like Peters and Locke pose a threat to the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty and wider soci­ety.

    “I think they’re not only in the minor­i­ty, I think they’re an anom­aly. In fact, I’m find­ing the exact oppo­site is tak­ing place,” Ralph Reed, the evan­gel­i­cal leader who head­ed up the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion through the ear­ly 1990s, told VICE News.

    Reed, now chair­man of the influ­en­tial Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion lob­by­ing group, pledged loy­al­ty to Trump imme­di­ate­ly after he nabbed the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion in 2016. Togeth­er with oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers like Franklin Gra­ham, Jer­ry Fal­well Jr., Robert Jef­fress and Paula White, he became a key part in secur­ing the white evan­gel­i­cal vot­ing bloc for the pres­i­dent.

    Now, fol­low­ing Trump’s defeat, he wants to reframe the con­ver­sa­tion about evan­gel­i­cals away from the for­mer president’s spread­ing of con­spir­a­cies and lies relat­ed to elec­tion fraud, and focus instead on the pos­i­tive work hap­pen­ing in evan­gel­i­cal church­es across the coun­try.

    And while Reed is cer­tain­ly cor­rect in his asser­tion that pas­tors like Peters are way in the minor­i­ty, his claim that he has not heard peo­ple talk­ing about Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ideas, elec­tion fraud lies, or QAnon con­spir­a­cies in his group’s deal­ings with “tens of thou­sands, if not hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple” in the com­mu­ni­ty, seems strange.

    A recent sur­vey by the Wash­ing­ton-based Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute found that a quar­ter of all white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants agree that the gov­ern­ment, media, and finan­cial worlds in the U.S. are con­trolled by a group of dev­il-wor­ship­ping pedophiles—a key QAnon con­spir­a­cy.
    ...

    So that was the dis­turb­ing report we got on this Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment back in Octo­ber of 2021. And as we can see in the fol­low­ing Novem­ber 2022 Vice News report, the move­ment is no longer just a hand­ful of pas­tors. By that point, 150 pas­tors signed on to the Black Robe Reg­i­ment group formed by Michael Fly­nn and Pas­tor Bill Cook. And Fly­nn and Cook are just two of grow­ing num­ber of fig­ures recruit­ing for this move­ment:

    Vice News

    Meet the ‘Black Robe Reg­i­ment’ of Extrem­ist Pas­tors Spread­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism

    “There is a very seri­ous spir­i­tu­al bat­tle we have and we don’t have any prob­lem with say­ing we are fight­ing things we can’t see.”

    by David Gilbert
    by Tess Owen
    Novem­ber 8, 2022, 7:02am

    PHOENIX — Days before the midterm elec­tions, Pas­tor David MacLel­lan was ready to preach far-right pol­i­tics through Bible vers­es to his small con­gre­ga­tion. MacLel­lan, a hulk­ing man with a long, griz­zled black beard, isn’t an ordi­nary pas­tor. He proud­ly iden­ti­fies him­self as a far-right, extrem­ist pas­tor and a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist, some­one who believes Amer­i­can pol­i­tics should reflect fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian val­ues.

    And he’s part of a grow­ing nation­al reli­gious polit­i­cal move­ment called the Black Robe Reg­i­ment, a mod­ern-day group inspired by a myth of a group of mil­i­tant pas­tors dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion who took up arms to lead their flock into bat­tle against the British. The move­ment, imbued with sup­port from far-right polit­i­cal activists like Michael Fly­nn, wants pas­tors to play a cen­tral role in not only preach­ing pol­i­tics from the pul­pit but also active­ly get­ting their con­gre­ga­tions to rise up and claim elec­tion fraud by weav­ing myths about the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion togeth­er with mod­ern-day con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and hard-line Chris­tian­i­ty. These pas­tors believe they’re sav­ing democ­ra­cy, though what they’re real­ly doing is encour­ag­ing sup­port­ers to under­mine the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.

    And MacLel­lan plans to take an active role: He’s con­vinced that the 2020 elec­tion was stolen and that fraud has already been com­mit­ted in the 2022 midterms. He wants his con­gre­gants to fight back.

    ...

    His ser­mon mixed Bible vers­es with remarks about evo­lu­tion, made claims of vio­lence against anti-abor­tion groups, and described Jew­ish peo­ple as a “wealthy group of peo­ple who didn’t believe in heav­en or hell, didn’t believe in angels, and they had polit­i­cal con­trol over every­thing.”

    ...

    MacLel­lan also trot­ted out wide­ly debunked con­spir­a­cies about the 2020 elec­tion. “The fact that we’re still uti­liz­ing machines that are con­nect­ed to the inter­net, it’s going to hap­pen,” he said in an inter­view. “The fact that they’re using a dif­fer­ent type of mark­er on bal­lots, it’s going to hap­pen. The fact that they’re dri­ven to do mail-in bal­lots, it’s going to hap­pen.”

    He then ref­er­enced the GOP’s cur­rent mas­ter plan to “stop the steal” dur­ing the midterms.

    MacLel­lan is one of many pas­tors across the Unit­ed States who are seek­ing to revive the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment and take advan­tage of the rise in sup­port for Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. But while MacLel­lan is work­ing on his own to spread the mes­sage, oth­ers are coor­di­nat­ing to bring the move­ment to a nation­al stage.

    Fly­nn, the dis­graced for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er-turned-de fac­to leader of the nation­wide elec­tion denial move­ment, is one of the regiment’s biggest sup­port­ers.

    “You can­not preach the Bible with­out the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion. Peri­od,” Fly­nn announced to a crowd­ed hall on stage of the QAnon-infused evan­gel­i­cal “ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca” July tour stop in Vir­ginia Beach. Thou­sands were in atten­dance, and Flynn’s speech was full of fire and brim­stone, espous­ing a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy about how the church should be at the heart of all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety.

    Dur­ing Flynn’s speech, dozens of pas­tors stood right behind him; in total, 150 pas­tors had just signed a pledge to become part of the reg­i­ment. Flynn’s group was found­ed by Vir­ginia pas­tor William Cook with the aim of putting a Black Robe pas­tor in every sin­gle con­stituen­cy in the Unit­ed States. This new iter­a­tion of the group wants pas­tors to preach the gospel of Trump, active­ly spread con­spir­a­cies about COVID vac­cines and stolen elec­tions, and get more involved in local pol­i­tics. Many of the pas­tors aligned with the move­ment were involved in the Capi­tol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, includ­ing sev­er­al who encour­aged their flocks to take part in the protest and then trav­eled to D.C. them­selves. And experts wor­ry that their incen­di­ary lan­guage about spir­i­tu­al war­fare could incite real-world vio­lence.

    Cook’s orga­ni­za­tion is grow­ing fast: An old web­site full of dead ends and miss­ing con­tent has been replaced by a slick new site with Pay­Pal links and sign-up forms. Cook has already estab­lished out­posts across the coun­try that are mak­ing inroads into local and state gov­ern­ment, and he has the back­ing of some of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures with­in the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing long­time Trump advis­er Paula White.

    And, with the back­ing of Fly­nn, who has attained a God-like sta­tus among huge swaths of the Amer­i­can right over the last cou­ple of years, this iter­a­tion of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment could become much more real than its nonex­is­tent ances­tors. They could actu­al­ly pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat to Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.

    For MacLel­lan, align­ing with the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment means he’s spir­i­tu­al­ly oblig­at­ed to get his flock to believe some­one is steal­ing elec­tions.

    “The Black Robe Reg­i­ment, his­tor­i­cal­ly, were pas­tors that fought for the rev­o­lu­tion, what it has become today is pas­tors who are will­ing to fight polit­i­cal­ly,” MacLel­lan said. “So we’re not afraid to speak from the pul­pit on a sub­ject, espe­cial­ly when you get around to elec­tion times. And it’s impor­tant because peo­ple need to be embold­ened in what they believe to be true. and if you’re not going to give them that encour­age­ment, you get what you get.”

    Though the Black Robe Reg­i­ment is based on a belief that there were groups of Chris­t­ian min­is­ters who took up arms against the British and led their con­gre­gants into war, these sto­ries are based on thin­ly sourced and mis­in­ter­pret­ed tales. These his­tor­i­cal claims made by those who ascribe to the Black Robe Reg­i­ment today have been wide­ly debunked, and even the name itself is a mis­quo­ta­tion.

    But that hasn’t stopped Cook. The Vir­ginia pastor’s goals are sim­ple: He wants pas­tors to become the de fac­to polit­i­cal lead­ers in their dis­trict. He wants them elect­ed to school boards, become mem­bers of their local Repub­li­can Par­ty, and push Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist dog­ma to polit­i­cal lead­ers in their area.

    And with the midterm elec­tions, this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Cook’s group to demon­strate their grass­roots influ­ence. Already, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism beliefs are increas­ing­ly over­lap­ping with the Repub­li­can Party’s polit­i­cal agen­da, espe­cial­ly on issues like trans­gen­der rights, abor­tion, and same-sex mar­riage.

    “If Cook can actu­al­ly turn this into a real orga­ni­za­tion, as opposed to a pub­lic­i­ty stunt with the kind of real­ly mil­i­tant or often­times, apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric from Fly­nn, that’ll make him gen­uine­ly dan­ger­ous,” Thomas Lecaque, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Grand View Uni­ver­si­ty in Des Moines, Iowa, told VICE News.

    Mem­bers of these groups have already advo­cat­ed for vio­lence and took part in the Capi­tol riot. Ten­nessee Pas­tors Ken Peters and Greg Locke and Ken­tucky Pas­tor Bri­an Gib­son, all of whom sub­scribe to the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment, encour­aged their fol­low­ers to trav­el to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Peters and Locke were also both present at the insur­rec­tion (nei­ther has been charged with any crimes). “If you can make it, please come to DC. Get there maybe on Tues­day, or get there ear­ly on Wednes­day. I think the stuff starts around 10 in the morn­ing, alright? So you want to be with­in strik­ing dis­tance,” Peters told his flock days before the riot.

    ...

    “This vio­lent, spir­i­tu­al war­fare rhetoric can inspire peo­ple and lead to actu­al phys­i­cal vio­lence like we saw on Jan­u­ary 6,” Bri­an Kay­lor, a for­mer Bap­tist min­is­ter and edi­tor-in-chief of Chris­t­ian pub­li­ca­tion Word & Way, told VICE News. “And so the embrace of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment by peo­ple who cheered on the insur­rec­tion could help inspire more vio­lence in the future.”

    In recent months, Cook has ramped up recruit­ment efforts, hold­ing a pas­tor sum­mit promis­ing “Bib­li­cal train­ing on how to become a Black Robed preach­er in the 21st cen­tu­ry” in Octo­ber. At the end of the month, Cook and Fly­nn were back at anoth­er edi­tion of the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour, where more pas­tors were “com­mis­sioned,” accord­ing to a video of the event reviewed by VICE News.

    Cook also claimed that he had spo­ken to Eric Trump at the event and they had dis­cussed Cook’s move­ment. Cook announced at that event that his Black Robe Reg­i­ment orga­ni­za­tion had already estab­lished out­posts in 25 states, and that more pas­tors were sign­ing up quick­ly. Cook also claimed that he had spo­ken to Eric Trump at the event and they had dis­cussed Cook’s move­ment.

    ...

    Though MacLel­lan, the Ari­zona pas­tor, is not affil­i­at­ed with Cook’s group, he holds the same beliefs about the cen­tral role the church needs to play in Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life.

    For now, his reach is lim­it­ed. There are just 17 peo­ple in MacLellan’s con­gre­ga­tion. And at a ser­vice last Sunday—held in the liv­ing room of his home in Mesa just days before the midterm elections—only four peo­ple showed up.

    ...

    As is the case with much mod­ern Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rhetoric, anti­semitism fig­ures promi­nent­ly in MacLellan’s the­o­log­i­cal out­look.

    His per­son­al Face­book page is full of memes tar­get­ing Jew­ish peo­ple. One recent post fea­tured a par­a­site-like crea­ture, embla­zoned with the Star of David, suf­fo­cat­ing the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. Anoth­er makes ref­er­ence to the “Syn­a­gogue of Satan.”

    When VICE News asked him about his anti­semitism, he appeared unfazed. Judaism, he said, is an “Antichrist reli­gion.” He also not­ed that the “whole con­cept of anti­semitism is big now, espe­cial­ly with Kanye West mak­ing a state­ment.”

    Unlike oth­ers in the move­ment, who often couch anti-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments in dog whis­tles and euphemisms, MacLel­lan is unapolo­getic. But ulti­mate­ly, the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment wants to return the coun­try to what they see as its found­ing Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples. Fig­ures like Cook and Fly­nn want to use these pas­tors to fur­ther their belief that the Unit­ed States should revert to a Chris­t­ian nation, one where the only accept­ed reli­gion is Chris­tian­i­ty. “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,” Fly­nn said dur­ing a pre­vi­ous stop on the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour.

    Cook’s first attempt at cre­at­ing a Black Robe Reg­i­ment group began in 2012, with the Black Robe Reg­i­ment of Vir­ginia. Lim­it­ed to pas­tors from his home state, the group nev­er took hold and was lim­it­ed to a dozen or so pas­tors.

    But with the rise of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics has grown in recent years, par­al­lel with the rise of Trump­ism, Cook tried again, this time with the more inclu­sive title of America’s Black Robe Reg­i­ment.

    Cook real­ly rose to promi­nence in Decem­ber 2020 when he spoke at a pro-Trump prayer ral­ly while wear­ing an Oath Keep­ers T‑shirt on the Nation­al Mall orga­nized by Jeri­cho March and Stop the Steal in Decem­ber 2020. Hours lat­er, on the same stage, the Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes, who is cur­rent­ly on tri­al fac­ing sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy charges for his role in orches­trat­ing the Capi­tol riot, threat­ened bloody civ­il war if Trump did not stay in pow­er.

    After that week in Wash­ing­ton, Cook, known to his fol­low­ers as Bill, had a clear goal in mind for his new group: “With­in the next cou­ple of years, we would like to see the Black Robe Reg­i­ment formed in all 50 states…consisting of at least two pas­tors with­in each polit­i­cal juris­dic­tion in Amer­i­ca, who are assert­ing their influ­ence with­in local gov­ern­ment and also the influ­ence of their flock,” Cook out­lined in an August webi­nar for mem­bers of the group that was reviewed by VICE News. The church has got to “return in its role as stew­ard of lib­er­ty and gov­ern­ment,” Cook added.

    ...

    The first mod­ern revival of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment myth was by con­ser­v­a­tive radio host Glenn Beck when he announced the re-cre­ation of the move­ment at a ral­ly in August 2010. Days lat­er on his radio show, Beck pro­claimed that “our church­es have fall­en asleep” and that the “thou­sands of cler­gy” in the reg­i­ment who sub­scribe to his par­tic­u­lar views on the role of reli­gion in Amer­i­can life, will “start the heart of this nation again and put it where it belongs: our heart with God.”

    Beck was inspired by self-taught “his­to­ri­an” David Bar­ton who sug­gest­ed weeks before Beck announced his plan that the Black Robe Reg­i­ment was the per­fect vehi­cle for get­ting pas­tors more close­ly involved in the run­ning of the coun­try, at a time when the influ­ence of the Tea Par­ty move­ment was first grow­ing in the U.S.

    Anoth­er Black Robe Reg­i­ment group is based around the Patri­ot Church move­ment led by Peters, which includesQAnon-spout­ing Locke, who spoke at a ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., the night before the attack on the Capi­tol .

    Allen West, a for­mer Ccn­gress­man and most recent­ly the chair of the Texas GOP, is also try­ing to revive the group. In a video post­ed to YouTube in Jule, West out­lined a scheme to hon­or two pas­tors every month who embody the “spir­it of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment.” The win­ners of the award will each receive an engraved tom­a­hawk.

    “It’s this nar­ra­tive of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism tied into the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion in ways that are aggres­sive­ly ahis­tor­i­cal, but now has over a decade-long tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can far-right pol­i­tics, that kind of stuff con­cerns me,” Lecaque said. “The fact that all of these lit­tle groups are pop­ping out of the wood­work to latch on to this rhetoric and lan­guage, it feels accel­er­a­tionist.”

    These groups have drawn sup­port from dis­parate fig­ures like for­mer Trump advis­er Roger Stone and Pas­tor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, the head of the gun-tot­ing Rod of Iron Min­istries church and son of the founder of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, whose fol­low­ers were known as the Moonies.

    “These groups don’t like each oth­er and they’re going to end up fight­ing for influ­ence, [but] I think it’s con­cern­ing that all of them think that there’s a big enough mar­ket to sup­port this many dif­fer­ent iterations—and that that seems to actu­al­ly be true,” Lecaque added.

    But with the back­ing of Fly­nn, and his loy­al audi­ence on the right, Cook’s new group could become the most promi­nent group nation­al­ly.

    Some of the new reg­i­ments under Cook’s umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion, like the one run by Pas­tor Stephen Man­nion in New York, are still in the process of get­ting the word out about their group.

    “We are expand­ing our net­work, let­ting groups know that we exist,” Man­nion told par­tic­i­pants on an August webi­nar Cook ran for pas­tors in his group. “We all know at some point stuff’s going to heat up again and the church which doesn’t want to get involved in pol­i­tics will be forced to get involved in pol­i­tics, and they are going to need a place to land,” Man­nion added.

    ...

    And some groups appear to be much fur­ther ahead in their efforts to make inroads with local gov­ern­ments.

    Kei­th Hem­mi­la, a senior pas­tor with Cross­fire Church in Rock­ford, Michi­gan, told Cook that his group wel­comed Overstock.com founder and one of the major financiers of the Stop the Steal move­ment, Patrick Byrne, this month, as well as for­mer Repub­li­can mem­ber of the Michi­gan Sen­ate, Patrick Col­beck. Paula White, the Pen­ta­costal megachurch pas­tor and long­time Trump advis­er, was on the call as well. Last year, White was appoint­ed to head up the for­mer president’s nation­al faith advi­so­ry board, the for­ma­tion of which many took as a sign that Trump was plan­ning to run for pres­i­dent again in 2024.

    Hem­mi­la said on the webi­nar call that his group meets every week to dis­cuss a strat­e­gy for how they are going to increase the num­ber of pas­tors aligned with the Black Robe reg­i­ment in Michi­gan and says that every­one has to go through a vet­ting process before being admit­ted.

    And ear­li­er this month, Hem­mi­la said a group of pas­tors would meet at the state Capi­tol. “We’re going to start becom­ing vis­i­ble,” he told the webi­nar, out­lin­ing how they are work­ing with Michi­gan Capi­tol House of Prayer Direc­tor Gina Johnsen, who just won her pri­ma­ry in a race for the Michi­gan state Sen­ate.

    Also present was Lance Wall­nau, a Texas-based evan­ge­list and an influ­en­tial fig­ure in the domin­ion­ist New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion move­ment, which calls for Chris­t­ian con­trol of vir­tu­al­ly every aspect of cul­ture and pol­i­tics. He has a his­to­ry of mak­ing out­landish claims, like call­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden the “Antichrist” and spread­ing homo­pho­bic con­spir­a­cy theories—like his claim in 2017 that reformed pros­ti­tutes turned the own­er of a gay bar straight by bak­ing him an “anoint­ed cake.

    Dur­ing the webi­nar, Wall­nau said that pas­tors should be engaged in “spir­i­tu­al war­fare,” fight­ing back against per­ceived threats such as child groom­ing, crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, and trans­gen­der rights. He described the Black Robe Reg­i­ment as a “pop­ulist move­ment of cit­i­zen saints… It’s the clos­est thing we have to rev­o­lu­tion­ary patri­ot inter­ven­tion.”

    Wall­nau has been stump­ing for the Trump-endorsed Penn­syl­va­nia guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Mas­tri­ano, a major boost­er of Trump’s elec­tion con­spir­a­cies and pro­mot­er of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs. The far-right pas­tor recent­ly stoked con­tro­ver­sy when he took part in a ral­ly for Mas­tri­ano where he asked the audi­ence to raise their right hands in uni­son, a ges­ture that some crit­ics said resem­bled a Nazi salute.

    ...

    Even though the vary­ing reg­i­ments enjoy dif­fer­ent lev­els of sup­port from their com­mu­ni­ties and con­gre­ga­tions, their influ­ence nation­al­ly, and local­ly, is grow­ing.

    In Ari­zona, one of the few peo­ple who attend­ed MacLellan’s ser­vice last Sun­day is con­vinced that her pas­tor is telling her the truth about elec­tion fraud.

    “There’s gonna be fraud,” Free­land told VICE News. “They are already set­ting it up. The man—resident—in the White House is say­ing it’s tak­ing days and weeks to count votes. This all start­ed hap­pen­ing since 2016, mas­sive mail-in bal­lots. That’s how they stole that. 2,000 Mules showed that out.” [2,000 Mules is a con­spir­a­cy film from far-right com­men­ta­tor Dinesh D’Souza that makes wide­ly debunked claims about bal­lot mules alter­ing the out­come of elec­tions.]

    MacLel­lan makes no bones about the fact that his role, and the role of all Black Robe Reg­i­ment pas­tors, is to influ­ence the gov­ern­ment and be ready for bat­tle.

    “The intent behind the Black Robe now is to fight through leg­is­la­tion to try and get things changed for our com­mu­ni­ty so we can have a more con­ser­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment,” MacLel­lan told VICE News. “There is a very seri­ous spir­i­tu­al bat­tle we have and we don’t have any prob­lem with say­ing we are fight­ing things we can’t see.”

    ———–

    “Meet the ‘Black Robe Reg­i­ment’ of Extrem­ist Pas­tors Spread­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism” by David Gilbert and Tess Owen; Vice News; 11/08/2022

    “MacLel­lan is one of many pas­tors across the Unit­ed States who are seek­ing to revive the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment and take advan­tage of the rise in sup­port for Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. But while MacLel­lan is work­ing on his own to spread the mes­sage, oth­ers are coor­di­nat­ing to bring the move­ment to a nation­al stage.

    As we can see from this report dur­ing the 2022 midterms, the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment con­tin­ued to grow fol­low­ing its Jan 6 ‘stolen elec­tion’ jump start. And it’s been none oth­er than Michael Fly­nn play­ing a key lead­er­ship role and man­ag­ing to get over 150 pas­tors to sign a pledge to join the reg­i­ment. And that was as of Novem­ber 2022. It’s pre­sum­ably going to be a lot more pas­tors by Novem­ber of 2024:

    ...
    Fly­nn, the dis­graced for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er-turned-de fac­to leader of the nation­wide elec­tion denial move­ment, is one of the regiment’s biggest sup­port­ers.

    “You can­not preach the Bible with­out the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion. Peri­od,” Fly­nn announced to a crowd­ed hall on stage of the QAnon-infused evan­gel­i­cal “ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca” July tour stop in Vir­ginia Beach. Thou­sands were in atten­dance, and Flynn’s speech was full of fire and brim­stone, espous­ing a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy about how the church should be at the heart of all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety.

    Dur­ing Flynn’s speech, dozens of pas­tors stood right behind him; in total, 150 pas­tors had just signed a pledge to become part of the reg­i­ment. Flynn’s group was found­ed by Vir­ginia pas­tor William Cook with the aim of putting a Black Robe pas­tor in every sin­gle con­stituen­cy in the Unit­ed States. This new iter­a­tion of the group wants pas­tors to preach the gospel of Trump, active­ly spread con­spir­a­cies about COVID vac­cines and stolen elec­tions, and get more involved in local pol­i­tics. Many of the pas­tors aligned with the move­ment were involved in the Capi­tol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, includ­ing sev­er­al who encour­aged their flocks to take part in the protest and then trav­eled to D.C. them­selves. And experts wor­ry that their incen­di­ary lan­guage about spir­i­tu­al war­fare could incite real-world vio­lence.

    Cook’s orga­ni­za­tion is grow­ing fast: An old web­site full of dead ends and miss­ing con­tent has been replaced by a slick new site with Pay­Pal links and sign-up forms. Cook has already estab­lished out­posts across the coun­try that are mak­ing inroads into local and state gov­ern­ment, and he has the back­ing of some of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures with­in the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing long­time Trump advis­er Paula White.

    And, with the back­ing of Fly­nn, who has attained a God-like sta­tus among huge swaths of the Amer­i­can right over the last cou­ple of years, this iter­a­tion of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment could become much more real than its nonex­is­tent ances­tors. They could actu­al­ly pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat to Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.

    ...

    “If Cook can actu­al­ly turn this into a real orga­ni­za­tion, as opposed to a pub­lic­i­ty stunt with the kind of real­ly mil­i­tant or often­times, apoc­a­lyp­tic rhetoric from Fly­nn, that’ll make him gen­uine­ly dan­ger­ous,” Thomas Lecaque, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Grand View Uni­ver­si­ty in Des Moines, Iowa, told VICE News.

    Mem­bers of these groups have already advo­cat­ed for vio­lence and took part in the Capi­tol riot. Ten­nessee Pas­tors Ken Peters and Greg Locke and Ken­tucky Pas­tor Bri­an Gib­son, all of whom sub­scribe to the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment, encour­aged their fol­low­ers to trav­el to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Peters and Locke were also both present at the insur­rec­tion (nei­ther has been charged with any crimes). “If you can make it, please come to DC. Get there maybe on Tues­day, or get there ear­ly on Wednes­day. I think the stuff starts around 10 in the morn­ing, alright? So you want to be with­in strik­ing dis­tance,” Peters told his flock days before the riot.

    ...

    “This vio­lent, spir­i­tu­al war­fare rhetoric can inspire peo­ple and lead to actu­al phys­i­cal vio­lence like we saw on Jan­u­ary 6,” Bri­an Kay­lor, a for­mer Bap­tist min­is­ter and edi­tor-in-chief of Chris­t­ian pub­li­ca­tion Word & Way, told VICE News. “And so the embrace of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment by peo­ple who cheered on the insur­rec­tion could help inspire more vio­lence in the future.”
    ...

    But, of course, the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment isn’t just about rad­i­cal­iz­ing pas­tors. It’s about rad­i­cal­iz­ing entire con­gre­ga­tions into a rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor fueled by a sense of reli­gious right­eous­ness but also a call to patri­ot­ic rev­o­lu­tion but­tressed by fear that the entire coun­try has been stolen through mass elec­toral fraud. It’s like a Molo­tov cock­tail for civ­il soci­ety:

    ...
    Days before the midterm elec­tions, Pas­tor David MacLel­lan was ready to preach far-right pol­i­tics through Bible vers­es to his small con­gre­ga­tion. MacLel­lan, a hulk­ing man with a long, griz­zled black beard, isn’t an ordi­nary pas­tor. He proud­ly iden­ti­fies him­self as a far-right, extrem­ist pas­tor and a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist, some­one who believes Amer­i­can pol­i­tics should reflect fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian val­ues.

    And he’s part of a grow­ing nation­al reli­gious polit­i­cal move­ment called the Black Robe Reg­i­ment, a mod­ern-day group inspired by a myth of a group of mil­i­tant pas­tors dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion who took up arms to lead their flock into bat­tle against the British. The move­ment, imbued with sup­port from far-right polit­i­cal activists like Michael Fly­nn, wants pas­tors to play a cen­tral role in not only preach­ing pol­i­tics from the pul­pit but also active­ly get­ting their con­gre­ga­tions to rise up and claim elec­tion fraud by weav­ing myths about the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion togeth­er with mod­ern-day con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and hard-line Chris­tian­i­ty. These pas­tors believe they’re sav­ing democ­ra­cy, though what they’re real­ly doing is encour­ag­ing sup­port­ers to under­mine the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.
    ...

    Oth­er fig­ures involved with pro­mot­ing the move­ment include Allen West and even Roger Stone. The Black Robe Reg­i­ment con­cept has obvi­ous appeal to more than just fringe pas­tors in the age of Trump:

    ...
    Anoth­er Black Robe Reg­i­ment group is based around the Patri­ot Church move­ment led by Peters, which includesQAnon-spout­ing Locke, who spoke at a ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., the night before the attack on the Capi­tol .

    Allen West, a for­mer Ccn­gress­man and most recent­ly the chair of the Texas GOP, is also try­ing to revive the group. In a video post­ed to YouTube in Jule, West out­lined a scheme to hon­or two pas­tors every month who embody the “spir­it of the Black Robe Reg­i­ment.” The win­ners of the award will each receive an engraved tom­a­hawk.

    “It’s this nar­ra­tive of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism tied into the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion in ways that are aggres­sive­ly ahis­tor­i­cal, but now has over a decade-long tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can far-right pol­i­tics, that kind of stuff con­cerns me,” Lecaque said. “The fact that all of these lit­tle groups are pop­ping out of the wood­work to latch on to this rhetoric and lan­guage, it feels accel­er­a­tionist.”

    These groups have drawn sup­port from dis­parate fig­ures like for­mer Trump advis­er Roger Stone and Pas­tor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, the head of the gun-tot­ing Rod of Iron Min­istries church and son of the founder of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, whose fol­low­ers were known as the Moonies.

    “These groups don’t like each oth­er and they’re going to end up fight­ing for influ­ence, [but] I think it’s con­cern­ing that all of them think that there’s a big enough mar­ket to sup­port this many dif­fer­ent iterations—and that that seems to actu­al­ly be true,” Lecaque added.
    ...

    And then there’s this inter­est­ing claim by Bill Book: he spoke with Eric Trump to dis­cuss the move­ment. Shock­ing, per­haps. But not sur­pris­ing:

    ...
    In recent months, Cook has ramped up recruit­ment efforts, hold­ing a pas­tor sum­mit promis­ing “Bib­li­cal train­ing on how to become a Black Robed preach­er in the 21st cen­tu­ry” in Octo­ber. At the end of the month, Cook and Fly­nn were back at anoth­er edi­tion of the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour, where more pas­tors were “com­mis­sioned,” accord­ing to a video of the event reviewed by VICE News.

    Cook also claimed that he had spo­ken to Eric Trump at the event and they had dis­cussed Cook’s move­ment. Cook announced at that event that his Black Robe Reg­i­ment orga­ni­za­tion had already estab­lished out­posts in 25 states, and that more pas­tors were sign­ing up quick­ly. Cook also claimed that he had spo­ken to Eric Trump at the event and they had dis­cussed Cook’s move­ment.
    ...

    Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is even on board with the agen­da. Along with long-time Trump spir­i­tu­al advi­sor Paula White. Keep all these peo­ple in mind the next time you hear some­one like Ralph Reed try to dis­miss this as a fringe:

    ...
    But with the back­ing of Fly­nn, and his loy­al audi­ence on the right, Cook’s new group could become the most promi­nent group nation­al­ly.

    Some of the new reg­i­ments under Cook’s umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion, like the one run by Pas­tor Stephen Man­nion in New York, are still in the process of get­ting the word out about their group.

    “We are expand­ing our net­work, let­ting groups know that we exist,” Man­nion told par­tic­i­pants on an August webi­nar Cook ran for pas­tors in his group. “We all know at some point stuff’s going to heat up again and the church which doesn’t want to get involved in pol­i­tics will be forced to get involved in pol­i­tics, and they are going to need a place to land,” Man­nion added.

    ...

    And some groups appear to be much fur­ther ahead in their efforts to make inroads with local gov­ern­ments.

    Kei­th Hem­mi­la, a senior pas­tor with Cross­fire Church in Rock­ford, Michi­gan, told Cook that his group wel­comed Overstock.com founder and one of the major financiers of the Stop the Steal move­ment, Patrick Byrne, this month, as well as for­mer Repub­li­can mem­ber of the Michi­gan Sen­ate, Patrick Col­beck. Paula White, the Pen­ta­costal megachurch pas­tor and long­time Trump advis­er, was on the call as well. Last year, White was appoint­ed to head up the for­mer president’s nation­al faith advi­so­ry board, the for­ma­tion of which many took as a sign that Trump was plan­ning to run for pres­i­dent again in 2024.
    ...

    And when we see Domin­ion­ist leader Lance Wall­nau par­tic­i­pat­ing in these meet­ings, it’s a reminder that the Black Robe Reg­i­men­t’s ulti­mate goal is effec­tive­ly Domin­ion­ism. The kind of Domin­ion­ism we’ve seen repeat­ed advanced by the CNP and its allies. Recall how Wall­nau sites on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, a group that works close­ly with the CNP-backed Moms for Lib­er­ty. Also recall how Wall­nau was push­ing the idea that Don­ald Trump is a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure King Cyrus, back in 2017. For a fringe the­ol­o­gy, it sure has a lot of promi­nent advo­cates:

    ...
    Also present was Lance Wall­nau, a Texas-based evan­ge­list and an influ­en­tial fig­ure in the domin­ion­ist New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion move­ment, which calls for Chris­t­ian con­trol of vir­tu­al­ly every aspect of cul­ture and pol­i­tics. He has a his­to­ry of mak­ing out­landish claims, like call­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden the “Antichrist” and spread­ing homo­pho­bic con­spir­a­cy theories—like his claim in 2017 that reformed pros­ti­tutes turned the own­er of a gay bar straight by bak­ing him an “anoint­ed cake.

    Dur­ing the webi­nar, Wall­nau said that pas­tors should be engaged in “spir­i­tu­al war­fare,” fight­ing back against per­ceived threats such as child groom­ing, crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, and trans­gen­der rights. He described the Black Robe Reg­i­ment as a “pop­ulist move­ment of cit­i­zen saints… It’s the clos­est thing we have to rev­o­lu­tion­ary patri­ot inter­ven­tion.”

    Wall­nau has been stump­ing for the Trump-endorsed Penn­syl­va­nia guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Mas­tri­ano, a major boost­er of Trump’s elec­tion con­spir­a­cies and pro­mot­er of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs. The far-right pas­tor recent­ly stoked con­tro­ver­sy when he took part in a ral­ly for Mas­tri­ano where he asked the audi­ence to raise their right hands in uni­son, a ges­ture that some crit­ics said resem­bled a Nazi salute.
    ...

    Final­ly, since we’re talk­ing about a theo­crat­ic move­ment intent on cap­tur­ing the whole of soci­ety, it’s worth keep in mind the ‘clas­sic’ memes we often see in rela­tion to move­ments intent on cap­tur­ing a soci­ety. That would of course be ‘Jews con­trol the world’ nar­ra­tives. The kind of nar­ra­tives that have alarm­ing lev­els of syn­er­gy with this broad­er move­ment:

    ...
    And MacLel­lan plans to take an active role: He’s con­vinced that the 2020 elec­tion was stolen and that fraud has already been com­mit­ted in the 2022 midterms. He wants his con­gre­gants to fight back.

    ...

    His ser­mon mixed Bible vers­es with remarks about evo­lu­tion, made claims of vio­lence against anti-abor­tion groups, and described Jew­ish peo­ple as a “wealthy group of peo­ple who didn’t believe in heav­en or hell, didn’t believe in angels, and they had polit­i­cal con­trol over every­thing.”

    ...

    Though MacLel­lan, the Ari­zona pas­tor, is not affil­i­at­ed with Cook’s group, he holds the same beliefs about the cen­tral role the church needs to play in Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life.

    For now, his reach is lim­it­ed. There are just 17 peo­ple in MacLellan’s con­gre­ga­tion. And at a ser­vice last Sunday—held in the liv­ing room of his home in Mesa just days before the midterm elections—only four peo­ple showed up.

    ...

    As is the case with much mod­ern Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist rhetoric, anti­semitism fig­ures promi­nent­ly in MacLellan’s the­o­log­i­cal out­look.

    His per­son­al Face­book page is full of memes tar­get­ing Jew­ish peo­ple. One recent post fea­tured a par­a­site-like crea­ture, embla­zoned with the Star of David, suf­fo­cat­ing the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. Anoth­er makes ref­er­ence to the “Syn­a­gogue of Satan.”

    When VICE News asked him about his anti­semitism, he appeared unfazed. Judaism, he said, is an “Antichrist reli­gion.” He also not­ed that the “whole con­cept of anti­semitism is big now, espe­cial­ly with Kanye West mak­ing a state­ment.”

    Unlike oth­ers in the move­ment, who often couch anti-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments in dog whis­tles and euphemisms, MacLel­lan is unapolo­getic. But ulti­mate­ly, the Black Robe Reg­i­ment move­ment wants to return the coun­try to what they see as its found­ing Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples. Fig­ures like Cook and Fly­nn want to use these pas­tors to fur­ther their belief that the Unit­ed States should revert to a Chris­t­ian nation, one where the only accept­ed reli­gion is Chris­tian­i­ty. “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,” Fly­nn said dur­ing a pre­vi­ous stop on the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour.
    ...

    As we can see, this move­ment did­n’t just main­tain the momen­tum it acquired after Jan­u­ary 6 but has been build­ing that momen­tum. And as the fol­low­ing Jan­u­ary 2024 arti­cle makes clear, the Black Robe Reg­i­ment did­n’t sud­den­ly fade away fol­low­ing the 2022 midterms. Instead, we find Bill Cook open­ly opin­ing about how elec­tion fraud could be cured if a few peo­ple start­ed drop­ping dead:

    Newsweek

    Rev­erend Warns Elec­tion Fraud Will Have Peo­ple ‘Struck Dead by God’

    Pub­lished Jan 17, 2024 at 6:05 PM EST
    By Natal­ie Vene­gas

    A Vir­ginia rev­erend issues a warn­ing on elec­tion fraud, stat­ing that it will have peo­ple “struck dead by God”

    For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, the fron­trun­ner for the 2024 GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion was indict­ed on four counts in August by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) in rela­tion to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capi­tol riot. Spe­cial Coun­sel Jack Smith has led the DOJ inves­ti­ga­tion, accus­ing Trump of attempt­ing to over­turn the results of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that led to the U.S. Capi­tol riot. The for­mer pres­i­dent, with­out any evi­dence, claimed that the elec­tion was stolen from him via wide­spread vot­er fraud. Trump has pled not guilty and has said that the case against him is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

    How­ev­er, since the 2020 elec­tions, debates over elec­tion fraud and vot­er rights have increased as vot­ing mea­sures con­tin­ue to take hits across the coun­try.

    Dur­ing a recent episode of his “Amer­i­ca’s Black Robe Reg­i­ment” pro­gram, Rev­erend Bill Cook announced that his orga­ni­za­tion is going to be “com­bat­ing elec­tion fraud” dur­ing the 2024 elec­tions.

    While speak­ing with Alex New­man, an exec­u­tive edi­tor at The Lib­er­ty Sen­tinel, Cook ref­er­enced a verse from the Bible, seem­ing­ly warn­ing that any­one “involved in elec­tion fraud” will be “struck dead by God.”

    “You read about what hap­pened to Ana­nias and Sap­phi­ra in Acts 5 when they lied to the holy spir­it, they were struck dead by God. We are going to bring that sto­ry to bear on every­one who is involved in elec­tion fraud. We are going to be say­ing to them beware when you do this because you might just find your­self stand­ing before God a lot more soon­er than you thought. It’s not going to be a hap­py time when you do,” Cook said.

    Cook, who is the founder of Amer­i­ca’s Black Robe Reg­i­ment, a fel­low­ship of Vir­ginia cler­gy and lay min­is­ters who iden­ti­fy with the faith, patri­o­tism and fight­ing spir­it of the Rev. Gen­er­al John Peter Gabriel Muh­len­berg, con­tin­ued by stat­ing it would “cure” elec­tion fraud.

    “Noth­ing would cure elec­tion fraud like a cou­ple peo­ple drop­ping dead in the moment,” Cook added.

    ...

    Accord­ing to Right Wing Watch, this is not the first time Cook has made com­ments sug­gest­ing vio­lence. In July, Cook issued a sim­i­lar warn­ing to FBI agents when he declared that God would soon start killing them and send­ing them to Hell for arrest­ing those involved in the Jan­u­ary 6 U.S. Capi­tol riot, Right Wing Watch report­ed..

    ...

    ————

    “Rev­erend Warns Elec­tion Fraud Will Have Peo­ple ‘Struck Dead by God’ ” By Natal­ie Vene­gas; Newsweek; 01/17/2024

    “While speak­ing with Alex New­man, an exec­u­tive edi­tor at The Lib­er­ty Sen­tinel, Cook ref­er­enced a verse from the Bible, seem­ing­ly warn­ing that any­one “involved in elec­tion fraud” will be “struck dead by God.””

    God will strike down the evil-doers. This is where we are. It’s not an open death threat against those accused of vague “elec­tion fraud” charges. But it’s not not a death threat either. And note how Cook seemed to be sug­gest­ing that peo­ple dying in the lead up to the 2024 elec­tion might help pre­vent the mass elec­tion fraud he warned against: “Noth­ing would cure elec­tion fraud like a cou­ple peo­ple drop­ping dead in the moment”:

    ...
    “You read about what hap­pened to Ana­nias and Sap­phi­ra in Acts 5 when they lied to the holy spir­it, they were struck dead by God. We are going to bring that sto­ry to bear on every­one who is involved in elec­tion fraud. We are going to be say­ing to them beware when you do this because you might just find your­self stand­ing before God a lot more soon­er than you thought. It’s not going to be a hap­py time when you do,” Cook said.

    Cook, who is the founder of Amer­i­ca’s Black Robe Reg­i­ment, a fel­low­ship of Vir­ginia cler­gy and lay min­is­ters who iden­ti­fy with the faith, patri­o­tism and fight­ing spir­it of the Rev. Gen­er­al John Peter Gabriel Muh­len­berg, con­tin­ued by stat­ing it would “cure” elec­tion fraud.

    “Noth­ing would cure elec­tion fraud like a cou­ple peo­ple drop­ping dead in the moment,” Cook added.
    ...

    Are we going to see a wave of dead elec­tion work­ers in 2024? Let’s hope not, but we don’t need to see some­one show up dead for these kinds of threats to work. Sim­ply intim­i­dat­ing hon­est peo­ple who oth­er­wise may have agreed to be elec­tion work­ers could be enough.

    But, of course, the move­ment we’re talk­ing about is capa­ble of far more than just intim­i­dat­ing elec­tion work­ers. The Black Robe Reg­i­ment is led by the peo­ple who helped make Jan­u­ary 6 hap­pen, after all. They have a track record. One of open vio­lent insur­rec­tion. And it’s hard to imag­ine they won’t right­eous­ly foment anoth­er insur­rec­tion, or worse, should the need arise.

    Either Trump wins, or the US expe­ri­ences ‘blood­bath’. It’s not just Trump’s pledge to Amer­i­ca. The Black Robe Reg­i­ment is on a mis­sion from God to not just see Trump return to office, but also help Trump imple­ment the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist vision for the future that he’s more or less open­ly cam­paign­ing on at this point. “Make Amer­i­ca Pray Again” isn’t just Trump Bible sales pitch. It’s a pre­view. A pre­view of the future of Repub­li­can Par­ty and the future of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. Con­ve­nient­ly, it’s a sin­gle pre­view since we’re talk­ing about a merg­er of pol­i­tics and reli­gion. Or at least it will be real­ly con­ve­nient for all the self-appoint­ed divine­ly cho­sen lead­ers. Not so much for real Chris­tians or basi­cal­ly any­one else.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 2, 2024, 12:11 am
  22. Don­ald Trump is an instru­ment of divine prov­i­dence. Of that there’s no doubt. Who can doubt all the empir­i­cal evi­dence? At least that’s how Steve Ban­non sees it. As Ban­non assert­ed on his April 1, 2024 ‘War Room’ episode, a big part of the rea­son Trump’s sup­port­ers con­tin­ue to sup­port him is that they rec­og­nize he’s a ves­sel for God’s will. Who can argue with that?

    But, of course, Ban­non — a long-time mem­ber of the theo­crat­ic Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) — is far from the only fig­ure mak­ing these divine prov­i­dence claims. Nor is this the first time he’s assert­ed that Trump is a divine agent. There’s a ‘divine Trump’ cot­tage indus­try at this point. And as we’re going to see, this cot­tage indus­try isn’t just mak­ing claims about Trump’s divine back­ing. They’re issu­ing prophe­cies. Grant­ed, many of those prophe­cies have already fiz­zled out, but the prophe­cies are still com­ing, thanks in large part to the fact that so many prophe­cy-ori­ent­ed Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers appear to be huge Trump fans. And, obvi­ous­ly, also thanks to the raw shame­lessess of these ‘prophets’. Their shame­less­ness — issu­ing one failed prophe­cy after anoth­er — is a key ingre­di­ent to this sto­ry.

    And as we should expect, Trump and his fam­i­ly are more than hap­py to embrace this divine role. For exam­ple„ it was back in May of 2023 when the Trump-owned Doral resort host­ed a back-to-back week­end of ‘divive Trump’ events that fea­tured a call-in phone vis­it by Trump. The week­end start­ed off with a Fri­day event for Pas­tors for Trump, fol­lowed by a Sat­ur­day event for the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour.

    As we’ve seen, Pas­tors for Trump and the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour are close­ly inter­twined orga­ni­za­tions. Recall how Pas­tors for Trump was start­ed by Tul­sa, Okla­homa, pas­tor Jack­son Lah­mey­er. ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca, which was launched in ear­ly 2021, was found­ed by Clay Clark, a mem­ber of Lah­mey­er’s church. Lah­mey­er has been a reg­u­lar attendee of the ReAwak­en events.

    And as we’ve also seen, the con­tent at these ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events — co-host­ed by Michael Fly­nn — have been so extrem­ist that even some extrem­ists have felt the need to dis­tance them­selves from the tour at the same time the Trump world has been embrac­ing the tour. For exam­ple, these events have fea­tured a num­ber of Trump-world fig­ures, includ­ing Kath Patel and even Eric Trump. Along with QAnon fig­ures like Scott Mck­ay and Ann Van­der­steel. As we saw, McK­ay, who has a his­to­ry of mak­ing claims like “Hitler was actu­al­ly fight­ing the same peo­ple that we’re try­ing to take down today”, has fre­quent­ly appeared at these events and even appeared on stage with Eric Trump. And it was Novem­ber 2021, when pas­tor John Hagee’s Cor­ner­stone Church host­ed one of these events, where Fly­nn open­ly declared that “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.” Hagee sub­se­quent­ly released a state­ment about how his church did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly endorse Fly­n­n’s views.

    And yet, while the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour mes­sage may have been too con­tro­ver­sial for some evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to embrace in 2021, it’s not clear that’s still the case in 2024. Espe­cial­ly now that Don­ald Trump has secured the GOP nom­i­na­tion and appears to be open­ly run­ning as some sort of ‘God’s vengeance’ overt Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist can­di­date. In oth­er words, expect to hear a lot more procla­ma­tions from Steve Ban­non and oth­ers about Trump’s divine man­date the clos­er we get to Elec­tion Day.

    But as we’re going to see, there’s anoth­er rea­son we should prob­a­bly expect more pas­tors to jump about the ‘divine Trump’ train: claim­ing a divine man­date is prob­a­bly the best get-out-the-vote strat­e­gy avail­able to Trump as this point. At least when it comes to the evan­gel­i­cal base that is cru­cial for his vic­to­ry.

    And then there’s the ‘prophets’, who can’t help but issue one ‘mes­sage from God’ after anoth­er about how Don­ald Trump is poised to van­quish all his ene­mies any day now. And enrich his fol­low­ers in the process. For exam­ple, at the Pas­tors for Trump event at the Doral last year, we found Sta­cy Whit­ed, a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist media per­son­al­i­ty who told the audi­ence that not only will Trump be back for a sec­ond term but that he’s going to trig­ger a mas­sive wealth trans­fer due to the great “trans­fer­ence of wealth from the wicked to the right­eous” com­ing, adding “imag­ine when we part­ner with God, the Cre­ator of the uni­verse, what we’re going to do with this mon­ey.”

    The next day, dur­ing the Sat­ur­day ReAwak­en event, ‘prophet’ Julie Green pre­dict­ed the immi­nent col­lapse of the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, explain­ing “That’s what the Lord is say­ing.” Green went on to describe the US as being in midst of anoth­er “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War”. But don’t assume the fail­ure of Green’s Biden-col­lapse prophe­cy deterred her from issu­ing more Trump-relat­ed prophe­cies. That’s not how this works. Back in Sep­tem­ber, Green wel­comed none oth­er than Eric Trump and Clay Clark on her pod­cast, where she assert­ed that Eric’s dad was being pro­tect­ed by God sim­i­lar to how God pro­tect­ed the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of David. As Green put it, “no mat­ter what they’re going to try to do to your dad, it will not go the way they want it. It will not go the way they want it because God’s on his side, and he’s called him his David.”

    And that brings us to Julie Green’s New Years Day mes­sage from God she decid­ed to share at the begin­ning of the year: “My chil­dren, the time has come. A time that you have been wait­ing for. A rein­state­ment. A shift of pow­er. A new gov­ern­ment in con­trol. An over­throw, and a takeover in this nation from the hands of the wicked, to the hands of the right­eous.” Green went on to add that a “coup is about to be dis­rupt­ed and anni­hi­lat­ed,” with those involved “exposed and removed.”

    That’s all part of the con­text of Steve Ban­non’s recent ‘Trumpian divine prov­i­dence’ rant. Not only is Ban­non not alone in ascrib­ing divine motives to Trump’s actions but all indi­ca­tions are this nar­ra­tive is poised to explode over the 2024 elec­tion year. A vote for Trump is a vote for God’s wrath upon the ene­mies of Chris­tian­i­ty. It’s the ulti­mate get-out-the-vote strat­e­gy. Which dou­bles as the ulti­mate man­date for the upcom­ing purge after Trump wins:

    Media Mat­ters

    Steve Ban­non: “There’s empir­i­cal evi­dence” that Trump is an “instru­ment of divine prov­i­dence”

    Ban­non: “He’s doing God’s will”

    Writ­ten by Media Mat­ters Staff
    Pub­lished 04/01/24 5:59 PM EDT

    Cita­tion From the April 1, 2024, edi­tion of Real Amer­i­ca’s Voice’s War Room

    STEVE BANNON (HOST): They hate him because they under­stand your com­mit­ment to him and part of your com­mit­ment is you under­stand, wait for it MSNBC, wait for it, wait for it, no, don’t, wait for it, he is an instru­ment of divine prov­i­dence. Yep. He is. Of that there’s no doubt. There’s empir­i­cal evi­dence of that. This is one of the rea­sons peo­ple sup­port him because they under­stand he’s doing God’s will to save this repub­lic when all ratio­nal­i­ty said no, let me not do that, they win. Trump wouldn’t do that. Trump would nev­er quit. Trump would nev­er back down and that’s why they hate him and that’s why they must destroy him.

    ———–

    “Steve Ban­non: “There’s empir­i­cal evi­dence” that Trump is an “instru­ment of divine prov­i­dence”” by Media Mat­ters Staff; Media Mat­ters; 04/01/2024

    No doubt about it. The evi­dence of Don­ald Trump’s divine prov­i­dence is empir­i­cal. At least that’s how long-time CNP mem­ber Steve Ban­non sees it.

    And while actu­al evi­dence for Trump’s divine man­date is, let’s just say, more sub­jec­tive than empir­i­cal, what is empir­i­cal­ly estab­lished at this point is the ele­va­tion of Trump to divine sta­tus by a grow­ing num­ber of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. Along with the grow­ing empir­i­cal evi­dence that Trump is more than hap­py to embrace this role. And as an expert warns in the fol­low­ing Guardian arti­cle, a big part of what is dri­ving the evan­gel­i­cal base’s enthu­si­asm for Trump is a sense of per­se­cu­tion direct­ed against not just Trump but them­selves. And the more Trump is mocked for his overt embrace of these divine nar­ra­tives, the more his sup­port­ers are like­ly to feel mocked and per­se­cut­ed them­selves. So get ready for Trump to dou­ble and triple down on these divine nar­ra­tives know­ing full well that it’s going to invite all sorts of ridicule. That ridicule is just more fuel for this theo­crat­ic fire. That’s the state of affairs in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics in 2024. A dement­ed hellscape:

    The Guardian

    Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists embrace Trump as their sav­ior – will they be his?

    Chris­tians opposed to infi­deli­ty and immoral­i­ty have embraced a thrice-mar­ried man who can’t name a sin­gle Bible verse

    Adam Gab­batt
    Sun 7 Apr 2024 07.00 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Sun 7 Apr 2024 14.48 EDT

    A thrice-mar­ried man who refers to the Eucharist as a “lit­tle crack­er”, was appar­ent­ly unable to name a sin­gle Bible verse and says he has nev­er asked God for for­give­ness was always an unlike­ly hero for the most con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians in the US.

    But in both 2016 and 2020, Don­ald Trump resound­ing­ly won the vote of white evan­gel­i­cals. Now, with Trump hav­ing almost cer­tain­ly secured the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for 2024 and eye­ing a return to the White House, his cam­paign is dou­bling down on reli­gious imagery, secur­ing the evan­gel­i­cal base and sig­nal­ing sym­pa­thies with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism.

    Indeed, the for­mer US president’s rela­tion­ship with the reli­gious right has deep­ened so much that Trump is now com­fort­able with com­par­ing him­self to their mes­si­ah.

    “And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned par­adise, and said: ‘I need a care­tak­er,’” booms a video that Trump shared on his Truth Social account, and that has been played at some of his ral­lies.

    “So God gave us Trump.”

    The video, made by Dil­ley Meme Team, a group of Trump sup­port­ers, con­tin­ues:

    “God said: ‘I need some­body will­ing to get up before dawn, fix this coun­try, work all day, fight the Marx­ists, eat sup­per, then go to the Oval Office and stay up past mid­night at a meet­ing of the heads of state.’ So God made Trump.”

    ...

    Now, Trump is believ­ing the hype he’s received from some on the reli­gious right: that he has been cho­sen, or anoint­ed, by God him­self.

    He has increas­ing­ly begun to lean into the rightwing social con­ser­vatism that white evan­gel­i­cals – who make up 14% of Amer­i­cans – favor. That was clear in Feb­ru­ary, when Trump spoke at the Nation­al Reli­gious Broad­cast­ers con­ven­tion (NRBC), a gath­er­ing of the kind of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians who lead mega-church­es, host tel­e­van­ge­list shows and claim to receive prophe­cies from God.

    Trump said in that address that there was an “anti-Chris­t­ian bias” in the US, and promised that he would cre­ate a task­force to inves­ti­gate “dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment and per­se­cu­tion against Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca”.

    While Trump eas­i­ly won the white evan­gel­i­cal vote in his pre­vi­ous two pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, Kristin Du Mez, a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry and gen­der stud­ies at Calvin Uni­ver­si­ty whose research focus­es on the inter­sec­tion of gen­der, reli­gion and pol­i­tics, said this elec­tion cycle sees him lean­ing even fur­ther into this appeal.

    Du Mez said his speech at the NRBC was “a new lev­el we haven’t often seen”.

    “He was promis­ing [the evan­gel­i­cal audi­ence] pow­er, but in much more explic­it terms,” she said. “And he was real­ly lean­ing into this lan­guage of cul­ture wars, of reli­gious wars: that he was going to pro­tect their inter­ests and pro­tect their pow­er against the ene­mies – against fel­low Amer­i­cans, against lib­er­als, against the ene­mies who were try­ing to per­se­cute Chris­tians, who were per­se­cut­ing Chris­tians.”

    The “God made Trump” video is not the only exam­ple of Trump see­ing him­self as a deity. On 25 March, Trump said on his Truth Social account that he had received the fol­low­ing mes­sage from a sup­port­er:

    “It’s iron­ic that Christ walked through His great­est per­se­cu­tion the very week they are try­ing to steal your prop­er­ty from you.”

    It fol­lows Trump shar­ing a fake court sketch in late 2023, pub­lished dur­ing Trump’s fraud tri­al in New York, which shows him seat­ed beside Jesus Christ.

    About 85% of white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant vot­ers who fre­quent­ly attend reli­gious ser­vices vot­ed for Trump in 2020, Pew Research found, as did 81% of those who attend less fre­quent­ly.

    Secur­ing, and adding to, that vote could be key to a Trump vic­to­ry. Du Mez point­ed to research by the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute that shows how cru­cial the evan­gel­i­cal vote is in swing states. Evan­gel­i­cals make up about a quar­ter of res­i­dents in Geor­gia and North Car­oli­na, 16% of the pop­u­la­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia and about 12% of vot­ers in Wis­con­sin.

    Biden beat Trump in all but North Car­oli­na in 2020. Giv­en the lack of enthu­si­asm for both can­di­dates, both men are des­per­ate to win every pos­si­ble vote in what is expect­ed to be a tight elec­tion.

    It helps Trump that evan­gel­i­cals feel under attack. Since 2015, he has told his sup­port­ers that they are looked down on by lib­er­al elites, and that their rights are threat­ened. That same mes­sage res­onates with some reli­gious vot­ers, Du Mez said, who could also resent the mock­ery of Trump’s imag­in­ing him­self as Jesus Christ.

    “It only rein­forces the scripts that they’ve been hand­ed, which is that the left is out to get you and they are mock­ing and they have no respect for your faith,” Du Mez said.

    While Trump has long enjoyed pop­u­lar­i­ty among evan­gel­i­cals, and has been court­ed by lead­ers includ­ing tel­e­van­ge­lists and pas­tors at mega-church­es, this is the first elec­tion cycle in which he has been con­fi­dent enough to com­pare him­self to Jesus Christ. So, what’s changed?

    Trump “has been get­ting this mes­sage from these folks for years now”, said Matthew D Tay­lor, author of The Vio­lent Take It by Force: The Chris­t­ian Move­ment That Is Threat­en­ing Our Democ­ra­cy, recall­ing the sight of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers pray­ing over Trump dur­ing his time in office.

    The thirst for Trump as a bib­li­cal fig­ure can be traced to the unique way he ascend­ed to become an evan­gel­i­cal favorite, Tay­lor said: when he launched his cam­paign in June 2015, few in “respectable evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles” want­ed any­thing to do with the brash, twice-divorced, self-pro­claimed bil­lion­aire.

    It made sense. This was a man who, dur­ing his first pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, mem­o­rably mis­named the body of Christ, and while at church put cash in a plate that is meant to hold the com­mu­nion. Dur­ing his ear­ly for­ays into reli­gious out­reach, Trump was asked to name his favorite verse in the Bible, and couldn’t name one – asked again three weeks lat­er, he named one that doesn’t exist.

    He enlist­ed Paula White as his spir­i­tu­al advis­er, and charged her with bring­ing the evan­gel­i­cal elites onboard. The prob­lem was that White, her­self a thrice-mar­ried mul­ti­mil­lion­aire who preach­es the idea that God will bestow wealth on his fol­low­ers, didn’t move in those cir­cles.

    Tay­lor not­ed that White’s allies were among fel­low pros­per­i­ty gospel preach­ers and “new apos­tolic ref­or­ma­tion lead­ers” – a move­ment that seeks to inject Chris­tian­i­ty into pol­i­tics, the judi­cia­ry, the media and busi­ness.

    “These folks were real­ly on the mar­gins not only of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, but of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals. They were seen as kind of low­brow and pros­per­i­ty gospel types and tel­e­van­ge­lists. They were seen as kind of a laugh­able sec­tor of evan­gel­i­cal­ism in respectable evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles,” Tay­lor said.

    As Trump won pri­ma­ry elec­tions in state after state, the respectable evan­gel­i­cals were able to over­come their moral objec­tions to him being the Repub­li­can can­di­date.

    But by this point, Trump’s main advis­ers were cement­ed as the type of reli­gious lead­ers once scoffed at by the reli­gious elites. Trump con­tin­ued to rely on the Paula Whites of this world, and the more far-out reli­gious lead­ers won influ­ence – and are set to have even more if he wins in 2024.

    “Those are the type of peo­ple I think Trump would be bring­ing in to help shape pol­i­cy, help shape iden­ti­ty,” Tay­lor said.

    “These aren’t the kind of peo­ple who are pol­i­cy wonks, but there are Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists who have very clear agen­da items, espe­cial­ly on top­ics like abor­tion, on top­ics like sup­port for Israel, on top­ics like reli­gious free­dom, on top­ics such as LGBTQ +rights.

    “Trump has sur­round­ed him­self and has brought into his White House advis­ers ech­e­lons some very, very extreme Chris­t­ian voic­es. And he seems to be at the very least play­ing foot­sie with them, if not overt­ly endors­ing some of their ideas.”

    ...

    There are also warn­ing signs, Tay­lor said, should Trump again refuse to con­cede the elec­tion – and if his sup­port­ers once more inter­pret his rhetoric as a call to attack the home of US democ­ra­cy.

    Trump’s reli­gious sup­port­ers were among those at the Capi­tol dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion. Tay­lor said he was see­ing “more and more of this cross-pol­li­na­tion between far-right and even overt­ly racist ele­ments and these spir­i­tu­al war­riors”.

    “When you are mix­ing white nation­al­ism and neo-Nazi ideas with very heavy reli­gious fer­vor and process­es, that is a very, very dan­ger­ous mix,” Tay­lor said.

    “Because it’s encour­ag­ing more and more peo­ple to do extra­or­di­nary things, if they feel like their coun­try is slip­ping away from them.”

    ————–

    “Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists embrace Trump as their sav­ior – will they be his?” by Adam Gab­batt; The Guardian; 04/07/2024

    “While Trump has long enjoyed pop­u­lar­i­ty among evan­gel­i­cals, and has been court­ed by lead­ers includ­ing tel­e­van­ge­lists and pas­tors at mega-church­es, this is the first elec­tion cycle in which he has been con­fi­dent enough to com­pare him­self to Jesus Christ. So, what’s changed?”

    He’s not hid­ing it any­more. Trump is a Christ-like fig­ure who is sac­ri­fic­ing him­self for God’s glo­ry and the pro­tec­tion of per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians. Trump is appar­ent­ly com­fort­able enough in this role to make it part of his 2024 cam­paign pitch. Trump’s vic­to­ry won’t just be the start of Trump’s reign of vengeance against his ene­mies. It will be God’s vengeance too. The wrath of God, chan­neled through Trump. That’s the mes­sage we’re hear­ing in this 2024 cam­paign in speech­es like the one he deliv­ered at the Nation­al Reli­gious Broad­cast­ers (NRB) con­ven­tion back in Feb­ru­ary. A mes­sage that was pre­sum­ably very well received giv­en that the NRB is effec­tive­ly an arm of the CNP. Recall how the 2023 NRB con­ven­tion fea­tured Michael Far­ris and Mark Meck­ler of the Con­ven­tion of States project where they made clear that they are still very inter­est­ed in over­haul­ing the US Con­sti­tu­tion by trig­ger­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion. Far­ris also became the group’s legal coun­sel that year, mak­ing Far­ris one of the many CNP-con­nect­ed fig­ures involved with the NRB lead­er­ship. That’s a key part of the con­text of Trump’s embrace of a Christ-like role: the CNP net­work of theocrats are his pri­ma­ry audi­ence:

    ...
    He has increas­ing­ly begun to lean into the rightwing social con­ser­vatism that white evan­gel­i­cals – who make up 14% of Amer­i­cans – favor. That was clear in Feb­ru­ary, when Trump spoke at the Nation­al Reli­gious Broad­cast­ers con­ven­tion (NRBC), a gath­er­ing of the kind of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians who lead mega-church­es, host tel­e­van­ge­list shows and claim to receive prophe­cies from God.

    Trump said in that address that there was an “anti-Chris­t­ian bias” in the US, and promised that he would cre­ate a task­force to inves­ti­gate “dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment and per­se­cu­tion against Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca”.
    ...

    But while the CNP may be Trump’s pri­ma­ry audi­ence in terms of cozy­ing up to a pow­er struc­ture that can help him secure and run the White House, CNP lumi­nar­ies are obvi­ous­ly not his only audi­ence. If he win, it’s going to be thanks to aver­age evan­gel­i­cals com­ing out in record num­bers. Which brings us to this omi­nous and depress­ing warn­ing: the more Trump is mocked for his claims of a Christ-like sta­tus, the more sym­pa­thy he’s going to gar­ner among evan­gel­i­cals who are already suf­fer­ing from feel of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion. Feels Trump is con­stant­ly stok­ing. Trump isn’t just claim­ing to be doing God’s work. The pro­tec­tion of per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians from dia­bol­i­cal pro­gres­sives is the divine mis­sion he claims to be on. It’s a dement­ed, but potent, polit­i­cal dynam­ic:

    ...
    While Trump eas­i­ly won the white evan­gel­i­cal vote in his pre­vi­ous two pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, Kristin Du Mez, a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry and gen­der stud­ies at Calvin Uni­ver­si­ty whose research focus­es on the inter­sec­tion of gen­der, reli­gion and pol­i­tics, said this elec­tion cycle sees him lean­ing even fur­ther into this appeal.

    Du Mez said his speech at the NRBC was “a new lev­el we haven’t often seen”.

    “He was promis­ing [the evan­gel­i­cal audi­ence] pow­er, but in much more explic­it terms,” she said. “And he was real­ly lean­ing into this lan­guage of cul­ture wars, of reli­gious wars: that he was going to pro­tect their inter­ests and pro­tect their pow­er against the ene­mies – against fel­low Amer­i­cans, against lib­er­als, against the ene­mies who were try­ing to per­se­cute Chris­tians, who were per­se­cut­ing Chris­tians.”

    ...

    It helps Trump that evan­gel­i­cals feel under attack. Since 2015, he has told his sup­port­ers that they are looked down on by lib­er­al elites, and that their rights are threat­ened. That same mes­sage res­onates with some reli­gious vot­ers, Du Mez said, who could also resent the mock­ery of Trump’s imag­in­ing him­self as Jesus Christ.

    “It only rein­forces the scripts that they’ve been hand­ed, which is that the left is out to get you and they are mock­ing and they have no respect for your faith,” Du Mez said.
    ...

    And then we get to this impor­tant wrin­kle in Trump’s theo­crat­ic court­ing: Trump has­n’t just been court­ing the Domin­ion­ist of the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ “New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion” branch of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. He’s been par­tic­u­lar­ly close to ‘pros­per­i­ty the­ol­o­gy’ fig­ures like Paula White, the per­son tapped to be his spir­i­tu­al advi­sor and bring the rest of the evan­gel­i­cal lead­er­ship onboard. The rise of Trump as an influ­ence on US evan­gel­i­cal­ism is inevitably going to trans­late into a rise of pros­per­i­ty the­ol­o­gy. The more he’s seen as a divine fig­ure, the more valid peo­ple like Paula White become too in the eyes of con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals:

    ...
    Trump “has been get­ting this mes­sage from these folks for years now”, said Matthew D Tay­lor, author of The Vio­lent Take It by Force: The Chris­t­ian Move­ment That Is Threat­en­ing Our Democ­ra­cy, recall­ing the sight of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers pray­ing over Trump dur­ing his time in office.

    The thirst for Trump as a bib­li­cal fig­ure can be traced to the unique way he ascend­ed to become an evan­gel­i­cal favorite, Tay­lor said: when he launched his cam­paign in June 2015, few in “respectable evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles” want­ed any­thing to do with the brash, twice-divorced, self-pro­claimed bil­lion­aire.

    ...

    He enlist­ed Paula White as his spir­i­tu­al advis­er, and charged her with bring­ing the evan­gel­i­cal elites onboard. The prob­lem was that White, her­self a thrice-mar­ried mul­ti­mil­lion­aire who preach­es the idea that God will bestow wealth on his fol­low­ers, didn’t move in those cir­cles.

    Tay­lor not­ed that White’s allies were among fel­low pros­per­i­ty gospel preach­ers and “new apos­tolic ref­or­ma­tion lead­ers” – a move­ment that seeks to inject Chris­tian­i­ty into pol­i­tics, the judi­cia­ry, the media and busi­ness.

    “These folks were real­ly on the mar­gins not only of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, but of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals. They were seen as kind of low­brow and pros­per­i­ty gospel types and tel­e­van­ge­lists. They were seen as kind of a laugh­able sec­tor of evan­gel­i­cal­ism in respectable evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles,” Tay­lor said.

    As Trump won pri­ma­ry elec­tions in state after state, the respectable evan­gel­i­cals were able to over­come their moral objec­tions to him being the Repub­li­can can­di­date.

    But by this point, Trump’s main advis­ers were cement­ed as the type of reli­gious lead­ers once scoffed at by the reli­gious elites. Trump con­tin­ued to rely on the Paula Whites of this world, and the more far-out reli­gious lead­ers won influ­ence – and are set to have even more if he wins in 2024.

    “Those are the type of peo­ple I think Trump would be bring­ing in to help shape pol­i­cy, help shape iden­ti­ty,” Tay­lor said.

    “These aren’t the kind of peo­ple who are pol­i­cy wonks, but there are Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists who have very clear agen­da items, espe­cial­ly on top­ics like abor­tion, on top­ics like sup­port for Israel, on top­ics like reli­gious free­dom, on top­ics such as LGBTQ +rights.

    “Trump has sur­round­ed him­self and has brought into his White House advis­ers ech­e­lons some very, very extreme Chris­t­ian voic­es. And he seems to be at the very least play­ing foot­sie with them, if not overt­ly endors­ing some of their ideas.”
    ...

    Then we get to this omi­nous but impor­tant warn­ing that when we are talk­ing about a flow­er­ing of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist extrem­ism, we’re also talk­ing about an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the fur­ther fusion of these ide­olo­gies with white suprema­cy. Divine­ly ordained white suprema­cy:

    ...
    There are also warn­ing signs, Tay­lor said, should Trump again refuse to con­cede the elec­tion – and if his sup­port­ers once more inter­pret his rhetoric as a call to attack the home of US democ­ra­cy.

    Trump’s reli­gious sup­port­ers were among those at the Capi­tol dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion. Tay­lor said he was see­ing “more and more of this cross-pol­li­na­tion between far-right and even overt­ly racist ele­ments and these spir­i­tu­al war­riors”.

    “When you are mix­ing white nation­al­ism and neo-Nazi ideas with very heavy reli­gious fer­vor and process­es, that is a very, very dan­ger­ous mix,” Tay­lor said.

    “Because it’s encour­ag­ing more and more peo­ple to do extra­or­di­nary things, if they feel like their coun­try is slip­ping away from them.”
    ...

    And as the fol­low­ing TPM piece by Sarah Pos­ner points out about how Trump’s Feb­ru­ary speech at the NRB was received b the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, while his speech may have seemed ram­bling, inflam­ma­to­ry, and seem­ing­ly inco­her­ent to the gen­er­al pub­lic, it was quite coher­ent to the tar­get audi­ence and duti­ful­ly clar­i­fied and ampli­fied in the days fol­low­ing the speech by all sorts of evan­gel­i­cal groups like Kel­ly Shack­le­ford’s First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute and Paula White’s NFAB. And as Pos­ner also grim­ly reminds us, push­ing the this kind of divine war mes­sage is prob­a­bly the best get-out-the-vote strat­e­gy Trump has this year, so expect to hear a lot more of it:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    Apoc­a­lyp­tic Pic­ture Trump Paints For Evan­gel­i­cals Shows Where Cam­paign Is Head­ed

    By Sarah Pos­ner
    April 1, 2024 10:32 a.m.

    Don­ald Trump’s late Feb­ru­ary speech to the annu­al Nation­al Reli­gious Broad­cast­ers’ con­ven­tion received a short-lived spurt of media atten­tion, large­ly for its men­ac­ing pledges to pro­tect Chris­tians from sup­posed per­se­cu­tion by a “wicked sys­tem” and the “rad­i­cal” left. But it would be a mis­take to con­sign this speech to one-day-on-the-cam­paign trail sta­tus. Despite some assess­ments of the speech as “ram­bling,” wild,” and “inco­her­ent,” it actu­al­ly lays out a cogent, com­pre­hen­si­ble nar­ra­tive — for evan­gel­i­cals.

    As the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign heats up, his seem­ing­ly bizarre ora­to­ry is a crit­i­cal win­dow into how the Trump cam­paign plans to main­tain and mobi­lize his core base of white evan­gel­i­cals, and poten­tial­ly peel off more Black and Lati­no evan­gel­i­cals along the way.

    The NRB’s year­ly con­ven­tion is the pre­mier gath­er­ing of Chris­t­ian talk show hosts and influ­encers cel­e­brat­ing its mis­sion of pro­mot­ing “Chris­t­ian broad­cast­ers’ right to com­mu­ni­cate the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.” The 80-year-old orga­ni­za­tion, with over 1,100 mem­bers and a robust pres­ence in Wash­ing­ton, rep­re­sents the local and nation­al Chris­t­ian media land­scape, from tel­e­van­ge­lists, radio ser­mo­niz­ers, pod­cast­ers, and social media influ­encers. NRB claims that 141 mil­lion Amer­i­cans lis­ten to or watch reli­gious broad­cast­ing at least once a month, on more than 4,000 Chris­t­ian tele­vi­sion and radio sta­tions across the coun­try. In his speech, Trump praised the talk show hosts as “brave inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian jour­nal­ists,” and “pas­tors, pod­cast­ers, pro­duc­ers, and patri­ots” who are doing “an incred­i­ble thing for human­i­ty.” The NRB speech gave Trump’s mega­phone a rip­ple effect to oth­ers with small­er, but cumu­la­tive­ly pow­er­ful mega­phones of their own.

    ...

    White evan­gel­i­cals are Trump’s most reli­able sup­port­ers. Promi­nent evan­gel­i­cals and tel­e­van­ge­lists kept his pres­i­den­cy afloat through scan­dals and impeach­ment, stood by him on and after Jan­u­ary 6, and per­sist in repeat­ing his stolen elec­tion lies and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. One of his lead boost­ers is his long-time friend Paula White, the con­tro­ver­sial tel­e­van­ge­list with a pep­py self-help mes­sage for women and a pen­chant for turn­ing sin­is­ter spir­i­tu­al war­fare themes into patri­ot­ic cheer­lead­ing for Trump. After a close rela­tion­ship to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing a stint as advi­sor to Trump’s Faith and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Ini­tia­tive, White has returned to her Flori­da church — and to lead­ing the Nation­al Faith Advi­so­ry Board (NFAB), a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that claims to be con­tin­u­ing the work “we began at the White House.”(Although the NFAB’s web­site lists an Arling­ton, Vir­ginia post office box as its address, the Flori­da incor­po­ra­tion papers for the NFAB list the same address as White’s City of Des­tiny church.)

    The week after Trump’s NRB speech, the NFAB’s email newslet­ter boast­ed that its own mem­bers — includ­ing Texas megachurch pas­tor Jack Gra­ham, Sen­a­tor Mar­sha Black­burn (R‑TN), and author and tele­vi­sion and radio host Eric Metaxas, a promi­nent elec­tion denier — were on hand. The email linked to a recap of Trump’s remarks, com­piled by the Chris­t­ian right legal firm First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, con­dens­ing “reli­gious lib­er­ty high­lights” of the speech into digestible and famil­iar bul­let points: sup­port for “peo­ple of faith;” Trump’s accom­plish­ments pro­tect­ing “con­science,” ban­ning abor­tion, defend­ing Israel, and stack­ing the fed­er­al bench.

    The First Liberty/NFAB sum­ma­tion pro­vides use­ful talk­ing points for Trump sur­ro­gates who might have dif­fi­cul­ty repris­ing a mean­der­ing mono­logue that went on for more than an hour, or at least mak­ing it seem less unhinged. A cru­cial ele­ment of his NRB speech was cen­ter­ing his sup­port for Israel, even call­ing “my David,” his for­mer ambas­sador to Israel, David Fried­man, to the stage to praise him as “the great­est friend that Israel ever had in the Oval Office, by far.” Trump’s claimed sup­port for Israel (in real­i­ty sup­port for Israel’s far right) is charged and sym­bol­ic for evan­gel­i­cal audi­ences, who are steeped in lurid Chris­t­ian Zion­ist nar­ra­tives fore­telling the sec­ond com­ing of Jesus and his vic­to­ry over the Antichrist. They believe that the Bible com­mands Chris­tians to sup­port Israel — in prac­tice, to sup­port Israel’s far-right gov­ern­ing coali­tion — and that Israeli con­sol­i­da­tion of its occu­pa­tion and annex­a­tion of Pales­tin­ian land is a pre­con­di­tion of Christ’s return.. Israel, they believe, is where their actu­al mes­si­ah will return. In the mean­time, while they wait, Trump stands in as a mes­sian­ic fig­ure sav­ing Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca from “the tox­ic poi­son of gen­der ide­ol­o­gy” and “from the Com­mu­nists and the freaks.”

    ...

    In Trump’s twist­ed, false nar­ra­tive, Chris­tians are “hunt­ed down by the Biden regime,” by “the same Biden DOJ that dropped charges against Antifa, where they kill peo­ple.” He then claimed that, in Port­land, because of Antifa, “they don’t even have store­fronts any­more,” and because of the “inva­sion” of immi­grants, “cities are being inun­dat­ed, they’re being over­run, they’re tak­ing the parks from chil­dren, there are no more base­ball fields, no more soc­cer fields.”

    How­ev­er macabre this sounds to out­siders, to evan­gel­i­cals steeped in end-times prophe­cy, these night­mar­ish sce­nar­ios are real. They believe they are wag­ing spir­i­tu­al war­fare against demon­ic spir­its bent on destroy­ing an Amer­i­ca God intend­ed to be a Chris­t­ian nation. For them, Trump’s accom­plish­ments are more than just a check­list of judges and abor­tion pol­i­cy; his entire being is a divine­ly ordained force pow­er­ful enough to upend Satan’s plans.

    Between now and Novem­ber, mobi­liz­ing his spir­i­tu­al war­riors by con­tin­u­al­ly divorc­ing them from real­i­ty will be the most potent get-out-the-vote tool he has. And if it turns out not to be enough, he always has this con­stant reminder, as he told the NRB: “They rigged the elec­tion.”

    ———-

    “Apoc­a­lyp­tic Pic­ture Trump Paints For Evan­gel­i­cals Shows Where Cam­paign Is Head­ed” By Sarah Pos­ner; Talk­ing Points Memo; 04/01/2024

    In Trump’s twist­ed, false nar­ra­tive, Chris­tians are “hunt­ed down by the Biden regime,” by “the same Biden DOJ that dropped charges against Antifa, where they kill peo­ple.” He then claimed that, in Port­land, because of Antifa, “they don’t even have store­fronts any­more,” and because of the “inva­sion” of immi­grants, “cities are being inun­dat­ed, they’re being over­run, they’re tak­ing the parks from chil­dren, there are no more base­ball fields, no more soc­cer fields.”

    Chris­tians are being “hunt­ed down by the Biden regime” and God sent Don­ald Trump to save them. That’s the under­ly­ing mes­sage the Trump cam­paign is appar­ent­ly plan­ning on going with and as Pos­ner warns, it’s a strat­e­gy that could appeal to more than just Trump’s core base of white evan­gel­i­cals. It’s a poten­tial­ly potent polit­i­cal play, as raw appeals to reli­gion tend to be:

    ...
    As the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign heats up, his seem­ing­ly bizarre ora­to­ry is a crit­i­cal win­dow into how the Trump cam­paign plans to main­tain and mobi­lize his core base of white evan­gel­i­cals, and poten­tial­ly peel off more Black and Lati­no evan­gel­i­cals along the way.
    ...

    And when we see email newslet­ter from Paula White’s NFAB boast­ing that mem­bers like Jack Gra­ham were present for the remarks and link­ing to a Lib­er­ty First Insti­tute syn­op­sis of Trump’s NRB speech sent out in talk­ing point for­mat while, recall how First Lib­er­ty Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­le­ford and Jack Gra­ham were both among the small group of promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers, like CNP mem­ber Ralph Reed and CNP co-founder James Dob­son, who met with then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump in May of 2016 and effec­tive­ly con­veyed to evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers that they should have no qualms about vot­ing for some­one as open­ly un-Chris­t­ian as Trump. The First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute and megachurch pas­tors like Gra­ham has been run­ning cov­er for Trump with evan­gel­i­cals for a long time now:

    ...
    The week after Trump’s NRB speech, the NFAB’s email newslet­ter boast­ed that its own mem­bers — includ­ing Texas megachurch pas­tor Jack Gra­ham , Sen­a­tor Mar­sha Black­burn (R‑TN), and author and tele­vi­sion and radio host Eric Metaxas, a promi­nent elec­tion denier — were on hand. The email linked to a recap of Trump’s remarks, com­piled by the Chris­t­ian right legal firm First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, con­dens­ing “reli­gious lib­er­ty high­lights” of the speech into digestible and famil­iar bul­let points: sup­port for “peo­ple of faith;” Trump’s accom­plish­ments pro­tect­ing “con­science,” ban­ning abor­tion, defend­ing Israel, and stack­ing the fed­er­al bench.

    The First Liberty/NFAB sum­ma­tion pro­vides use­ful talk­ing points for Trump sur­ro­gates who might have dif­fi­cul­ty repris­ing a mean­der­ing mono­logue that went on for more than an hour, or at least mak­ing it seem less unhinged. A cru­cial ele­ment of his NRB speech was cen­ter­ing his sup­port for Israel, even call­ing “my David,” his for­mer ambas­sador to Israel, David Fried­man, to the stage to praise him as “the great­est friend that Israel ever had in the Oval Office, by far.” Trump’s claimed sup­port for Israel (in real­i­ty sup­port for Israel’s far right) is charged and sym­bol­ic for evan­gel­i­cal audi­ences, who are steeped in lurid Chris­t­ian Zion­ist nar­ra­tives fore­telling the sec­ond com­ing of Jesus and his vic­to­ry over the Antichrist. They believe that the Bible com­mands Chris­tians to sup­port Israel — in prac­tice, to sup­port Israel’s far-right gov­ern­ing coali­tion — and that Israeli con­sol­i­da­tion of its occu­pa­tion and annex­a­tion of Pales­tin­ian land is a pre­con­di­tion of Christ’s return.. Israel, they believe, is where their actu­al mes­si­ah will return. In the mean­time, while they wait, Trump stands in as a mes­sian­ic fig­ure sav­ing Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca from “the tox­ic poi­son of gen­der ide­ol­o­gy” and “from the Com­mu­nists and the freaks.”
    ...

    And as Sarah Pos­ner warns, claim­ing a divine man­date is prob­a­bly the best get-out-the-vote strat­e­gy Trump has at this point. We should only expect this dynam­ic to get much worse by elec­tion day, whether he wins or los­es:

    ...
    How­ev­er macabre this sounds to out­siders, to evan­gel­i­cals steeped in end-times prophe­cy, these night­mar­ish sce­nar­ios are real. They believe they are wag­ing spir­i­tu­al war­fare against demon­ic spir­its bent on destroy­ing an Amer­i­ca God intend­ed to be a Chris­t­ian nation. For them, Trump’s accom­plish­ments are more than just a check­list of judges and abor­tion pol­i­cy; his entire being is a divine­ly ordained force pow­er­ful enough to upend Satan’s plans.

    Between now and Novem­ber, mobi­liz­ing his spir­i­tu­al war­riors by con­tin­u­al­ly divorc­ing them from real­i­ty will be the most potent get-out-the-vote tool he has. And if it turns out not to be enough, he always has this con­stant reminder, as he told the NRB: “They rigged the elec­tion.”
    ...

    And as the fol­low­ing May 2023 Rolling Stone report makes clear, part of the rea­son we should expect the Trump 2024 cam­paign to lean into the whole divine man­date nar­ra­tives is he’s been cul­ti­vat­ed this nar­ra­tive for years. Like the week­end in May 2023 when the Trump owned Doral resort host­ed back to back events for groups that basi­cal­ly exist to pro­claim Trump to be divine­ly guid­ed. The week­end start­ed with a Fri­day event for Pas­tors for Trump, the group found­ed by Tul­sa-based pas­tor Jack­son Lah­mey­er. Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism fig­ure Sta­cy Whit­ed announce her prophet­ic vision of a “trans­fer­ence of wealth from the wicked to the right­eous” com­ing, adding “imag­ine when we part­ner with God, the Cre­ator of the uni­verse, what we’re going to do with this mon­ey.” Fol­lowed by a Sat­ur­day ReAwak­en event fea­tur­ing Michael Fly­nn and anoth­er prophet, Julie Green, who let the crowd know that God let her know that the “removal of The Biden is com­ing,” while describ­ing the US as being in the midst of anoth­er “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War.” And as we should have expect­ed, giv­en that Trump owns the prop­er­ty, he made a call-in appear­ance, show­er­ing Fly­nn with acco­lades and cau­tion­ing him “to stay healthy because we’re bring­ing you back.” Trump was call­ing into a ‘Trump the divine’ event held at the Doral and this was almost a year ago. This is a strat­e­gy that’s been cul­ti­vat­ed by both the Trumps and his theo­crat­ic allies for a while now, with a demon­strat­ed appetite among Trump’s evan­gel­i­cal base for more of it:

    Rolling Stone

    Evil Mer­maids, Demons, and Don­ald: This Pro-Trump Con­fer­ence Got Real Weird

    Both Pas­tors for Trump and Re-Awak­en Amer­i­ca took over Trump’s Mia­mi prop­er­ty this past week­end. It was strange — and ter­ri­fy­ing

    By Tim Dick­in­son
    May 15, 2023

    Trump Proph­e­sies. “Demon­ic” Democ­rats. Total­i­tar­i­an threats. And pre­dic­tions of com­bat with mer­maids(?!). The Trump Doral was a hive of far-right and reli­gious extrem­ism this past week­end. And what­ev­er doesn’t weird you out, should freak you out.

    Trump’s Mia­mi prop­er­ty played host to a one-two punch of reunions for Pas­tors For Trump — the charis­mat­ic evan­gel­i­cal body hyp­ing up the Trump ‘24 cam­paign as a gift from the Lord — and the Re-Awak­en Amer­i­ca tour, the trav­el­ing MAGA cir­cus that plat­forms retired Gen. Mike Fly­nn and an unhinged band of sho­far-bleaters, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, and zealots who relate their visions of the spir­it world.

    Both of these groups have pre­vi­ous­ly oper­at­ed with tac­it sup­port from Don­ald Trump, but this was the first time that either group had staged their hijinks at a prop­er­ty owned by the for­mer pres­i­dent, or appeared joint­ly. Trump him­self called into the ReAwak­en pro­ceed­ings to laud Fly­nn and give his well wish­es to the throngs of his admir­ers at Doral.

    Pas­tors for Trump kicked off the pro­ceed­ings in a Doral ball­room on Fri­day night. The group’s Tul­sa-based leader, Jack­son Lah­mey­er, paint­ed the nation’s pol­i­tics in dark, bib­li­cal terms, assert­ing the dev­il has seized con­trol of one-half our two-par­ty sys­tem. “This is one of the worst points our nation has ever faced,” Lah­mey­er said, con­demn­ing what he called “gen­der con­fu­sion” and “moral con­fu­sion.”

    ...

    When pas­tor Craig Hagin, anoth­er Okla­homa preach­er, took the podi­um, he felt he need­ed to “dis­pel a few rumors” that he blamed on the “main­stream media” in light of the group’s over-the-top devo­tion to the 45th pres­i­dent. “I want to go on the record that at Pas­tors for Trump, we do not wor­ship Don­ald Trump,” he said. “We only wor­ship Jesus Christ.”

    Soon a “prophet­ic” voice took the stage. Sta­cy Whit­ed is Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist media per­son­al­i­ty whose pod­cast is called “The Prophet­ic Report.” Whit­ed deliv­ered hope to the Trumpy insist­ing that 45 is fat­ed to return to the White House: “Pres­i­dent Trump will be back for a sec­ond term,” Whit­ed insist­ed. She also told the audi­ence to pre­pare to get rich — because there is a great “trans­fer­ence of wealth from the wicked to the right­eous” com­ing. She added: “imag­ine when we part­ner with God, the Cre­ator of the uni­verse, what we’re going to do with this mon­ey.”

    In his own remarks to the Pas­tors for Trump crowd, Fly­nn echoed Lahmeyer’s dec­la­ra­tions about good and evil. But he added a total­i­tar­i­an twist: “If you haven’t fig­ured this out yet, the evil that we are fac­ing will not give in until we take over,” he said.

    The week­end ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca con­ven­tion built seam­less­ly on the Fri­day-night zani­ness of Pas­tors for Trump. (The two groups are, them­selves, linked; Clay Clark — the orga­niz­er of the ReAwak­en tour — is a mem­ber of the Tul­sa church of Pas­tors for Trump leader Lah­mey­er. Both men revere Fly­nn as “America’s gen­er­al.”)

    In his appear­ance on the main stage, Fly­nn took a call on his iPhone from Don­ald Trump, who direct­ed him “to stay healthy because we’re bring­ing you back.” This seemed to be a pledge to give the dis­graced gen­er­al a place in any new Trump admin­is­tra­tion. (Rolling Stone report­ed last week that Trump has been pri­vate­ly plan­ning to appoint Fly­nn to a top post if he’s reelect­ed.)

    The pres­i­den­tial­ly par­doned Fly­nn appeared any­thing but chas­tened from his first, crim­i­nal stint as a Trump advis­er. Appear­ing on stage with fel­low-for­mer Trump aide Peter Navar­ro, and invok­ing the nation’s found­ing, Fly­nn declared of him­self and Navar­ro: “We’re prob­a­bly going to go to the fir­ing squad some­day.” (Fly­nn backpedaled only some­what adding: “I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek, but that’s what we’re up against.”)

    Pas­tor Mark Burns, a Black preach­er who is mak­ing a name for him­self in MAG­A­world, gave a strange speech in which he sug­gest­ed that Chris­tians should not turn the oth­er cheek, when con­front­ed by wicked forces, rather pre­pare to “smack them back two times hard­er.” Burns told the crowd of this nation: “The bible says we take it by force.” And he insist­ed that the “only man that God has annoint­ed” in the 2024 race is “Don­ald! J! … ” (Burns left it to the crowed to holler out “Trump!”)

    Julie Green, anoth­er lead­ing MAGA “prophet,” renowned for false­ly pre­dict­ing that Prince Charles would mur­der his moth­er to seize the British Roy­al crown, told the ReAwak­en crowd that God had revealed to her the immi­nent down­fall of the cur­rent pres­i­dent. “The removal of The Biden is com­ing,” Green insist­ed. “That’s what the Lord is say­ing.” Pick­ing up on the theme of vio­lence, Green also described the nation as in the midst of anoth­er “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War.”

    In by far the strangest per­for­mance of the whacked out week­end at Doral, yet anoth­er prophet, Aman­da Grace, sug­gest­ed that the war­fare will be both spir­i­tu­al and phys­i­cal — and that the ene­my will be unfa­mil­iar, involv­ing strange, “seduc­ing spir­its.”

    “I have nev­er seen more images of more mer­maids and water peo­ple in my life,” Grace told the crowd, elab­o­rat­ing that these aquat­ic forces are “a divi­sion in the king­dom of dark­ness.” Under­scor­ing the dan­ger, Grace insist­ed that that these mer-peo­ple are “high­ly tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced.”

    “We have to under­stand the rules of engage­ment in spir­i­tu­al war­fare. And we are meant for hand to hand com­bat,” Grace instruct­ed. “We are meant to bring our cries before the throne of God to bring judg­ment on the rulers of dark­ness of this world,” she added. “Because the rulers have set up a throne in this nation.”

    ...

    ————

    “Evil Mer­maids, Demons, and Don­ald: This Pro-Trump Con­fer­ence Got Real Weird” By Tim Dick­in­son; Rolling Stone; 05/15/2023

    “Both of these groups have pre­vi­ous­ly oper­at­ed with tac­it sup­port from Don­ald Trump, but this was the first time that either group had staged their hijinks at a prop­er­ty owned by the for­mer pres­i­dent, or appeared joint­ly. Trump him­self called into the ReAwak­en pro­ceed­ings to laud Fly­nn and give his well wish­es to the throngs of his admir­ers at Doral.

    Trump called into the pro-Trump theoc­ra­cy events held at his resort back in May of 2023 because of course he did. It would have been shock­ing had he not called in. These groups exist for the pur­pose of ele­vat­ing him to a kind of saint. Those events were like a giant Trump mag­net. Start­ing with a Fri­day Night Pas­tors for Trump event led by founder Jack­son Lah­mey­er. And as we can see, Pas­tors for Trump includes the­olo­gies like Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Sta­cy Whit­ed who promised a great “trans­fer­ence of wealth from the wicked to the right­eous” com­ing soon, pre­sum­ably thanks to the divine works of God and Trump. Which sure sounds a lot like some sort of mass loot­ing and theft. The Holo­caust includ­ed a “trans­fer­ence of wealth from the wicked to the right­eous” too, at least in the mind’s the Nazis and their col­lab­o­ra­tors. It’s a reminder that a fas­cist pros­per­i­ty the­ol­o­gy move­ment cou­pled to some­thing as dan­ger­ous as an insur­rec­tionary MAGA move­ment with a divine man­date of wip­ing out ‘the left’ once and for all is the kind of sit­u­a­tion that could lead to some mas­sive plun­der­ing on a scale not seen in a long time:

    ...
    Pas­tors for Trump kicked off the pro­ceed­ings in a Doral ball­room on Fri­day night. The group’s Tul­sa-based leader, Jack­son Lah­mey­er, paint­ed the nation’s pol­i­tics in dark, bib­li­cal terms, assert­ing the dev­il has seized con­trol of one-half our two-par­ty sys­tem. “This is one of the worst points our nation has ever faced,” Lah­mey­er said, con­demn­ing what he called “gen­der con­fu­sion” and “moral con­fu­sion.”

    ...

    When pas­tor Craig Hagin, anoth­er Okla­homa preach­er, took the podi­um, he felt he need­ed to “dis­pel a few rumors” that he blamed on the “main­stream media” in light of the group’s over-the-top devo­tion to the 45th pres­i­dent. “I want to go on the record that at Pas­tors for Trump, we do not wor­ship Don­ald Trump,” he said. “We only wor­ship Jesus Christ.”

    Soon a “prophet­ic” voice took the stage. Sta­cy Whit­ed is Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist media per­son­al­i­ty whose pod­cast is called “The Prophet­ic Report.” Whit­ed deliv­ered hope to the Trumpy insist­ing that 45 is fat­ed to return to the White House: “Pres­i­dent Trump will be back for a sec­ond term,” Whit­ed insist­ed. She also told the audi­ence to pre­pare to get rich — because there is a great “trans­fer­ence of wealth from the wicked to the right­eous” com­ing. She added: “imag­ine when we part­ner with God, the Cre­ator of the uni­verse, what we’re going to do with this mon­ey.”

    In his own remarks to the Pas­tors for Trump crowd, Fly­nn echoed Lahmeyer’s dec­la­ra­tions about good and evil. But he added a total­i­tar­i­an twist: “If you haven’t fig­ured this out yet, the evil that we are fac­ing will not give in until we take over,” he said.
    ...

    And then we get to Sat­ur­day’s ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca event, where Mike Fly­nn received his phone call from Trump. And it was that night we got to hear from anoth­er fig­ure seem­ing­ly gift with the pow­er of clair­voy­ance. Although maybe not so much: MAGA “prophet” Julie Green revealed how “The removal of The Biden is com­ing” while the US finds itself in the midst of anoth­er “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War”:

    ...
    The week­end ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca con­ven­tion built seam­less­ly on the Fri­day-night zani­ness of Pas­tors for Trump. (The two groups are, them­selves, linked; Clay Clark — the orga­niz­er of the ReAwak­en tour — is a mem­ber of the Tul­sa church of Pas­tors for Trump leader Lah­mey­er. Both men revere Fly­nn as “America’s gen­er­al.”)

    In his appear­ance on the main stage, Fly­nn took a call on his iPhone from Don­ald Trump, who direct­ed him “to stay healthy because we’re bring­ing you back.” This seemed to be a pledge to give the dis­graced gen­er­al a place in any new Trump admin­is­tra­tion. (Rolling Stone report­ed last week that Trump has been pri­vate­ly plan­ning to appoint Fly­nn to a top post if he’s reelect­ed.)

    ...

    Pas­tor Mark Burns, a Black preach­er who is mak­ing a name for him­self in MAG­A­world, gave a strange speech in which he sug­gest­ed that Chris­tians should not turn the oth­er cheek, when con­front­ed by wicked forces, rather pre­pare to “smack them back two times hard­er.” Burns told the crowd of this nation: “The bible says we take it by force.” And he insist­ed that the “only man that God has annoint­ed” in the 2024 race is “Don­ald! J! … ” (Burns left it to the crowed to holler out “Trump!”)

    Julie Green, anoth­er lead­ing MAGA “prophet,” renowned for false­ly pre­dict­ing that Prince Charles would mur­der his moth­er to seize the British Roy­al crown, told the ReAwak­en crowd that God had revealed to her the immi­nent down­fall of the cur­rent pres­i­dent. “The removal of The Biden is com­ing,” Green insist­ed. “That’s what the Lord is say­ing.” Pick­ing up on the theme of vio­lence, Green also described the nation as in the midst of anoth­er “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War.”
    ...

    The removal of Biden was going to hap­pen. The Lord told Julie Green and now every­one knows. Tat was May of 2023. It has­n’t quite hap­pened yet but tech­ni­cal­ly there’s still time for a divine smit­ing of some sort at Biden before Elec­tion Day. But the lack of a Biden removal has­n’t pre­vent Green was announc­ing more Trump-relat­ed prophe­cy. Four months lat­er, Green shared anoth­er prophe­cy deliv­ered by God on her pod­cast. All four indict­ments against Trump would soon “explode” and “all fall apart”. Green also shared that God con­sid­ers Trump to be “his David”. Oh, and Eric Trump and Clay Clark of ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca hap­pened to be the guests while she was shar­ing this. There’s a grow­ing num­ber of Trump-relat­ed prophe­cies loom­ing in the air thanks to this deep­en­ing alliance between the Trumps and the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal world where “prophet” fig­ures Julie Green are abun­dant. And thanks to God too, of course:

    Newsweek

    ‘Prophet’ Gives Eric Trump a Pre­dic­tion From God About His Father

    Pub­lished Sep 08, 2023 at 1:01 PM EDT
    Updat­ed Sep 10, 2023 at 2:32 PM EDT
    By Jon Jack­son

    Julie Green, a self-pro­claimed prophet and a vocal sup­port­er of Don­ald Trump, was joined by the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s son Eric on her web show Thurs­day and told him God is pro­tect­ing his father.

    Green fre­quent­ly posts videos on stream­ing chan­nels for her Julie Green Min­istries Inter­na­tion­al in which she shares mes­sages that she says God sends to her.

    In recent weeks, she has said these mes­sages include prophe­cies regard­ing Don­ald Trump’s legal trou­bles. Green said dur­ing a show last month that God told her the four indict­ments against Trump would explode” and “all fall apart.” Last week, she said she had recent­ly received a prophe­cy that Trump will soon face anoth­er indict­ment.

    On Thurs­day’s episode of her show, which can be viewed on Green’s YouTube and Rum­ble chan­nels, she wel­comed Eric Trump and Clay Clark, an entre­pre­neur and founder of the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour. Both Green and the younger Trump have made appear­ances at ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events, which have been crit­i­cized for spread­ing QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and COVID-19 mis­in­for­ma­tion.

    Eric Trump, an exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, began the appear­ance by accus­ing the Biden admin­is­tra­tion of tar­get­ing his father with indict­ments, adding that attacks from Democ­rats have made the for­mer pres­i­dent stronger.

    ...

    Green agreed with Eric Trump regard­ing legal attacks, adding that “no mat­ter what they’re going to try to do to your dad, it will not go the way they want it. It will not go the way they want it because God’s on his side, and he’s called him his David.”

    Green has referred to Don­ald Trump as the bib­li­cal fig­ure David mul­ti­ple times in the past, includ­ing in her mes­sage last month about the indict­ments against him fail­ing.

    ...

    “I’ve had so many dif­fer­ent prophet­ic words regard­ing your father. I’ve cried because I knew the love that God has for him, the love that God has for your fam­i­ly, and I could just feel it,” Green told Eric Trump. “He’s not going to for­sake you, and he’s not going to let this con­tin­ue.”

    ———–

    “ ‘Prophet’ Gives Eric Trump a Pre­dic­tion From God About His Father” By Jon Jack­son; Newsweek; 09/08/2023

    “On Thurs­day’s episode of her show, which can be viewed on Green’s YouTube and Rum­ble chan­nels, she wel­comed Eric Trump and Clay Clark, an entre­pre­neur and founder of the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour. Both Green and the younger Trump have made appear­ances at ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events, which have been crit­i­cized for spread­ing QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and COVID-19 mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

    Julie Green and the Trumps sure have an inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship. Sad­ly, it’s not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing rela­tion­ship giv­en Green’s propen­si­ty for mak­ing divine Trump prophe­cies. So of course Eric Trump was going to appear on her Sep­tem­ber 2023 pod­cast to talk about how his dad had divine pro­tec­tion look the Bib­li­cal fig­ure David:

    ...
    Green agreed with Eric Trump regard­ing legal attacks, adding that “no mat­ter what they’re going to try to do to your dad, it will not go the way they want it. It will not go the way they want it because God’s on his side, and he’s called him his David.”

    Green has referred to Don­ald Trump as the bib­li­cal fig­ure David mul­ti­ple times in the past, includ­ing in her mes­sage last month about the indict­ments against him fail­ing.
    ...

    And there was more Julie Green Trump prophe­cy where that came from. Flash for­ward to New Years Day of this year, when Green shared with her audi­ence a New Years mes­sage from God. Although it was­n’t exact­ly new. It was more or less the same mes­sage about a Trumpian rev­o­lu­tion that’s about to unfold:

    Newsweek

    MAGA ‘Prophet’ Pre­dicts ‘Over­throw’ of US Gov­ern­ment

    Pub­lished Jan 01, 2024 at 2:21 PM EST
    Updat­ed Jan 02, 2024 at 4:02 AM EST
    By Alexan­der Fabi­no

    Pas­tor Julie Green, a self-pro­claimed prophet known for her alle­giance to the MAGA move­ment, has pre­dict­ed an “over­throw” of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.

    Green, who fre­quent­ly shares mes­sages she claims are sent from God on her Julie Green Min­istries Inter­na­tion­al stream­ing chan­nels, has a his­to­ry of con­tro­ver­sial prophe­cies. Her past pre­dic­tions range from the death of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nan­cy Pelosi before the 2022 midterms to the col­lapse of legal indict­ments against for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

    In the lat­est video, post­ed by Ron Fil­ip­kows­ki, edi­tor-in-chief of the lib­er­al media out­let Mei­das­Touch, Green deliv­ers a potent mes­sage: “My chil­dren, the time has come. A time that you have been wait­ing for. A rein­state­ment. A shift of pow­er. A new gov­ern­ment in con­trol. An over­throw, and a takeover in this nation from the hands of the wicked, to the hands of the right­eous.

    MAGA ‘Prophet’ Julie Green has received a New Years mes­sage from God. God says the evil peo­ple con­trol­ling the govt are about to stage a coup to retain pow­er, but there will be “an over­throw & takeover of this nation from the hands of the wicked to the hands of the right­eous.” pic.twitter.com/J3bkHYYltB— Ron Fil­ip­kows­ki (@RonFilipkowski) Jan­u­ary 1, 2024

    She proph­e­sizes a sig­nif­i­cant upheaval, sug­gest­ing a “coup is about to be dis­rupt­ed and anni­hi­lat­ed,” with those involved “exposed and removed.” Her pre­dic­tion for 2024 is dra­mat­ic, hint­ing at an event that will “shake you loose from the chains that bind you.”

    ...

    In her mes­sage, Green paints a pic­ture of impend­ing jus­tice and divine inter­ven­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Her cryp­tic words, “It will look worse, but remem­ber my words. This means your ene­my’s days are run­ning out,” imply a tumul­tuous but ulti­mate­ly right­eous trans­for­ma­tion.

    ...

    ———–

    “MAGA ‘Prophet’ Pre­dicts ‘Over­throw’ of US Gov­ern­ment” By Alexan­der Fabi­no; Newsweek; 01/01/2024

    “In the lat­est video, post­ed by Ron Fil­ip­kows­ki, edi­tor-in-chief of the lib­er­al media out­let Mei­das­Touch, Green deliv­ers a potent mes­sage: “My chil­dren, the time has come. A time that you have been wait­ing for. A rein­state­ment. A shift of pow­er. A new gov­ern­ment in con­trol. An over­throw, and a takeover in this nation from the hands of the wicked, to the hands of the right­eous.””

    A New Years mes­sage from God to Julie Green about how over­throw is at hand. A takeover is about to hap­pen that will tear pow­er from the hands of the wicked to the right­eous (who will pre­sum­ably get very wealth by plun­der­ing the wicked). That was the mes­sage Green shared. A long with a vague mes­sage about how “coup is about to be dis­rupt­ed and anni­hi­lat­ed,” with those involved “exposed and removed.” 2024 is going to be a wild year. And Don­ald Trump and the right­eous will pre­vail. That was Julie Green’s New Years mes­sage from God:

    ...
    She proph­e­sizes a sig­nif­i­cant upheaval, sug­gest­ing a “coup is about to be dis­rupt­ed and anni­hi­lat­ed,” with those involved “exposed and removed.” Her pre­dic­tion for 2024 is dra­mat­ic, hint­ing at an event that will “shake you loose from the chains that bind you.”
    ...

    Has the coup been dis­trupt­ed and anni­hi­lat­ed yet? It was appar­ent­ly about to hap­pen. Maybe it will take a lit­tle more time. You can’t argue with prophe­cy, after all. Time will tell, as always.

    But it’s worth keep­ing in mind in all of this mad­ness that, when it comes to expos­ing deceivers and false prophets, you almost could­n’t ask for some­one more appro­pri­ate than Don­ald Trump and his mer­ry band of syco­phants. Syco­phants who seem intent on mis­read­ing the teach­ings of Jesus at pret­ty much every oppor­tu­ni­ty. Sure, the odds of see­ing some sort of real moral rev­e­la­tions sweep­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty over the gross­ly un-Chris­t­ian nature of this move­ment are exceed­ing­ly low. They always were. But it’s hard to imag­ine a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty than this. Well, ok, a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty would actu­al­ly be Trump win­ning and help­ing this move­ment impose its dement­ed ver­sion of theoc­ra­cy. It might be too late for Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy at that point, but boy would Amer­i­cans learn a thing or two about the cor­rupt nature of these theocrats. Because as many the devout like to remind us, God works in mys­te­ri­ous ways. Or in-your-face ways that you can’t pos­si­bly keep ignor­ing as you hit rock bot­tom, as the case may be.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 8, 2024, 8:42 pm
  23. Well that’s quite a twist: In a unan­i­mous three-judge rul­ing, an Indi­ana appel­late court just ruled that Indi­ana’s abor­tion ban ran afoul of the reli­gions free­doms of a group of from anony­mous plain­tiffs of faith. Accord­ing to the plain­tiffs, their per­son­al faiths imposed no restric­tions on get­ting an abor­tion and, there­fore, the state’s abor­tion ban amounts to a state restric­tion on their per­son­al faith and a vio­la­tion of the state’s Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act that pro­tects reli­gious objec­tors from laws that “sub­stan­tial­ly bur­den” their “sin­cere­ly held” reli­gious beliefs.

    And what was the prece­dent that the three-judge pan­el cit­ed in their legal rea­son­ing? The 2014 Bur­well v. Hob­by Lob­by Supreme Court rul­ing that found that anti-abor­tion employ­ers don’t have to offer employ­ees cov­er­age for birth con­trol. Yep, that his­toric rul­ing in favor or ‘reli­gious free­dom’ is the basis for what might be a legal loop­hole in Indi­ana’s strict abor­tion laws.

    We’ll see how the Indi­ana Supreme Court ulti­mate­ly rules after the state pre­sum­ably appeals the rul­ing. But either way, this unan­i­mous appel­late court rul­ing is a stun­ning reminder to the theo­crat­ic right about an implic­it risk on one of the move­men­t’s biggest legal strate­gies for break­ing down the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State. Because as we’re going to see, the theo­crat­ic right, and in par­tic­u­lar the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF), has been wag­ing a high­ly suc­cess­ful legal strat­e­gy for almost 30 years now pred­i­cat­ed on the idea that the pro­tec­tion of devout Chris­tians against “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” should take prece­dent over the Estab­lish­ment Clause that pre­vents the state from endors­ing a reli­gion.

    In fact, it was ADF’s vic­to­ry in the 1995 Supreme Court rul­ing of Rosen­berg­er vs. The Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, that the prece­dent of pri­or­i­tiz­ing “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” over the Estab­lish­ment Clause was first set. But that was just the start. The ADF has been wag­ing sim­i­lar legal bat­tles ever since, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the rights of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to con­demn homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in defi­ance of anti-harass­ment codes at schools and uni­ver­si­ties.

    But it’s not just the case that the ADF has been suc­cess­ful­ly carv­ing out spe­cial exemp­tions for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to con­demn the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. As the ADF has put it, The “homo­sex­u­al agen­da,” is implic­it­ly anti-Chris­t­ian and the two can­not coex­ist. Anti-harass­ment codes at schools and uni­ver­si­ties, gay rights events, and oth­er expres­sions of free­dom or equal rights for LGBTQ peo­ple silence Chris­tians who are bib­li­cal­ly com­pelled to con­demn homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Or as ADF founder Alan Sears put it, “the homo­sex­u­al agen­da and reli­gious free­dom are on a col­li­sion course.”

    That ‘rights for me, but not for thee’ stance long adopt­ed by the ADF is part of fas­ci­nat­ing con­text of this legal bat­tle now play­ing out in Indi­ana over an inter­pre­ta­tion of the 2014 Hob­by Lob­by rul­ing. Because this “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” legal wedge always begged the ques­tion of what hap­pens when you have “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” in con­flict with each oth­er. Whose view­point wins out? It’s a ques­tion for which the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists have a clear answer. If The US is fun­da­men­tal­ly a Chris­t­ian coun­try than, obvi­ous­ly, the views of Chris­tians should take prece­dent. But the courts may not see it that way. And if “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” can now be used to get around abor­tion laws, what oth­er legal loop­holes are there wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered?

    Per­haps the Indi­ana Supreme Court will some­how squash this case in a man­ner that effec­tive­ly clos­es the door in “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” cas­es brought by peo­ple who are con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. But if not, some­thing very inter­est­ing is devel­op­ing in the US courts. Ok, first, here’s a piece by Chris­t­ian extrem­ism expert Sarah Pos­ner about that stun­ning Indi­ana appel­late court rul­ing:

    MSNBC

    A Hob­by Lob­by plot twist marks a win for abor­tion rights in Indi­ana

    An Indi­ana court affirms the reli­gious rights of those who aren’t far-right Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives and whose faiths allow abor­tions.

    April 9, 2024, 5:11 PM CDT
    By Sarah Pos­ner, MSNBC Colum­nist

    The U.S. Supreme Court 2014 deci­sion in Bur­well v. Hob­by Lob­by allowed reli­gious, anti-abor­tion employ­ers to refuse to cov­er con­tra­cep­tion in their employ­ee health insur­ance. But an extra­or­di­nary April 4 appel­late court deci­sion in Indi­ana turned the con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court’s land­mark Hob­by Lob­by deci­sion into a win­ning argu­ment for abor­tion rights.

    The unan­i­mous rul­ing from the three-judge pan­el, which found that the state’s abor­tion ban bur­dens the reli­gious beliefs of those whose faiths per­mit abor­tions, sig­nals the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a long over­due shift in the con­ser­v­a­tive bias of reli­gious free­dom jurispru­dence. It also sig­nals the emer­gence of a par­tial, albeit untest­ed, argu­ment for peo­ple need­ing an abor­tion in states that have banned it.

    The Indi­ana case was brought in 2022 by five anony­mous plain­tiffs of faith and the group Jew­ish Hoosiers for Choice. They’re seek­ing a reli­gious exemp­tion from the abor­tion ban Indi­ana enact­ed fol­low­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s rever­sal of Roe v. Wade that year. They said the ban vio­lates their rights under the state’s Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act (RFRA), which, like the fed­er­al law the own­ers of Hob­by Lob­by suc­cess­ful­ly relied on to avoid pro­vid­ing con­tra­cep­tion cov­er­age, pro­tects reli­gious objec­tors from laws that “sub­stan­tial­ly bur­den” their “sin­cere­ly held” reli­gious beliefs.

    The plain­tiffs argued that their reli­gious doc­trine teach­es that a fetus is part of a woman’s body, not an inde­pen­dent being with its own rights. The abor­tion ban, then, vio­lates their reli­gious free­dom to decide whether to have an abor­tion. This argu­ment, which under­girds sim­i­lar reli­gious free­dom law­suits across the coun­try, includ­ing in Ken­tucky, Mis­souri and Flori­da, is a pro­found push­back against the Chris­t­ian right’s attempts to assert their posi­tion, that life begins at con­cep­tion and that a fetus is a per­son, as the only gen­uine reli­gious belief.

    In defend­ing the abor­tion ban, the state argued that because seek­ing an abor­tion is not a manda­to­ry reli­gious rit­u­al for the plain­tiffs, they were not enti­tled to the pro­tec­tions of the state’s RFRA. But the court reject­ed this argu­ment out of hand, cit­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hob­by Lob­by rul­ing as deci­sive prece­dent. “The pro­cure­ment of health insur­ance is not a manda­to­ry reli­gious rit­u­al, either,” wrote Judge Lean­na K. Weiss­mann (who was appoint­ed to the court by the gov­er­nor who signed the state’s abor­tion ban into law). If the own­ers of Hob­by Lob­by could engage in reli­gious exer­cise by refus­ing to pro­vide cov­er­age for con­tra­cep­tives they con­sid­ered abor­ti­fa­cients, the court con­clud­ed, then “it stands to rea­son that a preg­nant per­son can engage in a reli­gious exer­cise by pur­su­ing an abor­tion.”

    The Indi­ana Supreme Court will have the final word in the like­li­hood that the state appeals. Nonethe­less, reli­gious lib­er­ty schol­ars see the appel­late court deci­sion as an impor­tant cor­rec­tive in a pro­tract­ed effort to undo the lop­sided appli­ca­tion of RFRA in favor of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives. Eliz­a­beth Sep­per, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas School of Law and an expert on reli­gious lib­er­ty law, told me the deci­sion is “enor­mous­ly sig­nif­i­cant,” as it shows “what an even-hand­ed appli­ca­tion of reli­gious lib­er­ty doc­trine looks like.”

    Sep­per cau­tioned, though, that even if the state’s high court lets the deci­sion stand, how that deci­sion might be applied is still uncer­tain. A RFRA-based court injunc­tion against the abor­tion ban would pre­sum­ably shield a doc­tor from being charged with a felony for per­form­ing an oth­er­wise ille­gal abor­tion. But it is not clear how these sce­nar­ios would play out in real life, since doc­tors would be risk­ing jail, finan­cial penal­ties and loss of their med­ical licens­es. “There’s a great deal of con­fu­sion and con­cern,” said Sep­per, includ­ing among doc­tors who might wor­ry in our cur­rent envi­ron­ment about “blow­back” and “harass­ment,” even if the state did not pros­e­cute them.

    ...

    With Repub­li­cans in con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives fol­low­ing the 2010 midterms, they staged a series of volatile hear­ings intend­ed to por­tray Oba­ma as “tram­pling” on the reli­gious free­dom and con­science rights of Chris­tians who opposed con­tra­cep­tion and abor­tion. In the process, those Repub­li­cans made it clear that they believed that reli­gious free­dom for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians took prece­dence over the rights of every­one else. In oth­er words, they believed in reli­gious free­dom for me but not for thee. That’s why the Indi­ana Court of Appeals deci­sion find­ing reli­gious free­dom for those with oppo­site beliefs on abor­tion is so momen­tous.

    In addi­tion to turn­ing the 2014 Hob­by Lob­by deci­sion against the Chris­t­ian right’s posi­tion, the Indi­ana court’s deci­sion also shows that the Chris­t­ian right’s state-lev­el excess­es might be com­ing back to haunt them. The state RFRA was signed into law by then-Gov. Mike Pence in 2015. There was a fren­zy of Chris­t­ian right efforts that year to craft expan­sive reli­gious exemp­tions for oppo­nents of mar­riage equal­i­ty as they antic­i­pat­ed the high court’s impend­ing deci­sion in Oberge­fell v. Hodges, which allowed same-sex cou­ples to mar­ry. But these reli­gious dog­ma­tists appar­ent­ly did not antic­i­pate that their RFRA would pro­vide potent legal ammu­ni­tion to peo­ple with reli­gious beliefs dif­fer­ent from their own fol­low­ing their crim­i­nal­iza­tion of abor­tion.

    ...

    ————-

    “A Hob­by Lob­by plot twist marks a win for abor­tion rights in Indi­ana” By Sarah Pos­ner; MSNBC; 04/09/2024

    “The unan­i­mous rul­ing from the three-judge pan­el, which found that the state’s abor­tion ban bur­dens the reli­gious beliefs of those whose faiths per­mit abor­tions, sig­nals the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a long over­due shift in the con­ser­v­a­tive bias of reli­gious free­dom jurispru­dence. It also sig­nals the emer­gence of a par­tial, albeit untest­ed, argu­ment for peo­ple need­ing an abor­tion in states that have banned it.”

    As we can see, reli­gious free­dom for me and thee cre­ates a lot of com­pli­ca­tions. The reli­gious free­dom legal loop­hole cre­at­ed by the Hob­by Lob­by rul­ing that grant­ed Chris­tians the right to legal­ly ele­vate per­son­al faith over the law isn’t exclu­sive to Chris­tians, accord­ing to this unan­i­mous rul­ing from the three-judge pan­el appel­late court deci­sion in Indi­ana. Any­one of any faith can exploit that loop­hole. Includ­ing peo­ple of faiths that allow for the right to an abor­tion. Whoops!

    ...
    The Indi­ana case was brought in 2022 by five anony­mous plain­tiffs of faith and the group Jew­ish Hoosiers for Choice. They’re seek­ing a reli­gious exemp­tion from the abor­tion ban Indi­ana enact­ed fol­low­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s rever­sal of Roe v. Wade that year. They said the ban vio­lates their rights under the state’s Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act (RFRA), which, like the fed­er­al law the own­ers of Hob­by Lob­by suc­cess­ful­ly relied on to avoid pro­vid­ing con­tra­cep­tion cov­er­age, pro­tects reli­gious objec­tors from laws that “sub­stan­tial­ly bur­den” their “sin­cere­ly held” reli­gious beliefs.

    The plain­tiffs argued that their reli­gious doc­trine teach­es that a fetus is part of a woman’s body, not an inde­pen­dent being with its own rights. The abor­tion ban, then, vio­lates their reli­gious free­dom to decide whether to have an abor­tion. This argu­ment, which under­girds sim­i­lar reli­gious free­dom law­suits across the coun­try, includ­ing in Ken­tucky, Mis­souri and Flori­da, is a pro­found push­back against the Chris­t­ian right’s attempts to assert their posi­tion, that life begins at con­cep­tion and that a fetus is a per­son, as the only gen­uine reli­gious belief.

    In defend­ing the abor­tion ban, the state argued that because seek­ing an abor­tion is not a manda­to­ry reli­gious rit­u­al for the plain­tiffs, they were not enti­tled to the pro­tec­tions of the state’s RFRA. But the court reject­ed this argu­ment out of hand, cit­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hob­by Lob­by rul­ing as deci­sive prece­dent. “The pro­cure­ment of health insur­ance is not a manda­to­ry reli­gious rit­u­al, either,” wrote Judge Lean­na K. Weiss­mann (who was appoint­ed to the court by the gov­er­nor who signed the state’s abor­tion ban into law). If the own­ers of Hob­by Lob­by could engage in reli­gious exer­cise by refus­ing to pro­vide cov­er­age for con­tra­cep­tives they con­sid­ered abor­ti­fa­cients, the court con­clud­ed, then “it stands to rea­son that a preg­nant per­son can engage in a reli­gious exer­cise by pur­su­ing an abor­tion.”
    ...

    We’ll see if the rul­ing is upheld by the Indi­ana Supreme Court. It’s going to be inter­est­ing. Either the loop­hole is upheld for all faiths, in which case the Hob­by Lob­by rul­ing could become a mas­sive com­pli­ca­tion for the theo­crat­ic far right. Or some sort of legal rea­son­ing that leaves this loop­hole open only to con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians will have to be deployed by the court, which will make the theo­crat­ic nature of these ‘reli­gious free­dom’ legal strate­gies glar­ing­ly clear to the pub­lic at large. It’s a major test of whether not the ‘free­dom for me, but not thee’ goals of this move­ment. And kind of an inevitable test:

    ...
    The Indi­ana Supreme Court will have the final word in the like­li­hood that the state appeals. Nonethe­less, reli­gious lib­er­ty schol­ars see the appel­late court deci­sion as an impor­tant cor­rec­tive in a pro­tract­ed effort to undo the lop­sided appli­ca­tion of RFRA in favor of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives. Eliz­a­beth Sep­per, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas School of Law and an expert on reli­gious lib­er­ty law, told me the deci­sion is “enor­mous­ly sig­nif­i­cant,” as it shows “what an even-hand­ed appli­ca­tion of reli­gious lib­er­ty doc­trine looks like.”

    Sep­per cau­tioned, though, that even if the state’s high court lets the deci­sion stand, how that deci­sion might be applied is still uncer­tain. A RFRA-based court injunc­tion against the abor­tion ban would pre­sum­ably shield a doc­tor from being charged with a felony for per­form­ing an oth­er­wise ille­gal abor­tion. But it is not clear how these sce­nar­ios would play out in real life, since doc­tors would be risk­ing jail, finan­cial penal­ties and loss of their med­ical licens­es. “There’s a great deal of con­fu­sion and con­cern,” said Sep­per, includ­ing among doc­tors who might wor­ry in our cur­rent envi­ron­ment about “blow­back” and “harass­ment,” even if the state did not pros­e­cute them.
    ...

    It’s a remark­able legal bat­tle play­ing out in Indi­ana. Will the theo­crat­ic legal push face a thor­ough­ly iron­ic come­up­pance? Or will ‘free­dom for me but not thee’ some­how win out? Time will tell, but as the fol­low­ing 2007 piece by Sarah Pos­ner makes clear, the ADF’s legal strat­e­gy has been focused on “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” for decades now as its legal wedge for carv­ing out spe­cial rights for devout con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. It was the ADF’s vic­to­ry in the 1995 Supreme Court rul­ing of Rosen­berg­er vs. The Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, when the ele­va­tion of “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” over the Estab­lish­ment Clause — bar­ring the state from endors­ing a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious — was first cre­at­ed as a legal prece­dent. A prece­dent that was sub­se­quent­ly used by the ADF to effec­tive­ly argue that attempts to block Chris­tians from harass­ing the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty was a form of “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” barred by the Con­sti­tu­tion. As the ADF put it, The “homo­sex­u­al agen­da,” is implic­it­ly anti-Chris­t­ian and the two can­not coex­ist. Anti-harass­ment codes at schools and uni­ver­si­ties, gay rights events, and oth­er expres­sions of free­dom or equal rights for LGBTQ peo­ple silence Chris­tians who are bib­li­cal­ly com­pelled to con­demn homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Or as ADF founder Alan Sears put it, “the homo­sex­u­al agen­da and reli­gious free­dom are on a col­li­sion course.” You can’t sep­a­rate the con­tem­po­rary theo­crat­ic move­ment from the “reli­gious free­dom” legal argu­ments its relied on for decades now:

    The Wash­ing­ton Spec­ta­tor

    The Legal Mus­cle Lead­ing the Fight to End the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State

    The ADF has seized on “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” to put the gay rights move­ment in its cross hairs.

    Sarah Pos­ner
    April 1, 2007

    On a dis­mal, rainy after­noon, over tea and Pep­si and a plate of fries at the Bob Evans restau­rant in Can­nons­burg, Ken­tucky, Bill Scaggs, a retired gov­ern­ment and pub­lic-rela­tions exec­u­tive of ARMCO Steel, told me why he thinks that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is the great­est threat to Amer­i­ca. “AIDS kills,” was his cir­ca 1984 answer, “and the most com­mon way to pass that on of course is from homo­sex­u­al con­tact.” His voice crack­ing with indig­na­tion, Scaggs added that he refus­es to use the word gay. “It’s homo­sex­u­al, or worse,” he says. “Gay is in our Ken­tucky song! They took it away and tram­pled on it. We want it back.”

    Scaggs is a board mem­ber of Defend­ers Voice, a local orga­ni­za­tion formed two years ago by a group of min­is­ters and their fol­low­ers who fought the for­ma­tion of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Boyd Coun­ty High School, just up the road from where we sat. Locat­ed on a stretch of state high­way dot­ted with church­es, dol­lar stores, pay­day lenders, and a dri­ve-through cig­a­rette store, the high school had become a place where anti-gay harass­ment had become an every­day occur­rence.

    Most of the time, stu­dent orga­niz­ers of the Boyd Coun­ty GSA said, the basis for the harass­ment was reli­gious. One of the orga­niz­ers, Lib­by Fugett, said that “most of the peo­ple at school, even the younger peo­ple, who would call us names at school, they would cuss at us; they would say, You f’ing fag, you’re going to hell. . . . They just think it’s excus­able because their reli­gion backs it up. And that was a real­ly big part of it. It’s okay for them to sin against us because we’re sin­ners.”

    Lead­ing the charge against the GSA were min­is­ters, led by the Rev. Tim York, who said they “believe the Bible to be the word of God; we believe that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin.” (In 2004, York, who is now the pas­tor of a church in Nashville, ran an unsuc­cess­ful cam­paign for the Ken­tucky Sen­ate on an anti-gay-mar­riage plat­form, with back­ing from the state and nation­al Repub­li­can par­ties.) York and his fol­low­ers exert­ed such intense pres­sure on school offi­cials that it influ­enced their deci­sion on the GSA, ulti­mate­ly forc­ing the stu­dents to sue the school sys­tem in order have the GSA rec­og­nized.

    To set­tle the case, the school dis­trict agreed to con­duct manda­to­ry anti-harass­ment train­ing for all stu­dents. Although the train­ing con­sist­ed of just a one-hour video once a year, York was intent on pre­vent­ing stu­dents from see­ing what he con­sid­ered “indoc­tri­na­tion [into the] homo­sex­u­al lifestyle . . . indoc­tri­na­tion to tear down the Chris­t­ian view that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is wrong. It is reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion, is what it is.” The min­is­ter-led group cir­cu­lat­ed opt-out forms in an effort to exempt stu­dents from watch­ing the video, but the forms were not legal­ly bind­ing. York, his fol­low­ers, and some par­ents want­ed to exempt Chris­t­ian stu­dents, legal­ly, from watch­ing the court-ordered anti-harass­ment video. To vin­di­cate what he believed to be their legal rights, York knew exact­ly where to turn for help: the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).

    THE O’REILLY FACTOR

    If Bill O’Reilly had a hero oth­er than him­self, it would be ADF and its court­room cru­saders lined up to fight the ACLU, Nickelodeon’s homo­sex­u­al agen­da, and hea­thens who are hell-bent on cen­sor­ing the words “Mer­ry Christ­mas.” ADF’s pres­i­dent, Alan Sears, a for­mer Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion pros­e­cu­tor who, accord­ing to the ADF’s web­site, “God unique­ly pre­pared” for his lead role in the orga­ni­za­tion, admits to being inspired by the right-wing com­men­ta­tor O’Reilly—hardly known for his jurispru­den­tial acuity—to write por­tions of his book, The ACLU vs. Amer­i­ca.

    ...

    While the ACLU gained its rep­u­ta­tion by win­ning cas­es, ADF’s reputation—and fund-rais­ing spigot—preceded its first court case. Cre­at­ed just 13 years ago with the sup­port of such Chris­t­ian Right pow­er­hous­es as James Dob­son, D. James Kennedy, and Bill Bright, founder of Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ, it is today the nation’s lead­ing Chris­t­ian Right legal orga­ni­za­tion. Through its Nation­al Lit­i­ga­tion Acad­e­my, ADF has trained more than 900 lawyers, who com­mit them­selves to per­form­ing 450 hours of pro bono legal work “on behalf of the body of Christ.” It doles out mil­lions of dol­lars a year to oth­er Chris­t­ian Right organizations—many of which are already well endowed—to cov­er attor­neys’ fees and costs.

    Its three prin­ci­pal goals are pro­tect­ing the “sanc­ti­ty of human life” (through lit­i­gat­ing cas­es relat­ing to abor­tion and end-of-life issues); pro­mot­ing the “tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly” (via cas­es con­cern­ing gay mar­riage and adop­tion); and ensur­ing the “reli­gious free­dom” of Chris­tians (by por­tray­ing them as vic­tims of dis­crim­i­na­tion on the part of those who seek to silence their abil­i­ty to “speak the Truth” by preach­ing the Gospel). Using the pro­pa­gan­da machin­ery of con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets and church­es, ADF has cre­at­ed a zeit­geist of Chris­t­ian vic­tim­hood among peo­ple like Rev. York, who believes Chris­t­ian stu­dents are the vic­tims in Boyd Coun­ty, and who has long admired ADF’s “fight with the ACLU to pro­tect Chris­t­ian free­dom and Chris­t­ian lib­er­ty.”

    Last year, ADF received over $21 mil­lion in indi­vid­ual and foun­da­tion fund­ing. Some of the major donors include the Covenant Foun­da­tion, financed by the “Grand­dad­dy” of the Texas Chris­t­ian Right, busi­ness mogul James Leininger; var­i­ous mem­bers of the Amway-Prince Auto­mo­tive empire, includ­ing the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foun­da­tion, whose vice pres­i­dent, Erik Prince (Edgar and Elsa’s son, and broth­er of Bet­sy DeVos, wife of the Amway mag­nate, right-wing financier, and unsuc­cess­ful Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Richard DeVos), found­ed the Black­wa­ter USA mil­i­tary-secu­ri­ty firm; and the Bolt­house Foun­da­tion, which is under­writ­ten chiefly with prof­its from Bolt­house Farms, a fam­i­ly-run Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny whose prod­ucts are often seen at organ­ic mar­kets and Whole Foods. Bolt­house requires recip­i­ents of its grants to pledge adher­ence to a state­ment of faith that includes the dec­la­ra­tion that “man was cre­at­ed by a direct act of God in His image, not from pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ing crea­tures” and a belief in “the ever­last­ing blessed­ness of the saved and the ever­last­ing pun­ish­ment of the lost.”

    SCHOOLHOUSE “DAYS”

    ...

    ADF rec­og­nizes that some­times strange bedfellows—even the ACLU—can help its divine cause on behalf of the free-speech rights of America’s pub­lic high school­ers. It recent­ly sided with its arch-ene­my (and against the Bush admin­is­tra­tion) in a Supreme Court case in which an Alas­ka high school stu­dent charged that his First Amend­ment rights were vio­lat­ed when school offi­cials forced him to take down a sign read­ing “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” The stu­dent, Joseph Fred­er­ick, admit­ted that he designed the sign “to be mean­ing­less and fun­ny, in order to get on tele­vi­sion” as the Olympic torch passed through his home town of Juneau in 2002. And even though Frederick’s cause had noth­ing to do with Jesus (and even impli­cat­ed the Sav­ior in the defiled cul­ture that ADF dis­dains), ADF has an inter­est in con­tin­u­ing to shape Supreme Court prece­dent, an effort it began with its first land­mark case 12 years ago and that has been aid­ed by a judi­cia­ry increas­ing­ly friend­ly to its views. ADF’s lega­cy in these cas­es has been to ele­vate the First Amendment’s free speech clause over its Estab­lish­ment Clause, which sep­a­rates church and state, and there­by to pro­mote reli­gious speech—even pros­e­ly­tiz­ing speechin the nation’s pub­lic schools.

    In that first land­mark case, Rosen­berg­er vs. The Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, ADF rep­re­sent­ed a stu­dent chal­leng­ing the university’s pol­i­cy of not fund­ing reli­gious stu­dent groups through the same stu­dent activ­i­ty fees that fund­ed sec­u­lar clubs. The Supreme Court devi­at­ed from its prece­dents and based its deci­sion not on the Estab­lish­ment Clause—which pro­hibits a state insti­tu­tion like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia from endors­ing or appear­ing to endorse a par­tic­u­lar religion—but on ADF’s the­o­ry of “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion.”

    In oth­er words, ADF con­vinced the Court that instead of deter­min­ing whether the school’s fund­ing of reli­gious clubs would be, or would appear to be, an endorse­ment of a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, it should decide whether or not fund­ing reli­gious groups “dis­crim­i­nat­ed” against them based on their reli­gion. And dis­crim­i­na­tion is present, the Court rea­soned, if the school fund­ed sec­u­lar clubs but not reli­gious ones.

    Rosen­berg­er, then, not only began to bring down the Chris­t­ian Right’s dread­ed “wall of sep­a­ra­tion” between gov­ern­ment and reli­gious activ­i­ties, but ele­vat­ed ADF’s mythol­o­gy of the vic­tim­ized Chris­t­ian to a legal prece­dent. The case, says Mar­ci Hamil­ton, pro­fes­sor of con­sti­tu­tion­al law at Car­do­zo Law School and author of the book God Ver­sus the Gav­el, rep­re­sent­ed a “fork in the road” in Estab­lish­ment Clause jurispru­dence. “When framed as a view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion issue,” Hamil­ton adds, “it was going to be very hard for the uni­ver­si­ty to win. . . . the word dis­crim­i­na­tion is so freight­ed in our cul­ture with neg­a­tives that the minute that view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion was on the table, it was real­ly the end.”

    The Court reit­er­at­ed its rea­son­ing and applied it to the nation’s pub­lic ele­men­tary schools in a 2001 deci­sion in an ADF-fund­ed case, in which it forced the Mil­ford Cen­tral School Dis­trict in upstate New York to change its pol­i­cy of pro­hibit­ing reli­gious clubs from using its facil­i­ties for after-school meet­ings. Although the Good News Club, one of thou­sands spon­sored nation­wide by the Child Evan­ge­lism Fel­low­ship, pros­e­ly­tizes to chil­dren, under Rosen­berg­er, the school’s denial of its use of school facil­i­ties to the reli­gious clubs, when it allowed sec­u­lar clubs to use them, again con­sti­tut­ed “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion.” The Court reject­ed the school’s claim that it had to exclude the reli­gious club in order to com­ply with the Estab­lish­ment Clause.

    Accord­ing to Hamil­ton, in “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” cas­es, the plain­tiffs need only claim dis­crim­i­na­tion, with­out any actu­al proof, to pre­vail on their asser­tion that they were ille­gal­ly pre­vent­ed from using school resources for reli­gious activ­i­ties. Com­pared with oth­er civ­il rights law, said Hamil­ton, “it’s like liv­ing with Alice in Won­der­land.”

    These cas­es have become not only the chief legal weapon in ADF’s arse­nal but also the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple for all its fund-rais­ing, pub­lic rela­tions, and pro­pa­gan­da. ADF attor­ney Mike John­son summed up his organization’s posi­tion when he said, “What we’re see­ing in more and more cas­es is a dis­crim­i­na­tion against par­tic­u­lar view­points, even out­right hos­til­i­ty some­times, against . . . kids who hold a Chris­t­ian kind of world view who want to share Chris­t­ian view­points or speech on cam­pus, and they’re being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against because some peo­ple see that as intol­er­ant, or how­ev­er they char­ac­ter­ize it.”

    “BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN IS IN”

    Over the past sev­er­al years, ADF has seized on “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” to put the gay rights move­ment in its cross hairs. Gay rights, in ADF’s view, can­not coex­ist with its ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty. Anti-harass­ment codes at schools and uni­ver­si­ties, gay rights events, and oth­er expres­sions of free­dom or equal rights for LGBT peo­ple, nec­es­sar­i­ly silence Chris­tians, who, ADF insists, are bib­li­cal­ly com­pelled to con­demn homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The “homo­sex­u­al agen­da,” then, is ipso fac­to anti-Chris­t­ian. Alan Sears, ADF’s pres­i­dent, told the Fam­i­ly Research Council’s Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit last fall that “the homo­sex­u­al agen­da and reli­gious free­dom are on a col­li­sion course.” He scoffed at what he called “pro­pa­gan­da about so-called oppres­sion” of gays, coun­ter­ing that the “homo­sex­u­al agen­da” not only seeks to silence reli­gious speech but it “prob­a­bly includes the abo­li­tion of mar­riage.”

    ...

    Back in Boyd Coun­ty, Ken­tucky, ADF lost its attempt to exempt its clients from the manda­to­ry train­ing, and is now appeal­ing. Kevin The­ri­ot, ADF’s senior legal coun­sel, says the train­ing video—which he hasn’t seen—is try­ing to “change the belief sys­tems of reli­gious stu­dents.” In fact, the video, which is pub­licly avail­able, acknowl­edges that “your reli­gious beliefs are sacred and we’re not try­ing to influ­ence those,” and “you have the right to express your beliefs” that “homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is wrong” with­out harass­ing anoth­er stu­dent.

    Despite ADF’s ongo­ing lit­i­ga­tion, the per­cent­age of stu­dents view­ing the video has steadi­ly increased since 2004, when bare­ly half the stu­dents watched it, to over 87 per­cent. But there is no longer a GSA at Boyd Coun­ty High School, which to Bill Scaggs proves that it was just a “flash in the pan,” fail­ing to see that his orga­ni­za­tion intim­i­dat­ed the club out of exis­tence. As William Carter, a Boyd Coun­ty High School grad­u­ate whose efforts to start the GSA result­ed in years of per­son­al upheaval and entan­gle­ment in law­suits, said, “Who wants to join a club where you would have to explain to your par­ents, you know, I’m going to be involved in a fed­er­al law­suit because I’m going to be in a club or some­one hit me in the head with a can of pop, or someone’s going to kill me? No one’s going to do that. It’s high school.”

    ———–

    “The Legal Mus­cle Lead­ing the Fight to End the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State” by Sarah Pos­ner; The Wash­ing­ton Spec­ta­tor; 04/01/2007

    “Its three prin­ci­pal goals are pro­tect­ing the “sanc­ti­ty of human life” (through lit­i­gat­ing cas­es relat­ing to abor­tion and end-of-life issues); pro­mot­ing the “tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly” (via cas­es con­cern­ing gay mar­riage and adop­tion); and ensur­ing the “reli­gious free­dom” of Chris­tians (by por­tray­ing them as vic­tims of dis­crim­i­na­tion on the part of those who seek to silence their abil­i­ty to “speak the Truth” by preach­ing the Gospel). Using the pro­pa­gan­da machin­ery of con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets and church­es, ADF has cre­at­ed a zeit­geist of Chris­t­ian vic­tim­hood among peo­ple like Rev. York, who believes Chris­t­ian stu­dents are the vic­tims in Boyd Coun­ty, and who has long admired ADF’s “fight with the ACLU to pro­tect Chris­t­ian free­dom and Chris­t­ian lib­er­ty.””

    The ADF’s prin­ci­pal goals include end­ing abor­tion and gay mar­riage, but it does­n’t stop there. Cul­ti­vat­ing a zeit­geist of Chris­t­ian vic­tim­hood that can be exploit­ed under the ban­ner of “reli­gious free­dom” has long been a key ele­ment of the ADF’s long-term strat­e­gy, as we can see in this 2007 report by Sarah Pos­ner. It’s a strat­e­gy that ADF estab­lished with its first land­mark ‘reli­gious free­dom’ case, Rosen­berg­er vs. The Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, that man­aged to con­vince the Supreme Court to devi­ate from prece­dent and base its deci­sion not on the Estab­lish­ment Clause that pro­hibits the state from endors­ing a reli­gion and instead rule in favor of the ADF’s “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” rea­son­ing. As the ADF seemed to argue, the pre­ven­tion of the estab­lish­ment of reli­gious clubs at a pub­lic insti­tu­tion was a form of anti-Chris­t­ian dis­crim­i­na­tion. And the Supreme Court agreed, cre­at­ing a legal prece­dent that is still play­ing out to this day as we just saw:

    ...
    In that first land­mark case, Rosen­berg­er vs. The Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, ADF rep­re­sent­ed a stu­dent chal­leng­ing the university’s pol­i­cy of not fund­ing reli­gious stu­dent groups through the same stu­dent activ­i­ty fees that fund­ed sec­u­lar clubs. The Supreme Court devi­at­ed from its prece­dents and based its deci­sion not on the Estab­lish­ment Clause—which pro­hibits a state insti­tu­tion like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia from endors­ing or appear­ing to endorse a par­tic­u­lar religion—but on ADF’s the­o­ry of “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion.”

    In oth­er words, ADF con­vinced the Court that instead of deter­min­ing whether the school’s fund­ing of reli­gious clubs would be, or would appear to be, an endorse­ment of a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, it should decide whether or not fund­ing reli­gious groups “dis­crim­i­nat­ed” against them based on their reli­gion. And dis­crim­i­na­tion is present, the Court rea­soned, if the school fund­ed sec­u­lar clubs but not reli­gious ones.

    Rosen­berg­er, then, not only began to bring down the Chris­t­ian Right’s dread­ed “wall of sep­a­ra­tion” between gov­ern­ment and reli­gious activ­i­ties, but ele­vat­ed ADF’s mythol­o­gy of the vic­tim­ized Chris­t­ian to a legal prece­dent. The case, says Mar­ci Hamil­ton, pro­fes­sor of con­sti­tu­tion­al law at Car­do­zo Law School and author of the book God Ver­sus the Gav­el, rep­re­sent­ed a “fork in the road” in Estab­lish­ment Clause jurispru­dence. “When framed as a view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion issue,” Hamil­ton adds, “it was going to be very hard for the uni­ver­si­ty to win. . . . the word dis­crim­i­na­tion is so freight­ed in our cul­ture with neg­a­tives that the minute that view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion was on the table, it was real­ly the end.”

    The Court reit­er­at­ed its rea­son­ing and applied it to the nation’s pub­lic ele­men­tary schools in a 2001 deci­sion in an ADF-fund­ed case, in which it forced the Mil­ford Cen­tral School Dis­trict in upstate New York to change its pol­i­cy of pro­hibit­ing reli­gious clubs from using its facil­i­ties for after-school meet­ings. Although the Good News Club, one of thou­sands spon­sored nation­wide by the Child Evan­ge­lism Fel­low­ship, pros­e­ly­tizes to chil­dren, under Rosen­berg­er, the school’s denial of its use of school facil­i­ties to the reli­gious clubs, when it allowed sec­u­lar clubs to use them, again con­sti­tut­ed “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion.” The Court reject­ed the school’s claim that it had to exclude the reli­gious club in order to com­ply with the Estab­lish­ment Clause.

    Accord­ing to Hamil­ton, in “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” cas­es, the plain­tiffs need only claim dis­crim­i­na­tion, with­out any actu­al proof, to pre­vail on their asser­tion that they were ille­gal­ly pre­vent­ed from using school resources for reli­gious activ­i­ties. Com­pared with oth­er civ­il rights law, said Hamil­ton, “it’s like liv­ing with Alice in Won­der­land.”
    ...

    And as we can see, the par­tic­u­lar type of “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” the ADF has been focused on is the ‘dis­crim­i­na­tion’ against Chris­t­ian who want to dis­crim­i­nate against the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Or as ADF founder, Alan Sears, put it, “the homo­sex­u­al agen­da and reli­gious free­dom are on a col­li­sion course.” You sim­ply can­not have gay rights with­out dis­crim­i­nat­ing against devout Chris­tians. Rights for me and thee are impos­si­ble in this sit­u­a­tion. Soci­ety needs to choose one group’s rights over the oth­er, and that should obvi­ous­ly be the rights of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians, as the ADF sees it:

    ...
    Scaggs is a board mem­ber of Defend­ers Voice, a local orga­ni­za­tion formed two years ago by a group of min­is­ters and their fol­low­ers who fought the for­ma­tion of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Boyd Coun­ty High School, just up the road from where we sat. Locat­ed on a stretch of state high­way dot­ted with church­es, dol­lar stores, pay­day lenders, and a dri­ve-through cig­a­rette store, the high school had become a place where anti-gay harass­ment had become an every­day occur­rence.

    Most of the time, stu­dent orga­niz­ers of the Boyd Coun­ty GSA said, the basis for the harass­ment was reli­gious. One of the orga­niz­ers, Lib­by Fugett, said that “most of the peo­ple at school, even the younger peo­ple, who would call us names at school, they would cuss at us; they would say, You f’ing fag, you’re going to hell. . . . They just think it’s excus­able because their reli­gion backs it up. And that was a real­ly big part of it. It’s okay for them to sin against us because we’re sin­ners.”

    Lead­ing the charge against the GSA were min­is­ters, led by the Rev. Tim York, who said they “believe the Bible to be the word of God; we believe that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin.” (In 2004, York, who is now the pas­tor of a church in Nashville, ran an unsuc­cess­ful cam­paign for the Ken­tucky Sen­ate on an anti-gay-mar­riage plat­form, with back­ing from the state and nation­al Repub­li­can par­ties.) York and his fol­low­ers exert­ed such intense pres­sure on school offi­cials that it influ­enced their deci­sion on the GSA, ulti­mate­ly forc­ing the stu­dents to sue the school sys­tem in order have the GSA rec­og­nized.

    To set­tle the case, the school dis­trict agreed to con­duct manda­to­ry anti-harass­ment train­ing for all stu­dents. Although the train­ing con­sist­ed of just a one-hour video once a year, York was intent on pre­vent­ing stu­dents from see­ing what he con­sid­ered “indoc­tri­na­tion [into the] homo­sex­u­al lifestyle . . . indoc­tri­na­tion to tear down the Chris­t­ian view that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is wrong. It is reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion, is what it is.” The min­is­ter-led group cir­cu­lat­ed opt-out forms in an effort to exempt stu­dents from watch­ing the video, but the forms were not legal­ly bind­ing. York, his fol­low­ers, and some par­ents want­ed to exempt Chris­t­ian stu­dents, legal­ly, from watch­ing the court-ordered anti-harass­ment video. To vin­di­cate what he believed to be their legal rights, York knew exact­ly where to turn for help: the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).

    ...

    Over the past sev­er­al years, ADF has seized on “view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion” to put the gay rights move­ment in its cross hairs. Gay rights, in ADF’s view, can­not coex­ist with its ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty. Anti-harass­ment codes at schools and uni­ver­si­ties, gay rights events, and oth­er expres­sions of free­dom or equal rights for LGBT peo­ple, nec­es­sar­i­ly silence Chris­tians, who, ADF insists, are bib­li­cal­ly com­pelled to con­demn homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The “homo­sex­u­al agen­da,” then, is ipso fac­to anti-Chris­t­ian. Alan Sears, ADF’s pres­i­dent, told the Fam­i­ly Research Council’s Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit last fall that “the homo­sex­u­al agen­da and reli­gious free­dom are on a col­li­sion course.” He scoffed at what he called “pro­pa­gan­da about so-called oppres­sion” of gays, coun­ter­ing that the “homo­sex­u­al agen­da” not only seeks to silence reli­gious speech but it “prob­a­bly includes the abo­li­tion of mar­riage.”

    ...

    Back in Boyd Coun­ty, Ken­tucky, ADF lost its attempt to exempt its clients from the manda­to­ry train­ing, and is now appeal­ing. Kevin The­ri­ot, ADF’s senior legal coun­sel, says the train­ing video—which he hasn’t seen—is try­ing to “change the belief sys­tems of reli­gious stu­dents.” In fact, the video, which is pub­licly avail­able, acknowl­edges that “your reli­gious beliefs are sacred and we’re not try­ing to influ­ence those,” and “you have the right to express your beliefs” that “homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is wrong” with­out harass­ing anoth­er stu­dent.

    Despite ADF’s ongo­ing lit­i­ga­tion, the per­cent­age of stu­dents view­ing the video has steadi­ly increased since 2004, when bare­ly half the stu­dents watched it, to over 87 per­cent. But there is no longer a GSA at Boyd Coun­ty High School, which to Bill Scaggs proves that it was just a “flash in the pan,” fail­ing to see that his orga­ni­za­tion intim­i­dat­ed the club out of exis­tence. As William Carter, a Boyd Coun­ty High School grad­u­ate whose efforts to start the GSA result­ed in years of per­son­al upheaval and entan­gle­ment in law­suits, said, “Who wants to join a club where you would have to explain to your par­ents, you know, I’m going to be involved in a fed­er­al law­suit because I’m going to be in a club or some­one hit me in the head with a can of pop, or someone’s going to kill me? No one’s going to do that. It’s high school.”
    ...

    Also note how the ADF was kind of encour­ag­ing exact­ly the kind of law­suit we’re see­ing play out in Indi­ana today when it decid­ed to join the legal defense of Joseph Fred­er­ick over his “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, when his school forced him to take down the sign. While the ADF may have sided with Fred­er­ick at the time out of some sort of sense of oblig­a­tion to defend all forms of Chris­t­ian-themed speech, it’s pret­ty clear that Fred­er­ick was actu­al­ly just mak­ing a joke that did­n’t real­ly have any­thing to do with his per­son­al reli­gion. He was just shar­ing a fun­ny view­point. It’s going to be inter­est­ing to see if the ADF’s sid­ing with Fred­er­ick in this case comes up at all in the cur­rent case play­ing out in Indi­ana:

    ...
    ADF rec­og­nizes that some­times strange bedfellows—even the ACLU—can help its divine cause on behalf of the free-speech rights of America’s pub­lic high school­ers. It recent­ly sided with its arch-ene­my (and against the Bush admin­is­tra­tion) in a Supreme Court case in which an Alas­ka high school stu­dent charged that his First Amend­ment rights were vio­lat­ed when school offi­cials forced him to take down a sign read­ing “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” The stu­dent, Joseph Fred­er­ick, admit­ted that he designed the sign “to be mean­ing­less and fun­ny, in order to get on tele­vi­sion” as the Olympic torch passed through his home town of Juneau in 2002. And even though Frederick’s cause had noth­ing to do with Jesus (and even impli­cat­ed the Sav­ior in the defiled cul­ture that ADF dis­dains), ADF has an inter­est in con­tin­u­ing to shape Supreme Court prece­dent, an effort it began with its first land­mark case 12 years ago and that has been aid­ed by a judi­cia­ry increas­ing­ly friend­ly to its views. ADF’s lega­cy in these cas­es has been to ele­vate the First Amendment’s free speech clause over its Estab­lish­ment Clause, which sep­a­rates church and state, and there­by to pro­mote reli­gious speech—even pros­e­ly­tiz­ing speechin the nation’s pub­lic schools.
    ...

    Then there’s the oblig­a­tory recog­ni­tion of the exten­sive CNP pres­ence in the fig­ures we’re see­ing in this sto­ry: Alan Sears, James Kennedy, Bill Bright, James Leininger, Edgar and Elsa Prince, and Erik Prince are all CNP mem­bers, along with CNP found­ing mem­ber James Dob­son. And don’t for­get how 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. The ADF is a CNP project, even if it’s not offi­cial:

    ...
    If Bill O’Reilly had a hero oth­er than him­self, it would be ADF and its court­room cru­saders lined up to fight the ACLU, Nickelodeon’s homo­sex­u­al agen­da, and hea­thens who are hell-bent on cen­sor­ing the words “Mer­ry Christ­mas.” ADF’s pres­i­dent, Alan Sears, a for­mer Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion pros­e­cu­tor who, accord­ing to the ADF’s web­site, “God unique­ly pre­pared” for his lead role in the orga­ni­za­tion, admits to being inspired by the right-wing com­men­ta­tor O’Reilly—hardly known for his jurispru­den­tial acuity—to write por­tions of his book, The ACLU vs. Amer­i­ca.

    ...

    While the ACLU gained its rep­u­ta­tion by win­ning cas­es, ADF’s reputation—and fund-rais­ing spigot—preceded its first court case. Cre­at­ed just 13 years ago with the sup­port of such Chris­t­ian Right pow­er­hous­es as James Dob­son, D. James Kennedy, and Bill Bright, founder of Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ, it is today the nation’s lead­ing Chris­t­ian Right legal orga­ni­za­tion. Through its Nation­al Lit­i­ga­tion Acad­e­my, ADF has trained more than 900 lawyers, who com­mit them­selves to per­form­ing 450 hours of pro bono legal work “on behalf of the body of Christ.” It doles out mil­lions of dol­lars a year to oth­er Chris­t­ian Right organizations—many of which are already well endowed—to cov­er attor­neys’ fees and costs.

    ...

    Last year, ADF received over $21 mil­lion in indi­vid­ual and foun­da­tion fund­ing. Some of the major donors include the Covenant Foun­da­tion, financed by the “Grand­dad­dy” of the Texas Chris­t­ian Right, busi­ness mogul James Leininger; var­i­ous mem­bers of the Amway-Prince Auto­mo­tive empire, includ­ing the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foun­da­tion, whose vice pres­i­dent, Erik Prince (Edgar and Elsa’s son, and broth­er of Bet­sy DeVos, wife of the Amway mag­nate, right-wing financier, and unsuc­cess­ful Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Richard DeVos), found­ed the Black­wa­ter USA mil­i­tary-secu­ri­ty firm; and the Bolt­house Foun­da­tion, which is under­writ­ten chiefly with prof­its from Bolt­house Farms, a fam­i­ly-run Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny whose prod­ucts are often seen at organ­ic mar­kets and Whole Foods. Bolt­house requires recip­i­ents of its grants to pledge adher­ence to a state­ment of faith that includes the dec­la­ra­tion that “man was cre­at­ed by a direct act of God in His image, not from pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ing crea­tures” and a belief in “the ever­last­ing blessed­ness of the saved and the ever­last­ing pun­ish­ment of the lost.”
    ...

    Final­ly, note the ADF attor­ney we find in this 2007 piece seem­ing­ly defend­ing the bul­ly­ing of LGTBQ kids by por­tray­ing crit­i­cism of that bul­ly­ing as “out­right hos­til­i­ty some­times, against . . . kids who hold a Chris­t­ian kind of world view who want to share Chris­t­ian view­points or speech on cam­pus”: Mike John­son, the cur­rent speak­er of the House. There he is as an ADF lawyer, defend­ing the rights of stu­dents who feel a bib­li­cal duty to harass gay kids:

    ...
    These cas­es have become not only the chief legal weapon in ADF’s arse­nal but also the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple for all its fund-rais­ing, pub­lic rela­tions, and pro­pa­gan­da. ADF attor­ney Mike John­son summed up his organization’s posi­tion when he said, “What we’re see­ing in more and more cas­es is a dis­crim­i­na­tion against par­tic­u­lar view­points, even out­right hos­til­i­ty some­times, against . . . kids who hold a Chris­t­ian kind of world view who want to share Chris­t­ian view­points or speech on cam­pus, and they’re being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against because some peo­ple see that as intol­er­ant, or how­ev­er they char­ac­ter­ize it.”
    ...

    If devout Chris­tians don’t have the right to aggres­sive­ly dis­crim­i­nate against gays, that’s dis­crim­i­na­tion. While the ADF may have had enor­mous legal suc­cess to push­ing this argu­ment, those suc­cess­es always begged the ques­tion of what hap­pens when peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faiths assert the same rights. For exam­ple, what if some­one is com­pelled, by the their, to decry those who dis­crim­i­nate against the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty? Are we going to see spe­cial rights carved out for those who want to harass out­spo­ken devout con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians who have a his­to­ry of protest­ing LBGTQ rights? Because that’s kind a log­i­cal end point of this kind of legal rea­son. Or at least one of the pos­si­ble end points.

    There’s always the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the courts will some­how find a way to lim­it these spe­cial rights carve-outs for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians only. Time will tell. But in the mean time, don’t be sur­prised if state leg­is­la­tures in places like Indi­ana sud­den­ly feel com­pelled to add spe­cial “* for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians only” clar­i­fi­ca­tions to their reli­gious lib­er­ty laws now that the CNP’s ‘reli­gious free­dom’ genie appears to have escaped from the bot­tle.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 15, 2024, 6:01 pm
  24. Paul Pressler died. It was a cou­ple of weeks ago, just days before this year’s annu­al South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC) annu­al meet­ing. Rather awk­ward tim­ing giv­ing Pressler’s dual stature as both one of the co-lead­ers of the “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” decades ago in the SBC but also one of the biggest ser­i­al sex­u­al preda­tors in the SBC’s his­to­ry. As we saw, the SBC actu­al­ly set­tled the law­suit it was fac­ing from one of Pressler’s vic­tims, Duane Rollins, in late Decem­ber 2023. So how did the SBC address Pressler’s pass­ing? By say­ing noth­ing.

    But while the SBC’s silence on Pressler might seem like an implic­it acknowl­edge­ment of Pressler’s guilt, that should­n’t be inter­pret­ed as some sort of new more eth­i­cal approach to the han­dling of sex­u­al abuse claims. In fact, as we’re going to see, a res­o­lu­tion to call on the SBC to end its use of nondis­clo­sure agree­ments (some­thing very handy when try­ing to cov­er up a sex­u­al abuse claim) nev­er even made it to a vote. Beyond that, the pow­er­ful Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work (CBN) put out a 38 page doc­u­ment describ­ing the group’s agen­da. An agen­da that includes ques­tion­ing the hon­esty of sex­u­al abuse vic­tims. As we’ve seen, the CBN was formed in 2020 and oper­ates as a kind of con­tem­po­rary “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence”, with the block­ing of sex­u­al abuse inves­ti­ga­tions as one of its top pri­or­i­ties. Don’t for­get that Pressler was mere­ly the most high pro­file sex­u­al preda­tor inside the SBC. There’s an ongo­ing sex­u­al abuse epi­dem­ic in the SBC’s church­es thanks, in large part, to the SBC’s utter refusal to address the prob­lem. It’s part of what made Pressler’s pass­ing all the more awk­ward and the silence around his pass­ing all the more deaf­en­ing.

    But a sex­u­al abuse epi­dem­ic is just one of the many issues the SBC has been grap­pling with. Women serv­ing as pas­tors was anoth­er one. And while a major­i­ty of the SBC mem­ber­ship is opposed to women being allowed to serve as pas­tors, a res­o­lu­tion that would have banned women being called “pas­tor” nar­row­ly failed the nec­es­sary two-thirds-major­i­ty vote. It’s being tout­ed by some as “the cen­ter hold­ing” against the CBN’s push to the right. But, again, it almost passed. And there’s always next year.

    One of the CBN-backed res­o­lu­tions that did pass had imme­di­ate rever­ber­a­tion far beyond just the SBC’s mil­lions of mem­bers: a ban on all IVF treat­ments. It was a vote that is seen as a pow­er­ful con­fir­ma­tion to the broad­er “pro-life” move­ment that the SBC’s lead­er­ship will back their desire to expand the “pro-life” move­ment to more fronts than just abor­tion. New fronts like IVF bans.

    As we’re also going to see, while access to IVF is wide­ly endorsed by the vast major­i­ty of US evan­gel­i­cals today, it’s also the case that IVF treat­ments is a top­ic that almost no one had actu­al­ly thought much about until the Alaba­ma Supreme Court’s IVF ban back in Feb­ru­ary. That Alaba­ma Supreme Court rul­ing is seen by IVF oppo­nents as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change minds on the issue and it sounds that minds are chang­ing. But more impor­tant­ly, the oppo­nents of IVF — who tend to be lead­ers in the anti-abor­tion move­ment — are intent on wag­ing the same kind of decades-long strug­gle to ban all IVF treat­ments that it took for the over­turn­ing of Roe. Of course, with today’s Supreme Court com­po­si­tion and the prospects for an even more con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court should Trump win this elec­tion, it prob­a­bly won’t be decades-long strug­gle this time. More like a few years, if that.

    But the SBC’s his­to­ry IVF ban was­n’t the only polit­i­cal potent news to emerge from the SBC’s annu­al meet­ing. In what was char­ac­ter­ized as an SBC side event, the Dan­bury Insti­tute held a lun­cheon fea­tur­ing Don­ald Trump, with Trump telling the group, “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make it come back. Like just about no oth­er group. I know what’s hap­pen­ing. I know where you’re com­ing from and where you’re going, and I’ll be with you side by side.”. As we’re going to see, the Dan­bury Insti­tute was formed ear­li­er this year and appears to be run large­ly by CBN mem­bers and has close ties to Paige Pat­ter­son. Recall how Pat­ter­son is not just seen as the co-leader of the “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” along­side Pressler and a for­mer leader of the SBC. Pat­ter­son also played a lead role in for­mu­lat­ing the legal coverups of sex­u­al abuse claims. In 2018, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, after it was revealed he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down”. Pat­ter­son sep­a­rate­ly set­tled in Duane Rollins’s law­suit back in April of 2023. So when Trump pledged to the group that “these are going to be your years”, he was mak­ing that pledge to the CBN and Paige Pat­ter­son­’s close allies.

    The oth­er speak­er at the Dan­bury Insti­tute event was Albert Mohler, pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary and one of the two peo­ple who sub­mit­ted the IVF res­o­lu­tion for con­sid­er­a­tion at the SBC annu­al meet­ing. Mohler’s mes­sage to the group includ­ed state­ments on his oppo­si­tion to IVF but also a cri­tique of Trump’s recent felony con­vic­tions over the hush mon­ey pay­ments to porn star Stormy Daniels. “What we are look­ing at is the mis­use of the Amer­i­can legal sys­tem in a way that, quite frankly, will not allow for recov­ery,” accord­ing to Mohler.

    And that defense of Trump’s felony con­vic­tions by Mohler brings us to anoth­er dark chap­ter in this ongo­ing sto­ry about the SBC’s inabil­i­ty to grap­ple with sex­u­al preda­tors: it was back on Feb­ru­ary 16, the same day the Alaba­ma Supreme Court made its IVF rul­ing, when Mohler was speak­ing at a in Louisville, KY, spon­sored by the Ken­wood Insti­tute where he engaged in a tru­ly absurd defense of Pressler over the sex­u­al abuse charges. First, Mohler has claimed that he knew noth­ing about Pressler’s abuse until 2017, when Rollins’s recent­ly set­tled law­suit was first raised. That’s despite the fact that rumors about Pressler’s pre­da­tions had been ram­pant for decades. In fact, it turns out Pressler was ini­tial­ly tapped by George H. W. Bush in 1989 to lead the U.S. Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics. Pressler’s nom­i­na­tion was qui­et­ly with­drawn for unclear rea­sons fol­low­ing an FBI back­ground check. Keep in mind Pressler’s abuse of Rollins start­ed over a decade ear­li­er. Also keep in mind that Pressler had already secret­ly set­tled a law­suit from Rollins back in 2004. And yet, Mohler, one of the SBC’s senior lead­ers today, claims he knew noth­ing about it all until 2017. Which is all part of what makes his defense of Pressler so absurd: accord­ing to Mohler, the charges against Pressler were too hor­ren­dous to be believed.

    More specif­i­cal­ly, Mohler points to the lack of accu­sa­tions against Pressler from the late Ken Chafin, who was a mod­er­ate SBC leader long seen as an ene­my of Pressler. Both Chafin and Pressler were based in Hous­ton dur­ing the peri­od of Pressler’s rise to SBC promi­nence. And accord­ing to Mohler, if the accu­sa­tions against Pressler were true, Chafin would sure have said some­thing about it. It’s the kind of defense that assumes a rumor mill about Pressler’s pre­da­tions going back decades. And yet Mohler claims he knew noth­ing about these rumors until 2017.

    And, again, the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee had set­tled in the Rollins case less than two months before Mohler made this argu­ment. It’s one of the many warn­ing signs that the set­tling of that case did­n’t some­how set­tle an inter­nal SBC debate over whether or not to con­tin­ue cov­er­ing up these cas­es. The coverups are to con­tin­ue.

    That was more or less the mes­sage Mohler deliv­ered — deliv­ered in the form of a per­verse defense of Pressler — on the same day the Alaba­ma Supreme Court made its his­to­ry IVF rul­ing. And here we are, four months lat­er, with the SBC for­mal­iz­ing that oppo­si­tion to IVF at its annu­al meet­ing. An annu­al meet­ing that took place just days after Pressler’s passing...with a sin­gle men­tion. The SBC is putting Pressler in the past, while look­ing to a future of more abuse coverups and a new ‘IVF’ front in the ‘pro-life’ move­ment. The Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work may not have won all of the votes at this meet­ing, with the ban on female pas­tors nar­row­ly fail­ing. But it’s pret­ty clear the CBN is steadi­ly win­ning con­trol of the SBC. And as Trump’s appear­ance at the CBN’s Dan­bury Insti­tute also makes clear, the CBN’s influ­ence is set to explode. Not just with­in the SBC but across the US. “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make it come back. Like just about no oth­er group. I know what’s hap­pen­ing. I know where you’re com­ing from and where you’re going, and I’ll be with you side by side.” Trump was­n’t minc­ing words, for once.

    So while the silence around the pass­ing of Paul Pressler might seem like the end of a very dark chap­ter for the SBC, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that this is a strate­gic silence intend­ed to ensure the pow­er net­work Pressler thrived in con­tin­ues to thrive and expand:

    Bap­tist News Glob­al

    Break­ing news: Paul Pressler died and the SBC said noth­ing

    News
    Mark Wing­field | June 15, 2024

    Her­man Paul Pressler III of Hous­ton died June 7, four days before the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion annu­al meet­ing, where noth­ing was said about his pass­ing.

    Pressler, who had just turned 94, was the co-archi­tect of the so-called “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” in the SBC.

    He was a lead­ing fig­ure in the denom­i­na­tion for five decades. How­ev­er, he has been cred­i­bly accused of sex­u­al abuse of boys and young men over a peri­od of years. Those alle­ga­tions put his pre­vi­ous sta­tus as a cham­pi­on of con­ser­vatism in a new light.

    ...

    “Paul Pressler will go down as the biggest hyp­ocrite in Bap­tist his­to­ry. He split the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and dec­i­mat­ed the min­istries of count­less sem­i­nary pro­fes­sors, denom­i­na­tion­al work­ers and pas­tors, all the while prey­ing upon young men who believed his sanc­ti­mo­nious tripe,” said Marv Knox, for­mer fea­tures edi­tor for Bap­tist Press and lat­er edi­tor of the Texas Bap­tist Stan­dard. “Thank God, Pressler lived long enough for the truth of his malev­o­lence and debauch­ery to be known across the SBC and beyond.”

    ———

    “Break­ing news: Paul Pressler died and the SBC said noth­ing” by Mark Wing­field; Bap­tist News Glob­al; 06/15/2024

    “Her­man Paul Pressler III of Hous­ton died June 7, four days before the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion annu­al meet­ing, where noth­ing was said about his pass­ing.

    He dies just four days before the SBC’s annu­al meet­ing and there’s not a sin­gle men­tion. Pressler was one of the co-archi­tects of the SBC’s “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” decades ago. The silence is deaf­en­ing. And kind of an admis­sion of guilt. Pressler’s abus­es did­n’t hap­pen in a vac­u­um, after all. They hap­pened in a cul­ture of coverups and pro­tect­ing the pow­er­ful, hence the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee itself even­tu­al­ly set­tling in the long­stand­ing sex­u­al abuse case brought against Pressler and the SBC back in 2017.

    But while Pressler’s pass­ing did­n’t get a sin­gle men­tion at the SBC’s annu­al con­ven­tion, that should­n’t be inter­pret­ed as the SBC some­how putting these sor­did sex abuse scan­dals to rest. Pressler isn’t the only abuser in SBC has had to deal with, after all, and as we’ve seen, there’s an influ­en­tial new group inside the SBC that has made end­ing the sex­u­al abuse inves­ti­ga­tions one of its top pri­or­i­ties: The Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work (CBN), formed in 2020. As the fol­low­ing New York­er piece describes, the CBN was still busi­ly sow­ing doubt about the cred­i­bil­i­ty of accusers dur­ing this year’s con­ven­tion. It was part of a 38 page doc­u­ment that includ­ed oth­er CBN pri­or­i­ties, like an oppo­si­tion to female pas­tors and social jus­tice.

    The CBN was undoubt­ed­ly pleased that a mea­sure that would have called for an end to the SBC’s use of nondis­clo­sure agree­ments nev­er made it to a vote. A pro­pos­al to for­mal­ly ban allow­ing women to be called “pas­tor”, how­ev­er, bare­ly fell short of a two-thirds-major­i­ty vote at the con­fer­ence. But there was one major vic­to­ry for the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tives: a mea­sure to ban all use of IVF tech­nol­o­gy passed, help­ing to to fuel a major new front in the ‘pro-life’ move­ment. The next front:

    The New York­er

    An Unex­pect­ed Turn in the Evan­gel­i­cal Cul­ture Wars

    A pro­pos­al to ban South­ern Bap­tist women from serv­ing as pas­tors failed a two-thirds-major­i­ty vote, sig­nalling that the far right has not yet con­sol­i­dat­ed its con­trol of the Church.

    By Eliza Gris­wold
    June 12, 2024

    On Wednes­day, in Indi­anapo­lis, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, the largest Protes­tant body in the Unit­ed States, reject­ed a pro­posed ban on allow­ing women to be called “pas­tor.” The mea­sure, which would have amend­ed the S.B.C.’s con­sti­tu­tion, fell just short of a two-thirds-major­i­ty vote. The S.B.C. has offi­cial­ly barred women from lead­ing church­es since 2000. Yet this ban would have gone fur­ther, threat­en­ing to “dis­fel­low­ship” church­es that allow women to use the title of pas­tor in any way. I called Rick War­ren, the founder of Sad­dle­back Church, in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and one of the most influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors, short­ly after the vote with the news. “That’s a relief for over two thou­sand S.B.C. church­es who have women pas­tors, whether they lead church­es or not,” War­ren told me.

    The vast major­i­ty of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, who num­ber about a quar­ter of adults in the U.S., oppose the idea of female pas­tors. For most, the Bible’s stance against female pas­tors is stark­ly clear. “Women should be silent in the church­es,” the apos­tle Paul writes to the mem­bers of the ear­ly Church. “For they are not per­mit­ted to speak but should be sub­or­di­nate, as the law also says. If there is some­thing they want to learn, let them ask their hus­bands at home. For it is shame­ful for a woman to speak in church.” Oth­er pas­sages rein­force this injunc­tion. “Let a woman learn in silence with full sub­mis­sion,” Paul writes to Tim­o­thy, a leader of the church in Eph­esus. “I do not per­mit a woman to teach or to have author­i­ty over a man; she is to keep silent.”

    In spite of these vers­es, many Protes­tant denominations—including the Bap­tists, Pres­by­te­ri­ans, Methodists, and Episcopalians—ordain women. Most Chris­tians view these vers­es as anachro­nis­tic and sub­ject to his­tor­i­cal con­text, much like oth­er Bib­li­cal pas­sages on ston­ing adul­ter­ers to death and order­ing slaves to be obe­di­ent to their mas­ters.

    “Paul also tells women not to braid their hair or wear jew­el­ry,” Lin­da Barnes Popham, a six­ty-eight-year-old pas­tor, who leads Fern Creek Bap­tist Church, in Louisville, Ken­tucky, told me recent­ly. Popham attend­ed South­ern Sem­i­nary, the South­ern Bap­tists’ lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion, in the nineteen-eighties—a time when women were allowed to study preach­ing. “Women still won the preach­ing award,” she told me. “And all of my pro­fes­sors affirmed women in min­istry.” That atti­tude of open­ness changed quick­ly. When Popham grad­u­at­ed from the sem­i­nary, in 1985, fun­da­men­tal­ist lead­ers were stag­ing a coup with­in the S.B.C., known as the con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence, fir­ing lib­er­al pro­fes­sors and bar­ring women from tak­ing cours­es that pre­pared them to become pas­tors.

    Though the S.B.C. now claims that the Bible is clear in its stric­tures against female pas­tors, schol­ars point to scrip­tur­al con­tra­dic­tions. Kather­ine Ellis, a doc­tor­al stu­dent at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty, not­ed that, in addi­tion to silenc­ing women and grous­ing about their hair, Paul prais­es female lead­ers: he refers to Phoebe, who trav­elled to Rome to preach, as a “dea­con”; calls Junia, impris­oned for her faith, an “apos­tle”; and describes Prisca and Aquila as “co-work­ers in Christ Jesus.” From the first to the twelfth cen­tu­ry, the his­to­ri­an Gary Macy writes in “The Hid­den His­to­ry of Women’s Ordi­na­tion,” women held roles as priests, dea­cons, and even bish­ops, begin­ning with Mary Mag­da­lene, who left her home to fol­low Jesus, along­side his twelve dis­ci­ples. In addi­tion to Mary, whom Thomas Aquinas, the thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry the­olo­gian, calls “the Apos­tle to the Apos­tles,” Scrip­ture recounts the sto­ries of mul­ti­ple women among Jesus’ ear­li­est con­verts and first teach­ers.

    Dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic, Rick War­ren read these accounts of women in the ear­ly Church. Since he’d begun preach­ing, at the age of six­teen, War­ren, who is the­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, had vehe­ment­ly opposed women pas­tors. How­ev­er, the iso­la­tion of lock­down allowed him to ques­tion that posi­tion. “One of the things that real­ly stood out to me was the hid­den his­to­ry of how much women were involved in the ear­ly growth of the first four hun­dred years of Chris­tian­i­ty,” War­ren told me. “This has been com­plete­ly writ­ten out of tra­di­tion and cul­ture.”

    To War­ren, ordain­ing women wasn’t sim­ply good the­ol­o­gy; he also believed that it could help save the Church, which, in the U.S., was rapid­ly shrink­ing. Dur­ing the past three decades, some forty mil­lion Amer­i­cans have left their church­es; the num­ber of South­ern Bap­tists has dropped from six­teen mil­lion mem­bers to about thir­teen mil­lion since 2010. “Why have we not been as fast at get­ting the good news out as they were in the first four hun­dred years?” War­ren asked. “You’ve heard the old say­ing that women hold up half the sky? Well, women hold up half the Church. Why would you keep fifty per cent sit­ting on the bench?” In 2021, War­ren ordained three women as pas­tors at Sad­dle­back: Liz Puffer, Cyn­thia Pet­ty, and Katie Edwards. In 2022, he com­mis­sioned a fourth, Sta­cie Wood, to suc­ceed him in lead­ing Sad­dle­back along­side her hus­band, Andy.

    ...

    Warren’s ordi­na­tion of the women inflamed a far-right strain with­in the S.B.C., which he labelled “fun­da­men­tal­ism.” Although the S.B.C. has long been both the­o­log­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, dif­fer­ences with­in it had sharp­ened in 2020, when a splin­ter orga­ni­za­tion arose, call­ing itself the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work. “It began with twen­ty peo­ple from around the coun­try who shared the same con­cerns that the S.B.C. was mov­ing away from Bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples, and against the gains of the con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence,” Ron­nie Rogers, one of the founders of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, told me. In a thir­ty-eight-page doc­u­ment, they list­ed their con­cerns: prin­ci­pal­ly, a soft­en­ing around the role of women and issues of social jus­tice. The S.B.C. was inves­ti­gat­ing hun­dreds of claims that its lead­er­ship had cov­ered up sex­u­al abuse by cler­gy mem­bers; Rogers’s group doubt­ed that the accusers, most­ly girls and women, were telling the truth. “In Chris­tian­i­ty, both women and men lie,” Rogers told me. Their man­i­festo drew more inter­est. “Now we have ten thou­sand mem­bers,” he told me.

    War­ren told me, “This is a fight between fun­da­men­tal­ists and con­ser­v­a­tives. All of us believe that the Bible is inerrant, but the fun­da­men­tal­ists believe that their inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible is also inerrant, and that’s the prob­lem.” By press­ing the issue of female pas­tors among his fel­low South­ern Bap­tists, War­ren was striv­ing to make a point about a dan­ger­ous direc­tion in which he saw the Church mov­ing. “Rick War­ren is a bril­liant tac­ti­cian,” Ryan Burge, a Bap­tist min­is­ter and a pro­fes­sor at East­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, told me. “He knew that, by forc­ing this con­ver­sa­tion, he would either help bring South­ern Bap­tists along, or they’d have to kick out one of their most influ­en­tial and beloved pas­tors.”

    In Feb­ru­ary of 2022, not long after War­ren ordained the three female pas­tors, the S.B.C. declared that Sad­dle­back Church was “not in friend­ly coop­er­a­tion with the con­ven­tion.” That spring, on the floor of the S.B.C. con­ven­tion in Ana­heim, Cal­i­for­nia, War­ren defend­ed his deci­sion and called for an end to “bick­er­ing about sec­ondary issues.” He asked his fel­low South­ern Bap­tists, “As West­ern cul­ture becomes more dark, more evil, more sec­u­lar, we have to decide: are we going to treat each oth­er as allies or not?” Warren’s actions fuelled a fur­ther hard­en­ing of the far right of the Church. A new, more vocif­er­ous strain of oppo­si­tion to female pas­tors arose, and, at the 2023 con­ven­tion, the del­e­gates, known as mes­sen­gers, vot­ed to dis­fel­low­ship Sad­dle­back. At that same meet­ing, in New Orleans, the mes­sen­gers endorsed the Law Amend­ment: the pro­posed ban, named for Mike Law, the Vir­ginia pas­tor who pro­posed it, on women even being called pas­tors.

    ...

    The rejec­tion of the Law Amend­ment sig­nalled that the rad­i­cals of the S.B.C. may have over­es­ti­mat­ed their sup­port. Her­shael York, the dean of the School of The­ol­o­gy at South­ern Sem­i­nary, told me, “Some­times I sus­pect that the guys who were too young or not yet born when the con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence hap­pened feel like they missed the war, so they try to start one.” York sup­port­ed the expul­sions of Sad­dle­back and Fern Creek. But, he said, of the Law Amend­ment, “I fear it will only dri­ve out some church­es that we can oth­er­wise strength­en and encour­age.” The enthu­si­asm for the insur­gent Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work was, to York, anoth­er sign of trou­ble. “When we treat every­thing like an exis­ten­tial threat and feel the need to form splin­ter orga­ni­za­tions, we lose the cohe­sion and uni­ty we des­per­ate­ly need to face legit­i­mate threats,” he added.

    To many observers, the con­fronta­tion over female pas­tors is sim­ply one sal­vo in an inter­nal pow­er strug­gle over the future of evan­gel­i­cal­ism. “It’s a sign that the cen­ter held for now, but the cul­ture-war fac­tion is already say­ing they are regroup­ing, and their main aim is to turn the Church into a polit­i­cal weapon,” Kristin Du Mez, the author of “Jesus and John Wayne,” a his­to­ry of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism, told me. The real ten­sion lies between con­ser­v­a­tives who pos­sess lit­tle inter­est in influ­enc­ing sec­u­lar pol­i­tics, and those for whom pol­i­tics are para­mount. At this year’s con­ven­tion, mes­sen­gers also approved a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies, such as I.V.F. Anoth­er res­o­lu­tion, called “On Defend­ing Reli­gious Lib­er­ty,” warned against the influ­ence of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and opposed “any effort to use the peo­ple and the church­es of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion to estab­lish Chris­tian­i­ty as the state reli­gion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” It was over­whelm­ing­ly approved. Yet anoth­er, which drew atten­tion to the ongo­ing scan­dal over sex­u­al abuse and called for an end to the S.B.C’s use of nondis­clo­sure agree­ments, nev­er made it to a vote. Al Mohler, the sem­i­nary pres­i­dent, said, “Giv­en the sec­u­lar­iz­ing pres­sures of the age, I don’t think any­one thinks that list is going to get short­er.”

    ...

    ———-

    “An Unex­pect­ed Turn in the Evan­gel­i­cal Cul­ture Wars” By Eliza Gris­wold; The New York­er; 06/12/2024

    To many observers, the con­fronta­tion over female pas­tors is sim­ply one sal­vo in an inter­nal pow­er strug­gle over the future of evan­gel­i­cal­ism. “It’s a sign that the cen­ter held for now, but the cul­ture-war fac­tion is already say­ing they are regroup­ing, and their main aim is to turn the Church into a polit­i­cal weapon,” Kristin Du Mez, the author of “Jesus and John Wayne,” a his­to­ry of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism, told me. The real ten­sion lies between con­ser­v­a­tives who pos­sess lit­tle inter­est in influ­enc­ing sec­u­lar pol­i­tics, and those for whom pol­i­tics are para­mount. At this year’s con­ven­tion, mes­sen­gers also approved a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies, such as I.V.F. Anoth­er res­o­lu­tion, called “On Defend­ing Reli­gious Lib­er­ty,” warned against the influ­ence of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and opposed “any effort to use the peo­ple and the church­es of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion to estab­lish Chris­tian­i­ty as the state reli­gion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” It was over­whelm­ing­ly approved. Yet anoth­er, which drew atten­tion to the ongo­ing scan­dal over sex­u­al abuse and called for an end to the S.B.C’s use of nondis­clo­sure agree­ments, nev­er made it to a vote. Al Mohler, the sem­i­nary pres­i­dent, said, “Giv­en the sec­u­lar­iz­ing pres­sures of the age, I don’t think any­one thinks that list is going to get short­er.””

    It was quite hash­ing of issues for the SBC. And as we can see, while the ban on female nar­row­ly failed to get the required two thirds major­i­ty, the con­ser­v­a­tive wing of the SBC still had a num­ber of ‘wins’. Or rather, the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work fac­tion that arose back in 2020 and appears to to be attempt­ing to ampli­fy the “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” from decades past. As as we’ve seen, in addi­tion to goals like reduc­ing the role of women, fight­ing against “social jus­tice”, and a suc­cess­ful res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing IVF treat­ment, this Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work has anoth­er key agen­da item: end­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into sex­u­al abuse:

    ...
    The vast major­i­ty of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, who num­ber about a quar­ter of adults in the U.S., oppose the idea of female pas­tors. For most, the Bible’s stance against female pas­tors is stark­ly clear. “Women should be silent in the church­es,” the apos­tle Paul writes to the mem­bers of the ear­ly Church. “For they are not per­mit­ted to speak but should be sub­or­di­nate, as the law also says. If there is some­thing they want to learn, let them ask their hus­bands at home. For it is shame­ful for a woman to speak in church.” Oth­er pas­sages rein­force this injunc­tion. “Let a woman learn in silence with full sub­mis­sion,” Paul writes to Tim­o­thy, a leader of the church in Eph­esus. “I do not per­mit a woman to teach or to have author­i­ty over a man; she is to keep silent.”

    ...

    “Paul also tells women not to braid their hair or wear jew­el­ry,” Lin­da Barnes Popham, a six­ty-eight-year-old pas­tor, who leads Fern Creek Bap­tist Church, in Louisville, Ken­tucky, told me recent­ly. Popham attend­ed South­ern Sem­i­nary, the South­ern Bap­tists’ lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion, in the nineteen-eighties—a time when women were allowed to study preach­ing. “Women still won the preach­ing award,” she told me. “And all of my pro­fes­sors affirmed women in min­istry.” That atti­tude of open­ness changed quick­ly. When Popham grad­u­at­ed from the sem­i­nary, in 1985, fun­da­men­tal­ist lead­ers were stag­ing a coup with­in the S.B.C., known as the con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence, fir­ing lib­er­al pro­fes­sors and bar­ring women from tak­ing cours­es that pre­pared them to become pas­tors.

    ...

    Warren’s ordi­na­tion of the women inflamed a far-right strain with­in the S.B.C., which he labelled “fun­da­men­tal­ism.” Although the S.B.C. has long been both the­o­log­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, dif­fer­ences with­in it had sharp­ened in 2020, when a splin­ter orga­ni­za­tion arose, call­ing itself the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work. “It began with twen­ty peo­ple from around the coun­try who shared the same con­cerns that the S.B.C. was mov­ing away from Bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples, and against the gains of the con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence,” Ron­nie Rogers, one of the founders of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, told me. In a thir­ty-eight-page doc­u­ment, they list­ed their con­cerns: prin­ci­pal­ly, a soft­en­ing around the role of women and issues of social jus­tice. The S.B.C. was inves­ti­gat­ing hun­dreds of claims that its lead­er­ship had cov­ered up sex­u­al abuse by cler­gy mem­bers; Rogers’s group doubt­ed that the accusers, most­ly girls and women, were telling the truth. “In Chris­tian­i­ty, both women and men lie,” Rogers told me. Their man­i­festo drew more inter­est. “Now we have ten thou­sand mem­bers,” he told me.
    ...

    But as we’re going to see the fol­low­ing Politi­co arti­cle, while this Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work (CBN) may have suc­ceed­ed in get­ting its desired IVF res­o­lu­tion passed, we should­n’t inter­pret that as a sign of broad sup­port for the ban­ning of IVF ther­a­py among reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cals. Instead, what we find is not just gen­er­al sup­port for IVF treat­ments among evan­gel­i­cals for also a gen­er­al lack of con­vic­tion behind that sup­port because the issue has quite sim­ply been off most peo­ple’s radar until now. Whether or not to allow IVF is large­ly a new issue for the vast major­i­ty of evan­gel­i­cals, but not for the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tives of the CBN who have long held a desire to restrict IVF. As such, the recent pas­sage of the SBC res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing IVF is less of a sign of gen­er­al dis­ap­proval for IVF among the mem­ber­ship of the SBC’s church­es and more a sign of the con­vic­tion of these lead­ers to turn this into an issue that evan­gel­i­cals care about. In oth­er words, these theo­crat­ic lead­ers are attempt­ing to repli­cate the decades old post-Roe wild suc­cess in con­vert­ing evan­gel­i­cals who nev­er thought about abor­tion into polit­i­cal sol­diers who pri­or­i­tize end­ing it above all else. And as we all now know, that’s a very plau­si­ble strat­e­gy. It’s worked before. Which is why we prob­a­bly should­n’t be sur­prised if ban­ning IVF treat­ments becomes not just more and more pop­u­lar among evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers but increas­ing­ly seen as an exis­ten­tial issue of great the­o­log­i­cal importance...the kind of issue that can dri­ve evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers back to polls over and over:

    Politi­co

    Why the South­ern Bap­tists’ vote oppos­ing IVF could change nation­al pol­i­tics

    The move may sig­nal the begin­ning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many social con­ser­v­a­tives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next fron­tier.

    By Megan Messer­ly

    06/12/2024 02:58 PM EDT
    Updat­ed: 06/12/2024 04:41 PM EDT

    INDIANAPOLIS — The South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, the nation’s largest and most polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion, vot­ed Wednes­day to oppose in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion.

    The move may sig­nal the begin­ning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many evan­gel­i­cals, anti-abor­tion advo­cates and oth­er social con­ser­v­a­tives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next fron­tier — one they hope will even­tu­al­ly lead to restric­tions, or out­right bans, on IVF at the state and fed­er­al lev­els.

    ...

    IVF has come under increas­ing scruti­ny since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs deci­sion two years ago. Many on the right have begun to ques­tion whether the prac­tice, which often dis­cards fer­til­ized eggs, is at odds with their beliefs on when life begins, even as it is relied upon by mil­lions of Amer­i­cans to grow their fam­i­lies and is sup­port­ed by the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of evan­gel­i­cals.

    “It’s going to be a long process. It took us 50 years to take down Roe,” said Brent Leather­wood, pres­i­dent of the Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, the pub­lic pol­i­cy arm of the SBC. “It may take us a sim­i­lar­ly long time frame to get peo­ple to a place where they are think­ing more deeply about some­thing like this. It’s okay. It takes time. We have to be patient.”

    The res­o­lu­tion, which was passed by near­ly 11,000 so-called mes­sen­gers to the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s annu­al meet­ing, declares that IVF “most often par­tic­i­pates in the destruc­tion of embry­on­ic human life” and calls on South­ern Bap­tists to adopt and “only uti­lize repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies” that affirm “the uncon­di­tion­al val­ue and right to life of every human being.”

    Though the res­o­lu­tion is non­bind­ing, near­ly 13 mil­lion South­ern Bap­tists across 45,000 church­es may now face pres­sure from the pul­pit or in indi­vid­ual con­ver­sa­tions with pas­tors to eschew IVF.

    While Catholics have long opposed IVF, many Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions have large­ly ignored it even as they have preached on the sanc­ti­ty of life as it relates to abor­tion. That is start­ing to change in the wake of the Alaba­ma Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Feb­ru­ary that ruled that frozen embryos cre­at­ed dur­ing the IVF process should have full per­son­hood rights.

    The South­ern Bap­tists’ Wednes­day vote could encour­age oth­er evan­gel­i­cal denom­i­na­tions and church­es to fol­low suit in declar­ing — or at least teach­ing about — their eth­i­cal con­cerns with IVF.

    “This is a very pow­er­ful faith group,” said Christa Brown, an advo­cate for reform with­in the denom­i­na­tion as it relates to sex­u­al assault and women’s issues. “They have huge influ­ence not only because of their own num­bers but because they’re a bell­wether for all of white evan­gel­i­cal­ism.”

    The IVF con­ver­sa­tion has put Repub­li­cans in an uncom­fort­able posi­tion as they stare down polling show­ing over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar sup­port for IVF. A CBS News/YouGov poll ear­li­er this year found that 86 per­cent of respon­dents thought IVF should be legal, and a sur­vey released in Decem­ber by a firm run by Kellyanne Con­way, for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s for­mer senior coun­selor and cam­paign man­ag­er, found that IVF had 78 per­cent sup­port among self-iden­ti­fied “pro-life advo­cates” and 83 per­cent among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.

    The Alaba­ma high court’s deci­sion forced many evan­gel­i­cals to for the first time think deeply about the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the pro­ce­dure, which as com­mon­ly prac­ticed in the U.S. results in the destruc­tion of excess embryos. Doc­tors cre­ate extra embryos to ensure the best chance of a suc­cess­ful preg­nan­cy. The left­over embryos are frozen, destroyed or donat­ed to med­ical research.

    Many evan­gel­i­cals are now com­ing around to the fact that their con­vic­tion that life begins at con­cep­tion must be applied to IVF, too. If abor­tion is mur­der, the destruc­tion of viable embryos cre­at­ed dur­ing the IVF process is as well.

    ...

    Some Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton have respond­ed to the IVF dis­course by sign­ing onto leg­is­la­tion cre­at­ing broad fed­er­al pro­tec­tions for IVF or intro­duc­ing their own bills to expand access to the pro­ce­dure. Last month, Sen. Ted Crux (R‑Texas), a South­ern Bap­tist, and Katie Britt (R‑Ala.) intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to strip Med­ic­aid fund­ing from any state that bans IVF, a pro­pos­al the Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion resound­ing­ly con­demned in a recent let­ter.

    Albert Mohler, a promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal the­olo­gian, pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary and one of the two peo­ple who sub­mit­ted the IVF res­o­lu­tion for con­sid­er­a­tion, said Repub­li­can elect­ed offi­cials need to do bet­ter.

    “I’m very frus­trat­ed. A lot of them are respond­ing out of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, not out of moral prin­ci­ple. You can’t say on one hand life begins at fer­til­iza­tion and then on the oth­er hand say but now we’re not so con­cerned about that in this oth­er are­na,” Mohler said. “I find the ini­tia­tives and leg­is­la­tion to be deeply trou­bling and I think they reveal a lack of seri­ous­ness on the part of many social con­ser­v­a­tives.”

    Mohler and Andrew Walk­er, an ethics pro­fes­sor at South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, have long advo­cat­ed on the IVF issue. But they said the Alaba­ma Supreme Court deci­sion cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a wider con­ver­sa­tion about the prac­tice with­in the denom­i­na­tion.

    “Do I think this means that South­ern Bap­tist cou­ples will nev­er ever pur­sue IVF again? No, I don’t think that’s the case,” Walk­er said. “I think that this is a very help­ful point in time brought about by nation­al cir­cum­stances that is allow­ing us to make an ini­tial but very impor­tant state­ment on IVF.”

    Still, the issue can be hard for Repub­li­cans who want to tout their “pro-life” cre­den­tials but not alien­ate the vast major­i­ty of their con­stituents who accept IVF as a com­mon way to bring life into the world. Even House Speak­er Mike John­son, a South­ern Bap­tist and for­mer ERLC trustee, has strug­gled with how to talk about the issue. He has pub­licly under­scored his sup­port for IVF while declin­ing to weigh in on whether the destruc­tion of unused embryos is mur­der.

    “We’ve seen many politi­cians come out in sup­port of IVF, and the mes­sag­ing often clear­ly is, we want to sup­port fam­i­lies in expand­ing and grow­ing their fam­i­lies. We want to say ‘yes and amen’ to that, but not by any means pos­si­ble,” said Jason Thack­er, a senior fel­low and direc­tor of the research insti­tute at the ERLC. “We have to con­sid­er the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions and real­i­ties of these tech­nolo­gies and mak­ing sure that we’re valu­ing human life even in the embry­on­ic stage.”

    As evan­gel­i­cals become more edu­cat­ed on the issue, they are large­ly falling into two camps: those who believe that IVF can be prac­ticed eth­i­cal­ly if no embryos are destroyed, and those who like Mohler and Walk­er believe IVF is inher­ent­ly uneth­i­cal because it sep­a­rates con­cep­tion from the act of sex between hus­band and wife. Walk­er, acknowl­edg­ing the for­mer view, not­ed the res­o­lu­tion was “draft­ed to pass.”

    A last-minute amend­ment sought to make clear that IVF is per­mis­si­ble in some cir­cum­stances, but failed.

    ...

    Erick Ses­sions, a pas­tor at Grace­land Church in New Albany, Indi­ana, and his wife strug­gled to con­ceive for sev­en years but decid­ed against IVF because of eth­i­cal con­cerns and opt­ed instead to fos­ter chil­dren. Near­ly 15 years lat­er, they have four adopt­ed and five nat­u­ral­ly con­ceived chil­dren.

    “Any­time you get out­side of the nor­mal means with­in which pro­cre­ation occurs, the more for­eign you get or the more alien you get from that, the more you have to con­sid­er its moral impli­ca­tions,” Ses­sions said. “When you divorce it now from the actu­al phys­i­cal act of sex, and you put it into a lab­o­ra­to­ry, it just becomes fur­ther and fur­ther away from the nor­mal means with­in the nat­ur­al world of pro­cre­ation.”

    But he said he is unsure whether his con­gre­ga­tion is ready to hear about IVF from the pul­pit. One of the pas­tors at his church, he said, has had a child through IVF.

    Karen Patrick, whose hus­band is senior pas­tor at First Bap­tist Church of Syla­cau­ga, Alaba­ma, said she had con­ver­sa­tions with friends imme­di­ate­ly after the state Supreme Court deci­sion forced many fam­i­lies to pause the IVF process as the Leg­is­la­ture scram­bled to pass a bill that would allow pro­ce­dures to resume in the state. Patrick said there was “a lot of con­fu­sion” about IVF in the women’s study group she leads at church.

    “I had con­ver­sa­tions just imme­di­ate­ly after that with some friends who were strug­gling with how this deci­sion impact­ed peo­ple that they knew per­son­al­ly, whose process of IVF had been put on hold and not know­ing what was going to hap­pen with that, and just try­ing to help peo­ple think through that while being sym­pa­thet­ic to those who were very much want­i­ng to have chil­dren,” Patrick said. “Until recent­ly, I didn’t real­ly think through that deeply either.”

    Her hus­band, Rick, said Mon­day that he planned to sup­port the IVF res­o­lu­tion. Though he said he nor­mal­ly preach­es on abor­tion, not IVF, he said he’s got­ten more ques­tions on the lat­ter from con­gre­gants in advance of this week’s meet­ing.

    “I’m sen­si­tive to the cou­ple that wants to have a child. Cer­tain­ly you want to help them. It’s just dis­heart­en­ing. The bot­tom line is, life begins at con­cep­tion and I firm­ly believe it does. The way we would do any kind of IVF, we need to not pro­duce the addi­tion­al fer­til­ized eggs that are going to assured­ly be destroyed,” he said. “That is just uncon­scionable that we would kill those lives. We don’t want mur­der, to mur­der those human beings.”

    For Kelsey Melvin, who attends Inter­na­tion­al Bap­tist Church in Arling­ton, Texas, it’s per­son­al. She and her hus­band are decid­ing whether to move for­ward with IVF; if they do, they plan to have as many chil­dren as viable embryos are cre­at­ed.

    Melvin, after hear­ing Mohler speak to the Dan­bury Insti­tute, a Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, on Mon­day, said she appre­ci­at­ed his tone and his tenor.

    “I just dis­agree with him on this par­tic­u­lar issue,” she said. “We’re pro-life, and I feel like that is anoth­er way that we can be pro-life. I believe it is a way that God has giv­en us to have chil­dren.”

    ———-

    “Why the South­ern Bap­tists’ vote oppos­ing IVF could change nation­al pol­i­tics” By Megan Messer­ly; Politi­co; 06/12/2024

    “The move may sig­nal the begin­ning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many evan­gel­i­cals, anti-abor­tion advo­cates and oth­er social con­ser­v­a­tives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next fron­tier — one they hope will even­tu­al­ly lead to restric­tions, or out­right bans, on IVF at the state and fed­er­al lev­els.”

    IVF bans are the “next fron­tier” for the “pro-life” move­ment. At least that’s the plan embraced by the SBC’s lead­er­ship. For most evan­gel­i­cals, IVF was a non-issue. And still today, an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of self-described evan­gel­i­cals are in favor or allow­ing access to IVF. And then the Alaba­ma Supreme Court’s deci­sion hap­pen. Now, IVF bans are the new fron­tier, for decades to come, whether reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cals real­ize it yet or not. Reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal may not care deeply about ban­ning IVF yet, but they will. It’s just a mat­ter of time. Time and heavy dos­es of pul­pit pro­pa­gan­da:

    ...
    IVF has come under increas­ing scruti­ny since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs deci­sion two years ago. Many on the right have begun to ques­tion whether the prac­tice, which often dis­cards fer­til­ized eggs, is at odds with their beliefs on when life begins, even as it is relied upon by mil­lions of Amer­i­cans to grow their fam­i­lies and is sup­port­ed by the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of evan­gel­i­cals.

    “It’s going to be a long process. It took us 50 years to take down Roe,” said Brent Leather­wood, pres­i­dent of the Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, the pub­lic pol­i­cy arm of the SBC. “It may take us a sim­i­lar­ly long time frame to get peo­ple to a place where they are think­ing more deeply about some­thing like this. It’s okay. It takes time. We have to be patient.”

    ...

    While Catholics have long opposed IVF, many Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions have large­ly ignored it even as they have preached on the sanc­ti­ty of life as it relates to abor­tion. That is start­ing to change in the wake of the Alaba­ma Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Feb­ru­ary that ruled that frozen embryos cre­at­ed dur­ing the IVF process should have full per­son­hood rights.

    The South­ern Bap­tists’ Wednes­day vote could encour­age oth­er evan­gel­i­cal denom­i­na­tions and church­es to fol­low suit in declar­ing — or at least teach­ing about — their eth­i­cal con­cerns with IVF.

    “This is a very pow­er­ful faith group,” said Christa Brown, an advo­cate for reform with­in the denom­i­na­tion as it relates to sex­u­al assault and women’s issues. “They have huge influ­ence not only because of their own num­bers but because they’re a bell­wether for all of white evan­gel­i­cal­ism.”

    The IVF con­ver­sa­tion has put Repub­li­cans in an uncom­fort­able posi­tion as they stare down polling show­ing over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar sup­port for IVF. A CBS News/YouGov poll ear­li­er this year found that 86 per­cent of respon­dents thought IVF should be legal, and a sur­vey released in Decem­ber by a firm run by Kellyanne Con­way, for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s for­mer senior coun­selor and cam­paign man­ag­er, found that IVF had 78 per­cent sup­port among self-iden­ti­fied “pro-life advo­cates” and 83 per­cent among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.

    The Alaba­ma high court’s deci­sion forced many evan­gel­i­cals to for the first time think deeply about the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the pro­ce­dure, which as com­mon­ly prac­ticed in the U.S. results in the destruc­tion of excess embryos. Doc­tors cre­ate extra embryos to ensure the best chance of a suc­cess­ful preg­nan­cy. The left­over embryos are frozen, destroyed or donat­ed to med­ical research.

    Many evan­gel­i­cals are now com­ing around to the fact that their con­vic­tion that life begins at con­cep­tion must be applied to IVF, too. If abor­tion is mur­der, the destruc­tion of viable embryos cre­at­ed dur­ing the IVF process is as well.

    ...

    Karen Patrick, whose hus­band is senior pas­tor at First Bap­tist Church of Syla­cau­ga, Alaba­ma, said she had con­ver­sa­tions with friends imme­di­ate­ly after the state Supreme Court deci­sion forced many fam­i­lies to pause the IVF process as the Leg­is­la­ture scram­bled to pass a bill that would allow pro­ce­dures to resume in the state. Patrick said there was “a lot of con­fu­sion” about IVF in the women’s study group she leads at church.

    “I had con­ver­sa­tions just imme­di­ate­ly after that with some friends who were strug­gling with how this deci­sion impact­ed peo­ple that they knew per­son­al­ly, whose process of IVF had been put on hold and not know­ing what was going to hap­pen with that, and just try­ing to help peo­ple think through that while being sym­pa­thet­ic to those who were very much want­i­ng to have chil­dren,” Patrick said. “Until recent­ly, I didn’t real­ly think through that deeply either.”
    ...

    And note how this oppo­si­tion to IVF treat­ment isn’t the lim­it to the restric­tions this move­ment is seek­ing. In the view of Albert Mohler — the pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary one of the two peo­ple who sub­mit­ted the IVF ban res­o­lu­tion for con­sid­er­a­tion — the cre­ation of any human embryo out­side of a sex­u­al act between a hus­band and wife is inher­ent­ly uneth­i­cal. So same sex cou­ples who rely on sperm or egg donors would obvi­ous­ly be ruled out too, along with preg­nan­cies out­side of mar­riage:

    ...
    Some Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton have respond­ed to the IVF dis­course by sign­ing onto leg­is­la­tion cre­at­ing broad fed­er­al pro­tec­tions for IVF or intro­duc­ing their own bills to expand access to the pro­ce­dure. Last month, Sen. Ted Crux (R‑Texas), a South­ern Bap­tist, and Katie Britt (R‑Ala.) intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to strip Med­ic­aid fund­ing from any state that bans IVF, a pro­pos­al the Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion resound­ing­ly con­demned in a recent let­ter.

    Albert Mohler, a promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal the­olo­gian, pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary and one of the two peo­ple who sub­mit­ted the IVF res­o­lu­tion for con­sid­er­a­tion, said Repub­li­can elect­ed offi­cials need to do bet­ter.

    “I’m very frus­trat­ed. A lot of them are respond­ing out of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, not out of moral prin­ci­ple. You can’t say on one hand life begins at fer­til­iza­tion and then on the oth­er hand say but now we’re not so con­cerned about that in this oth­er are­na,” Mohler said. “I find the ini­tia­tives and leg­is­la­tion to be deeply trou­bling and I think they reveal a lack of seri­ous­ness on the part of many social con­ser­v­a­tives.”

    Mohler and Andrew Walk­er, an ethics pro­fes­sor at South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, have long advo­cat­ed on the IVF issue. But they said the Alaba­ma Supreme Court deci­sion cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a wider con­ver­sa­tion about the prac­tice with­in the denom­i­na­tion.

    ...

    As evan­gel­i­cals become more edu­cat­ed on the issue, they are large­ly falling into two camps: those who believe that IVF can be prac­ticed eth­i­cal­ly if no embryos are destroyed, and those who like Mohler and Walk­er believe IVF is inher­ent­ly uneth­i­cal because it sep­a­rates con­cep­tion from the act of sex between hus­band and wife. Walk­er, acknowl­edg­ing the for­mer view, not­ed the res­o­lu­tion was “draft­ed to pass.”

    A last-minute amend­ment sought to make clear that IVF is per­mis­si­ble in some cir­cum­stances, but failed.
    ...

    And as we can see, Mohler was quite frus­trat­ed with Repub­li­can offi­cials push­ing for IVF pro­tec­tions in the wake of that Alaba­ma Supreme Court rul­ing. Which rais­es the ques­tion about Don­ald Trump’s posi­tion on the mat­ter. After all, if he wins again and gets to appoint even more Supreme Court jus­tices, it’s not hard to imag­ine a Supreme Court major­i­ty very much aligned with Mohler’s views. So it’s worth not­ing that both Trump and Mohler made appear­ances at anoth­er recent SBC event: a free lun­cheon host­ed by the Dan­bury Insti­tute, a new con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal group that just came into exis­tence this year. Mohler’s speech empha­sized his oppo­si­tion to IVF. Trump’s speech had a much more vague mes­sage in the sense that he was­n’t tak­ing any par­tic­u­lar the­o­log­i­cal stand. Instead, he basi­cal­ly declared that the Dan­bury Insti­tute’s pri­or­i­ties will be his pri­or­i­ties when he’s back in the White House. Or as Trump put it, “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make it come back. Like just about no oth­er group. I know what’s hap­pen­ing. I know where you’re com­ing from and where you’re going, and I’ll be with you side by side”:

    Bap­tist News Glob­al

    Trump tells South­ern Bap­tists, ‘You can­not vote for Democ­rats’ while Mohler oppos­es IVF

    News
    Mark Wing­field | June 10, 2024

    Don­ald Trump spoke to a group of South­ern Bap­tists for about a minute and a half June 10 and warned them they can­not vote for Democ­rats because “they’re against reli­gion” and “they’re against your reli­gion.”

    Trump, the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for U.S. pres­i­dent, spoke via video to par­tic­i­pants at a free lun­cheon host­ed by the Dan­bury Insti­tute as a side event to the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion in Indi­anapo­lis.

    ...

    In what has become stan­dard fare for his cam­paign ral­lies, Trump called the Unit­ed States a “declin­ing nation” that can only be res­cued by vot­ing for him.

    “These are dif­fi­cult times for our nation, and your work is so impor­tant,” he said. “We can’t afford to have any­one sit on the side­lines. Now is the time for us to all pull togeth­er and to stand up for our val­ues, and for our free­doms, and you just can’t vote Demo­c­rat.

    “They’re against reli­gion. They’re against your reli­gion. In par­tic­u­lar, you can­not vote for Democ­rats, and you have to get out and vote. We have to defend reli­gious lib­er­ty, free speech, it is in life, and the her­itage and tra­di­tion that built Amer­i­ca into the great­est nation in the his­to­ry of the world.”

    If reelect­ed to the White House, Trump said, “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make it come back. Like just about no oth­er group. I know what’s hap­pen­ing. I know where you’re com­ing from and where you’re going, and I’ll be with you side by side.”

    The for­mer pres­i­dent, who now is a con­vict­ed felon, was intro­duced by Scott Colter, who leads the new Dan­bury Insti­tute, a con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy group. Colter is a for­mer admin­is­tra­tor at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, an SBC school in Fort Worth, Texas.

    ...

    “We who made that deci­sion faced immense and tremen­dous per­se­cu­tion and ridicule from the lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, from orga­ni­za­tions with­in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, and from a wide swath of Chris­tian­i­ty,” he assert­ed. “And yet we went to the bal­lot box and made that deci­sion based upon the issue that we thought was the most impor­tant issue fac­ing our coun­try and the next gen­er­a­tion of our chil­dren, who are being slaugh­tered in the womb.

    “Our deci­sion to sup­port Don­ald Trump was vin­di­cat­ed in that moment, because of what he did,” Colter con­tin­ued. “We took a risk. We took a risk on what he said he would do. And he came through and he deliv­ered in that case. And so we can debate all day long the mer­its of who Don­ald Trump is and his per­son­al­i­ty and all of those dif­fer­ent things. He did what he said he would do. And for Chris­tians, that brought the step that we had been pray­ing for and that we real­ly nev­er thought we would see in the pro-life move­ment and I’m tremen­dous­ly grate­ful for that.”

    Ear­li­er in the lun­cheon pro­gram, Al Mohler, pres­i­dent of South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Louisville, Ky., reit­er­at­ed his pre­vi­ous cri­tique of Trump’s con­vic­tion in a New York court on 34 felony counts relat­ed to hush mon­ey pay­ments made to a mis­tress.

    “What we are look­ing at is the mis­use of the Amer­i­can legal sys­tem in a way that, quite frankly, will not allow for recov­ery,” Mohler said.

    ...

    Then in a turn that sep­a­rates Mohler from the views of most evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, he called for oppo­si­tion to invit­ro fer­til­iza­tion. This dis­tinc­tion, brought to the fore­front by an ear­li­er rul­ing by the Alaba­ma Supreme Court, sep­a­rates the most extreme anti-abor­tion advo­cates from tra­di­tion­al anti-abor­tion advo­cates.

    “If we believe in the sanc­ti­ty and dig­ni­ty of every sin­gle human life from the point of fer­til­iza­tion, we need to rec­og­nize any inter­ven­tion by an embryo, any com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the embryo, any turn of the embryo into a con­sumer prod­uct is an assault upon human dig­ni­ty,” Mohler declared.

    Mohler is coau­thor of a res­o­lu­tion oppos­ing IVF that will be con­sid­ered by mes­sen­gers to the SBC annu­al meet­ing Tues­day and Wednes­day. That res­o­lu­tion is con­sid­ered to be extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial.

    ———–

    “Trump tells South­ern Bap­tists, ‘You can­not vote for Democ­rats’ while Mohler oppos­es IVF” by Mark Wing­field; Bap­tist News Glob­al; 06/10/2024

    “Trump, the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for U.S. pres­i­dent, spoke via video to par­tic­i­pants at a free lun­cheon host­ed by the Dan­bury Insti­tute as a side event to the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion in Indi­anapo­lis.

    As we can see, Trump made a cam­paign appear­ance at an SBC con­ven­tion side event. A spe­cial get togeth­er for evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. So when Trump makes state­ments about how “these are going to be your years”, he’s effec­tive­ly telling the ultra con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers of the Dan­bury Insti­tute that their agen­da is his agen­da. Which pre­sum­ably now includes the agen­da of ban­ning IVF.

    But also note who intro­duced Trump: Scott Colter, a for­mer admin­is­tra­tor at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. Recall how the long-time leader of the South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, Paige Pat­ter­son, end­ed up set­tling a law suit back in 2023, which was part of the much larg­er law­suit brought against long-time SBC leader Paul Pressler over years of sex­u­al abuse. As we’re going to see, the peo­ple run­ning the Dan­bury Insti­tute have exten­sive ties to Pat­ter­son:

    ...
    If reelect­ed to the White House, Trump said, “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make it come back. Like just about no oth­er group. I know what’s hap­pen­ing. I know where you’re com­ing from and where you’re going, and I’ll be with you side by side.”

    The for­mer pres­i­dent, who now is a con­vict­ed felon, was intro­duced by Scott Colter, who leads the new Dan­bury Insti­tute, a con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy group. Colter is a for­mer admin­is­tra­tor at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, an SBC school in Fort Worth, Texas.

    ...

    “Our deci­sion to sup­port Don­ald Trump was vin­di­cat­ed in that moment, because of what he did,” Colter con­tin­ued. “We took a risk. We took a risk on what he said he would do. And he came through and he deliv­ered in that case. And so we can debate all day long the mer­its of who Don­ald Trump is and his per­son­al­i­ty and all of those dif­fer­ent things. He did what he said he would do. And for Chris­tians, that brought the step that we had been pray­ing for and that we real­ly nev­er thought we would see in the pro-life move­ment and I’m tremen­dous­ly grate­ful for that.”
    ...

    And then we get to Al Mohler’s speech, which not only includ­ed a reit­er­a­tion of his oppo­si­tion to IVF treat­ments for also includ­ed a defense of Don­ald Trump’s recent court con­vic­tions. So this event was­n’t just an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Trump to express his feal­ty to this group of theocrats and also an oppor­tu­ni­ty for this group to show­er Trump with the praise and loy­al­ty sig­nals he desires:

    ...
    Ear­li­er in the lun­cheon pro­gram, Al Mohler, pres­i­dent of South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Louisville, Ky., reit­er­at­ed his pre­vi­ous cri­tique of Trump’s con­vic­tion in a New York court on 34 felony counts relat­ed to hush mon­ey pay­ments made to a mis­tress.

    “What we are look­ing at is the mis­use of the Amer­i­can legal sys­tem in a way that, quite frankly, will not allow for recov­ery,” Mohler said.

    ...

    Then in a turn that sep­a­rates Mohler from the views of most evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, he called for oppo­si­tion to invit­ro fer­til­iza­tion. This dis­tinc­tion, brought to the fore­front by an ear­li­er rul­ing by the Alaba­ma Supreme Court, sep­a­rates the most extreme anti-abor­tion advo­cates from tra­di­tion­al anti-abor­tion advo­cates.

    “If we believe in the sanc­ti­ty and dig­ni­ty of every sin­gle human life from the point of fer­til­iza­tion, we need to rec­og­nize any inter­ven­tion by an embryo, any com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the embryo, any turn of the embryo into a con­sumer prod­uct is an assault upon human dig­ni­ty,” Mohler declared.

    Mohler is coau­thor of a res­o­lu­tion oppos­ing IVF that will be con­sid­ered by mes­sen­gers to the SBC annu­al meet­ing Tues­day and Wednes­day. That res­o­lu­tion is con­sid­ered to be extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial.
    ...

    Now, to get a bet­ter idea of the con­text of these speech­es at this Dan­bury Insti­tute enti­ty, here’s an arti­cle from just a few months ago about the cre­ation of the Dan­bury Insti­tute. And as we can see, it’s more or less run by the theocrats in Paige Pat­ter­son­’s orbit run­ning the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work:

    Bap­tist News Glob­al

    There’s a new reli­gious advo­ca­cy group with ties to Pat­ter­son and Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work

    News
    Mark Wing­field | March 12, 2024

    The lat­est con­ser­v­a­tive, pro-fam­i­ly, anti-diver­si­ty advo­ca­cy group affirmed by the James Dob­son Fam­i­ly Insti­tute has dis­tinc­tive South­ern Bap­tist ties and takes its name from a his­toric Bap­tist lega­cy tra­di­tion­al­ists might be sur­prised to see on such an enter­prise.

    In an email to sup­port­ers this week head­lined, “New Chris­t­ian Group Enters the Are­na!” Gary Bauer, vice pres­i­dent of pub­lic pol­i­cy for the Dob­son Insti­tute, said he wel­comes The Dan­bury Insti­tute for join­ing “the bat­tle rag­ing in our coun­try to pre­serve faith, fam­i­ly and free­dom. The future of Amer­i­ca will be bleak indeed if we are ripped out of the rich soil of Judeo-Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion, which is root­ed in the Bible.”

    Bauer cit­ed involve­ment of James Dobson’s “long­time friend” Richard Land, who serves as chair­man of the group’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil. Land is a promi­nent fig­ure in the SBC, hav­ing served as the found­ing pres­i­dent of the SBC Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion.

    ...

    Ties to Pat­ter­son and CBN

    The staff of The Dan­bury Insti­tute have direct ties to Paige Pat­ter­son, co-archi­tect of the SBC’s “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” and for­mer pres­i­dent of two SBC sem­i­nar­ies. Key staff mem­bers also have roles with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, which seeks to turn the SBC in an even more con­ser­v­a­tive direc­tion.

    The group’s exec­u­tive direc­tor is Scott Colter, for­mer chief of staff to Pat­ter­son at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, and cur­rent pro­fes­sor at Mid-Amer­i­ca Bap­tist Sem­i­nary in Mem­phis. He pre­vi­ous­ly was direc­tor of the Sandy Creek Foun­da­tion, which is run by Pat­ter­son and his wife, Dorothy. Colter also serves on the steer­ing coun­cil of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.

    The group’s chief com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer is Sharayah Colter, who is mar­ried to Scott Colter. She is the founder of a com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sult­ing group, Colter & Co., and is a found­ing steer­ing coun­cil mem­ber of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, edi­tor of Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work Press and con­sul­tant for Cit­i­zens for Amer­i­ca.

    The group’s chief oper­a­tions offi­cer is Collin Hain, who is direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Birch­man Bap­tist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and is chief of staff and direc­tor of oper­a­tions for the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.

    The group’s chief finan­cial offi­cer is Kim­ber­ly Hobbs, an Alaba­ma pastor’s wife who also is asso­ci­at­ed with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.

    The group’s chief legal coun­sel is C.J. Cavin, who serves as the full-time par­lia­men­tar­i­an for the Okla­homa House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and is affil­i­at­ed with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.

    What’s in a name?

    Most notable, how­ev­er, is the cho­sen name for this new advo­ca­cy group. It ref­er­ences cor­re­spon­dence between the Dan­bury Bap­tist Asso­ci­a­tion and Pres­i­dent Thomas Jef­fer­son in 1801. The Bap­tists in Con­necti­cut wrote to Jef­fer­son to com­mend his stand in favor of reli­gious lib­er­ty and to express dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the church-state sit­u­a­tion in Con­necti­cut. Jef­fer­son replied in what has become one of the most impor­tant doc­u­ments in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, using the metaphor of a “wall of sep­a­ra­tion” between church and state.

    That tra­di­tion­al­ly has been inter­pret­ed as a two-way sep­a­ra­tion, mean­ing the church can­not con­trol the state and the state can­not con­trol the church — as out­lined in the two reli­gion claus­es of the First Amend­ment: “Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise there­of.”

    More recent­ly, evan­gel­i­cals and groups like Focus on the Fam­i­ly have advo­cat­ed for more of a one-way pro­tec­tion, that the state may not con­trol the church — such as with manda­to­ry COVID lock­downs — but the church is free to attempt to con­trol the state. This is the essence of what has come to be called Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism.

    Thus Dob­son in his email warned: “In spite of all the efforts to demo­nize and dis­cour­age Chris­tians from being active cit­i­zens, evi­dence is grow­ing that church­es are wak­ing up to the dan­gers fac­ing an Amer­i­ca with­out God.”

    And he laud­ed this state­ment by Collin Hain, who described the new orga­ni­za­tion as “an asso­ci­a­tion of church­es, Chris­tians and orga­ni­za­tions aligned to affirm and pre­serve God-giv­en rights to life and lib­er­ty by influ­enc­ing cul­ture and pub­lic pol­i­cy, uphold­ing the free exer­cise of reli­gion, inspir­ing the vig­or­ous involve­ment of an informed cit­i­zen­ry, and pro­mot­ing Judeo-Chris­t­ian val­ues as the prop­er foun­da­tion for a free and pros­per­ous repub­lic.”

    That is the organization’s mis­sion state­ment as post­ed on its web­site.

    ...

    ———-

    “There’s a new reli­gious advo­ca­cy group with ties to Pat­ter­son and Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work” by Mark Wing­field; Bap­tist News Glob­al; 03/12/2024

    “In an email to sup­port­ers this week head­lined, “New Chris­t­ian Group Enters the Are­na!” Gary Bauer, vice pres­i­dent of pub­lic pol­i­cy for the Dob­son Insti­tute, said he wel­comes The Dan­bury Insti­tute for join­ing “the bat­tle rag­ing in our coun­try to pre­serve faith, fam­i­ly and free­dom. The future of Amer­i­ca will be bleak indeed if we are ripped out of the rich soil of Judeo-Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion, which is root­ed in the Bible.””

    It’s a new theo­crat­ic institution...that hap­pens to be run by the same old peo­ple already play­ing lead­ing theo­crat­ic roles. For starters, there’s Richard Land, chair of the group’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Land — like Pat­ter­son, Pressler, Dob­son, and Bauer — shows up on the CNP mem­bers list. And then there’s string of peo­ple with ties to Pat­ter­son and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work. By the looks of it, this is basi­cal­ly the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work’s new insti­tu­tion:

    ...
    Bauer cit­ed involve­ment of James Dobson’s “long­time friend” Richard Land, who serves as chair­man of the group’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil. Land is a promi­nent fig­ure in the SBC, hav­ing served as the found­ing pres­i­dent of the SBC Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion.

    ...

    The staff of The Dan­bury Insti­tute have direct ties to Paige Pat­ter­son, co-archi­tect of the SBC’s “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” and for­mer pres­i­dent of two SBC sem­i­nar­ies. Key staff mem­bers also have roles with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, which seeks to turn the SBC in an even more con­ser­v­a­tive direc­tion.

    The group’s exec­u­tive direc­tor is Scott Colter, for­mer chief of staff to Pat­ter­son at South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, and cur­rent pro­fes­sor at Mid-Amer­i­ca Bap­tist Sem­i­nary in Mem­phis. He pre­vi­ous­ly was direc­tor of the Sandy Creek Foun­da­tion, which is run by Pat­ter­son and his wife, Dorothy. Colter also serves on the steer­ing coun­cil of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.

    The group’s chief com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer is Sharayah Colter, who is mar­ried to Scott Colter. She is the founder of a com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sult­ing group, Colter & Co., and is a found­ing steer­ing coun­cil mem­ber of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, edi­tor of Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work Press and con­sul­tant for Cit­i­zens for Amer­i­ca.

    The group’s chief oper­a­tions offi­cer is Collin Hain, who is direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Birch­man Bap­tist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and is chief of staff and direc­tor of oper­a­tions for the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.

    The group’s chief finan­cial offi­cer is Kim­ber­ly Hobbs, an Alaba­ma pastor’s wife who also is asso­ci­at­ed with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.

    The group’s chief legal coun­sel is C.J. Cavin, who serves as the full-time par­lia­men­tar­i­an for the Okla­homa House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and is affil­i­at­ed with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work.
    ...

    And note the dis­turb­ing mes­sage inher­ent in the choice of the name “Dan­bury Insti­tute”: it appears to be a ref­er­ence to the idea that the sep­a­rate of church and state is a one way sep­a­ra­tion. The state may not con­trol the church, but it’s fine for a church to attempt to con­trol the state:

    ...
    Most notable, how­ev­er, is the cho­sen name for this new advo­ca­cy group. It ref­er­ences cor­re­spon­dence between the Dan­bury Bap­tist Asso­ci­a­tion and Pres­i­dent Thomas Jef­fer­son in 1801. The Bap­tists in Con­necti­cut wrote to Jef­fer­son to com­mend his stand in favor of reli­gious lib­er­ty and to express dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the church-state sit­u­a­tion in Con­necti­cut. Jef­fer­son replied in what has become one of the most impor­tant doc­u­ments in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, using the metaphor of a “wall of sep­a­ra­tion” between church and state.

    That tra­di­tion­al­ly has been inter­pret­ed as a two-way sep­a­ra­tion, mean­ing the church can­not con­trol the state and the state can­not con­trol the church — as out­lined in the two reli­gion claus­es of the First Amend­ment: “Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise there­of.”

    More recent­ly, evan­gel­i­cals and groups like Focus on the Fam­i­ly have advo­cat­ed for more of a one-way pro­tec­tion, that the state may not con­trol the church — such as with manda­to­ry COVID lock­downs — but the church is free to attempt to con­trol the state. This is the essence of what has come to be called Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism.

    Thus Dob­son in his email warned: “In spite of all the efforts to demo­nize and dis­cour­age Chris­tians from being active cit­i­zens, evi­dence is grow­ing that church­es are wak­ing up to the dan­gers fac­ing an Amer­i­ca with­out God.”
    ...

    So when Trump and Mohler mode those appear­ances at the Dan­bury Insti­tute lun­cheon dur­ing the SBC con­ven­tion, they were we effec­tive­ly speak­ing to the theocrats behind the new Con­ser­v­a­tive Bap­tist Net­work, which appears to basi­cal­ly be a mod­ern rehash­ing of the same “con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence” led by fig­ures like Pressler, Pat­ter­son, and Mohler and oth­er long­stand­ing ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive bap­tist lead­ers for the last gen­er­a­tion. Trump was engag­ing in the kind of cyn­i­cal trans­ac­tion­al pol­i­tics that helped fuel his ini­tial White House run while Mohler was speak­ing to his own fel­low ultra con­ser­v­a­tive bap­tist lead­ers. Fel­low lead­ers who, as the fol­low­ing piece points out, joined Mohler in deny­ing and cov­er­ing up the tor­rent of sex­u­al abuse by Pressler and oth­ers for decades now. In fact, it turns out Mohler made the case back in Feb­ru­ary — after the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee already set­tled Pressler’s case — that Pressler could­n’t be guilty of the charges because they were too hor­ren­dous to imag­ine. And he hap­pened to do this on Feb­ru­ary 16, the same day the Alaba­ma Supreme Court made its anti-IVF rul­ing:

    Bap­tist News Glob­al

    Pressler’s pow­er ensnares an unlike­ly vic­tim, Al Mohler

    Opin­ion Marv Knox
    Feb­ru­ary 21, 2024

    Poor Al Mohler. He’s Paul Pressler’s lat­est vic­tim.

    “How can that be?” you ask. “Nobody has enjoyed South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion promi­nence as famous­ly and mag­nif­i­cent­ly as Al Mohler.”

    ...

    Across the past three decades, Mohler has bur­nished his rep­u­ta­tion as the SBC’s most pow­er­ful king­mak­er, tow­er­ing intel­lect and famous evan­gel­i­cal pun­dit. His “tree” of men­tored sem­i­nary pres­i­dents and pro­fes­sors, denom­i­na­tion­al lead­ers and promi­nent pas­tors is taller than anybody’s. He’s built South­ern Sem­i­nary into the SBC’s flag­ship school while pro­lif­i­cal­ly pub­lish­ing books and papers. And his pod­casts and pub­lic speak­ing engage­ments have made “Albert Mohler” a house­hold name far beyond the SBC.

    How, you ask, has Mohler fall­en vic­tim to Pressler, once co-archi­tect of the con­ser­v­a­tive resur­gence but now a cred­i­bly and repeat­ed­ly accused abuser of teenage boys and young men?

    Well, aside from what­ev­er they do phys­i­cal­ly, preda­tors typ­i­cal­ly abuse their vic­tims in two ways. They strip them of their dig­ni­ty. And they steal what­ev­er the vic­tim val­ues most — often their rep­u­ta­tion with fam­i­ly, friends and peo­ple they admire.

    Late­ly, 93-year-old Pressler has done just that to Mohler.

    Weak log­ic

    Dur­ing Feb. 16 forum in Louisville, Mohler stretched creduli­ty beyond its lim­its, bend­ing over back­ward to defend his old friend. While doing so, he applied log­ic so weak it wouldn’t earn a pass­ing grade at his sem­i­nary across town. Near­ing the end of his esteemed career, nobody ever again is like­ly to think Mohler is the smartest guy in the room, a dev­as­tat­ing loss for the prince of SBC sem­i­nary pres­i­dents.

    Here’s what hap­pened:

    At the forum, spon­sored by the Ken­wood Insti­tute in Louisville, Mohler said the sex­u­al abuse alle­ga­tions against Pressler are “so hor­ri­fy­ing that it’s actu­al­ly very hard to imag­ine that they could be real.” Give Mohler cred­it for acknowl­edg­ing the charges against Pressler are “hor­ri­fy­ing.” But he imme­di­ate­ly engages in a pri­ma­ry pathol­o­gy of vic­tim­hood — denial.

    ...

    The facts

    Mohler’s denial aside, the charges are sub­stan­tive and have been deliv­ered under oath.

    Late last year, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion — which owns South­ern Sem­i­nary — and its top admin­is­tra­tive body, the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, agreed to a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment in a law­suit accus­ing Pressler of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing a teenage mem­ber of his Hous­ton church mul­ti­ple times, begin­ning in 1977.

    The law­suit had hung over the SBC’s and Exec­u­tive Committee’s heads since 2017. That’s when Duane Rollins filed the legal action, accus­ing Pressler of molest­ing him numer­ous times across years. Rollins said the sex­u­al assaults began when he was 14 years old, after he enrolled in a Bible study led by Pressler.

    In break­ing the sto­ry about the law­suit set­tle­ment, the Texas Tri­bune report­ed, “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.”

    An Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee state­ment pro­vid­ed to the Tri­bune said the agency was “ful­ly pre­pared” to go to tri­al. But “sev­er­al fac­tors ulti­mate­ly made set­tle­ment the more pru­dent choice.” Among them was “the like­li­hood that coun­sel for the SBC and Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would have to con­front and cross-exam­ine abuse sur­vivors.”

    Catch the Exec­u­tive Committee’s tac­it agree­ment with the lawsuit’s claims: Its attor­neys might have to “con­front and cross-exam­ine abuse sur­vivors.” Not mere­ly “wit­ness­es” or “alleged abuse sur­vivors,” but “abuse sur­vivors,” peri­od. Although Pressler has denied charges against him, the SBC’s/Executive Committee’s attor­neys have rea­son to believe he has left “abuse sur­vivors” in his wake.

    As report­ed by the Tri­bune, the Rollins law­suit alleges Pressler’s pre­da­tion dates back at least to 1977. That’s when a for­mer mem­ber of Pressler’s youth group in a Hous­ton Pres­by­ter­ian church said Pressler molest­ed him in a coun­try club sauna. That charge result­ed in the church remov­ing Pressler from his posi­tion work­ing with youth, as well as his move to First Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton.

    Twen­ty-sev­en years lat­er, in 2004, lead­ers at First Bap­tist in Hous­ton received an alle­ga­tion that Pressler undressed and groped a young man in Pressler’s home, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion revealed in the Rollins law­suit. In a let­ter, the church lead­ers con­demned Pressler’s “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior. But they also feared going pub­lic, lest the news dam­age Pressler’s rep­u­ta­tion in both the church and the SBC.

    This back­ground is impor­tant because it sheds light on the breadth and depth of Mohler’s denial.

    Deny, deflect

    In an hour-long inter­view con­duct­ed at the Ken­wood Insti­tute forum, Mohler called news com­ing out of the Rollins law­suit “a mas­sive scan­dal relat­ed to some­one who had a lot of influ­ence on the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.” He agreed the charges against Pressler are “humil­i­at­ing to the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.”

    But Mohler quick­ly turned to denial. “I can’t fig­ure this out,” he said. “And I’ll admit it because you’re talk­ing about a man, Paul Pressler, who’s lived a very pub­lic life and who had many ene­mies.”

    Here’s where Mohler’s log­ic gets sil­ly: Since those “ene­mies” didn’t come for­ward with alle­ga­tions of Pressler’s sex­u­al abuse, it could not have hap­pened.

    He specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed the late Ken Chafin, a mod­er­ate SBC leader and pas­tor of South Main Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton in the days of Pressler’s rise to promi­nence and then dom­i­nance of SBC pol­i­tics. Pressler also lives in Hous­ton.

    “It’s hard for me to believe that some­one like a Ken Chafin … it’s just hard for me to imag­ine that if he knew or had heard a rumor or any­thing that it just wouldn’t have been addressed. I just find that implau­si­ble,” Mohler said.

    So, let’s fol­low Mohler’s log­ic: If (a) Chafin were Pressler’s ene­my, and (b) an ene­my would use any dam­ag­ing mate­r­i­al to hurt his adver­sary, then © because Chafin nev­er pub­licly accused Pressler of sex­u­al abuse, (d) Pressler there­fore is inno­cent of sex­u­al­ly prey­ing upon teenagers and young men who have sworn in court he abused them.

    Poor Mohler. He’s debas­ing him­self by throw­ing a long-dead “ene­my” under the prover­bial bus. Chafin, who can­not speak for him­self, much less defend him­self, is his foil. That cheap shot should be beneath the dig­ni­ty of an esteemed sem­i­nary president/denominational states­man. But Pressler’s pull on Mohler has sucked him down to gut­ter fight­ing with a dead guy..

    ...

    Unrav­el­ing the lie

    Two respons­es:

    First, just because Chafin didn’t know about it doesn’t mean Pressler didn’t do it. Preda­tors abuse vic­tims in pri­vate and work hard to keep their mis­deeds secret. Accord­ing to vic­tims’ alle­ga­tions, Pressler abused them in his home, at his ranch and in emp­ty saunas, not on the steps of South Main Bap­tist Church.

    Sec­ond, Mohler applied SBC con­ser­v­a­tives’ ethics to a deeply moral mod­er­ate pas­tor. Pressler and his allies won SBC polit­i­cal bat­tles by lying about sem­i­nary pro­fes­sors, oth­er denom­i­na­tion­al work­ers and mod­er­ate pas­tors. Long before the era of Trump, facts didn’t mat­ter for them. The end jus­ti­fied the mean­ness. But Chafin, marked by integri­ty, would not dimin­ish his char­ac­ter that way. We do not know what he knew — he’s dead and can’t respond — but those of us who knew him know he would not make charges he could not doc­u­ment. He prac­ticed ethics.

    Also, Mohler’s impli­ca­tion that SBC con­ser­v­a­tives would have believed Chafin if he claimed Pressler were an abuser is out­right bogus. They didn’t believe him when he told them, with ample evi­dence, mod­er­ates love Jesus and believe the Bible. Why would they believe their polit­i­cal leader preyed on boys and young men?

    And speak­ing of what was known, Mohler told the Louisville crowd he didn’t know about Pressler’s alleged abus­es pri­or to 2017, when Rollins filed his law­suit and news sources report­ed the charges.

    “I think prob­a­bly to most of us, it wasn’t known to me that there was a back­ground of some pre­vi­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion” of alleged abus­es, Mohler said. That state­ment may tech­ni­cal­ly be cor­rect; he used the word “doc­u­men­ta­tion.” But he didn’t know the “back­ground” of claims about Pressler’s pro­cliv­i­ties?

    That’s a fas­ci­nat­ing state­ment, because rumors of Pressler’s abuse abound­ed in the SBC at least as far back as 35 years ago — when Mohler held an insid­er job as edi­tor of the Chris­t­ian Index and con­tin­ued to man­age the con­ven­tion-insid­er net­work he built while work­ing for Roy Hon­ey­cutt.

    Thir­ty-five years ago, in 1989, then-Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush nom­i­nat­ed Pressler to direct the U.S. Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics. The nom­i­na­tion led to an FBI back­ground inves­ti­ga­tion, in which agents inter­viewed lead­ers from across the breadth of the SBC and pre­sum­ably sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers in Hous­ton.

    After the inves­ti­ga­tion, Pres­i­dent Bush ulti­mate­ly announced, “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Judge Pressler informs me that due to pro­fes­sion­al, reli­gious and fam­i­ly oblig­a­tions, he is unable to accept a full-time gov­ern­ment posi­tion at this time.”

    That was the offi­cial, grace­ful announce­ment. But the SBC was abuzz with ques­tions about why, peo­ple won­dered, Pressler failed that FBI back­ground check. Did agents (a) find sub­stan­tial evi­dence regard­ing Pressler’s rumored rela­tion­ships with teenagers and young men, (b) real­ize lots of peo­ple just couldn’t stand the guy or © all the above?

    I was an edi­tor at Bap­tist Press at the time and wrote the arti­cle about the Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics. In response to a ques­tion, an FBI agent involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion said the bureau’s report can­not be released until either Pressler waives his right to pri­va­cy or he dies.

    But Mohler denied know­ing the “back­ground” of Pressler’s abuse alle­ga­tions until the Rollins suit came out in 2017. To para­phrase Jesus: “Which is eas­i­er: Tell a whop­per or say, ‘I was wrong’?”

    SBC con­ser­v­a­tives can’t admit they were wrong

    Mohler isn’t stand­ing alone, of course. No SBC agency head, offi­cer or oth­er promi­nent leader — past or present — has con­demned Pressler. Giv­en their the­o­log­i­cal world­view, they can’t.

    They built their move­ment to con­trol the SBC on the notion God blessed them because they are right­eous. The “lib­er­als” were “god­less,” so the Lord hand­ed the SBC over to them for safe­keep­ing. They got the SBC because they earned it.

    So, own­ing up to moral fail­ure by the lead­ers who got them there — Paige Patterson’s misog­y­ny and fail­ure to pro­tect female sem­i­nar­i­ans from sex­u­al abuse and the law­suit and relat­ed accu­sa­tions regard­ing Pressler’s sex­u­al abuse — would under­mine their belief that they received the SBC through the mer­it­ed favor of God.

    ...

    Marv Knox found­ed Fel­low­ship South­west after edit­ing the Bap­tist Stan­dard almost 20 years. He pre­vi­ous­ly served as fea­tures edi­tor for Bap­tist Press and as edi­tor of the Ken­tucky West­ern Recorder. Now retired, he lives with his wife, Joan­na, in Durham, N.C., where he tries to do some­thing use­ful almost every day. Some­times, that’s writ­ing for BNG.

    ———-

    “Pressler’s pow­er ensnares an unlike­ly vic­tim, Al Mohler” “Marv Knox; Bap­tist News Glob­al; 02/21/2024

    Dur­ing Feb. 16 forum in Louisville, Mohler stretched creduli­ty beyond its lim­its, bend­ing over back­ward to defend his old friend. While doing so, he applied log­ic so weak it wouldn’t earn a pass­ing grade at his sem­i­nary across town. Near­ing the end of his esteemed career, nobody ever again is like­ly to think Mohler is the smartest guy in the room, a dev­as­tat­ing loss for the prince of SBC sem­i­nary pres­i­dents.”

    Yes, it was Feb­ru­ary 16, the very same day of the Alaba­ma Supreme Court IVF rul­ing, when Al Mohler spoke at a forum in Louisville where he made the case that the sex­u­al abuse charges against Paul Pressler were too hor­ren­dous to be cred­i­ble. And he made this argu­ment despite the fact that the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee set­tled in the Pressler law­suit less than two months pri­or. Mohler was effec­tive­ly engag­ing in a kind of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism for Paul Pressler’s lega­cy of sex­u­al abuse. Extreme­ly bad faith his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism:

    ...
    Mohler’s denial aside, the charges are sub­stan­tive and have been deliv­ered under oath.

    Late last year, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion — which owns South­ern Sem­i­nary — and its top admin­is­tra­tive body, the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, agreed to a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment in a law­suit accus­ing Pressler of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing a teenage mem­ber of his Hous­ton church mul­ti­ple times, begin­ning in 1977.

    The law­suit had hung over the SBC’s and Exec­u­tive Committee’s heads since 2017. That’s when Duane Rollins filed the legal action, accus­ing Pressler of molest­ing him numer­ous times across years. Rollins said the sex­u­al assaults began when he was 14 years old, after he enrolled in a Bible study led by Pressler.

    In break­ing the sto­ry about the law­suit set­tle­ment, the Texas Tri­bune report­ed, “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.”

    An Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee state­ment pro­vid­ed to the Tri­bune said the agency was “ful­ly pre­pared” to go to tri­al. But “sev­er­al fac­tors ulti­mate­ly made set­tle­ment the more pru­dent choice.” Among them was “the like­li­hood that coun­sel for the SBC and Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would have to con­front and cross-exam­ine abuse sur­vivors.”

    Catch the Exec­u­tive Committee’s tac­it agree­ment with the lawsuit’s claims: Its attor­neys might have to “con­front and cross-exam­ine abuse sur­vivors.” Not mere­ly “wit­ness­es” or “alleged abuse sur­vivors,” but “abuse sur­vivors,” peri­od. Although Pressler has denied charges against him, the SBC’s/Executive Committee’s attor­neys have rea­son to believe he has left “abuse sur­vivors” in his wake.

    As report­ed by the Tri­bune, the Rollins law­suit alleges Pressler’s pre­da­tion dates back at least to 1977. That’s when a for­mer mem­ber of Pressler’s youth group in a Hous­ton Pres­by­ter­ian church said Pressler molest­ed him in a coun­try club sauna. That charge result­ed in the church remov­ing Pressler from his posi­tion work­ing with youth, as well as his move to First Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton.

    Twen­ty-sev­en years lat­er, in 2004, lead­ers at First Bap­tist in Hous­ton received an alle­ga­tion that Pressler undressed and groped a young man in Pressler’s home, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion revealed in the Rollins law­suit. In a let­ter, the church lead­ers con­demned Pressler’s “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior. But they also feared going pub­lic, lest the news dam­age Pressler’s rep­u­ta­tion in both the church and the SBC.

    This back­ground is impor­tant because it sheds light on the breadth and depth of Mohler’s denial.
    ...

    But Mohler did­n’t just engage in a bizarre his­tor­i­cal­ly revi­sion­ist defense of Pressler. He also attempt­ed to revise his own his­to­ry on the mat­ter, claim­ing to have nev­er heard about the alle­ga­tions against Pressler until 2017. A denial that flies in the face of 35 years of rumors about Pressler’s abuse going back to 1989 when Pressler was passed over to direct the U.S. Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics for George H. W. Bush after fail­ing an FBI back­ground check:

    ...
    And speak­ing of what was known, Mohler told the Louisville crowd he didn’t know about Pressler’s alleged abus­es pri­or to 2017, when Rollins filed his law­suit and news sources report­ed the charges.

    “I think prob­a­bly to most of us, it wasn’t known to me that there was a back­ground of some pre­vi­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion” of alleged abus­es, Mohler said. That state­ment may tech­ni­cal­ly be cor­rect; he used the word “doc­u­men­ta­tion.” But he didn’t know the “back­ground” of claims about Pressler’s pro­cliv­i­ties?

    That’s a fas­ci­nat­ing state­ment, because rumors of Pressler’s abuse abound­ed in the SBC at least as far back as 35 years ago — when Mohler held an insid­er job as edi­tor of the Chris­t­ian Index and con­tin­ued to man­age the con­ven­tion-insid­er net­work he built while work­ing for Roy Hon­ey­cutt.

    Thir­ty-five years ago, in 1989, then-Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush nom­i­nat­ed Pressler to direct the U.S. Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics. The nom­i­na­tion led to an FBI back­ground inves­ti­ga­tion, in which agents inter­viewed lead­ers from across the breadth of the SBC and pre­sum­ably sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers in Hous­ton.

    After the inves­ti­ga­tion, Pres­i­dent Bush ulti­mate­ly announced, “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Judge Pressler informs me that due to pro­fes­sion­al, reli­gious and fam­i­ly oblig­a­tions, he is unable to accept a full-time gov­ern­ment posi­tion at this time.”

    That was the offi­cial, grace­ful announce­ment. But the SBC was abuzz with ques­tions about why, peo­ple won­dered, Pressler failed that FBI back­ground check. Did agents (a) find sub­stan­tial evi­dence regard­ing Pressler’s rumored rela­tion­ships with teenagers and young men, (b) real­ize lots of peo­ple just couldn’t stand the guy or © all the above?

    I was an edi­tor at Bap­tist Press at the time and wrote the arti­cle about the Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics. In response to a ques­tion, an FBI agent involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion said the bureau’s report can­not be released until either Pressler waives his right to pri­va­cy or he dies.

    But Mohler denied know­ing the “back­ground” of Pressler’s abuse alle­ga­tions until the Rollins suit came out in 2017. To para­phrase Jesus: “Which is eas­i­er: Tell a whop­per or say, ‘I was wrong’?”
    ...

    And as the piece reminds us, it’s not like Mohler is the only SBC leader seem­ing­ly unable to acknowl­edge Pressler’s actions, with Paige Pat­ter­son — who, again, set­tled over his own role in Pressler’s coverup in April of 2023 — being anoth­er promi­nent exam­ple. But he’s not the only one:

    ...
    Mohler isn’t stand­ing alone, of course. No SBC agency head, offi­cer or oth­er promi­nent leader — past or present — has con­demned Pressler. Giv­en their the­o­log­i­cal world­view, they can’t.

    They built their move­ment to con­trol the SBC on the notion God blessed them because they are right­eous. The “lib­er­als” were “god­less,” so the Lord hand­ed the SBC over to them for safe­keep­ing. They got the SBC because they earned it.

    So, own­ing up to moral fail­ure by the lead­ers who got them there — Paige Patterson’s misog­y­ny and fail­ure to pro­tect female sem­i­nar­i­ans from sex­u­al abuse and the law­suit and relat­ed accu­sa­tions regard­ing Pressler’s sex­u­al abuse — would under­mine their belief that they received the SBC through the mer­it­ed favor of God.
    ...

    How many more ser­i­al abusers are there inside the SBC? And what about the SBC’s lead­er­ship? Any more ser­i­al abusers hid­ing there? We don’t know, but we can be con­fi­dent at this point that they will be kept well hid­den if they exist. That was the mes­sage Mohler deliv­ered to this forum, whether that was his intend­ed mes­sage or not. Rapist are to be pro­tect­ed while those desir­ing a preg­nan­cy via IVF are to be denied.

    And in relat­ed news, Texas megachurch pas­tor Robert Mor­ris just resigned fol­low­ing a con­fes­sion to sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a girl in the 1980s while she was between the ages of 12 to 16 and he was in his ear­ly 20s. Mor­ris’s Gate­way Church, based out of Dal­las, is an SBC mem­ber. Oh, and Mor­ris also hap­pens to be a for­mer spir­i­tu­al advi­sor to Don­ald Trump and served on his evan­gel­i­cal advi­so­ry board for Trump’s 2016 cam­paign. Because of course.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 18, 2024, 3:29 pm
  25. And the hits keep com­ing. Right the heels of the Supreme Court’s string of hor­rid rul­ings last week — gut­ting both fed­er­al anti-cor­rup­tion laws AND the fed­er­al pow­er to imple­ment reg­u­la­tions — we get the Supreme Court’s rul­ing on pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty that effec­tive­ly turns the pres­i­dent into an unac­count­able indi­vid­ual who oper­ates above the law and can even legal­ly order Navy seals to assas­si­nate his polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Pres­i­den­tial law­less­ness is the new law of the land. So while it was hard to imag­ine high­er stakes in the upcom­ing 2024 elec­tion, the stakes did indeed just get high­er. Trumpian pledges of ret­ri­bu­tion of vengeance have new legal ground­ing.

    So with Trump now poised to oper­ate with com­plete immu­ni­ty dur­ing his upcom­ing sec­ond term, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that the vengeance and ret­ri­bu­tion Trump doles out won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be just his vengeance and ret­ri­bu­tion. As Trump him­self declared back in March of 2023, “In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today, I add, I am your war­rior. I am your jus­tice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your ret­ri­bu­tion.” It’s going to be an avalanche of vengeance and ret­ri­bu­tion.

    But, of course, Trump can’t actu­al­ly imple­ment the desired vengeance and ret­ri­bu­tion for all of his ran­dom sup­port­ers. That’s just not logis­ti­cal­ly pos­si­ble. On the oth­er hand, it’s not hard to imag­ine major donors get­ting Trump’s ear and express­ing some vengeance and ret­ri­bu­tion plans of their own.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing high­ly dis­turb­ing Rolling Stone report about a fig­ure with big plans for trans­form­ing the US who also hap­pens to be one of Trump’s biggest back­ers at this point: Texas oil bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dunn.

    As we’ve seen, Dunn has effec­tive­ly cap­tured the Texas GOP after years of wag­ing a scorched earth cam­paign against Repub­li­cans who devi­ate from his extrem­ist views. The Texas GOP is Tim dun­n’s par­ty now. Despite scan­dals like the sev­en hour meet­ing with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

    But as the Rolling Stone report makes clear, Dunn isn’t con­tent on trans­form­ing Texas into a theoc­ra­cy. He has nation­al ambi­tions. Nation­al ambi­tions already on dis­play with Dunn major dona­tions to the Con­ven­tion of States project work­ing to trig­gered a far right over­haul of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. And Don­ald Trump’s return to the White House is clear­ly part of the nation­al plan. In fact, it turns out that Dunn gave $5 mil­lion to Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Inc., a PAC that actu­al­ly ran com­mer­cials fea­tur­ing Trump’s “I am your ret­ri­bu­tion” mes­sage.

    It also sounds like Dunn is involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot to purge the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of all non-Trumpian loy­al­ists. In 2021, Dunn signed on as a found­ing direc­tor of the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (AFPI). The CEO of AFPI hap­pens to be Brooke Rollins who not only served as Trump’s domes­tic pol­i­cy advi­sor but also served as CEO of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), which has long oper­at­ed as one of Dun­n’s polit­i­cal influ­ence oper­a­tions. Beyond that, Dunn has donat­ed heav­i­ly to the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, run by key Project 2025 oper­a­tive Russ Vought. Recall how Vought actu­al­ly penned an opin­ion piece in March of 2021 advo­cat­ing for open Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism.

    Oth­er Trump-relat­ed ini­tia­tives of Dun­n’s includes part­ner­ing with Brad Parscale. It sounds like the pair are work­ing on some­thing that sounds like an AI-pow­ered ver­sion of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca micro­tar­get­ing oper­a­tion from 2016.

    And as the report also makes clear, it’s not just that Dunn sees an ally in Trump. The two have remark­ably sim­i­lar per­son­al­i­ties. In fact, Dunn him­self admits to being a “self-o-holic” who “want­ed to be in con­trol, but with­out tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty.” As Dunn describes, he pos­sess­es a knee-jerk petu­lance and mega­lo­ma­nia and tends to intim­i­date peo­ple to get his way. Beyond that, Dunn admits to an overt god com­plex. “I get tapped on the shoul­der fair­ly often. And Jesus says, ‘Excuse me, you’re sit­ting in my chair.’” Dunn also acknowl­edges how, “I very effort­less­ly can chan­nel my inner four-year-old at any time.” Dunn even hears a voice all day long call­ing for him to be a tyrant ruler. “‘Be a tyrant ruler. You should ascend to the most high’ — I hear that voice all day long, every day.” All day, every day.” Dunn basi­cal­ly admits to being Trump with a god com­plex.

    How does Dunn resolve these admit­ted­ly un-Chris­t­ian attrib­ut­es with his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da? Well, by declar­ing him­self a ‘jerk for Jesus’ and insist­ing that “nice­ness” (in the form of tol­er­ance) is in fact “cow­ardice” that will leave peo­ple liv­ing in Hell in the end. Forc­ing peo­ple to live a life accord­ing to his under­stand­ing of the Bible is Dun­n’s ver­sion of Jesus’s com­pas­sion. Yep. “Nice­ness” is in fact “cow­ardice” that will leave peo­ple liv­ing in Hell in the end. Forc­ing peo­ple to live a life accord­ing to his under­stand­ing of the Bible is Dun­n’s ver­sion of Jesus’s com­pas­sion.

    Oh, and then there’s this remark­able gem of a fun fact: Dun­n’s chief part­ner in his Texas oper­a­tions is megadonor Far­ris Wilks. And not only is Wilks a fel­low fun­da­men­tal­ist zealot, but it turns out Wilks also serves as an Old Tes­ta­ment preach­er who teach­es his fol­low­ers to avoid Christ­mas and East­er because they are “root­ed in pagan­ism”. Keep that in mind the next time you hear about a left-wing ‘war on Christ­mas’.

    Far­ris Wilks along with his broth­er Don­ald also hap­pen to be the major financiers for Ted Cruz’s super-PACs. And as we’re going to see in a Decem­ber 2015 Wash­ing­ton Post report, it was the Wilks ranch where around a 100 major faith lead­ers gath­ered to fur­ther strate­gize around who to endorse in the 2016 elec­tion. Now, as we’ve seen, those faith lead­ers end­ed up endors­ing Don­ald Trump after it because clear he was going to win the GOP pri­ma­ry. But before ty endorsed Trump, it was Cruz who man­aged to secure most of those endorse­ments. In oth­er words, the Dunn/Wilks oper­a­tion almost had one of their key polit­i­cal patrons, Ted Cruz, secure the GOP nom­i­na­tion in 2016. It’s a reminder that Dunn and Wilks have been on the cusp of see­ing their theo­crat­ic impuls­es enforced at the nation­al lev­el for a num­ber of years now. And have pre­sum­ably been plan­ning on how to exploit that oppor­tu­ni­ty for a num­ber of years too.

    So Tim Dunn — the Texas bil­lion­aire part­nered with the guy who oppos­es Christ­mas on the­o­log­i­cal grounds — also hap­pens to be one of Don­ald Trump’s biggest back­ers at this point. But he isn’t just sup­port­ing Trump. He’s sup­port­ing the much broad­er CNP-backed Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot to exploit a future Trump pres­i­den­cy for their max­i­mum advan­tage. And if that seems like an over­ly ambi­tious agen­da, don’t for­get that we’re talk­ing about the guy who already man­aged to cap­ture Texas:

    Rolling Stone

    Meet Trump’s New Chris­t­ian King­pin

    Oil-rich Tim Dunn has changed Texas pol­i­tics with fanat­i­cal zeal — the nation­al stage is next

    By Tim Dick­in­son
    Jun 9, 2024 10:00 am

    Tim Dunn stands on the stage of his Mid­land, Texas, church with a wry smile on his face. He’s prepar­ing to preach about his favorite sub­jects: Jesus and Peter Park­er.

    Dunn is a frack­ing mag­nate who is also a mem­ber of the “pul­pit team” at Mid­land Bible Church, a Rap­ture-for­ward con­gre­ga­tion that wor­ships in a mod­ern build­ing a stone’s throw from Dunn’s man­sion on the north edge of town — where dense sub­urbs yield to a scrub desert of grease­wood and mesquite, pock­marked by the see­saw­ing der­ricks of the West Texas oil patch.

    Tall and box-shoul­dered with a swoop of sil­ver hair, and a dis­arm­ing drawl, Dunn is dressed in a blue ging­ham shirt, no tie, and slacks. He presents as a mild-man­nered bil­lion­aire. But Dunn’s mes­sage is fierce. In a ser­mon titled “The Ulti­mate Bat­tle,” he sets the bib­li­cal stakes as a com­ic-book clash between good and evil: “Satan wants the same thing that every epic vil­lain wants. Which is what? Always. To take over the world!” Invok­ing Superman’s neme­sis, Dunn declares, “He is Lex Luthor!”

    Born-again Chris­tians, by con­trast, are God’s answer to Lucifer and his legion of “demons,” Dunn says. He describes their role as that of “the faith super­hero” who has been “dep­u­tized” by Jesus and must embrace the “author­i­ty to reign,” because they have a heav­en­ly mis­sion. God’s pur­pose? “To silence Satan, through us.” But here, Dunn cau­tions the con­gre­ga­tion with a proverb — not from the Bible, but from Mar­vel Comics: “With great pow­er comes great respon­si­bil­i­ty,” Dunn warns, recit­ing Uncle Ben’s advice to a young Peter Park­er. “So is the theme of Spi­der-Man. And that’s us, too.”

    In Dunn’s the­ol­o­gy, the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the “res­ur­rec­tion-empow­ered” believ­er includes has­ten­ing the end-times. In anoth­er fire-and-brim­stone ser­mon, “Jesus Is Com­ing,” he preach­es, “The bet­ter we live, the faster it’ll come.” Invok­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic bat­tles of Rev­e­la­tion as if they were part of a bib­li­cal cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse, Dunn describes Jesus return­ing astride a “white horse,” wear­ing a “robe dipped in blood,” and tak­ing “vengeance” on “unbe­liev­ers” with his “con­sum­ing fire.” Yet these same flames of judg­ment, Dunn insists, will refine the faith­ful, like rare met­als, to then reign beside Christ, for­ev­er, on a “new Earth.”

    Dunn’s comics-infused fun­da­men­tal­ism is not a pri­vate mat­ter. It dri­ves his engage­ment in pol­i­tics. Dunn is the largest donor in Texas pol­i­tics over the past decade, where he’s built a for­mi­da­ble polit­i­cal machine to warp state gov­ern­ment to his will. “The Repub­li­can Par­ty in Texas is not the par­ty of a small­er, less-intru­sive gov­ern­ment,” says Kel Seliger, a recent-for­mer GOP state sen­a­tor. “The reli­gious right is very strong right now — and still in its ascen­dan­cy. And Tim Dunn is prob­a­bly the best exam­ple of that.” James Talari­co, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Austin, observes the same dynam­ic, telling Rolling Stone: “Tim Dunn is spend­ing his vast for­tune to turn his beliefs into law.”

    A noto­ri­ous fig­ure in Texas, Dunn has not pre­vi­ous­ly been a pow­er play­er in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. But with $2 bil­lion in his war chest — from the recent sale of his frack­ing busi­ness — that’s chang­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Dunn has staked mil­lions to send Don­ald Trump back to the White House in 2024. And he has formed an alliance with Trump’s for­mer pres­i­den­tial cam­paign man­ag­er and vot­er-tar­get­ing guru Brad Parscale, who has opened up shop in Mid­land. Dunn is also bankrolling a bevy of high-pro­file groups that are craft­ing an extreme 2025 agen­da, one that seeks to roll back repro­duc­tive rights and tear down the wall between reli­gion and pol­i­tics.

    In Dunn’s world­view, any such bar­ri­er is bogus, because — as he insist­ed at a 2022 polit­i­cal con­ven­tion — God guides gov­ern­ment, and “government’s job is to exe­cute wrath on evil.”

    TIM DUNN WAS raised in Big Spring, a hilly desert town some 40 miles east of Mid­land, which was then a bustling city of oil­men and Air Force fam­i­lies. A ropey six feet three, Dunn played bas­ket­ball for the high school Steers, where he wore a flop of brown hair and, as a senior, near­ly aver­aged a dou­ble-dou­ble — 10 points and 10 rebounds. He has enor­mous hands that still look like they could palm a bas­ket­ball.

    ...

    Dunn was reluc­tant­ly reli­gious in his youth. “I came to view the Bible as most­ly bad news,” he writes in a 2018 book, Yel­low Bal­loons. “I saw it as a book of oblig­a­tion and con­dem­na­tion.” By con­trast, com­ic-book nar­ra­tives held Dunn’s rapt atten­tion — in par­tic­u­lar, Spi­der-Man: “I watched the car­toons and movies, and I saw the Broad­way musi­cal twice,” Dunn writes. “When Ter­ri and I got mar­ried” in col­lege, he adds, “I would get out of bed on Sat­ur­day morn­ings to watch Spider­Man car­toons with her.”

    Dunn’s oil career took off in Mid­land, a swel­ter­ing city in the desert flats of West Texas, halfway between El Paso and Dal­las. Midland’s claim to polit­i­cal fame is as the place where the Con­necti­cut and Ken­neb­unkport Bush­es were born again as Tex­ans. The mod­est home that once housed two future pres­i­dents (and a “please clap” also-ran) pass­es for a tourist attrac­tion here.

    ...

    Most of the rich­es pulled out of the ground in this part of Texas find their expres­sion in lux­u­ri­ous sub­urbs of Dal­las or Hous­ton. But Dunn has root­ed him­self in Mid­land, where he built his com­pa­ny, Crown­Quest Oper­at­ing, by mak­ing bold bets dur­ing bust times — buy­ing up oil leas­es oth­er com­pa­nies had soured on. With the frack­ing boom of the past decade — which has trans­formed the Per­mi­an Basin into the rival of any oil­field in Sau­di Ara­bia — Dunn’s long-term bets paid off. A top pri­vate pro­duc­er, Dunn’s oper­a­tion was acquired by Occi­den­tal in a $12 bil­lion Decem­ber deal that report­ed­ly net­ted Dunn at least $2 bil­lion.

    Dunn is a house­hold name in the Lone Star State. The exploits of his polit­i­cal machine have spawned mem­o­rable exposés by the Texas Tri­bune, and Dunn has been pro­filed at length by Texas Month­ly, which first unearthed Dunn’s anti-ERA dia­tribe. But the fusion of com­ic-book moral­i­ty and Chris­t­ian suprema­cy that is essen­tial to under­stand­ing Dunn’s extreme beliefs hasn’t been report­ed — nor has the full scope of Dunn’s new reach into nation­al pol­i­tics. Dunn did not respond to inter­view requests made by phone, fax, email, LinkedIn, and in per­son at Crown­Quest. In fact, a cone of silence seems to sur­round the bil­lion­aire. Rolling Stone reached out to more than a dozen of Dunn’s allies and oper­a­tives — both in Texas and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. None agreed to speak on the record.

    Befit­ting a man of his com­ic-book obses­sion, Dunn’s Mid­land life unfolds in what you can think of as a fortress of soli­tude, carved into a dense sub­di­vi­sion, where his pecu­liar moral code goes unchal­lenged. A gat­ed Dunn fam­i­ly com­pound sits astride a wind­ing sub­ur­ban lane. The next street over counts dozens of hous­es, but Dunn’s street has just five, includ­ing his own $2 mil­lion man­sion, and the homes of four of his six adult chil­dren.

    A pri­vate K‑12 reli­gious school that Dunn found­ed, Mid­land Clas­si­cal Acad­e­my, sits across the fence line. Here, stu­dents are taught the West­ern canon — but also that gen­der is fixed, men can only mar­ry women, and that “no one can enter the king­dom of God unless he or she is born again.” Cat­ty-cor­ner to this com­plex is Dunn’s house of faith. Mid­land Bible Church is expen­sive­ly appoint­ed, sport­ing a sun­ny recep­tion hall, an espres­so bar, and vault­ed sanc­tu­ary with 500 seats fanned before a wide stage. Ser­vices fea­ture a six-piece band that’s heavy on the bass.

    Dunn preach­es that Chris­tians should live as spir­i­tu­al “exiles” — and bold­ly lead lives counter to the pre­vail­ing cul­ture: “We want to focus our life on pleas­ing God,” he says in a ser­mon, “rather than pleas­ing humans.” This is espe­cial­ly true con­cern­ing sins of the flesh. “Sex­u­al immoral­i­ty,” Dunn insists, “is a sin that’s worse than all the oth­ers.”

    ...

    In most red dis­tricts, the gen­er­al elec­tion is a for­mal­i­ty — a Demo­c­rat won’t be com­pet­i­tive. The win­ner of the seat will be deter­mined in the GOP pri­ma­ry, where turnout is low and the vot­ers who can be per­suad­ed to show up tend to be right-wing activists with extreme views. Texas is unusu­al in hav­ing near­ly no lim­its on polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions to can­di­dates. And Dunn has invest­ed mil­lions in tilt­ing the play­ing field by back­ing hard-right politi­cians who will vote his inter­ests, while ril­ing up vot­ers with incen­di­ary mes­sages that often have lit­tle con­nec­tion to the truth. Polit­i­cal attacks linked to Dunn have alleged that more-mod­er­ate incum­bents are var­i­ous­ly behold­en to Mus­lims, homo­sex­u­als, gun grab­bers, or Nan­cy Pelosi.

    Matt Angle directs the Lone Star Project, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that seeks to break the GOP’s decades-long stran­gle­hold on Texas gov­ern­ment. A for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, Angle has a unique per­spec­tive on both state and fed­er­al pol­i­tics. He calls Dunn “the most influ­en­tial — and the most under­es­ti­mat­ed — destruc­tive polit­i­cal force in mod­ern Texas his­to­ry.”

    Dunn first emerged as a major force in Texas pol­i­tics in the Tea Par­ty era; his mon­ey helped send near­ly two dozen Repub­li­can hard-lin­ers to the State­house in the 2010 elec­tion. Dunn was report­ed­ly exas­per­at­ed with GOP lead­er­ship in Austin, where the then-dom­i­nant, busi­ness-friend­ly wing of the GOP often cut deals with Democ­rats to maneu­ver around uncom­pro­mis­ing con­ser­v­a­tives on the far right.

    In a now-infa­mous 2010 meet­ing with then-House Speak­er Joe Straus, Dunn demand­ed that his incom­ing fac­tion be reward­ed with com­mit­tee chair­man­ships. He also report­ed­ly shared his con­vic­tion that only Chris­tians should hold lead­er­ship posi­tions in state gov­ern­ment. Dunn was seem­ing­ly unaware that Straus, him­self, is Jew­ish. (First sur­faced by Texas Month­ly in 2018, the star­tling inci­dent was con­firmed by Straus in an event at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas this April. “It was a pret­ty unsat­is­fac­to­ry meet­ing,” he recalled. “We nev­er met again.”)

    Dunn has since estab­lished him­self as the largest donor in state pol­i­tics. Since 2015, he’s steered more than $24 mil­lion in dis­closed con­tri­bu­tions to politi­cians and polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees that push his reli­gious-right agen­da. Dunn’s undis­closed “dark mon­ey” spend­ing is also prodi­gious, report­ed­ly spread among a matrix of non­prof­its. Here, his fin­ger­prints are some­times vis­i­ble through board mem­ber­ships: He is a direc­tor of Con­ven­tion of States Action, for exam­ple, a far-right group that omi­nous­ly seeks to rewrite the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. In speech­es to this group, Dunn has overt­ly mixed reli­gion and pol­i­tics, includ­ing with the dec­la­ra­tion that “God’s on our side.”

    Dunn has a megadonor part­ner in his Texas oper­a­tions — a fel­low oil bil­lion­aire and zealot named Far­ris Wilks, who has spent more than $14 mil­lion over the same time frame. Wilks is also a preach­er, who heads the Assem­bly of Yah­weh near Cis­co, Texas, which grounds its wor­ship in the Old Tes­ta­ment, eschews Christ­mas and East­er as “root­ed in pagan­ism,” and says abor­tion is “mur­der” and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is “a griev­ous sin.”

    The son of a brick­lay­er, Wilks is as crude as Dunn is refined. Texas politi­cos often refer to them with a moniker befit­ting a coun­try duo — “Wilks and Dunn” — or a law firm — “Dunn and Wilks.” The exact con­tours of their part­ner­ship is unclear, but Dunn and Wilks have wield­ed pow­er through a rotat­ing series of PACs that they’ve staked with sev­en-fig­ure checks, begin­ning with Empow­er Tex­ans in 2006, mor­ph­ing into Defend Texas Lib­er­ty in 2020, and relaunched this year as Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty. (Wilks didn’t respond to inter­view requests.)

    The Dunn and Wilks polit­i­cal machine has three essen­tial com­po­nents: The first is a think tank — the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, where Dunn is the long­time vice chair, which devel­ops far-right pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. Sec­ond is the mas­sive cam­paign war chest that backs politi­cians who vow to fight for such an agen­da. The third is a rank­ing — pub­lished at the site Texas Score­card — which tracks votes on key bills that attempt to turn the favored poli­cies into law. Christo­pher Tack­ett is a trans­paren­cy watch­dog who charts the influ­ence of big mon­ey at the web­site TX Cam­paign Finance. He describes how the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion crafts mod­el leg­is­la­tion for Dunn- and Wilks-backed law­mak­ers to then push in Austin. “They’re not only help­ing [politi­cians] get elect­ed, they’re writ­ing the bills,” he says. “You’ve got a cou­ple of bil­lion­aires tak­ing their indi­vid­ual voic­es and turn­ing them into a cho­rus.”

    Kel Seliger is a Repub­li­can who served in the state Sen­ate until 2023. Dunn was a con­stituent, and Seliger, who is Jew­ish, clashed with Dunn’s machine. Seliger com­pares Dunn and Wilks to Russ­ian oli­garchs whose approach to pol­i­tics is “fun­da­men­tal­ly cor­rupt.” They go beyond the influ­ence that often accrues to large donors, Seliger insists, and have been “buy­ing offices in the state Leg­is­la­ture” and installing loy­al­ists who “do exact­ly what they say” — either out of con­vic­tion or because they’re “scared to death about the Texas Score­card.”

    Texas Repub­li­cans who rank high on the score­card can expect elec­tion sup­port. Those whose rat­ings slip must antic­i­pate a bruis­ing and expen­sive pri­ma­ry chal­lenge from even-fur­ther-right con­tenders. “If you don’t meet all of their lit­mus tests, then you’re a ‘lib­er­al,’ ” Seliger says. (The self-described Rea­gan Repub­li­can is no squish. His record includ­ed cham­pi­oning Texas’ “cas­tle doc­trine bill,” giv­ing gun own­ers the right to use dead­ly force to pro­tect their homes. But, he says, he nev­er scored bet­ter than 60 per­cent on the Dunn and Wilks score­card.)

    ...

    The cadre of Dunn and Wilks loy­al­ists includes not only rank-and-file leg­is­la­tors, but also statewide office­hold­ers like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — a for­mer right-wing AM-radio jock­ey nick­named the “Sil­ver Tongued Dev­il” — who has received $3 mil­lion in cam­paign cash and loans from Dunn-backed groups; and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton — a Trumpian fig­ure who has implau­si­bly kept crim­i­nal charges, and an impeach­ment effort by mem­bers of his own par­ty, at bay. Dunn has donat­ed $755,000 direct­ly to Pax­ton. “The far-right peo­ple are run­ning things,” Seliger insists. “They are now the estab­lish­ment.”

    Repub­li­can insid­ers describe the GOP-run Texas Sen­ate, where Patrick is the pre­sid­ing offi­cer, as ful­ly under the sway of the Dunn and Wilks machine, while a civ­il war for con­trol of the House remains in full swing. This dynam­ic was man­i­fest in the recent impeach­ment of Pax­ton on bribery and oth­er seri­ous charges. Repub­li­cans in the House sent more than a dozen arti­cles of impeach­ment to the upper cham­ber. But the Sen­ate, where Patrick man­aged the tri­al, acquit­ted Pax­ton com­plete­ly.

    In pri­ma­ry con­tests that cul­mi­nat­ed in late May, the Dunn fac­tion made big strides in its bid to con­trol the House, replac­ing 15 GOP incum­bents with hard-lin­ers. The offen­sive fell just short of total vic­to­ry. Texas House Speak­er Dade Phe­lan — who leads the chamber’s more-mod­er­ate wing — eked out a win by few­er than 400 votes, best­ing a chal­lenger who had received more than $800,000 from Dunn and Wilks’ new PAC.

    Even rock-ribbed Repub­li­cans weren’t safe from get­ting oust­ed. Glenn Rogers is a cat­tle ranch­er and doc­tor of vet­eri­nary med­i­cine who lost the GOP pri­ma­ry race for his rur­al House seat, out­side of Fort Worth. Rogers made him­self a tar­get by vot­ing against school vouch­ers — “They want to just cre­ate a state-sup­port­ed sys­tem of reli­gious schools, basi­cal­ly,” he says — and in favor of impeach­ing Pax­ton.

    The Repub­li­can describes run­ning against a well-fund­ed machine that played dirty, blast­ing him as anti-gun, despite his endorse­ments from the NRA and the Texas Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion. “They sup­port some of the most hor­rif­ic lies you’ve ever seen, and char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tions. The truth just doesn’t seem to mat­ter,” Rogers says. “That’s hard to under­stand how some­one that claims to be a Chris­t­ian can do that.”

    Dunn’s crit­ics in the GOP say the billionaire’s ulti­mate agen­da is to impose a “theoc­ra­cy” on Texas. Even com­ing from Repub­li­cans such talk can sound hyper­bol­ic — until you exam­ine the logo for Dunn and Wilks’ lat­est front group, Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty: It fea­tures a sil­hou­ette of the Texas State­house, but replaces the God­dess of Lib­er­ty stat­ue atop the Capi­tol dome with a stark, white cross.

    Dunn’s agen­da is “quite fright­en­ing to me,” Rogers tells Rolling Stone. “They want Texas ruled accord­ing to their ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty — rigid Chris­tian­i­ty.” Rogers is him­self a believ­er who argues that pub­lic lead­ers should be guid­ed by faith. But he says “that’s dif­fer­ent from Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Chris­tian­i­ty is about love. And Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism is about pow­er.”

    DUNN DOES NOT have a for­mal title at Mid­land Bible, but the church web­site fea­tures scores of his Sun­day ser­mons. Unlike pas­tors who are paid for their ser­vices, Dunn has dad-joked from the pul­pit that he is “good, for nuthin’.”

    Dunn has an ana­lyt­i­cal mind, and he quotes scrip­ture — lit­er­al­ly chap­ter and verse — with the con­fi­dence of a man who has bro­ken down and rebuilt Gospel as if it were the engine on a ’67 Chevy. Dunn bal­ances his com­ic-book call­outs — he pep­pers in ref­er­ences to Bat­man Begins, The Avengers, and Jus­tice League — with a book­ish the­ol­o­gy. He con­tends that society’s con­cep­tions of heav­en and hell, for exam­ple, have been “pol­lut­ed with Greek syn­cretism” — a word describ­ing a mashup of faith tra­di­tions.

    In Yel­low Bal­loons, Dunn writes that his own reli­gious awak­en­ing emerged from a rup­ture with a busi­ness col­league, more than two decades ago. The friend had lashed out at him as “arro­gant,” accus­ing him of fail­ing to “acknowl­edge peo­ple” and rely­ing on “intim­i­da­tion to get your way.” Dunn was stung by what he rec­og­nized was the truth — that he “would stomp on peo­ple with­out even notic­ing.” He came to under­stand him­self as a “self-o-holic” who “want­ed to be in con­trol, but with­out tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty.” For Dunn, this was a lit­er­al come-to-Jesus moment: “I real­ized and admit­ted my fail­ure [and] God demol­ished me,” he wrote. “The pain I felt dur­ing that peri­od real­ly was a sort of death.”

    But rich men who give them­selves soap­box­es — in the form of self-pub­lished books or speak­ing roles at church — have a ten­den­cy to tell on them­selves. And Dunn is no excep­tion. From the pul­pit, Dunn admits to bat­tling a God com­plex. “I get tapped on the shoul­der fair­ly often. And Jesus says, ‘Excuse me, you’re sit­ting in my chair.’ ” He describes a knee-jerk petu­lance: “I very effort­less­ly can chan­nel my inner four-year-old at any time.” And he con­fess­es his strug­gle with mega­lo­ma­nia: “ ‘Be a tyrant ruler. You should ascend to the most high’ — I hear that voice all day long, every day.”

    Dunn often describes how “annoy­ing” he finds fun­da­men­tal pre­cepts of his faith — as if this were a com­mon expe­ri­ence. The long list includes: attend­ing church, being hos­pitable, being lov­ing and patient, and “walk­ing in the spir­it.” While Dunn writes that the con­flict with his old friend put him on a holi­er path, he also admits that his “base nature” has not changed, that his “instincts are still self­ish” — and that “my per­son­al­i­ty pro­file is that I am a J‑E-R‑K.”

    With the can­ni­ness of an engi­neer, how­ev­er, Dunn has solved this char­ac­ter flaw by becom­ing a Jerk for Jesus. In Dunn’s through-the-look­ing-glass view, “nice­ness” — by which he means tol­er­ance of unbib­li­cal behav­ior by oth­ers — is “cow­ardice” by anoth­er name. And cow­ardice, he preach­es, is an arch sin that will get you tossed in the “lake of fire.”

    “The Bible nev­er calls us to be nice,” Dunn preach­es. “You have to applaud evil if you want to be nice.” In Dunn’s view, Chris­tians “aren’t called to mere­ly cope with the evil of this world. We’re called to fight it and to over­come it.” As a result, Dunn views impos­ing the harsh con­straints of his own faith on oth­ers as the very def­i­n­i­tion of Chris­t­ian love: “We’re doing peo­ple a huge favor,” he says, “when we get in their face.” The neg­a­tive reac­tion of those who are on a dif­fer­ent path is, to Dunn, affir­ma­tion of his right­eous­ness: “The more super­hero-like things we do, the more the world is like­ly to … hate us,” he writes.

    This belief shapes Dunn’s ideas about how Chris­tians should engage in what he calls the “dark­est of all are­nas in this world, which is pol­i­tics.” In a 2019 speech to a Con­ven­tion of States Action sum­mit titled “The Bible and Pol­i­tics,” Dunn declared that Chris­tians are “made to rule and reign,” and he described this ter­res­tri­al life as a prov­ing ground — to see who will take on the man­tle to gov­ern along­side Jesus in the “king­dom to come.”

    Dunn calls on believ­ers to be the “fra­grance” of Christ in the world. “When we live accord­ing to the way God has asked us to live,” he preach­es, “peo­ple smell it. They sense it.” The scent of Dunn’s polit­i­cal oper­a­tion, how­ev­er, is hard­ly sweet. In fact, much of it stinks to high heav­en.

    “They are seri­ous about their theoc­ra­cy,” says Angle, “but they know that in order to impose it on oth­ers, they have to have some pret­ty bad actors — and some of those bad actors are sin­ners.” The incon­gru­ous­ly scan­dal-plagued Dunn polit­i­cal machine relies on GOP oper­a­tives and enforcers who have behaved so atro­cious­ly that entire front groups have had to be shut down and rebrand­ed. “They keep embar­rass­ing them­selves,” says Seliger, call­ing the behav­ior “just inde­cent.”

    For more than a decade, Dunn’s polit­i­cal dona­tions flowed through a PAC called Empow­er Tex­ans. How­ev­er, in 2020, two top Empow­er Tex­ans oper­a­tives aired an unedit­ed ver­sion of a pod­cast that includ­ed pro­fan­i­ty-laced, hot-mic chat­ter, in which the pair belit­tled Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for hav­ing to use a wheel­chair — lead­ing one promi­nent GOP law­mak­er to blast the Dunn oper­a­tion as a “sanc­ti­mo­nious sew­er.”

    Empow­er Tex­ans was dis­solved that Octo­ber, lead­ing to the rise of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as Dunn’s pri­ma­ry PAC. The rebrand­ing had the effect of putting lip­stick on a pig. A top Texas law­mak­er backed by the Dunn machine was a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive named Bryan Sla­ton, who took $275,000 in cam­paign cash from Dunn direct­ly, and more than $300,000 from Dunn-backed PACs. Sla­ton fit the mod­el of a Dunn and Wilks con­ser­v­a­tive: a for­mer youth pas­tor who act­ed as a far-right provo­ca­teur in the State­house — includ­ing intro­duc­ing a bill that could have pun­ished women seek­ing abor­tions with the death penal­ty.

    But last May, Sla­ton became the first mem­ber of the Texas House to be expelled in more than 90 years — after a state inves­ti­ga­tion accused the mar­ried leg­is­la­tor of tak­ing a 19-year-old aide to his apart­ment and get­ting her drunk to the point of “split vision.” Sla­ton alleged­ly had sex with the woman, a vir­gin, repeat­ed­ly. He then pres­sured his employ­ee to keep qui­et. House inves­ti­ga­tors judged that “the only appro­pri­ate dis­ci­pline” was expul­sion. The House vote was unan­i­mous.

    Then, last fall, a whiff of neo-Nazism hit Dunn’s oper­a­tion. Defend Texas Liberty’s pres­i­dent was an oper­a­tive named Jonathan Stick­land — a for­mer pest-con­trol tech­ni­cian turned state leg­is­la­tor whose polit­i­cal career had been pro­pelled by $214,000 in con­tri­bu­tions from Dunn direct­ly, and near­ly $268,000 from Empow­er Tex­ans. Defend Texas Lib­er­ty worked with Stickland’s polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy, Pale Horse Strate­gies. And Stick­land, in ear­ly Octo­ber, host­ed a long meet­ing at his polit­i­cal office with Nick Fuentes, a fero­cious anti­semite and Holo­caust denier.

    Dunn is fre­quent­ly char­ac­ter­ized as a pup­pet­mas­ter of the Texas GOP. In this scan­dal, how­ev­er, he became a ven­tril­o­quist. His mea cul­pa was deliv­ered by a politi­cian whom Defend Texas Lib­er­ty had staked $3 mil­lion in cam­paign cash and loans: Lt. Gov. Patrick. “I spoke with Tim Dunn, a prin­ci­pal fun­der of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty PAC, and he has told me unequiv­o­cal­ly that it was a seri­ous blun­der for PAC Pres­i­dent Jonathan Stick­land to meet with white suprema­cist Nick Fuentes,” Patrick said pub­licly.

    Defend Texas Lib­er­ty was prompt­ly shut­tered, but replaced with­in weeks by a new PAC: Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty. In addi­tion to its eerie Chris­t­ian-cross logo, the PAC web­site declares that its mis­sion is to root out “Demo­c­rat-enabling law­mak­ers who are Repub­li­cans in name only (RINOs)” and — evok­ing Trumpy rhetoric — to drain “the Austin Swamp.”

    FOR HIS EXTRAORDINARY influ­ence in the Lone Star State, Dunn has nev­er been a pow­er play­er in pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics. But for 2024, he’s tak­ing his oper­a­tion nation­al. Dunn now stands as an avatar of the extreme oil wealth and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism that have hitched in as engines behind the Trump train.

    Dunn estab­lished him­self as one of Trump’s newest and largest megadonors in Decem­ber, cut­ting a $5 mil­lion check to Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump Super PAC. This was by far Dunn’s largest fed­er­al con­tri­bu­tion. Dunn has spo­ken rarely, but admir­ing­ly, of Trump’s for­ti­tude. In a 2019 address, he praised Trump for hav­ing once dressed down a room full of pas­tors in a man­ner Dunn found “very accu­rate, very prophet­ic” — “He said, ‘You’ve got­ten soft.’ ”

    The MAGA Inc. ads Dunn is help­ing pay for reflect his dark world­view. One fea­tures a voice-over in which Trump presents him­self as a demigod of cul­tur­al revenge: “I am your war­rior, I am your jus­tice,” he intones. “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your ret­ri­bu­tion.”

    Dunn has also tak­en on a new side­kick in Brad Parscale, a for­mer top Trump­world oper­a­tive, cred­it­ed with orches­trat­ing a mas­sive cam­paign of micro-tar­get­ed Face­book ads in 2016 that helped Trump top­ple the Hillary Clin­ton jug­ger­naut. Parscale par­layed that suc­cess into a short-lived stint as Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er in 2020.

    ...

    In a deal bro­kered by Parscale, Dunn has invest­ed $7.5 mil­lion in a firm called AiAd­ver­tis­ing, which touts its capac­i­ty to har­ness “rich cus­tomer data” and a “gen­er­a­tive AI process” to deliv­er “hyper-per­son­al­ized con­tent.” The tech­nol­o­gy holds the promise to micro-tar­get AI-per­son­al­ized polit­i­cal ads to vot­ers — in essence tur­bocharg­ing the online per­sua­sion work that made Parscale famous.

    In Texas pol­i­tics, Dunn has described him­self in foot­ball terms, as an “offen­sive coor­di­na­tor.” But it would be fair to char­ac­ter­ize his nation­al plans for 2024 as a blitz. Dunn is also back­ing a host of polit­i­cal groups that seek to craft a sec­ond-term Trump agen­da.

    In 2021, Dunn signed on as a found­ing direc­tor of the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute. The CEO of AFPI is Brooke Rollins, who served in the White House as Trump’s domes­tic-pol­i­cy advis­er. But before Rollins was Trump’s wing­man, she was Dunn’s. She served for years as CEO of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, the dri­ve­train of Dunn’s polit­i­cal machine.

    Rollins has long act­ed as a spokes­woman for Dunn. In a 2014 inter­view, she defend­ed his polit­i­cal influ­ence, insist­ing, “This nar­ra­tive that he’s the real­ly bad guy behind the cur­tain is unfair, because what he’s try­ing to do is change the coun­try.” Rollins recent­ly described to The Wall Street Jour­nal how she approached Dunn to help launch AFPI, seek­ing “to cre­ate a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion, sim­i­lar to what we built in Texas, that could be ready for a sec­ond term.” (Rollins and AFPI didn’t respond to requests for com­ment.)

    The AFPI agen­da includes tear­ing down the wall between church and state. In a doc­u­ment called “Bib­li­cal Foun­da­tions: Ten Pil­lars for Restor­ing a Nation Under God!,” AFPI insists “Faith and Pol­i­tics DO Mix in Amer­i­ca.” It con­tends “the Church is God’s force for good in the world and the Unit­ed States” and it “does not end where gov­ern­ment begins.”

    Rollins isn’t the only past Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion leader now seek­ing to shape a sec­ond Trump term. Kevin Roberts suc­ceed­ed Rollins as chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Texas think tank, and in 2021 became pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Roberts has steered the once estab­lish­ment-con­ser­v­a­tive group away from mar­ket eco­nom­ics and head­long into the cul­ture wars — insist­ing that the “rad­i­cal” agen­da of the “gen­der cult” is an “all-out assault on human flour­ish­ing,” and argu­ing that “move­ment con­ser­v­a­tives” can’t back gay mar­riage because it “con­tra­venes our under­stand­ing of an endur­ing moral order.”

    Her­itage has noto­ri­ous­ly orga­nized — in col­lab­o­ra­tion with dozens of far-right groups — an ini­tia­tive called Project 2025, which seeks to dri­ve Trump’s Day One agen­da. Its extreme pri­or­i­ties include impris­on­ing porn pro­duc­ers, repeal­ing same-sex mar­riage rights, and using the Com­stock Act to pre­vent the dis­tri­b­u­tion of abor­tion drugs by mail.

    Dunn is also report­ed­ly a sig­nif­i­cant donor to a group called the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca — tagline: “For God. For Coun­try. For Com­mu­ni­ty” — led by Trump’s for­mer Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get direc­tor Rus­sell Vought. Vought was a con­tro­ver­sial appointee because of his stark dog­ma, includ­ing an op-ed he wrote insist­ing that Mus­lims “stand con­demned” because they “have reject­ed Jesus Christ.” The orig­i­nal link between Dunn and Vought is unclear, but accord­ing to Vought’s pub­lic White House cal­en­dars, he and Dunn met twice at the White House. (Roberts, Vought, and CRA did not respond to inter­view requests.)

    Found­ed in 2021, CRA is also craft­ing pri­or­i­ties for a sec­ond Trump term — and CRA’s 2023 annu­al report describes Vought as an “indis­pens­able part of Project 2025.” In addi­tion, Vought’s out­fit drew nation­al scruti­ny after Politi­co report­ed on inter­nal CRA doc­u­ments that list­ed “Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism” as a top pri­or­i­ty for a sec­ond Trump term. That agen­da was not laid out in detail. How­ev­er, Vought post­ed on X in ear­ly 2023 that he’d been devel­op­ing a “sound Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism” with for­mer Trump offi­cial William E. Wolfe, who was then a CRA vis­it­ing fel­low.

    Wolfe, in turn, helped edit a “State­ment of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism.” It reads in part:

    “We deny that Jesus’ king­ship and lord­ship are mere­ly heav­en­ly or that His Word is only author­i­ta­tive over con­fess­ing Chris­tians.”

    “We deny that the pur­pose of civ­il gov­ern­ment is to estab­lish a sec­u­lar, neu­tral, or god­less order.”

    “Full obe­di­ence to Christ today is an indis­putable oblig­a­tion of all [gov­ern­ments].”

    In an April op-ed, Dunn wrote that he rejects the “dis­par­age­ment” that he is a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist — which he called “a made-up label that con­flicts with bib­li­cal teach­ing” and was objec­tion­able pri­mar­i­ly because it depri­or­i­tizes his iden­ti­ty as a Chris­t­ian. Dunn assert­ed that his vision is not “author­i­tar­i­an,” point­ing to Amer­i­cans’ “God-giv­en free will to believe in him (or not), pur­sue their own dreams, and make and bear the con­se­quences of their own choic­es.”

    Dunn’s crit­ics and admir­ers alike insist his sud­den entrance into nation­al pol­i­tics must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Rollins has boast­ed it’s the start of a “100-year play.”

    Angle, the Lone Star Project direc­tor, believes Dunn is attract­ed to the no-holds-barred pol­i­tics that sur­round Trump — and remind him of Texas: “He sees, in what Trump’s done to the Repub­li­can Par­ty nation­al­ly, exact­ly the type of envi­ron­ment he can oper­ate in — and real­ly start to dom­i­nate.”

    ...

    ————

    “Meet Trump’s New Chris­t­ian King­pin” By Tim Dick­in­son; Rolling Stone; 06/09/2024

    “A noto­ri­ous fig­ure in Texas, Dunn has not pre­vi­ous­ly been a pow­er play­er in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. But with $2 bil­lion in his war chest — from the recent sale of his frack­ing busi­ness — that’s chang­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Dunn has staked mil­lions to send Don­ald Trump back to the White House in 2024. And he has formed an alliance with Trump’s for­mer pres­i­den­tial cam­paign man­ag­er and vot­er-tar­get­ing guru Brad Parscale, who has opened up shop in Mid­land. Dunn is also bankrolling a bevy of high-pro­file groups that are craft­ing an extreme 2025 agen­da, one that seeks to roll back repro­duc­tive rights and tear down the wall between reli­gion and pol­i­tics.

    As we can see, Tim Dun­n’s oil-fueled $2 bil­lion polit­i­cal war chest isn’t just tak­ing aim at Texas any­more. Dun­n’s has nation­al Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ambi­tions and, quite log­i­cal­ly, sees Don­ald Trump’s return to the White House as his vehi­cle for mak­ing that hap­pen. So when we read that Dunn has­n’t just donat­ed heav­i­ly Trump’s reelec­tion effort but is also deeply involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. A scheme that, as we’ve seen, is fun­da­men­tal­ly a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist project of the CNP with the goal of a soci­ety-wide cap­ture of all insti­tu­tions. It should come as no sur­prise to learn that Dunn is a major Trump backer. It would have been shock­ing if he was­n’t.

    But it’s also hard not to notice how Dun­n’s embrace of Trump jux­ta­pos­es with one of the more absurd aspects of Dun­n’s pro­fessed moral par­a­digm: in Dun­n’s com­ic book-style ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty, “Sex­u­al immoral­i­ty is a sin that’s worse than all the oth­ers.” Beyond being a pro­found­ly shal­low form of moral pri­or­i­ties, here he is back­ing a con­vict­ed rapist felon who just got con­vict­ed of 34 counts relat­ed to pay­ing off a porn star with hush mon­ey to cov­er up with sex he had with her while his wife was preg­nant. There’s no doubt a com­ic book expla­na­tion for why this is the­o­log­i­cal­ly fine:

    ...
    Born-again Chris­tians, by con­trast, are God’s answer to Lucifer and his legion of “demons,” Dunn says. He describes their role as that of “the faith super­hero” who has been “dep­u­tized” by Jesus and must embrace the “author­i­ty to reign,” because they have a heav­en­ly mis­sion. God’s pur­pose? “To silence Satan, through us.” But here, Dunn cau­tions the con­gre­ga­tion with a proverb — not from the Bible, but from Mar­vel Comics: “With great pow­er comes great respon­si­bil­i­ty,” Dunn warns, recit­ing Uncle Ben’s advice to a young Peter Park­er. “So is the theme of Spi­der-Man. And that’s us, too.”

    In Dunn’s the­ol­o­gy, the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the “res­ur­rec­tion-empow­ered” believ­er includes has­ten­ing the end-times. In anoth­er fire-and-brim­stone ser­mon, “Jesus Is Com­ing,” he preach­es, “The bet­ter we live, the faster it’ll come.” Invok­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic bat­tles of Rev­e­la­tion as if they were part of a bib­li­cal cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse, Dunn describes Jesus return­ing astride a “white horse,” wear­ing a “robe dipped in blood,” and tak­ing “vengeance” on “unbe­liev­ers” with his “con­sum­ing fire.” Yet these same flames of judg­ment, Dunn insists, will refine the faith­ful, like rare met­als, to then reign beside Christ, for­ev­er, on a “new Earth.”

    Dunn’s comics-infused fun­da­men­tal­ism is not a pri­vate mat­ter. It dri­ves his engage­ment in pol­i­tics. Dunn is the largest donor in Texas pol­i­tics over the past decade, where he’s built a for­mi­da­ble polit­i­cal machine to warp state gov­ern­ment to his will. “The Repub­li­can Par­ty in Texas is not the par­ty of a small­er, less-intru­sive gov­ern­ment,” says Kel Seliger, a recent-for­mer GOP state sen­a­tor. “The reli­gious right is very strong right now — and still in its ascen­dan­cy. And Tim Dunn is prob­a­bly the best exam­ple of that.” James Talari­co, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Austin, observes the same dynam­ic, telling Rolling Stone: “Tim Dunn is spend­ing his vast for­tune to turn his beliefs into law.”

    ...

    In Dunn’s world­view, any such bar­ri­er is bogus, because — as he insist­ed at a 2022 polit­i­cal con­ven­tion — God guides gov­ern­ment, and “government’s job is to exe­cute wrath on evil.”

    ...

    Dunn is a house­hold name in the Lone Star State. The exploits of his polit­i­cal machine have spawned mem­o­rable exposés by the Texas Tri­bune, and Dunn has been pro­filed at length by Texas Month­ly, which first unearthed Dunn’s anti-ERA dia­tribe. But the fusion of com­ic-book moral­i­ty and Chris­t­ian suprema­cy that is essen­tial to under­stand­ing Dunn’s extreme beliefs hasn’t been report­ed — nor has the full scope of Dunn’s new reach into nation­al pol­i­tics. Dunn did not respond to inter­view requests made by phone, fax, email, LinkedIn, and in per­son at Crown­Quest. In fact, a cone of silence seems to sur­round the bil­lion­aire. Rolling Stone reached out to more than a dozen of Dunn’s allies and oper­a­tives — both in Texas and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. None agreed to speak on the record.

    ...

    Dunn preach­es that Chris­tians should live as spir­i­tu­al “exiles” — and bold­ly lead lives counter to the pre­vail­ing cul­ture: “We want to focus our life on pleas­ing God,” he says in a ser­mon, “rather than pleas­ing humans.” This is espe­cial­ly true con­cern­ing sins of the flesh. “Sex­u­al immoral­i­ty,” Dunn insists, “is a sin that’s worse than all the oth­ers.”
    ...

    And then we get to Dun­n’s extra­or­di­nar­i­ly Trumpian char­ac­ter. The god lit­er­al­ly admits to hav­ing a god com­plex when it comes to his reli­gious fer­vor. That’s on top of admit­ting that he finds “annoy­ing” Chris­tian­i­ty’s calls from traits like being hos­pitable, being lov­ing and patient, and “walk­ing in the spir­it.” A “self-o-holic” who “want­ed to be in con­trol, but with­out tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty.” Sound like any­one famil­iar run­ning for pres­i­dent again? Beyond that, Dunn admits to pos­sess­ing a knee-jerk petu­lance and strain of mega­lo­ma­nia who intim­i­dates peo­ple to get his way. As Dunn puts it, “I get tapped on the shoul­der fair­ly often. And Jesus says, ‘Excuse me, you’re sit­ting in my chair.’” In anoth­er Trumpian admis­sion, Dunn acknowl­edges how, “I very effort­less­ly can chan­nel my inner four-year-old at any time.” Dunn even hears a voice all day long call­ing for him to be a tyrant ruler. “‘Be a tyrant ruler. You should ascend to the most high’ — I hear that voice all day long, every day.” All day, every day.”

    So how does Dunn rec­on­cile his appar­ent­ly very un-Chris­t­ian per­son­al­i­ty? By arriv­ing at the con­clu­sion that impos­ing his will on soci­ety is actu­al­ly the most Christ-like thing he could do. “Nice­ness” is in fact “cow­ardice” that will leave peo­ple liv­ing in Hell in the end. Forc­ing peo­ple to live a life accord­ing to his under­stand­ing of the Bible is Dun­n’s ver­sion of Jesus’s com­pas­sion. He’s a jerk for Jesus so it’s all ok. It’s like if Trump was­n’t just com­plete­ly out for him­self but thought God was talk­ing to him telling him to run for pres­i­dent. That’s kind of Dun­n’s head­space in his own words. Which is arguably a lot scari­er than even Trump. It’s one of the hard­er to accept aspects of this sto­ry: some of the peo­ple behind Trump are even scari­er than he is. Even much scari­er. It’s hard to believe but true:

    ...
    DUNN DOES NOT have a for­mal title at Mid­land Bible, but the church web­site fea­tures scores of his Sun­day ser­mons. Unlike pas­tors who are paid for their ser­vices, Dunn has dad-joked from the pul­pit that he is “good, for nuthin’.”

    Dunn has an ana­lyt­i­cal mind, and he quotes scrip­ture — lit­er­al­ly chap­ter and verse — with the con­fi­dence of a man who has bro­ken down and rebuilt Gospel as if it were the engine on a ’67 Chevy. Dunn bal­ances his com­ic-book call­outs — he pep­pers in ref­er­ences to Bat­man Begins, The Avengers, and Jus­tice League — with a book­ish the­ol­o­gy. He con­tends that society’s con­cep­tions of heav­en and hell, for exam­ple, have been “pol­lut­ed with Greek syn­cretism” — a word describ­ing a mashup of faith tra­di­tions.

    In Yel­low Bal­loons, Dunn writes that his own reli­gious awak­en­ing emerged from a rup­ture with a busi­ness col­league, more than two decades ago. The friend had lashed out at him as “arro­gant,” accus­ing him of fail­ing to “acknowl­edge peo­ple” and rely­ing on “intim­i­da­tion to get your way.” Dunn was stung by what he rec­og­nized was the truth — that he “would stomp on peo­ple with­out even notic­ing.” He came to under­stand him­self as a “self-o-holic” who “want­ed to be in con­trol, but with­out tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty.” For Dunn, this was a lit­er­al come-to-Jesus moment: “I real­ized and admit­ted my fail­ure [and] God demol­ished me,” he wrote. “The pain I felt dur­ing that peri­od real­ly was a sort of death.”

    But rich men who give them­selves soap­box­es — in the form of self-pub­lished books or speak­ing roles at church — have a ten­den­cy to tell on them­selves. And Dunn is no excep­tion. From the pul­pit, Dunn admits to bat­tling a God com­plex. “I get tapped on the shoul­der fair­ly often. And Jesus says, ‘Excuse me, you’re sit­ting in my chair.’ ” He describes a knee-jerk petu­lance: “I very effort­less­ly can chan­nel my inner four-year-old at any time.” And he con­fess­es his strug­gle with mega­lo­ma­nia: “ ‘Be a tyrant ruler. You should ascend to the most high’ — I hear that voice all day long, every day.”

    Dunn often describes how “annoy­ing” he finds fun­da­men­tal pre­cepts of his faith — as if this were a com­mon expe­ri­ence. The long list includes: attend­ing church, being hos­pitable, being lov­ing and patient, and “walk­ing in the spir­it.” While Dunn writes that the con­flict with his old friend put him on a holi­er path, he also admits that his “base nature” has not changed, that his “instincts are still self­ish” — and that “my per­son­al­i­ty pro­file is that I am a J‑E-R‑K.”

    With the can­ni­ness of an engi­neer, how­ev­er, Dunn has solved this char­ac­ter flaw by becom­ing a Jerk for Jesus. In Dunn’s through-the-look­ing-glass view, “nice­ness” — by which he means tol­er­ance of unbib­li­cal behav­ior by oth­ers — is “cow­ardice” by anoth­er name. And cow­ardice, he preach­es, is an arch sin that will get you tossed in the “lake of fire.”

    “The Bible nev­er calls us to be nice,” Dunn preach­es. “You have to applaud evil if you want to be nice.” In Dunn’s view, Chris­tians “aren’t called to mere­ly cope with the evil of this world. We’re called to fight it and to over­come it.” As a result, Dunn views impos­ing the harsh con­straints of his own faith on oth­ers as the very def­i­n­i­tion of Chris­t­ian love: “We’re doing peo­ple a huge favor,” he says, “when we get in their face.” The neg­a­tive reac­tion of those who are on a dif­fer­ent path is, to Dunn, affir­ma­tion of his right­eous­ness: “The more super­hero-like things we do, the more the world is like­ly to … hate us,” he writes.

    This belief shapes Dunn’s ideas about how Chris­tians should engage in what he calls the “dark­est of all are­nas in this world, which is pol­i­tics.” In a 2019 speech to a Con­ven­tion of States Action sum­mit titled “The Bible and Pol­i­tics,” Dunn declared that Chris­tians are “made to rule and reign,” and he described this ter­res­tri­al life as a prov­ing ground — to see who will take on the man­tle to gov­ern along­side Jesus in the “king­dom to come.”
    ...

    Also hard to believe, but true, is the fact that Dunn isn’t just a direc­tor of Con­ven­tion of States Action — a group ded­i­cat­ed to a far right over­haul of the US Con­sti­tu­tion — but it’s simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the case that Dun­n’s chief polit­i­cal part­ner hap­pens to be Far­ris Wilks, a fel­low bil­lion­aire Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist zealot who is so extreme he lit­er­al­ly wants to wage a legal war on Christ­mas and have it banned as a pagan vio­la­tion. Hard to believe, espe­cial­ly giv­en all the right wing uproar the alleged ‘War on Crist­mas’. And yet it is true. Trump’­Tex­an cham­pi­on is a co-cham­pi­on with a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist who real­ly did declare a war on Christ­mast. And almost no one noticed:

    ...
    Dunn first emerged as a major force in Texas pol­i­tics in the Tea Par­ty era; his mon­ey helped send near­ly two dozen Repub­li­can hard-lin­ers to the State­house in the 2010 elec­tion. Dunn was report­ed­ly exas­per­at­ed with GOP lead­er­ship in Austin, where the then-dom­i­nant, busi­ness-friend­ly wing of the GOP often cut deals with Democ­rats to maneu­ver around uncom­pro­mis­ing con­ser­v­a­tives on the far right.

    ...

    Dunn has since estab­lished him­self as the largest donor in state pol­i­tics. Since 2015, he’s steered more than $24 mil­lion in dis­closed con­tri­bu­tions to politi­cians and polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees that push his reli­gious-right agen­da. Dunn’s undis­closed “dark mon­ey” spend­ing is also prodi­gious, report­ed­ly spread among a matrix of non­prof­its. Here, his fin­ger­prints are some­times vis­i­ble through board mem­ber­ships: He is a direc­tor of Con­ven­tion of States Action, for exam­ple, a far-right group that omi­nous­ly seeks to rewrite the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. In speech­es to this group, Dunn has overt­ly mixed reli­gion and pol­i­tics, includ­ing with the dec­la­ra­tion that “God’s on our side.”

    Dunn has a megadonor part­ner in his Texas oper­a­tions — a fel­low oil bil­lion­aire and zealot named Far­ris Wilks, who has spent more than $14 mil­lion over the same time frame. Wilks is also a preach­er, who heads the Assem­bly of Yah­weh near Cis­co, Texas, which grounds its wor­ship in the Old Tes­ta­ment, eschews Christ­mas and East­er as “root­ed in pagan­ism,” and says abor­tion is “mur­der” and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is “a griev­ous sin.”

    The son of a brick­lay­er, Wilks is as crude as Dunn is refined. Texas politi­cos often refer to them with a moniker befit­ting a coun­try duo — “Wilks and Dunn” — or a law firm — “Dunn and Wilks.” The exact con­tours of their part­ner­ship is unclear, but Dunn and Wilks have wield­ed pow­er through a rotat­ing series of PACs that they’ve staked with sev­en-fig­ure checks, begin­ning with Empow­er Tex­ans in 2006, mor­ph­ing into Defend Texas Lib­er­ty in 2020, and relaunched this year as Tex­ans Unit­ed for a Con­ser­v­a­tive Major­i­ty. (Wilks didn’t respond to inter­view requests.)

    The Dunn and Wilks polit­i­cal machine has three essen­tial com­po­nents: The first is a think tank — the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, where Dunn is the long­time vice chair, which devel­ops far-right pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. Sec­ond is the mas­sive cam­paign war chest that backs politi­cians who vow to fight for such an agen­da. The third is a rank­ing — pub­lished at the site Texas Score­card — which tracks votes on key bills that attempt to turn the favored poli­cies into law. Christo­pher Tack­ett is a trans­paren­cy watch­dog who charts the influ­ence of big mon­ey at the web­site TX Cam­paign Finance. He describes how the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion crafts mod­el leg­is­la­tion for Dunn- and Wilks-backed law­mak­ers to then push in Austin. “They’re not only help­ing [politi­cians] get elect­ed, they’re writ­ing the bills,” he says. “You’ve got a cou­ple of bil­lion­aires tak­ing their indi­vid­ual voic­es and turn­ing them into a cho­rus.”
    ...

    But Dunn isn’t just work­ing to turn Texas into a theoc­ra­cy. He’s part of the broad­er MAGA ecosys­tem of enti­ties work­ing to imple­ment the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme, serv­ing as as a found­ing direc­tor of the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (AFPI) along­side fel­low TPPF offi­cial Brooke Rollins:

    ...
    In Texas pol­i­tics, Dunn has described him­self in foot­ball terms, as an “offen­sive coor­di­na­tor.” But it would be fair to char­ac­ter­ize his nation­al plans for 2024 as a blitz. Dunn is also back­ing a host of polit­i­cal groups that seek to craft a sec­ond-term Trump agen­da.

    In 2021, Dunn signed on as a found­ing direc­tor of the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute. The CEO of AFPI is Brooke Rollins, who served in the White House as Trump’s domes­tic-pol­i­cy advis­er. But before Rollins was Trump’s wing­man, she was Dunn’s. She served for years as CEO of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, the dri­ve­train of Dunn’s polit­i­cal machine.

    Rollins has long act­ed as a spokes­woman for Dunn. In a 2014 inter­view, she defend­ed his polit­i­cal influ­ence, insist­ing, “This nar­ra­tive that he’s the real­ly bad guy behind the cur­tain is unfair, because what he’s try­ing to do is change the coun­try.” Rollins recent­ly described to The Wall Street Jour­nal how she approached Dunn to help launch AFPI, seek­ing “to cre­ate a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion, sim­i­lar to what we built in Texas, that could be ready for a sec­ond term.” (Rollins and AFPI didn’t respond to requests for com­ment.)

    The AFPI agen­da includes tear­ing down the wall between church and state. In a doc­u­ment called “Bib­li­cal Foun­da­tions: Ten Pil­lars for Restor­ing a Nation Under God!,” AFPI insists “Faith and Pol­i­tics DO Mix in Amer­i­ca.” It con­tends “the Church is God’s force for good in the world and the Unit­ed States” and it “does not end where gov­ern­ment begins.”

    ...

    Dunn’s crit­ics and admir­ers alike insist his sud­den entrance into nation­al pol­i­tics must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Rollins has boast­ed it’s the start of a “100-year play.”
    ...

    And then there’s Dun­n’s sig­nif­i­cant dona­tions to Russ Vought’s Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA), anoth­er key Sched­ule F/Project 2025 enti­ty. This is a good time to recall how Vought penned that opin­ion piece in March 2021 tout­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism as a good thing. Flash for­ward to today, and we find Vought’s CRA is active­ly plan­ning on imple­ment­ing a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da when Trump returns to the White House. That’s at the same time William E. Wolfe has been warn­ing that “we are get­ting close” to a point where Chris­tians will have to “heed the call to arms.” So when we learn that Dunn is a major CRA donor, it’s a reminder that Dunn isn’t wag­ing his theo­crat­ic agen­da alone. He has an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful net­work of allies fever­ish­ly mak­ing prepa­ra­tions:

    ...
    Rollins isn’t the only past Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion leader now seek­ing to shape a sec­ond Trump term. Kevin Roberts suc­ceed­ed Rollins as chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Texas think tank, and in 2021 became pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Roberts has steered the once estab­lish­ment-con­ser­v­a­tive group away from mar­ket eco­nom­ics and head­long into the cul­ture wars — insist­ing that the “rad­i­cal” agen­da of the “gen­der cult” is an “all-out assault on human flour­ish­ing,” and argu­ing that “move­ment con­ser­v­a­tives” can’t back gay mar­riage because it “con­tra­venes our under­stand­ing of an endur­ing moral order.”

    Her­itage has noto­ri­ous­ly orga­nized — in col­lab­o­ra­tion with dozens of far-right groups — an ini­tia­tive called Project 2025, which seeks to dri­ve Trump’s Day One agen­da. Its extreme pri­or­i­ties include impris­on­ing porn pro­duc­ers, repeal­ing same-sex mar­riage rights, and using the Com­stock Act to pre­vent the dis­tri­b­u­tion of abor­tion drugs by mail.

    Dunn is also report­ed­ly a sig­nif­i­cant donor to a group called the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca — tagline: “For God. For Coun­try. For Com­mu­ni­ty” — led by Trump’s for­mer Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get direc­tor Rus­sell Vought. Vought was a con­tro­ver­sial appointee because of his stark dog­ma, includ­ing an op-ed he wrote insist­ing that Mus­lims “stand con­demned” because they “have reject­ed Jesus Christ.” The orig­i­nal link between Dunn and Vought is unclear, but accord­ing to Vought’s pub­lic White House cal­en­dars, he and Dunn met twice at the White House. (Roberts, Vought, and CRA did not respond to inter­view requests.)

    Found­ed in 2021, CRA is also craft­ing pri­or­i­ties for a sec­ond Trump term — and CRA’s 2023 annu­al report describes Vought as an “indis­pens­able part of Project 2025.” In addi­tion, Vought’s out­fit drew nation­al scruti­ny after Politi­co report­ed on inter­nal CRA doc­u­ments that list­ed “Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism” as a top pri­or­i­ty for a sec­ond Trump term. That agen­da was not laid out in detail. How­ev­er, Vought post­ed on X in ear­ly 2023 that he’d been devel­op­ing a “sound Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism” with for­mer Trump offi­cial William E. Wolfe, who was then a CRA vis­it­ing fel­low.

    Wolfe, in turn, helped edit a “State­ment of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism.” It reads in part:

    “We deny that Jesus’ king­ship and lord­ship are mere­ly heav­en­ly or that His Word is only author­i­ta­tive over con­fess­ing Chris­tians.”

    “We deny that the pur­pose of civ­il gov­ern­ment is to estab­lish a sec­u­lar, neu­tral, or god­less order.”

    “Full obe­di­ence to Christ today is an indis­putable oblig­a­tion of all [gov­ern­ments].”
    ...

    And then we get to this dis­turb­ing part­ner­ship with Brad Parscale that sure sounds a lot like an AI-pow­ered ver­sion of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca micro­tar­get­ing oper­a­tion from 2016. What kind of next-gen­er­a­tion micro­tar­get­ing scheme do they have in store for 2024?

    ...
    Dunn has also tak­en on a new side­kick in Brad Parscale, a for­mer top Trump­world oper­a­tive, cred­it­ed with orches­trat­ing a mas­sive cam­paign of micro-tar­get­ed Face­book ads in 2016 that helped Trump top­ple the Hillary Clin­ton jug­ger­naut. Parscale par­layed that suc­cess into a short-lived stint as Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er in 2020.

    ...

    In a deal bro­kered by Parscale, Dunn has invest­ed $7.5 mil­lion in a firm called AiAd­ver­tis­ing, which touts its capac­i­ty to har­ness “rich cus­tomer data” and a “gen­er­a­tive AI process” to deliv­er “hyper-per­son­al­ized con­tent.” The tech­nol­o­gy holds the promise to micro-tar­get AI-per­son­al­ized polit­i­cal ads to vot­ers — in essence tur­bocharg­ing the online per­sua­sion work that made Parscale famous.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the omi­nous mes­sage in MAGA ads Dunn has been pay­ing for: “I am your war­rior, I am your jus­tice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your ret­ri­bu­tion.” Dunn is ful­ly on board with plans for a wave of Trumpian ret­ri­bu­tion and vengeance. Which is a reminder that it’s not just going to be Trump’s ret­ri­bu­tion and vengeance. Trump’s pow­er­ful allies have plans for ret­ri­bu­tion and vengeance of their own:

    ...
    FOR HIS EXTRAORDINARY influ­ence in the Lone Star State, Dunn has nev­er been a pow­er play­er in pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics. But for 2024, he’s tak­ing his oper­a­tion nation­al. Dunn now stands as an avatar of the extreme oil wealth and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism that have hitched in as engines behind the Trump train.

    Dunn estab­lished him­self as one of Trump’s newest and largest megadonors in Decem­ber, cut­ting a $5 mil­lion check to Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump Super PAC. This was by far Dunn’s largest fed­er­al con­tri­bu­tion. Dunn has spo­ken rarely, but admir­ing­ly, of Trump’s for­ti­tude. In a 2019 address, he praised Trump for hav­ing once dressed down a room full of pas­tors in a man­ner Dunn found “very accu­rate, very prophet­ic” — “He said, ‘You’ve got­ten soft.’ ”

    The MAGA Inc. ads Dunn is help­ing pay for reflect his dark world­view. One fea­tures a voice-over in which Trump presents him­self as a demigod of cul­tur­al revenge: “I am your war­rior, I am your jus­tice,” he intones. “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your ret­ri­bu­tion.”
    ...

    We’ve been warned. Warn­ings right there in Dunn-financed ads. Warn­ings all the more omi­nous fol­low­ing the Supreme Court’s lat­est ‘above the law’ rul­ing. And yet, despite all these glar­ing warn­ings of the incred­i­ble dan­ger pre­sent­ed by a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy, the US appears to be on the verge of doing exact­ly that.

    So giv­en the high like­li­hood of Dun­n’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Texas agen­da mor­ph­ing into a nation­al agen­da after Trump returns to the White House, here’s a reminder to try to enjoy Christ­mas this year. Because it’s not just going to Dunn wield­ing all of this influ­ence. His long-time part­ner Far­ris Wilks is pre­sum­ably going to be in a posi­tion to impose his theo­crat­ic impuls­es as well:

    New York Mag­a­zine

    Ted Cruz’s Biggest Finan­cial Back­ers Oppose the Cel­e­bra­tion of Christ­mas

    By Ed Kil­go­re, polit­i­cal colum­nist for Intel­li­gencer since 2015
    Dec. 22, 2015

    ’Tis the sea­son to be jol­ly — or, if you are a cul­tur­al­ly agi­tat­ed con­ser­v­a­tive, to get all worked up about the War on Christ­mas, the alleged per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians by depart­ment-store own­ers and oth­er insti­tu­tion­al offi­cials who try to stay out of trou­ble by deploy­ing reli­gious­ly neu­tral greet­ings and slo­gans like “Hap­py Hol­i­days.” This year’s biggest out­rage, it seems, has been Starbucks’s deci­sion to use tra­di­tion­al hol­i­day col­ors rather than spe­cif­ic mes­sages on its sea­son­al bev­er­age con­tain­ers.

    You cer­tain­ly don’t have to be non-Chris­t­ian to mar­vel at the con­fla­tion of such minor sym­bol­ic issues with the actu­al per­se­cu­tion of believ­ers over the cen­turies, or won­der if some Amer­i­can sub­ur­ban­ite aggriev­ed by a cof­fee cup is on the edge of being enlist­ed in the ranks of the mar­tyrs. But what always inter­ests me at this time of year is how thor­ough­ly today’s cul­ture war­riors ignore the once-strong and still-liv­ing tra­di­tion of Chris­t­ian hos­til­i­ty to Christ­mas. Calvin­ist Protes­tants all over Europe once frowned on the hol­i­day as a Pagan/Catholic chal­lenge to reg­u­lar Sab­bath wor­ship; it was actu­al­ly banned for cen­turies in Scot­land, and dur­ing the Puri­tan inter­reg­num in Eng­land. But it’s the heirs of the “rad­i­cal ref­or­ma­tion,” who thought Calvin and Luther did not suf­fi­cient­ly break with Catholi­cism and root out prac­tices added since the Ear­ly Church, who have car­ried on the anti-Christ­mas tra­di­tion here in the Unit­ed States even today.

    ...

    Today the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Tom Ham­burg­er has an impor­tant report on the rapid con­sol­i­da­tion of Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port for Cruz, which took off ear­li­er this month after a shad­owy Chris­t­ian Right–affiliated cabal that calls itself the Group had a secret meet­ing and decid­ed to endorse the Tex­an. Turns out that endorse­ment was just an appe­tiz­er:

    The next gath­er­ing will take place a few days after Christ­mas at a remote ranch in cen­tral Texas, where Cruz, his wife and sev­er­al key finan­cial back­ers will vis­it with some of the country’s most promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers for pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions and a pub­lic ral­ly.

    Some of the 100 or so lead­ers fly­ing to the ranch owned by con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks are still con­sid­er­ing oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Sen. Mar­co Rubio (Fla.), who also is maneu­ver­ing to be the Trump alter­na­tive. But in recent weeks, Cruz has out­paced his rivals in the race to line up reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port.

    Turns out Far­ris Wilks is at the cen­ter of the whole con­ver­gence, and not just because he’s host­ing this con­fab and ral­ly. He and his broth­er, Don­ald, who made their bil­lions via frack­ing, are Cruz’s most impor­tant super-pac donors. They are also heavy, heavy con­trib­u­tors to and staunch allies of David Lane, the fel­low Tex­an famous for orga­niz­ing con­ser­v­a­tive cler­gy to go into pol­i­tics, and for his politi­co-reli­gious tours of Europe and the Holy Land that have become de rigueur for right-wing pols. Lane is a very big deal in Iowa in par­tic­u­lar.

    So, what else do we know about the Wilks broth­ers? They are devout pro­po­nents of a tiny but fierce faith tra­di­tion called the Sacred Word Move­ment, which shares with Adven­tists a belief in Sab­bath wor­ship and the obser­va­tion of tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish dietary laws. But Sacred Word goes fur­ther than Adven­tists in embrac­ing a sort of Hebra­ic Chris­t­ian or Mes­sian­ic Jew­ish set of tenets in which none of the “gen­tile hol­i­days,” includ­ing Christ­mas, East­er, Valentine’s Day, and Hal­loween, are to be observed.

    ...

    ———–

    “Ted Cruz’s Biggest Finan­cial Back­ers Oppose the Cel­e­bra­tion of Christ­mas” By Ed Kil­go­re; New York Mag­a­zine; 12/22/2015

    “So, what else do we know about the Wilks broth­ers? They are devout pro­po­nents of a tiny but fierce faith tra­di­tion called the Sacred Word Move­ment, which shares with Adven­tists a belief in Sab­bath wor­ship and the obser­va­tion of tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish dietary laws. But Sacred Word goes fur­ther than Adven­tists in embrac­ing a sort of Hebra­ic Chris­t­ian or Mes­sian­ic Jew­ish set of tenets in which none of the “gen­tile hol­i­days,” includ­ing Christ­mas, East­er, Valentine’s Day, and Hal­loween, are to be observed.

    Far­ris and Don­ald Wilks weren’t just two of the biggest finan­cial sup­ports for Ted Cruz back dur­ing his 2016 run for the White House. They’re also oppo­nents of “gen­tile hol­i­days,” like Valentine’s Day, Hal­loween, Christ­mas and East­er.

    And as the fol­low­ing Decem­ber 2015 Wash­ing­ton Post piece about that con­sol­i­da­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal faith lead­ers behind Cruz makes clear, it was­n’t just a gath­er­ing of 100 Texas-based faith lead­ers. That gath­er­ing was like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the evan­gel­i­cal far right with promi­nent nation­al fig­ures in atten­dance like James Dob­son Far­ris and Don­ald Wilks. And at the core of this gath­er­ing was a group of around 50 con­ser­v­a­tive faith lead­ers call­ing itself “the Group.” Now, as we’ve seen, by May of 2016 Don­ald Trump had man­aged to secure the endorse­ment of Dob­son and oth­er major faith lead­ers. But before they backed Trump, they were ral­ly­ing around Ted Cruz. So when we learn about how the Wilks broth­ers were host­ing a gath­er­ing of “the Group” to secure its sup­port for their polit­i­cal patron Ted Cruz’s most impor­tant super PAC donors, it’s a reminder that Wilks, Dunn, and “the Group” came awful­ly close to being a posi­tion to imple­ment their Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist trans­for­ma­tion of the US via a Cruz pres­i­den­cy since back in 2016, and have pre­sum­ably been refin­ing those plans ever since:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Cruz con­sol­i­dates sup­port from key Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives

    By Tom Ham­burg­er
    Decem­ber 21, 2015 at 6:00 a.m. EST

    Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian activists whose sup­port has been hot­ly pur­sued by Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates have begun to qui­et­ly coa­lesce around Sen. Ted Cruz — a major boost for his efforts to present him­self as the lead­ing chal­lenger to front-run­ner Don­ald Trump.

    Mem­bers of this core GOP con­stituen­cy have long been torn between sev­er­al favorites in the party’s crowd­ed field. But many orga­ni­za­tion lead­ers have decid­ed in recent days to line up behind Cruz (Tex.) because they con­sid­er him the best-fund­ed and most elec­table social con­ser­v­a­tive in the race, accord­ing to sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants in the dis­cus­sions.

    He won the back­ing of a key evan­gel­i­cal coali­tion after a secret Dec. 7 meet­ing in which top nation­al activists agreed to roll out a stream of endorse­ments, many timed for max­i­mum impact between now and Super Tues­day on March 1, when a dozen states will hold pri­maries or cau­cus­es. Eight of those states have sig­nif­i­cant evan­gel­i­cal pop­u­la­tions, and Cruz is tar­get­ing them in hopes of emerg­ing March 2 with the high­est del­e­gate totals of any can­di­date.

    Since the Dec. 7 meet­ing, endorse­ments have been announced by influ­en­tial fig­ures such as James Dob­son, a radio host who found­ed Focus on the Fam­i­ly; Bri­an Brown of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Mar­riage; and Bob Van­der Plaats, head of the Iowa Fam­i­ly Leader orga­ni­za­tion.

    The next gath­er­ing will take place a few days after Christ­mas at a remote ranch in cen­tral Texas, where Cruz, his wife and sev­er­al key finan­cial back­ers will vis­it with some of the country’s most promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers for pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions and a pub­lic ral­ly.

    Some of the 100 or so lead­ers fly­ing to the ranch, owned by con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks, are still con­sid­er­ing oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Sen. Mar­co Rubio (Fla.), who also is maneu­ver­ing to be the Trump alter­na­tive. But in recent weeks, Cruz has out­paced his rivals in the race to line up the sup­port of reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives.

    Although Rubio has stepped up his courtship, activists say he is being hin­dered by a rel­a­tive­ly late start. He has been warm­ly received but also has encoun­tered some skep­ti­cism — he was ques­tioned at a meet­ing with Iowa pas­tors last month about his campaign’s reliance on mon­ey from New York financier Paul Singer, a major GOP donor who sup­ports caus­es includ­ing same-sex mar­riage.

    Trump per­forms well in nation­al polls among self-described evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers, but many top activists and group lead­ers con­sid­er the real estate mag­nate insuf­fi­cient­ly com­mit­ted to oppos­ing abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage.

    Oth­er evan­gel­i­cal favorites, such as retired neu­ro­sur­geon Ben Car­son, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee and for­mer sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum (Pa.), remain beloved but are con­sid­ered unable to defeat Trump.

    ...

    A sig­nif­i­cant moment in the bat­tle for evan­gel­i­cal sup­port came dur­ing the Dec. 7 meet­ing of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers that pre­ced­ed the string of endorse­ments. Hud­dling in a hotel in sub­ur­ban Wash­ing­ton, the group held an extend­ed debate about whether to sup­port Cruz or Rubio and in the end vot­ed for the Tex­an, par­tic­i­pants said.

    Par­tic­i­pants said the effort was orga­nized in part by Tony Perkins, pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, who has long urged Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives to pick a con­sen­sus pres­i­den­tial can­di­date ear­ly in the nom­i­na­tion process. The idea of an ear­ly endorse­ment has been dis­cussed for sev­er­al recent elec­tion cycles, but pres­sure has increased this time fol­low­ing frus­tra­tion among Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives with the nom­i­na­tions of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in 2008 and for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney in 2012.

    ...

    About 50 con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers had met peri­od­i­cal­ly since 2014, refer­ring to them­selves sim­ply as “the Group.” Ear­ly on, par­tic­i­pants set­tled on three cri­te­ria for back­ing a can­di­date: elec­tabil­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty in sup­port of posi­tions impor­tant to social con­ser­v­a­tives, and hav­ing the finan­cial and orga­ni­za­tion­al capa­bil­i­ty to be com­pet­i­tive in as many as 30 states.

    Dob­son, one of the most influ­en­tial social-con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es nation­al­ly, last week issued a state­ment dis­trib­uted by the Cruz cam­paign say­ing he had met with the can­di­date mul­ti­ple times. Dob­son said that he and his wife, Shirley, had “been pray­ing for a leader such as this” and that they asked “con­ser­v­a­tives and peo­ple of faith to join us in sup­port­ing his race for the pres­i­den­cy.”

    Dob­son is expect­ed to join 100 oth­er faith lead­ers at the meet­ing on Dec. 28 and 29 at the ranch in tiny Cis­co, Tex., where Cruz and the oth­er guests are expect­ed to dis­cuss cam­paign strat­e­gy, pol­i­cy ideas and reli­gious phi­los­o­phy. The meet­ing will include cler­ics from some of the country’s largest church­es, includ­ing African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic con­gre­ga­tions that make up an increas­ing­ly large share of the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment.

    Among those invit­ed to attend are Bish­op Har­ry Jack­son, the con­ser­v­a­tive black pas­tor of the 3,000-member Hope Chris­t­ian Church in Beltsville, Md., and Samuel Rodriguez, a Cal­i­for­nia-based pas­tor who leads the Nation­al His­pan­ic Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence. Jack­son declined to dis­cuss his involve­ment with the broad­er coali­tion of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. He con­firmed his plans to attend the Cis­co gath­er­ing, although he has not com­mit­ted to any can­di­date.

    In an inter­view last week, Rodriguez said he was not sold on back­ing Cruz, whom he said he knows and admires. He said that the sen­a­tor was doing well among white evan­gel­i­cals but that his recent tough talk on immi­gra­tion, in which he voiced strong oppo­si­tion to a path to cit­i­zen­ship for mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, “car­ries the poten­tial to alien­ate Lati­no vot­ers.”

    Rodriguez said many Lati­no evan­gel­i­cals appear to be lean­ing toward Rubio, who, like Cruz, is Cuban Amer­i­can but who has said he sup­ports an even­tu­al legal­iza­tion for undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants.

    Mike Gon­za­lez, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the South Car­oli­na Pas­tors Alliance and anoth­er His­pan­ic pas­tor plan­ning to attend the meet­ing in Texas, has a dif­fer­ent view. Cruz will con­nect with Lati­no vot­ers, Gon­za­lez said, not­ing that many share the senator’s posi­tion on enforc­ing immi­gra­tion rules.

    “I believe in the rule of law, as does Ted Cruz,” Gon­za­lez said.

    Gon­za­lez said he plans to bring five South Car­oli­na pas­tors to the event with him, two of whom have endorsed Cruz.

    “I hope we’ll have addi­tion­al endorse­ments by the time we leave,” he said.

    The gath­er­ing in Texas will include a pri­vate fundrais­er attend­ed by broth­ers Far­ris and Dan Wilks, who have under­writ­ten one of three super PACs back­ing Cruz. The Wilk­ses have fund­ed con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es using the for­tune they made from sev­er­al ener­gy and real estate com­pa­nies they found­ed in Cis­co, pop­u­la­tion 3,800.

    Although much of the two-day gath­er­ing will be pri­vate, it will end with a pub­lic ral­ly that will include a speech by Cruz and music by the News­boys, a pop­u­lar Chris­t­ian rock band.

    David Bar­ton, an orga­niz­er of the event who leads one of the super PACs back­ing Cruz, said he would not be sur­prised if more than 1,000 peo­ple attend the ral­ly and con­cert, in addi­tion to those who will be at the invi­ta­tion-only meet­ing at the Wilk­ses’ ranch.

    “We were blown away by the RSVPs,” said Bar­ton, a for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty who has writ­ten books about the Chris­t­ian her­itage of the Unit­ed States and encour­ages church lead­ers to engage in pol­i­tics.

    Cruz’s Jan­u­ary meet­ing with Iowa pas­tors will be the final pre-cau­cus gath­er­ing of the state’s Pas­tors and Pews orga­ni­za­tion. The effort is part of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, which seeks to be an “hon­est bro­ker” for the faith com­mu­ni­ty in eval­u­at­ing can­di­dates, said Lane, the group’s founder.

    ...

    ———–

    “Cruz con­sol­i­dates sup­port from key Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives” By Tom Ham­burg­er; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/21/2015

    “Since the Dec. 7 meet­ing, endorse­ments have been announced by influ­en­tial fig­ures such as James Dob­son, a radio host who found­ed Focus on the Fam­i­ly; Bri­an Brown of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Mar­riage; and Bob Van­der Plaats, head of the Iowa Fam­i­ly Leader orga­ni­za­tion.”

    The secret meet­ings were held, with major endorse­ments to fol­low. Endorse­ments of Ted Cruz, in this case. And while we don’t know the iden­ti­ties of all the mem­bers of “the Group”, it’s pret­ty clear that we’re talk­ing about a large net­work of major evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive faith lead­ers:

    ...
    He won the back­ing of a key evan­gel­i­cal coali­tion after a secret Dec. 7 meet­ing in which top nation­al activists agreed to roll out a stream of endorse­ments, many timed for max­i­mum impact between now and Super Tues­day on March 1, when a dozen states will hold pri­maries or cau­cus­es. Eight of those states have sig­nif­i­cant evan­gel­i­cal pop­u­la­tions, and Cruz is tar­get­ing them in hopes of emerg­ing March 2 with the high­est del­e­gate totals of any can­di­date.

    ...

    A sig­nif­i­cant moment in the bat­tle for evan­gel­i­cal sup­port came dur­ing the Dec. 7 meet­ing of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers that pre­ced­ed the string of endorse­ments. Hud­dling in a hotel in sub­ur­ban Wash­ing­ton, the group held an extend­ed debate about whether to sup­port Cruz or Rubio and in the end vot­ed for the Tex­an, par­tic­i­pants said.

    Par­tic­i­pants said the effort was orga­nized in part by Tony Perkins, pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, who has long urged Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives to pick a con­sen­sus pres­i­den­tial can­di­date ear­ly in the nom­i­na­tion process. The idea of an ear­ly endorse­ment has been dis­cussed for sev­er­al recent elec­tion cycles, but pres­sure has increased this time fol­low­ing frus­tra­tion among Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives with the nom­i­na­tions of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in 2008 and for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney in 2012.

    ...

    About 50 con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers had met peri­od­i­cal­ly since 2014, refer­ring to them­selves sim­ply as “the Group.” Ear­ly on, par­tic­i­pants set­tled on three cri­te­ria for back­ing a can­di­date: elec­tabil­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty in sup­port of posi­tions impor­tant to social con­ser­v­a­tives, and hav­ing the finan­cial and orga­ni­za­tion­al capa­bil­i­ty to be com­pet­i­tive in as many as 30 states.

    Dob­son, one of the most influ­en­tial social-con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es nation­al­ly, last week issued a state­ment dis­trib­uted by the Cruz cam­paign say­ing he had met with the can­di­date mul­ti­ple times. Dob­son said that he and his wife, Shirley, had “been pray­ing for a leader such as this” and that they asked “con­ser­v­a­tives and peo­ple of faith to join us in sup­port­ing his race for the pres­i­den­cy.”
    ...

    And we we find anoth­er secret meet­ing at the Wilks ranch, it’s not just a reflec­tion of the Wilks broth­er­s’s sta­tus as key Cruz mega-donors. It’s also a sign of how influ­ence they are with this nation­al net­work of theocrats. Influ­ence that has only grown over the last eight years as the Dunn/Wilks polit­i­cal oper­a­tion has suc­cess­ful­ly cap­ture the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty:

    ...
    The next gath­er­ing will take place a few days after Christ­mas at a remote ranch in cen­tral Texas, where Cruz, his wife and sev­er­al key finan­cial back­ers will vis­it with some of the country’s most promi­nent evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers for pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions and a pub­lic ral­ly.

    Some of the 100 or so lead­ers fly­ing to the ranch, owned by con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks, are still con­sid­er­ing oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Sen. Mar­co Rubio (Fla.), who also is maneu­ver­ing to be the Trump alter­na­tive. But in recent weeks, Cruz has out­paced his rivals in the race to line up the sup­port of reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives.

    ...

    Dob­son is expect­ed to join 100 oth­er faith lead­ers at the meet­ing on Dec. 28 and 29 at the ranch in tiny Cis­co, Tex., where Cruz and the oth­er guests are expect­ed to dis­cuss cam­paign strat­e­gy, pol­i­cy ideas and reli­gious phi­los­o­phy. The meet­ing will include cler­ics from some of the country’s largest church­es, includ­ing African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic con­gre­ga­tions that make up an increas­ing­ly large share of the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment.

    ...

    The gath­er­ing in Texas will include a pri­vate fundrais­er attend­ed by broth­ers Far­ris and Dan Wilks, who have under­writ­ten one of three super PACs back­ing Cruz. The Wilk­ses have fund­ed con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es using the for­tune they made from sev­er­al ener­gy and real estate com­pa­nies they found­ed in Cis­co, pop­u­la­tion 3,800.

    Although much of the two-day gath­er­ing will be pri­vate, it will end with a pub­lic ral­ly that will include a speech by Cruz and music by the News­boys, a pop­u­lar Chris­t­ian rock band.

    David Bar­ton, an orga­niz­er of the event who leads one of the super PACs back­ing Cruz, said he would not be sur­prised if more than 1,000 peo­ple attend the ral­ly and con­cert, in addi­tion to those who will be at the invi­ta­tion-only meet­ing at the Wilk­ses’ ranch.

    “We were blown away by the RSVPs,” said Bar­ton, a for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty who has writ­ten books about the Chris­t­ian her­itage of the Unit­ed States and encour­ages church lead­ers to engage in pol­i­tics.
    ...

    It’s hard to imag­ine Ted Cruz actu­al­ly becom­ing Pres­i­dent. But at this point it’s not too dif­fi­cult to imag­ine what a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist admin­is­tra­tion might look like. Although the fact that it’s going to be Don­ald Trump — one of the most open­ly and demon­stra­bly amoral and un-Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal fig­ures in US his­to­ry — who will make that Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist vision a real­i­ty is some­what sur­pris­ing. Or at least was sur­pris­ing back in 2016. It’s more or less what we should expect at this point.

    The large­ly unno­ticed War on Christ­mas and East­er by Ted Cruz’s biggest backer is still pret­ty sur­pris­ing.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 1, 2024, 11:32 pm
  26. Well that was weird­ly appro­pri­ate tim­ing: just two days before this year’s 4th of July US Inde­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion, Kevin Roberts — Her­itage Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent and the head of the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme to destroy and rebuild in a far right image the fed­er­al bureau­cra­cy — just announced a Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is under­way. And in case it’s not clear that he is talk­ing about a very real rev­o­lu­tion for very per­ma­nent con­se­quences, Roberts went on to add that this rev­o­lu­tion “will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be.” Nor should we assume that Roberts is just talk­ing about the next four years under a sec­ond Pres­i­dent Trump term. As Roberts pre­dict­ed, this rev­o­lu­tion could be com­plet­ed by 2050. Yes, the guy head­ing up Project 2025 is open­ly talk­ing about unchal­lenged rule under threat of vio­lence against ‘the left’ for the next 25 years or so. That’s the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion he’s talk­ing about. A plan that goes far past Trump’s lifes­pan. Trump is just going to lay their foun­da­tions for that per­ma­nent grip. We’re all along for the ride. The steer­ing wheel is being tak­en away.

    It was Kevin Robert­s’s July 2, 2024, Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion dec­la­ra­tion. July 2, going for­ward, at best, can eeri­ly haunt the US as a kind of dark anti-hol­i­day two days before every Inde­pen­dence Day to serve as a reminder of how far the threats to democ­ra­cy can get (Novem­ber 22 would be anoth­er good day for that kind of anti-hol­i­day). And that’s only if Don­ald Trump does not get a sec­ond+ term. Because if that comes to be, it just might result in July 2 becom­ing some sort of new fas­cist Inde­pen­dence Day for the new post-democ­ra­cy Amer­i­ca Roberts is warn­ing us about. The day they calm­ly and plain­ly stat­ed out loud the new order. And no one blinked. Either way, get ready for fas­cist fire­works on July 2 going for­ward. He was­n’t talk­ing about the next 4 years. He was talk­ing about rev­o­lu­tion that will take a gen­er­a­tion or more to com­plete. That’s on the bal­lot, unof­fi­cial­ly. One of many ‘sur­pris­es’ we all get start­ing next year. A plan intend­ed to seize pow­er and not give it up under the threat of vio­lence basi­cal­ly for as long as they can get away with it.

    Beyond that, Roberts pre­dict­ed that the imple­men­ta­tion of this Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion will coin­cide with a “great awak­en­ing” that would bring Amer­i­ca to God. As Roberts put it, “Our def­i­n­i­tion of ‘free­dom’ is not the free­dom to do what­ev­er the heck we want, but the free­dom to do what we ought.” Which is a reminder that Kevin Roberts isn’t just the pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. He’s also a mem­ber of pro­found­ly pow­er­ful and theo­crat­ic Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy and the for­mer head of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF). And not only does the TPPF have strong theo­crat­ic ties but it served as a kind of warn­ing of the upcom­ing CNP-backed Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. As we’ve seen, the TPPF has long served as one of the polit­i­cal influ­ence oper­a­tions for theo­crat­ic Texas bil­lion­aire — and now Trump mega-donor — Tim Dunn as part of Dun­n’s per­son­al quest for polit­i­cal pow­er to impose his fun­da­men­tal­ist brand of Chris­tian­i­ty on the pub­lic at large.

    And as we’ve also seen, the TPPF was found to be run­ning the “79 Days report” elec­tion sim­u­la­tions in the final weeks of the 2020 elec­tion in coor­di­na­tion with the Clare­mont Insti­tute and Charles Hay­wood. A sim­u­la­tion that assumed mass left-wing protests and the impo­si­tion of mass pre­emp­tive arrests and oth­er extreme mea­sures like call­ing up the Proud Boys and oth­er far right para­mil­i­tary groups to help keep order. And yes, that’s the same Charles Hay­wood par­tic­i­pat­ing in the “79 Days report” who has­n’t just called for an “Amer­i­can Cae­sar” but has gone on to orga­nize the Soci­ety for Amer­i­can Civic Renew­al (SACR), an ‘Armed Patron­age Net­work’ ded­i­cat­ed to over­throw­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and impos­ing a Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist theoc­ra­cy. Same guy.

    So when Kevin Roberts warns ‘the left’ of vio­lence reper­cus­sions should it inter­vene in his July 2 dec­la­ra­tion of a Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that he’s speak­ing on behalf of pow­er­ful theo­crat­ic insti­tu­tions and net­works of rad­i­cal­ized mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires ready to pull the trig­ger on end­ing democ­ra­cy. Which is more or less the same net­work that brought us Leonard Leo’s hand-picked rad­i­cal­ized Supreme Court. They are done plan­ning. It’s hap­pen­ing. They have the lock on the court. They’re tak­ing their cap­ture court for a mul­ti-decade spin through the land­scapes of nation­al trans­mu­ta­tion. They are think­ing about the decades to come. This is a good time to recall how Leo (anoth­er CNP mem­ber), some­what iron­i­cal­ly, had his polit­i­cal war chest — which will be used to fur­ther this Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism legal move­ment for decades to come — mas­sive­ly tur­bo-charged thanks to a $1.6 bil­lion for­tune left to him lib­er­tar­i­an Jew­ish busi­ness­man Barre Seid. Seid must have real­ly hat­ed gov­ern­ment. And not mind­ed financ­ing the Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy angle to Leonard Leo’s life’s work.

    It’s also worth not­ing that Roberts made these com­ments about a pos­si­bly vio­lent Sec­ond Rev­o­lu­tion in the con­text of his praise of the Supreme Court’s recent pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty rul­ing grat­ing Don­ald Trump seem­ing­ly unchecked pow­ers to do any­thing ‘offi­cial­ly’. Roberts was obvi­ous­ly very much in favor of the rul­ing, sug­gest­ing peo­ple read Alexan­der Hamil­ton’s Fed­er­al­ist No. 70 where Hamil­ton makes the case for a ‘Uni­tary Exec­u­tive’ legal the­o­ry the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion used with aban­don. Which is a reminder that this upcom­ing pow­er grab isn’t actu­al­ly new. It’s build­ing on a foun­da­tion of cor­rup­tion. A long term plan. That Leonard Leo prob­a­bly had a lot to do with for­mu­lat­ing. What’s new is the extent of that cor­rup­tion and the pow­er that’s now been grant­ed by a Supreme Court cap­tured for decades to come. Decades of a super amped up ver­sion of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s pow­er grab­bing pro­cliv­i­ties. That’s almost here. Per­ma­nent­ly. Or for ‘at least 25’.

    Karl Rove saw the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive the­o­ry’s poten­tial, was so enthu­si­as­tic about assert­ing when fac­ing inves­ti­ga­tions. And as we’re going to see, in the third arti­cle below, a June 13, 2008 By David Igle­sias — one of the fed­er­al attor­neys improp­er­ly fired for polit­i­cal rea­son by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion — where he points out a dis­turb­ing detail about the kind of author­i­ty they were assert­ing under the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive the­o­ry: It was a ‘the Exec­u­tive Branch is the first among equals and not actu­al­ly co-equals’ inter­pre­ta­tion that allowed the them to extend the pres­i­den­tial priv­i­lege of pri­va­cy well beyond the Pres­i­dent and includ­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions between the Pres­i­den­t’s advi­sors, whether or not they were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with peo­ple inside or out­side of gov­ern­ment. As Igle­sias point­ed out, it was an inter­pre­ta­tion that led to almost all White House com­mu­ni­ca­tions poten­tial­ly being held back from release under exec­u­tive priv­i­lege. It’s an inter­pre­ta­tion of the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive the­o­ry that we can be con­fi­dent Roberts, the head of the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme, would be extreme­ly keen to talk about giv­en that he and his orga­ni­za­tion are pre­sum­ably going to be direct­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment going for­ward. A lot of con­ver­sa­tions with gov­ern­ment offi­cials are going to need the ‘Bush spe­cial’ “Uni­tary Exec­u­tive” exten­sion of Trump’s exec­u­tive priv­i­leges stretched to keep them out of inves­ti­ga­tors hands. A dec­la­ra­tion of Uni­tary Exec­u­tive pow­ers fol­lowed up with a com­pli­ant rub­ber stamp Supreme Court will get what­ev­er the Trump admin­is­tra­tion makes up legal­ly cov­ered. Now that the Supreme Court is this cor­rupt, the exec­u­tive branch real­ly can be first among equals:

    ...
    The Bush admin­is­tra­tion stretched that priv­i­lege like cheap span­dex in an attempt to have it cov­er “free and open dis­cus­sions and delib­er­a­tions [that] occur among his advi­sors and between those advi­sors and oth­ers with­in and out­side the Exec­u­tive Branch.”

    Wait a minute. So now, the qual­i­fied priv­i­lege carved out in the Nixon deci­sion is sup­posed to cov­er dis­cus­sions among advis­ers that nev­er even speak to the pres­i­dent, and then beyond that to cov­er even “oth­ers … out­side the Exec­u­tive Branch”? If the pres­i­dent calls his old col­lege bud­dy at Exxon­Mo­bil for a lit­tle advice on gaso­line prices, the advice he receives is priv­i­leged? And if his secretary’s sec­re­tary calls the same guy, that advice is priv­i­leged as well? In fact, the num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions both inside and out­side the White House that are not cov­ered by such a priv­i­lege starts look­ing awful­ly close to zero.

    Since when did exec­u­tive priv­i­lege cov­er nondiplo­mat­ic and non­mil­i­tary secrets involv­ing advice giv­en by non­govern­men­tal advis­ers? I’d call this exec­u­tive priv­i­lege on steroids, or maybe even exec­u­tive carte blanche. Then again, if you sub­scribe to the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry, then the exec­u­tive branch is always first among equals. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion last sum­mer claimed exec­u­tive priv­i­lege no less than four sep­a­rate times in about a one-month peri­od. If that’s not a record, I’ll offer to clean Bob Woodward’s office for free. I won­der if the admin­is­tra­tion would claim it if Con­gress asked for a list of the tem­per­a­ture read­ings in the Rose Gar­den?
    ...

    It’s also all a reminder that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion was hor­rif­ic. And scar­i­ly com­pe­tent at its cor­rup­tion. Awful pol­i­cy blun­ders non-stop but the Bush admin­is­tra­tion knew how to be cor­rupt. And we are return­ing to that, but now with super pow­ers grant­ed by the per­ma­nent far right Supreme Court. Buck­le up. And prob­a­bly fill out a will if you haven’t yet. Get your affairs in order. Things are sound­ing kind of death squad‑y next year and going for­ward. How long before the Proud Boys get Judge Dredd pow­ers? The count­down has begun.

    And if the prospect of death squads sounds like sil­ly hyper­bole, don’t for­get the time frame and scope of what Roberts is warn­ing about: ‘the left’ is on notice for vio­lent sup­pres­sion of get­ting in the way of this upcom­ing Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion for the next 25 years or so if they get this plan in place, at which point it’s their new rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent coun­try per­ma­nent­ly. Keep in mind the plans this net­work has for over­haul­ing the US Con­sti­tu­tion. And Charles Hay­wood is lit­er­al­ly putting togeth­er some sort of very super-rich-guy-led-deathy-squad-y-sound­ing orga­ni­za­tion based on the The Broeder­bond. Hay­wood was par­tic­i­pat­ing in that “79 Days report” where they played out dep­u­tiz­ing para­mil­i­taries like the Proud Boys to sup­press pro­test­ers. And then he start­ed assem­bling SACR.

    ‘Vote like your life depends on it because it does’ is sud­den­ly a much more com­pelling slo­gan. ‘Hap­py July 2’ does­n’t real­ly work as as slo­gan for the new anti-hol­i­day. Maybe ‘Oh F*ck, it’s July 2! Be extra on guard for fake fas­cist ‘Rev­o­lu­tions’.’ It’s not exact­ly punchy but gets the point across:

    Rolling Stone

    Right-Wing Think Tank Leader Promis­es Rev­o­lu­tion, Warns of ‘Blood­shed’

    The pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion is sud­den­ly talk­ing like a mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers

    By Tim Dick­in­son
    July 3, 2024

    WASHINGTON, DC — Kevin Roberts, the pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, is talk­ing up rev­o­lu­tion and the prospect of “blood­shed” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s deci­sion plac­ing the pres­i­dent out­side the reach of crim­i­nal law.

    The Her­itage Foun­da­tion is the once-staid think tank that, since Roberts’ arrival in 2021, has leaned into the cul­ture wars with gus­to. The group has orga­nized the infa­mous Project 2025, map­ping out an extrem­ist agen­da for a prospec­tive sec­ond Trump term.

    Roberts spoke Tues­day on the show Real America’s Voice with guest host and for­mer Tea Par­ty con­gress­man Dave Brat, and uncorked com­ments that made him sound like a mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers mili­tia.

    “Let me speak about the rad­i­cal left,” Roberts said, insist­ing it “has tak­en over our insti­tu­tions.” He said that the rea­son pro­gres­sive are “apoplec­tic right now” — in the wake of the Supreme Court deci­sion grant­i­ng the pres­i­dent immu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion — “is because our side is win­ning.”

    Roberts then declared him­self an insur­rec­tion­ist who is open to vio­lence: “We are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” he said, “which will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be.”

    Her­itage Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent cel­e­brates Supreme Court pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty rul­ing: “We are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, which will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be” https://t.co/ndMJlNlUKH
    — Media Mat­ters (@mmfa) July 3, 2024

    Roberts com­ments under­score the threat of author­i­tar­i­an­ism that is loom­ing over the 2024 elec­tion, and imme­di­ate­ly caught the atten­tion of experts on fas­cist move­ments. Ruth Ben-Ghi­at, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at NYU, called out Roberts in a pair of posts on X, describ­ing him as a “fas­cist” who was “cel­e­brat­ing” the new­found pow­er of the pres­i­dent to “kill peo­ple and pay no penal­ty” while “feel­ing empow­ered by the rul­ing to threat­en the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” Ben-Ghi­at decod­ed “the left” as apply­ing to “every­one who is not MAGA.”

    The NYU pro­fes­sor, whose exper­tise is in Ital­ian fas­cism, added that “Her­itage does not have an in-house para­mil­i­tary” and that by “using ‘we,’ Roberts is sug­gest­ing that Her­itage is aligned with armed enti­ties that could be acti­vat­ed if there is resis­tance to their coup.” She called this a “clas­sic intim­i­da­tion tac­tic: sub­mit or else.”

    ...

    Lat­er in the broad­cast, Roberts pre­dict­ed that his “sec­ond rev­o­lu­tion” would be com­plete by 2050, and that would it would coin­cide with a new “great awak­en­ing” that would bring Amer­i­ca to God — under­scor­ing the extent to which Her­itage and its Project 2025 is entwined with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Roberts insist­ed that “God’s law can, in fact, be a huge influ­ence on the civ­il laws.” And he offered a con­strained vision of Amer­i­can lib­er­ty: “Our def­i­n­i­tion of ‘free­dom’ is not the free­dom to do what­ev­er the heck we want, but the free­dom to do what we ought.”

    Roberts, who pre­vi­ous­ly ran the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, is an ally of Trump megadonor Tim Dunn, who has long served on the board of TPPF. With mil­lions in polit­i­cal dona­tions, Dunn has steered Texas far to the reli­gious right, and, as Rolling Stone has report­ed, is now push­ing the MAGA move­ment to embrace his vision of a gov­ern­ment whose func­tion is to exe­cute God’s “wrath on evil.”

    ———-

    “Right-Wing Think Tank Leader Promis­es Rev­o­lu­tion, Warns of ‘Blood­shed’” By Tim Dick­in­son; Rolling Stone; 07/03/2024

    “Roberts then declared him­self an insur­rec­tion­ist who is open to vio­lence: “We are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” he said, “which will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be.”

    Bold words from Kevin Roberts. The kind of bold lan­guage that aligns with clas­sic “sub­mit or else” fas­cist rhetoric. It’s both a fur­ther drop­ping of the mask but also a pre­lude for the post-major­i­ty-rule Amer­i­ca Roberts and his allies are eager­ly get­ting ready to ush­er in under the next Trump term:

    ...
    Roberts com­ments under­score the threat of author­i­tar­i­an­ism that is loom­ing over the 2024 elec­tion, and imme­di­ate­ly caught the atten­tion of experts on fas­cist move­ments. Ruth Ben-Ghi­at, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at NYU, called out Roberts in a pair of posts on X, describ­ing him as a “fas­cist” who was “cel­e­brat­ing” the new­found pow­er of the pres­i­dent to “kill peo­ple and pay no penal­ty” while “feel­ing empow­ered by the rul­ing to threat­en the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” Ben-Ghi­at decod­ed “the left” as apply­ing to “every­one who is not MAGA.”

    The NYU pro­fes­sor, whose exper­tise is in Ital­ian fas­cism, added that “Her­itage does not have an in-house para­mil­i­tary” and that by “using ‘we,’ Roberts is sug­gest­ing that Her­itage is aligned with armed enti­ties that could be acti­vat­ed if there is resis­tance to their coup.” She called this a “clas­sic intim­i­da­tion tac­tic: sub­mit or else.”
    ...

    But also note how Roberts was­n’t pre­dict­ing this “Sec­ond Rev­o­lu­tion” would hap­pen with just one more Trump term. It’s going to take until 2050. In oth­er words, ‘the left’ should expect to be out of pow­er for at least the next 25 years, but real­ly for­ev­er. It’s that kind of rev­o­lu­tion.

    And it won’t just be a ‘MAGA’-centric rev­o­lu­tion. It’s going to be a reli­gious “great awak­en­ing” where “free­dom” is defined as “the free­dom to do what we ought”, with “what we ought” obvi­ous­ly defined under Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist terms. Because of course that’s what Roberts is advo­cat­ing. As we’ve seen, Roberts is close­ly con­nect­ed to the most pow­er­ful theo­crat­ic net­works in the US. For starters, he’s an ally of Texas bil­lion­aire thoe­crat Tim Dunn, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly run the TPPF. Recall how the TPPF was found to be run­ning the “79 Days report” elec­tion sim­u­la­tions in the final weeks of the 2020 elec­tion in coor­di­na­tion with the Clare­mont Insti­tute. Also recall how Roberts is a mem­ber of Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy. The guy may be lead­ing the call for a MAGA Rev­o­lu­tion, but the longterm rev­o­lu­tion he’s plan­ning on wag­ing isn’t real­ly a ‘MAGA’ rev­o­lu­tion. It’s the same rev­o­lu­tion Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist and their oli­garch allies have spent decades build­ing towards. ‘MAGA’ is just a brand­ing exer­cise:

    ...
    Lat­er in the broad­cast, Roberts pre­dict­ed that his “sec­ond rev­o­lu­tion” would be com­plete by 2050, and that would it would coin­cide with a new “great awak­en­ing” that would bring Amer­i­ca to God — under­scor­ing the extent to which Her­itage and its Project 2025 is entwined with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Roberts insist­ed that “God’s law can, in fact, be a huge influ­ence on the civ­il laws.” And he offered a con­strained vision of Amer­i­can lib­er­ty: “Our def­i­n­i­tion of ‘free­dom’ is not the free­dom to do what­ev­er the heck we want, but the free­dom to do what we ought.”

    Roberts, who pre­vi­ous­ly ran the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, is an ally of Trump megadonor Tim Dunn, who has long served on the board of TPPF. With mil­lions in polit­i­cal dona­tions, Dunn has steered Texas far to the reli­gious right, and, as Rolling Stone has report­ed, is now push­ing the MAGA move­ment to embrace his vision of a gov­ern­ment whose func­tion is to exe­cute God’s “wrath on evil.”
    ...

    And if we look at the tran­script of that appear­ance, we can find that not only did Roberts issue that implic­it threat of vio­lence should ‘the left’ get in the way of their planned decades-long ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’, but he was also open­ly cel­e­brat­ing the Supreme Court’s recent rul­ing on pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty, refer­ring back to the Fed­er­al­ist Papers, in par­tic­u­lar Fed­er­al­ist No 70. as an exam­ple of how the Found­ing Fathers (well, at least Alexan­der Hamil­ton) were in favor of a pow­er­ful exec­u­tive. Fed­er­al­ist No. 70 also hap­pens to be a favorite of those in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment who have long advo­cat­ed for a “Uni­tary Exec­u­tive”, which was effec­tive­ly prac­tice under the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. So when we see Roberts cit­ing Fed­er­al­ist No 70 in his cel­e­bra­tion of the Supreme Court’s pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty rul­ing, it’s a reminder that pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty is anoth­er one of the build­ing blocks towards a “Uni­tary Exec­u­tive” that the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has been work­ing towards for decades:

    Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca

    Her­itage Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent cel­e­brates Supreme Court immu­ni­ty deci­sion: “We are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion”

    Kevin Roberts: “We’re in the process of tak­ing this coun­try back ... we ought to be real­ly encour­aged by what hap­pened yes­ter­day”

    Writ­ten by Media Mat­ters Staff
    Pub­lished 07/02/24 11:35 AM EDT

    Cita­tion From the July 2, 2024, edi­tion of Real America’s Voice’s War Room

    KEVIN ROBERTS (HERITAGE FOUNDATION PRESIDENT): In spite of all this non­sense from the left, we are going to win. We’re in the process of tak­ing this coun­try back. No one in the audi­ence should be despair­ing.

    No one should be dis­cour­aged. We ought to be real­ly encour­aged by what hap­pened yes­ter­day. And in spite of all of the injus­tice, which, of course, friends and audi­ence of this show, of our friend Steve know, we are going to pre­vail.

    Num­ber two, to the point of the clips and, of course, your pre­view of the fact that I am an ear­ly Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an and love the Con­sti­tu­tion. That Supreme Court rul­ing yes­ter­day on immu­ni­ty is vital, and it’s vital for a lot of rea­sons. But I would go to Fed­er­al­ist No. 70.

    If peo­ple in the audi­ence are look­ing for some­thing to read over Inde­pen­dence Day week­end, in addi­tion to reread­ing the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, read Hamil­ton’s No. 70 because there, along with some oth­er essays, in some oth­er essays, he talks about the impor­tance of a vig­or­ous exec­u­tive.

    You know, for­mer con­gress­man, the impor­tance of Con­gress doing its job, but we also know the impor­tance of the exec­u­tive being able to do his job. And can you imag­ine, Dave Brat, any pres­i­dent, put pol­i­tics off to the side, any pres­i­dent hav­ing to sec­ond guess, triple guess every deci­sion they’re mak­ing in their offi­cial capac­i­ty, you could­n’t have the repub­lic that you just described.

    But num­ber three, let me speak about the rad­i­cal left. You and I have both been parts of fac­ul­ties and fac­ul­ty sen­ates and under­stand that the left has tak­en over our insti­tu­tions. The rea­son that they are apoplec­tic right now, the rea­son that so many anchors on MSNBC, for exam­ple, are los­ing their minds dai­ly is because our side is win­ning.

    And so I come full cir­cle on this response and just want to encour­age you with some sub­stance that we are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, which will remain blood­less if the left allows it to be.

    ———-

    “Her­itage Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent cel­e­brates Supreme Court immu­ni­ty deci­sion: “We are in the process of the sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion”” by Media Mat­ters Staff; Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca; 07/02/2024

    “Num­ber two, to the point of the clips and, of course, your pre­view of the fact that I am an ear­ly Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an and love the Con­sti­tu­tion. That Supreme Court rul­ing yes­ter­day on immu­ni­ty is vital, and it’s vital for a lot of rea­sons. But I would go to Fed­er­al­ist No. 70.

    Go read Fed­er­al­ist No. 70 to under­stand why the Supreme Court’s pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty rul­ing was so impor­tant. That’s the mes­sage Roberts was deliv­er­ing. A “vig­or­ous exec­u­tive” is nec­es­sary because oth­er­wise every pres­i­dent would be dou­ble or triple guess­ing every deci­sion. Roberts does­n’t explain how the lack of such pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty before imped­ed pres­i­dents but he does­n’t real­ly have to explain because it’s obvi­ous he’s talk­ing about how pres­i­dents are going to be behav­ing going for­ward under this planned ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’, which will be much clos­er to a king:

    ...
    If peo­ple in the audi­ence are look­ing for some­thing to read over Inde­pen­dence Day week­end, in addi­tion to reread­ing the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, read Hamil­ton’s No. 70 because there, along with some oth­er essays, in some oth­er essays, he talks about the impor­tance of a vig­or­ous exec­u­tive.

    You know, for­mer con­gress­man, the impor­tance of Con­gress doing its job, but we also know the impor­tance of the exec­u­tive being able to do his job. And can you imag­ine, Dave Brat, any pres­i­dent, put pol­i­tics off to the side, any pres­i­dent hav­ing to sec­ond guess, triple guess every deci­sion they’re mak­ing in their offi­cial capac­i­ty, you could­n’t have the repub­lic that you just described.
    ...

    And that fix­a­tion on ensur­ing pres­i­dents are empow­ered to oper­ate with impuni­ty when it comes to offi­cial acts serves as a reminder that it was­n’t that long ago that we were hear­ing very sim­i­lar argu­ments in favor of anoth­er Repub­li­can pres­i­den­cy. That would of course be the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive pow­ers repeat­ed­ly assert­ed by the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Pow­er that, as the fol­low­ing 2008 piece in Slate points out, weren’t just being assert­ed on behalf of then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. They were being expand­ed to include any­one Bush talked to about offi­cial mat­ters and any­one they talked to also. Inside or out­side of the admin­is­tra­tion. Which, if you think about it, will be an excep­tion­al­ly handy pow­er to assert dur­ing the upcom­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 fed­er­al purge. A purge that is pre­sum­ably going to be fol­lowed up with an unprece­dent­ed expan­sion of Exec­u­tive Pow­er in order to empow­er all of the Trump loy­al­ists installed in those offi­cial posi­tions. In oth­er words, when we inevitably start learn­ing about hor­ri­ble abus­es of pow­er being per­pe­trat­ed by all the new cronies up and down the fed­er­al hier­ar­chy, try not to be shocked if the super-pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty just con­ferred onto Trump ends up get­ting passed along to those cronies:

    Slate

    Out of Bounds

    The Bush administration’s exec­u­tive-priv­i­lege claims almost make Water­gate look like a fond mem­o­ry.

    By David Igle­sias
    June 13, 2008 12:03 PM

    I was a teenag­er dur­ing the dark days of Water­gate. I didn’t ful­ly under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of the con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis until I was much older—like last year. After all, it isn’t every day the pres­i­dent resigns after com­mit­ting “high crimes and mis­de­meanors” and to fore­stall his own impeach­ment. Over the years, Watergate’s ghosts have not exact­ly haunt­ed me, but they have always been at the gauzy edge of my consciousness—like a dis­tant light­ning storm on the New Mex­i­co hori­zon that nev­er gets clos­er but nev­er quite goes away, either. For­mer Water­gate felon John Erlich­man, one of Nixon’s men, lived in San­ta Fe—the town in which I grad­u­at­ed from high school and lived for many years. I do not ever recall see­ing him about town, though. Water­gate was ancient his­to­ry to me.

    The ghosts of the old scan­dal prac­ti­cal­ly leapt up and touched me, how­ev­er, this past spring, when the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives filed a civ­il action against for­mer White House Coun­sel Har­ri­et Miers and cur­rent White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. The law­suit result­ed when the pair refused to tes­ti­fy before Con­gress con­cern­ing the seem­ing­ly polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed U.S. attor­ney fir­ings in the win­ter of 2006. Miers and Bolten root­ed their refusal to par­tic­i­pate in the claim that exec­u­tive priv­i­lege pre­clud­ed them from doing so. The brief stat­ed in its first para­graph, “Not since the days of Water­gate have the Con­gress and the fed­er­al courts been con­front­ed with such an expan­sive view of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege as the one assert­ed by the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion.” That sen­tence set me back on my heels. Watergate—really? I bought the DVD ver­sion of All the President’s Men and mar­veled at how lit­tle Red­ford and Hoff­man looked like the real char­ac­ters.

    The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ law­suit invoked the Water­gate cri­sis because among the his­tor­i­cal detri­tus of Water­gate lies the land­mark Supreme Court case of Unit­ed States v. Nixon. This deci­sion was the first to actu­al­ly address a claim pres­i­dents had been mak­ing since the days of George Wash­ing­ton: that the pres­i­dent doesn’t have to give Con­gress every­thing it demands. Oth­er pres­i­dents have cer­tain­ly claimed exec­u­tive priv­i­lege. Har­ry Tru­man, for exam­ple, blocked admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials from tes­ti­fy­ing before Con­gress on secu­ri­ty mat­ters after the Hiss-Cham­bers case. The ques­tion in Nixon had to do with the scope of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege and where its bound­aries might lie.

    ...

    This brings us to the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, which, like the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion of my bare­ly recalled child­hood dreams, reflex­ive­ly claims priv­i­lege, even when it doesn’t apply. Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy, a Rea­gan appointee, has not­ed in anoth­er case that “[e]xecutive priv­i­lege is an extra­or­di­nary asser­tion of pow­er ‘not to be light­ly invoked.’ ” Kennedy has fur­ther stat­ed that “once exec­u­tive priv­i­lege is assert­ed, coequal branch­es of the Gov­ern­ment are set on a col­li­sion course.” The cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion seems to have an abun­dant sup­ply of crash-test dum­mies that must exist mere­ly for the joy of smash­ing into things. The asser­tion of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege looks to be no more and no less than a col­li­sion staged to illus­trate the infi­nite reach of this administration’s claims to secre­cy.

    On June 28, 2007, Pres­i­dent Bush assert­ed exec­u­tive priv­i­lege when Con­gress sought the pro­duc­tion of doc­u­ments from Har­ri­et Miers and for­mer polit­i­cal direc­tor Sara Tay­lor in con­nec­tion to the U.S. attor­ney scan­dal. In shield­ing those doc­u­ments, the admin­is­tra­tion grave­ly intoned that the pres­i­dent need­ed to “… receive can­did and unfet­tered advice.” That much I agree with, of course. The prob­lem is that Pres­i­dent Bush had already stat­ed pub­licly that he per­son­al­ly had noth­ing to do with the fir­ing of my for­mer U.S. attor­ney col­leagues and me. The Nixon deci­sion right­ly found that Con­gress shouldn’t be able to force pres­i­den­tial aides to report on the advice they gave to the pres­i­dent, espe­cial­ly about diplo­mat­ic or mil­i­tary secrets. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion stretched that priv­i­lege like cheap span­dex in an attempt to have it cov­er “free and open dis­cus­sions and delib­er­a­tions [that] occur among his advi­sors and between those advi­sors and oth­ers with­in and out­side the Exec­u­tive Branch.”

    Wait a minute. So now, the qual­i­fied priv­i­lege carved out in the Nixon deci­sion is sup­posed to cov­er dis­cus­sions among advis­ers that nev­er even speak to the pres­i­dent, and then beyond that to cov­er even “oth­ers … out­side the Exec­u­tive Branch”? If the pres­i­dent calls his old col­lege bud­dy at Exxon­Mo­bil for a lit­tle advice on gaso­line prices, the advice he receives is priv­i­leged? And if his secretary’s sec­re­tary calls the same guy, that advice is priv­i­leged as well? In fact, the num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions both inside and out­side the White House that are not cov­ered by such a priv­i­lege starts look­ing awful­ly close to zero.

    Since when did exec­u­tive priv­i­lege cov­er nondiplo­mat­ic and non­mil­i­tary secrets involv­ing advice giv­en by non­govern­men­tal advis­ers? I’d call this exec­u­tive priv­i­lege on steroids, or maybe even exec­u­tive carte blanche. Then again, if you sub­scribe to the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry, then the exec­u­tive branch is always first among equals. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion last sum­mer claimed exec­u­tive priv­i­lege no less than four sep­a­rate times in about a one-month peri­od. If that’s not a record, I’ll offer to clean Bob Woodward’s office for free. I won­der if the admin­is­tra­tion would claim it if Con­gress asked for a list of the tem­per­a­ture read­ings in the Rose Gar­den?

    In my new book, In Jus­tice, I argue that “… to the Gon­za­les Jus­tice Depart­ment, U.S. Attor­neys were mere polit­i­cal appointees, not impar­tial and non­po­lit­i­cal agents of jus­tice to be pro­tect­ed from the capri­cious winds of Capi­tol Hill. It was as if we were mere sum­mer help with law degrees to be moved about the appoint­ment chess­board by the likes of Karl Rove as he sought the Holy Grail of a per­ma­nent Repub­li­can major­i­ty in gov­ern­ment.” The mat­ter of who moved those chess pieces around, prob­a­bly just for polit­i­cal advan­tage, is nei­ther a mil­i­tary secret nor a diplo­mat­ic one. It’s just an embar­rass­ment.

    Karl Rove has already been held in con­tempt of Con­gress for his refusal to tes­ti­fy about the U.S. attor­ney fir­ings, and Miers and Bolten have been held in con­tempt by Con­gress. With con­tempt charges now being thrown about like Texas cow chips in a rodeo con­test, I pre­dict the courts will have to step in again to define the lim­its of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege. If priv­i­lege cov­ers dis­cus­sions that nev­er reached the pres­i­dent and extend to even non­govern­men­tal play­ers, then, to quote an astro­naut from Apol­lo 13, a Nixon-era mis­sion, “Hous­ton, we have a prob­lem.”

    ———-

    “Out of Bounds” By David Igle­sias; Slate; 06/13/2008

    “Since when did exec­u­tive priv­i­lege cov­er nondiplo­mat­ic and non­mil­i­tary secrets involv­ing advice giv­en by non­govern­men­tal advis­ers? I’d call this exec­u­tive priv­i­lege on steroids, or maybe even exec­u­tive carte blanche. Then again, if you sub­scribe to the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry, then the exec­u­tive branch is always first among equals. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion last sum­mer claimed exec­u­tive priv­i­lege no less than four sep­a­rate times in about a one-month peri­od. If that’s not a record, I’ll offer to clean Bob Woodward’s office for free. I won­der if the admin­is­tra­tion would claim it if Con­gress asked for a list of the tem­per­a­ture read­ings in the Rose Gar­den?”

    First among equals. That was the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions view of the exec­u­tive branch’s rela­tion­ship to its co-equal branch­es. It’s anoth­er reminder that what we are see­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty push under the “MAGA” brand is real­ly just an expand­ed ver­sion of the same pow­er grab Karl Rove was push­ing for rough­ly two decades ago.

    And note how this ver­sion of the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry advo­cat­ed by the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion did­n’t exclu­sive­ly apply to the pres­i­dent when it came to the exec­u­tive priv­i­lege to seek can­did advice from his advi­sors in the exec­u­tive branch. It was expand­ed to include any­one the pres­i­dent talks to and any­one they talk to even out­side the Exec­u­tive Branch. Think about how use­ful that kind of expan­sive inter­pre­ta­tion of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege will be in the con­text of the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 pow­er grab Kevin Roberts is cur­rent­ly help­ing to for­mu­late. It will be ‘King Trump’ and his many super-empow­ered fol­low­ers:

    ...
    On June 28, 2007, Pres­i­dent Bush assert­ed exec­u­tive priv­i­lege when Con­gress sought the pro­duc­tion of doc­u­ments from Har­ri­et Miers and for­mer polit­i­cal direc­tor Sara Tay­lor in con­nec­tion to the U.S. attor­ney scan­dal. In shield­ing those doc­u­ments, the admin­is­tra­tion grave­ly intoned that the pres­i­dent need­ed to “… receive can­did and unfet­tered advice.” That much I agree with, of course. The prob­lem is that Pres­i­dent Bush had already stat­ed pub­licly that he per­son­al­ly had noth­ing to do with the fir­ing of my for­mer U.S. attor­ney col­leagues and me. The Nixon deci­sion right­ly found that Con­gress shouldn’t be able to force pres­i­den­tial aides to report on the advice they gave to the pres­i­dent, espe­cial­ly about diplo­mat­ic or mil­i­tary secrets. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion stretched that priv­i­lege like cheap span­dex in an attempt to have it cov­er “free and open dis­cus­sions and delib­er­a­tions [that] occur among his advi­sors and between those advi­sors and oth­ers with­in and out­side the Exec­u­tive Branch.”

    Wait a minute. So now, the qual­i­fied priv­i­lege carved out in the Nixon deci­sion is sup­posed to cov­er dis­cus­sions among advis­ers that nev­er even speak to the pres­i­dent, and then beyond that to cov­er even “oth­ers … out­side the Exec­u­tive Branch”? If the pres­i­dent calls his old col­lege bud­dy at Exxon­Mo­bil for a lit­tle advice on gaso­line prices, the advice he receives is priv­i­leged? And if his secretary’s sec­re­tary calls the same guy, that advice is priv­i­leged as well? In fact, the num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions both inside and out­side the White House that are not cov­ered by such a priv­i­lege starts look­ing awful­ly close to zero.

    ...

    In my new book, In Jus­tice, I argue that “… to the Gon­za­les Jus­tice Depart­ment, U.S. Attor­neys were mere polit­i­cal appointees, not impar­tial and non­po­lit­i­cal agents of jus­tice to be pro­tect­ed from the capri­cious winds of Capi­tol Hill. It was as if we were mere sum­mer help with law degrees to be moved about the appoint­ment chess­board by the likes of Karl Rove as he sought the Holy Grail of a per­ma­nent Repub­li­can major­i­ty in gov­ern­ment.” The mat­ter of who moved those chess pieces around, prob­a­bly just for polit­i­cal advan­tage, is nei­ther a mil­i­tary secret nor a diplo­mat­ic one. It’s just an embar­rass­ment.

    Karl Rove has already been held in con­tempt of Con­gress for his refusal to tes­ti­fy about the U.S. attor­ney fir­ings, and Miers and Bolten have been held in con­tempt by Con­gress. With con­tempt charges now being thrown about like Texas cow chips in a rodeo con­test, I pre­dict the courts will have to step in again to define the lim­its of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege. If priv­i­lege cov­ers dis­cus­sions that nev­er reached the pres­i­dent and extend to even non­govern­men­tal play­ers, then, to quote an astro­naut from Apol­lo 13, a Nixon-era mis­sion, “Hous­ton, we have a prob­lem.”
    ...

    And don’t for­get, there’s no way they can pull this off with­out cre­at­ing a giant vio­lent ‘the left’ boo­gie­man that they get to vio­lent­ly crack down on. For at least 25 years. Longer if nec­es­sary. The dura­tion pre­sum­ably depends on how long they face any resis­tance and mass attempts to revert back to, you know, the very imper­fect democ­ra­cy the US had that was infi­nite­ly bet­ter than the per­ma­nent Christo­fas­cism that is just months away. Expect poli­cies awful enough to elic­it extreme a pas­sion­ate response and then vio­lent false flags as nec­es­sary. False flags are one skill set the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is def­i­nite­ly not gut­ting in the upcom­ing purge. Gonna be A LOT of those. Espe­cial­ly at first to ‘set the tone’. It’s com­ing. The writ­ing is on the wall. And com­ing out of Kevin Robert­s’s mouth. And in the extreme nature of the Project 2025 doc­u­ments. It’s right there. All the plan­ning for the Con­ven­tion of States far right over­haul of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. Some­thing way beyond how democ­ra­cy has func­tioned before. It’ll prob­a­bly still be called a “democ­ra­cy”. Some sort of per­verse hol­lowed out ver­sion of what the US used to have but­tressed along by an even more rigged Supreme Court. They are plan­ning for per­ma­nent rule under threat of vio­lence. At least 25 years. That’s quite a warn­ing.

    And since it’s July 4th, it’s also an extra good time to recall how one of the nice things about democ­ra­cy is we don’t just get one rev­o­lu­tion. Every elec­tion is a rev­o­lu­tion. A sys­tem­at­ic orga­nized demo­c­ra­t­ic non-vio­lent planned rev­o­lu­tion. Only the first one was vio­lent. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s sup­posed to work. Not one way under threat of vio­lent sup­pres­sion. But that’s what’s com­ing. That’s the new ‘democ­ra­cy’ on the way.

    Welp. We’re almost back to per­ma­nent rev­o­lu­tions by the group that seizes pow­er. Again. It was a good run. Hap­py 4th of July for Amer­i­cans. Savor this one. Although now we have to add the caveat of ‘and be extra on guard for fas­cists today too’ since 4th of July’s are obvi­ous­ly a date fas­cists might want to plot some sort of hor­ri­ble coup event or false flag. 2024 has been a bad year for updates on US hol­i­days. Let’s hope we don’t rack up too many more.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 4, 2024, 3:45 am
  27. The cel­e­brat­ing has only begun. And why not? Don­ald Trump’s big was tru­ly his­toric. Like the start of a new age for the US and per­haps the world. A dark­er age, no doubt. But new. There’s no going back and we haven’t even got­ten start­ed yet.

    That’s all part of what made the plea that Trump pur­sue “uni­ty, not revenge” by Joe Rogan — the pod­cast giant who made a now famous last-minute endorse­ment of Trump on the day before the elec­tion as he dropped the tweet on Elon Musk’s X.com with a link to a 2 1/2 hour inter­view of Elon Musk. Joe Rogan is a cul­tur­al giant who has glommed him­self onto what’s about to unfold. And he sure­ly knows it’s going to be ugly. Bloody and bru­tal. Calls for “uni­ty, not revenges” are cer­tain­ly under­stand­able for those who don’t want to be asso­ci­at­ed with the orgy of fas­cism Trump is about to inflict upon the US. Fool­ish, but under­stand­able. this final chap­ter of Trump’s fas­cist lega­cy has yet to be writ­ten, but it’s not going to be uni­fy­ing. The only uni­fy­ing that’s going to be hap­pen­ing is the uni­fi­ca­tion of fed­er­al pow­ers under the ‘super Uni­tary Exec­u­tive’ the­o­ry the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is undoubt­ed­ly going to assert.

    Who knows how much real remorse Rogan is going to have once the scope of Amer­i­ca’s his­toric, prob­a­bly fatal, mis­take becomes more clear. But giv­en how much of Trump’s sup­port appears to have come from vot­ers unhap­py with infla­tion and will­ing to con­vince them­selves Trump isn’t seri­ous when he sounds like a fas­cist — not seri­ous about deport­ing large num­bers of immi­grants, not seri­ous about per­se­cut­ing his polit­i­cal ene­mies, etc. — it’s not hard to imag­ine vot­er regret being a com­mon theme for 2025. Trump is going to start his admin­is­tra­tion with very real shock and awe. It’s going to be shock­ing. That’s the point. And it’s only going to get worse. Any­one who vot­ed for Trump expect­ing a return to nor­mal­cy is in for a sea­son of very ear­ly regrets.

    It’s going to be ret­ri­bu­tion and chaos. Maybe not imme­di­ate­ly, but it’s unlike­ly to take long. And not just met­ed out by Trump. The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist infra­struc­ture behind him, craft­ing the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme, is eager­ly final­iz­ing those plans right now. And as we saw with that recent report about key Project 2025 archi­tect Russ Vought’s behind-the-scenes talk about the plans to ‘inflict trau­ma’ on fed­er­al work­ers and ensure Trump is able to call in the mil­i­tary on domes­tic protests, the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist night­mare about to unfold has plen­ty of vengeance and ret­ri­bu­tion of its own that its plan­ning on dish­ing out. As soon as pos­si­ble. Mil­lions of Trump vot­ers def­i­nite­ly did NOT vote for that kind of theo­crat­ic night­mare. But mil­lions did vote for that and they the ones who aren’t going to have regrets.

    But beyond indi­vid­ual vot­ers or celebri­ties like Rogan who might end up regret­ting their vote, we have to won­der how much insti­tu­tion­al regret there’s going to be when this is over. The insti­tu­tions of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian church­es in Amer­i­ca. Because what­ev­er unfolds is going to have more than just a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pati­na. Domin­ion­ism is soon going to be a con­cept Amer­i­cans are MUCH more famil­iar with because that’s going to be the guide­book for the MAGA New Nor­mal. Trumpian Domin­ion­ism. Flori­da and Texas on steroids. That’s going to hap­pen across the US and it’s going to be expe­ri­enced as a merg­er of Church and Trump for at least the next for years. That’s Project 2025. The Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy’s decades-long Domin­ion­ist agen­da real­ized under the MAGA ban­ner and reach­ing all facets of Amer­i­can life. Trump might take cred­it for what’s to come, but it’s going to be a group effort. What kind of long-term impact is this com­ing era of fas­cist mad­ness going to have on Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty when Trump is already seen as a kind of god-sent fig­ure?

    And that all brings us to the fol­low­ing report about the gross­ly misog­y­nis­tic forms of ‘cel­e­brat­ing’ report­ed across social media imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Trump’s vic­to­ry. Cel­e­bra­tion in the form of call­ing for ret­ri­bu­tion and blood. Democ­rats need to be treat­ed as a can­cer­ous infec­tion that must be cleansed through tri­als and exe­cu­tions. Or mil­i­tary tri­bunals and exe­cu­tions. Exe­cu­tions are demand­ed, one way or anoth­er.

    It’s not just ran­dom con­ser­v­a­tive pro­files mak­ing these demands. Steve Ban­non spent elec­tion night broad­cast­ing from the Willard Hotel and mak­ing dec­la­ra­tions like, “You stole the 2020 elec­tion, you’ve mocked and ridiculed and put peo­ple in prison and bro­ken peo­ple’s lives because you said this thing was stolen...This entire pho­ny thing is get­ting swept out. Biden’s get­ting swept out. Kamala Har­ris is get­ting swept out. MSNBC is get­ting swept out. The Jus­tice Department’s get­ting swept out. The FBI’s get­ting swept out. You peo­ple suck, and now, you’re going to pay the price for try­ing to destroy this coun­try.” Ban­non wants prison for “try­ing to destroy the coun­try”. How wide a net is Ban­non going to deman Trump cast should those tri­als start hap­pen­ing? Dozens of tri­als? Hun­dreds? Thou­sands? Its going to be up to Trump. The guardrails are off.

    And let’s not for­get that Ban­non is a mem­ber of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP). He isn’t just call­ing for tri­als of his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and jail. Ban­non is a theo­crat. He has many more demands and they real­ly will be made real­i­ty. That’s the nature of the New Nor­mal. Theocrats like Steve Ban­non get to make demands and Trump and the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist bureau­cra­cy he’s going to set up will ensure those demands are made real­i­ty. Many peo­ple will be lis­ten­ing to Ban­non’s demands. It won’t just be Trump who has to hear him.

    Which, again, rais­es the ques­tion about what kind of impact this com­ing expe­ri­ence will have on the lega­cy of the con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian church in Amer­i­ca. Theocrats like Steve Ban­non are going to see their demands of ret­ri­bu­tion and Domin­ion­ism real­ized. And it’s going to be hard for the pub­lic not to notice. The pub­lic is the tar­get of this agen­da, after all. Abor­tion may have under­per­formed as a polit­i­cal issue at the bal­lot box in 2024 but that does­n’t mean this new MAGA coali­tion actu­al­ly vot­ed for a new Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy. But that’s what the whole US pub­lic is about to get, whether they vot­ed for it or not.

    And Ban­non is far from the only notable con­ser­v­a­tive ‘thought leader’ to make these kind of dis­turb­ing vic­to­ry dec­la­ra­tions. Christo­pher Pohlhaus, the leader of neo-Nazi Blood Tribe gang, wrote, “Thanks Trump...Cheaper gas will make it eas­i­er to spread White Pow­er across the whole coun­try.” Sure, Pohlhaus may not be gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be a main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive thought leader. But as we saw, it was Pohlhaus who devised the ‘Hait­ian immi­grants eat­ing cats and dogs’ meme that was so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embraced by the Trump cam­paign and much of con­ser­v­a­tive media. Pohlhaus has demon­stra­bly been a con­ser­v­a­tive thought leader in 2024. What kind of role will he play in 2025?

    Oth­er unof­fi­cial con­ser­v­a­tive thought lead­ers who decid­ed to chime in with Nazi-inspired online trolling include Catholic reac­tionary youth Nazi per­son­al­i­ty Nick Fuentes and con­ser­v­a­tive social media per­son­al­i­ty Evan Kil­go­re. Kil­go­re also hap­pens to be an ‘ambas­sador’ for Turn­ing Points USA, the youth-ori­ent­ed con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk. And as Kil­go­re wrote, “Women, back to the kitchen; Abor­tions, ille­gal; Gays, back in the clos­et; Inter­ra­cial mar­riage, banned; Ille­gals, pack your bags; Tran­nies, back to the asy­lums; Jesus, back in our schools...We are so back.”

    Fuentes chimed in with mes­sages like “Your body, my choice. For­ev­er,” and, “I’d just like to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank men for sav­ing this coun­try from stu­pid bitch­es who want­ed to destroy the world to keep abor­tion.” Fuentes lat­er claimed it was all just jokes, which is a pre­lude to ‘I was just jok­ing’ nor­mal­iz­ing tech­niques that are sure­ly going to per­me­ate the com­ing fas­cist New Nor­mal. And, again, Fuentes and Kil­go­re aren’t just ran­dom online far right trolls. Turn­ing Points USA is very much a main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive enti­ty these days. And as we’ve seen, Fuentes just keeps show­ing up in sur­pris­ing places. First there was the din­ner with Don­ald Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in Novem­ber of 2022. Almost a year lat­er, we got reports about the 7 hours Fuentes spent back in Octo­ber 2023 at the office of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy group owned by for­mer Repub­li­can state rep Jonathan Stick­land. But Stick­land isn’t a reg­u­lar polit­i­cal con­sult­ing. He’s the head of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, the main polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee used by Christo­fas­cist Texas Bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn to cap­ture con­trol of most of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty in recent years. Recall how Dunn was not only very much involved in Trump’s 2024 elec­tion effort, he gave mil­lions to a Super PAC that ran ads fea­tur­ing Trump’s “I am your ret­ri­bu­tion” rhetoric. Nick Fuentes had secret meet­ings all day long at the offices of the main polit­i­cal strate­gist for the theo­crat who basi­cal­ly con­trols Texas. That’s pret­ty main­stream. Not just main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive. Main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty.

    And we don’t have to com­plete­ly spec­u­late as to how the pub­lic at large, and women in par­tic­u­lar, are going to react to Amer­i­can’s polit­i­cal New Nor­mal. We’re already see­ing grow­ing inter­est in a move­ment that first got start­ed in the #MeToo move­ment of South Korea: the 4B move­ment, which is basi­cal­ly young women giv­ing up on men and plans of start­ing a fam­i­ly and instead just focus on their careers and being hap­py on their own. Inter­est in the move­ment 4B has already surged across social media. Along with rape and death threats tar­get­ing wom­en’s social media accounts.

    Uni­ty is not on the agen­da. Soci­ety being torn asun­der, on the oth­er hand, is very much what the elec­torate ordered. Whether they all real­ized it or not. That’s what’s com­ing. A Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist fas­cist purge that will leave a per­ma­nent scar on the Amer­i­can psy­che. Assum­ing there’s an intact coun­try left after this is over. Assum­ing it ever ends. The ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’ pre­dict­ed by Her­itage Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent (and CNP mem­ber) Kevin Roberts is just get­ting start­ed:

    Wired

    Far-Right Don­ald Trump Sup­port­ers Cel­e­brate His Vic­to­ry With Vio­lent Memes and Calls for Exe­cu­tions

    “Many many many exe­cu­tions are war­rant­ed,” one Trump sup­port­er wrote on Truth Social. “These trai­tors are a ter­mi­nal can­cer that MUST BE com­plete­ly erad­i­cat­ed to make Amer­i­ca healthy again.”

    By Tess Owen
    Pol­i­tics
    Nov 6, 2024 1:26 PM

    Don­ald Trump will be the next pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, and the same far-right extrem­ists embold­ened by his first admin­is­tra­tion are cel­e­brat­ing his win with vio­lent memes and threats.

    Many of the social media posts reviewed by WIRED rev­eled in fan­tasies of Trump lock­ing up and even exe­cut­ing his polit­i­cal oppo­nents in revenge. “Build the gal­lows!!” urged a post on Gab, a social media plat­form that caters to the far right.

    “There has to be as many trai­tors exe­cut­ed as he has days in office,” urged anoth­er Gab post. “Build the gal­lows, restore the REPUBLIC.”

    Trump ran a cam­paign that stoked cul­ture war griev­ances and divi­sions, and was defined by lies, a desire for vengeance, and, at times, threat­en­ing rhetoric. In social media posts he threat­ened mass arrests of his polit­i­cal oppo­nents in revenge for “steal­ing the elec­tion” in 2020 (though evi­dence con­clu­sive­ly shows the 2020 elec­tion was not stolen). Law­mak­ers, elec­tion work­ers, school board mem­bers, fed­er­al agents, and judges have been repeat­ed­ly tar­get­ed over the years with vio­lent threats by his sup­port­ers who believe they were act­ing on his behalf. Trump repeat­ed­ly promised his sup­port­ers he would “destroy” the deep state, invok­ing the pop­u­lar con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry of a nefar­i­ous web of face­less bureau­crats work­ing to destroy the US from with­in. He cast him­self, along­side the peo­ple who stormed the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6 over elec­tion lies, as “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers,” even “hostages” who were being per­se­cut­ed by a “tyran­ni­cal” Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

    And now that he has won the elec­tion, his sup­port­ers seem just as thirsty for revenge.

    A poster on Patriots.win, a pro-Trump forum, shared an AI draw­ing of Nan­cy Pelosi with a noose around her neck about to be hanged. Oth­ers shared images of Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Ale­jan­dro May­orkas, who has been vil­lainized by the right for over­see­ing the Biden administration’s immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, sug­gest­ing he too be hanged “for high trea­son.” “FACT!” some­one else post­ed. “The gal­lows await …”

    ...

    Sim­i­lar remarks were shared in response to for­mer Trump strate­gist Steve Bannon’s vic­to­ry remarks, broad­cast live from the rooftop of the Willard Hotel in Wash­ing­ton DC on elec­tion night.

    “You stole the 2020 elec­tion, you’ve mocked and ridiculed and put peo­ple in prison and bro­ken peo­ple’s lives because you said this thing was stolen,” Ban­non said dur­ing his broad­cast. “This entire pho­ny thing is get­ting swept out. Biden’s get­ting swept out. Kamala Har­ris is get­ting swept out. MSNBC is get­ting swept out. The Jus­tice Department’s get­ting swept out. The FBI’s get­ting swept out. You peo­ple suck, and now, you’re going to pay the price for try­ing to destroy this coun­try.”

    “MILITARY TRIBUNALS AWAIT!” some­one replied on X. “I want to see perp walks” wrote anoth­er. “Mil­i­tary exe­cu­tions com­ing right up,” a dif­fer­ent post read. “New DOJ must uti­lize armed raids on Demo­c­rat Deep State Homes! Drag their ass­es out into the street, just like they did to our peo­ple!!”

    Many oth­er social media posts viewed by WIRED were deeply misog­y­nis­tic in nature. The gen­der dynam­ics at play dur­ing this race were par­tic­u­lar­ly stark, with Har­ris promis­ing to safe­guard women’s med­ical free­dom while Trump aggres­sive­ly pur­sued a young male demo­graph­ic that has become increas­ing­ly cul­tur­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive.

    One viral meme that was shared wide­ly across plat­forms on Wednes­day had the cap­tion “RELEASE THE PROJECT 2025 HANDMAIDS TALE RAPE SQUADS.” “BREAKING: Mil­lions of women report for hand­maid duty fol­low­ing Trump’s stun­ning vic­to­ry,” some­one else wrote in Patriots.win. Some of these memes were also shared across Telegram chan­nels for Proud Boy chap­ters.

    Anoth­er per­son on Patriots.win shared an AI meme of Trump shirt­less in a box­ing ring. “First Man In His­to­ry to Beat Two Women,” the text on the meme reads. “Beat the hell out of two women,” the poster wrote. “Con­sid­er­ing the women, I’m for it.” Fort Wayne Proud Boys shared a graph­ic on Telegram with a pic­ture of Har­ris and the words “Pro­ject­ed Win­ner; Whore of the Year.”

    Christo­pher Pohlhaus, known as “Ham­mer,” the leader of neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, also cheered Trump’s vic­to­ry. “Thanks Trump,” he wrote. “Cheap­er gas will make it eas­i­er to spread White Pow­er across the whole coun­try.”

    White nation­al­ist groyper Nicholas Fuentes chimed in on X. “Your body, my choice. For­ev­er,” he wrote on Tues­day night. And he fol­lowed up on Wednes­day: “I’d just like to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank men for sav­ing this coun­try from stu­pid bitch­es who want­ed to destroy the world to keep abor­tion.”

    ...

    In a post on X to his near­ly 100,000 fol­low­ers, Evan Kil­go­re, an “ambas­sador” for Turn­ing Point USA, hailed a poten­tial com­ing crack­down on minori­ties, LGBTQ peo­ple, immi­grants, and women. “Women, back to the kitchen; Abor­tions, ille­gal; Gays, back in the clos­et; Inter­ra­cial mar­riage, banned; Ille­gals, pack your bags; Tran­nies, back to the asy­lums; Jesus, back in our schools,” he wrote. “We are so back.”

    “I was promised Hitler sh it. I demand Hitler sh it,” some­one else wrote on Patriots.win. “When do we start round­ing up all the gays into camps?” wrote anoth­er. “I was told this would hap­pen.”

    ———-

    “Far-Right Don­ald Trump Sup­port­ers Cel­e­brate His Vic­to­ry With Vio­lent Memes and Calls for Exe­cu­tions” By Tess Owen; Wired; 11/06/2024

    “And now that he has won the elec­tion, his sup­port­ers seem just as thirsty for revenge.”

    ‘Uni­ty’ is clear­ly not on the agen­da. A uni­tary exec­u­tive, sure. But not uni­ty. Quite the oppo­site. Now is the time for blood and vengeance. Bridges aren’t sim­ply going to be burned. New chasms are going to be rup­tur­ing across the sociopo­lit­i­cal land­scape. It’s not going to be an acci­dent. That’s the plan, as Project 2025 archi­tect Russ Vought made clear in his recent­ly revealed pri­vate speech to fel­low col­lab­o­ra­tors. Cre­at­ing the kind of tur­moil that results in mas­sive protests that can be used as a pre­text for unleash­ing the mil­i­tary on Democ­rats domes­ti­cal­ly is the plan. And what bet­ter way to see that plan come to fruition than mas­sive polit­i­cal reprisals against ‘the Left’. It’s sil­ly at this point to expect any­thing else. Espe­cial­ly when Steve Ban­non is call­ing for all of his ene­mies to be “swept out”. Ene­mies like the Jus­tice Depart­ment and FBI, along with media enti­ties like MSNBC.

    And note the loca­tion where Ban­non was mak­ing these remarks on elec­tion night: the Willard Hotel. The same hotel that host­ed Ban­non’s ‘war room’ in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. Recall how key insur­rec­tion plot­ter John East­man par­tic­i­pat­ed in strat­e­gy meet­ings with Ban­non the day before the insur­rec­tion, along with Rudy Giu­liani. Also recall how East­man admit­ted dur­ing that Jan 5 meet­ing how Mike Pence had no con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty to throw out the elec­toral votes of key states to throw the elec­tion to Trump, but East­man argued the plan was still worth doing because he con­clud­ed the courts would deter­mine that the con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis cre­at­ed by such an act was too large for them to han­dle and they would defer to the politi­cians. But this was­n’t just a meet­ing among some of Trump’s top sup­port­ers. Trump was report­ed­ly in con­tact with Ban­non in the days lead­ing up to the insur­rec­tion, with Ban­non pri­vate­ly encour­ag­ing Trump to have a reck­on­ing on Jan­u­ary 6th and kill the Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib. So for Ban­non to return to the Willard Hotel on elec­tion night and make dec­la­ra­tions about about Trump’s need to car­ry out his revenge promis­es car­ries quite a bit of sym­bol­ism about what’s about to tran­spire:

    ...
    A poster on Patriots.win, a pro-Trump forum, shared an AI draw­ing of Nan­cy Pelosi with a noose around her neck about to be hanged. Oth­ers shared images of Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Ale­jan­dro May­orkas, who has been vil­lainized by the right for over­see­ing the Biden administration’s immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, sug­gest­ing he too be hanged “for high trea­son.” “FACT!” some­one else post­ed. “The gal­lows await …”

    ...

    Sim­i­lar remarks were shared in response to for­mer Trump strate­gist Steve Bannon’s vic­to­ry remarks, broad­cast live from the rooftop of the Willard Hotel in Wash­ing­ton DC on elec­tion night.

    “You stole the 2020 elec­tion, you’ve mocked and ridiculed and put peo­ple in prison and bro­ken peo­ple’s lives because you said this thing was stolen,” Ban­non said dur­ing his broad­cast. “This entire pho­ny thing is get­ting swept out. Biden’s get­ting swept out. Kamala Har­ris is get­ting swept out. MSNBC is get­ting swept out. The Jus­tice Department’s get­ting swept out. The FBI’s get­ting swept out. You peo­ple suck, and now, you’re going to pay the price for try­ing to destroy this coun­try.”

    “MILITARY TRIBUNALS AWAIT!” some­one replied on X. “I want to see perp walks” wrote anoth­er. “Mil­i­tary exe­cu­tions com­ing right up,” a dif­fer­ent post read. “New DOJ must uti­lize armed raids on Demo­c­rat Deep State Homes! Drag their ass­es out into the street, just like they did to our peo­ple!!”

    ...

    “I was promised Hitler sh it. I demand Hitler sh it,” some­one else wrote on Patriots.win. “When do we start round­ing up all the gays into camps?” wrote anoth­er. “I was told this would hap­pen.”
    ...

    And then there’s the cheers com­ing from Blood Tribe leader Christo­pher Pohlhaus. The same Pohlhaus who, as we’ve seen, has been net­work­ing with the Azov Bat­tal­ion and hap­pens to be the ori­gin the “Hait­ian immi­grant eat­ing cats and dogs in Spring, Ohio” nar­ra­tive that was almost like the id of Don­ald Trump’s now-suc­cess­ful pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Pohlhaus pre­sum­ably has very big plans for the next four years. He knows Trump’s sec­ond term is going to be very dif­fer­ent from the first for Amer­i­ca’s Nazis. Even if many of Trump’s vot­er nev­er fig­ured that out. Pohlhaus isn’t a nor­mal Trump vot­ers. He’s more like an insid­er:

    ...
    Christo­pher Pohlhaus, known as “Ham­mer,” the leader of neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, also cheered Trump’s vic­to­ry. “Thanks Trump,” he wrote. “Cheap­er gas will make it eas­i­er to spread White Pow­er across the whole coun­try.”
    ...

    But then we get to the incred­i­ble lev­els of misog­y­ny and the flood of out­right rape threats that of inun­dat­ed social media in the wake of the elec­tion results. Most notably Nick Fuentes’s pre­dictable “Your body, my choice. For­ev­er,” ‘trolling’ on Elon Musk’s X.com along with con­ser­v­a­tive social media per­son­al­i­ty Evan Kil­go­re’s X.com procla­ma­tion that, “Women, back to the kitchen; Abor­tions, ille­gal; Gays, back in the clos­et; Inter­ra­cial mar­riage, banned; Ille­gals, pack your bags; Tran­nies, back to the asy­lums; Jesus, back in our schools.” Keep in mind that when Evan Kil­go­re makes open Nazi-like state­ments, he’s as an “ambas­sador” Turn­ing Points USA, a group that at this point a main­stream GOP youth out­reach enti­ty. Don’t for­get it was found­ed by Char­lie Kirk, one of the younger mem­bers of the Christo­fas­cist Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy. On the sur­face, Kil­go­re and Fuentes aren’t in the same league. Fuentes leads a mod­ern open neo-Nazi move­ment. Kil­go­re is a ran­dom promi­nent online MAGA troll. With con­ver­gent cel­e­bra­to­ry mes­sages. Except Kil­go­re did­n’t claim to be trolling:

    ...
    Many oth­er social media posts viewed by WIRED were deeply misog­y­nis­tic in nature. The gen­der dynam­ics at play dur­ing this race were par­tic­u­lar­ly stark, with Har­ris promis­ing to safe­guard women’s med­ical free­dom while Trump aggres­sive­ly pur­sued a young male demo­graph­ic that has become increas­ing­ly cul­tur­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive.

    One viral meme that was shared wide­ly across plat­forms on Wednes­day had the cap­tion “RELEASE THE PROJECT 2025 HANDMAIDS TALE RAPE SQUADS.” “BREAKING: Mil­lions of women report for hand­maid duty fol­low­ing Trump’s stun­ning vic­to­ry,” some­one else wrote in Patriots.win. Some of these memes were also shared across Telegram chan­nels for Proud Boy chap­ters.

    Anoth­er per­son on Patriots.win shared an AI meme of Trump shirt­less in a box­ing ring. “First Man In His­to­ry to Beat Two Women,” the text on the meme reads. “Beat the hell out of two women,” the poster wrote. “Con­sid­er­ing the women, I’m for it.” Fort Wayne Proud Boys shared a graph­ic on Telegram with a pic­ture of Har­ris and the words “Pro­ject­ed Win­ner; Whore of the Year.”

    ...

    White nation­al­ist groyper Nicholas Fuentes chimed in on X. “Your body, my choice. For­ev­er,” he wrote on Tues­day night. And he fol­lowed up on Wednes­day: “I’d just like to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank men for sav­ing this coun­try from stu­pid bitch­es who want­ed to destroy the world to keep abor­tion.”

    ...

    In a post on X to his near­ly 100,000 fol­low­ers, Evan Kil­go­re, an “ambas­sador” for Turn­ing Point USA, hailed a poten­tial com­ing crack­down on minori­ties, LGBTQ peo­ple, immi­grants, and women. “Women, back to the kitchen; Abor­tions, ille­gal; Gays, back in the clos­et; Inter­ra­cial mar­riage, banned; Ille­gals, pack your bags; Tran­nies, back to the asy­lums; Jesus, back in our schools,” he wrote. “We are so back.”
    ...

    But let’s not for­get that Fuentes is no nor­mal neo-Nazi. He’s pret­ty main­stream him­self at this point. At least inside the GOP. It was was Fuentes who Kanye West invit­ed to that now noto­ri­ous Novem­ber 2022 din­ner with Don­ald Trump. And it was Fuentes who spent 7 mys­te­ri­ous hours back in Octo­ber of 2023 at the office of Pale Horse Strate­gies, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy group owned by for­mer Repub­li­can state rep Jonathan Stick­land. But Stick­land isn’t a reg­u­lar polit­i­cal con­sult­ing. He’s the head of Defend Texas Lib­er­ty, the main polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee used by Christo­fas­cist Texas Bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn to cap­ture con­trol of most of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty in recent years. Recall how Dunn was not only very much involved in Trump’s 2024 elec­tion effort, he gave mil­lions to a Super PAC that ran ads fea­tur­ing Trump’s “I am your ret­ri­bu­tion” rhetoric.

    And let’s also not for­get that Fuentes isn’t just a neo-Nazi, he’s a Catholic Christo­fas­cist too, and very aligned with Dun­n’s Christo­fas­cism. That’s part of the con­text of his ter­ri­fy­ing tweets. Nick Fuentes is kind of a ‘main­stream’ con­ser­v­a­tive thought leader at this point. He’s ‘respectable’ enough for secret meet­ings, at a min­i­mum. Just as Evan Kil­go­re is ‘respectable’ enough to be a Turn­ing Points USA ‘ambas­sador’, effec­tive­ly speak­ing on behalf of Char­lie Kirk.

    And that’s all part of why the grotesque misog­y­ny expressed by thought con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers like Fuentes, who as deep ties to both MAGA world and Tim Dun­n’s Christo­fas­cist move­ment, does­n’t just raise omi­nous ques­tion about the fate of women in Amer­i­ca. It also rais­es major ques­tions about the fate of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. Because it’s not real­ly a ques­tion at this point as to whether or not the US is going to expe­ri­ence a Domin­ion­ist takeover. It’s a ques­tion of how far will they go and how long will they hold pow­er. Are we look­ing at 2 years of hap­less­ness fol­lowed by a swing back to ‘nor­mal­cy’ with the 2016 mid-terms? Or the start of the next 1000 Year Reich. Because it’s look­ing like it could go either way at this point and con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty isn’t just along for the ride. Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty is going to going to be play­ing a lead­ing role in what­ev­er unfolds.

    And with con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty’s fix­a­tion of repro­duc­tion and female tra­di­tion­al­ism, that’s also why we should expect the com­ing back­lash from Amer­i­can women against this theo­crat­ic takeover to be a big part of how con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty shapes the new domin­ion they con­trol. Even Kil­go­re is basi­cal­ly describ­ing a Gilead-style real­i­ty. Maybe it’s a joke. Maybe not. But it’s not real­ly a ques­tions as to whether or not the hard­core Domin­ion­ists want to cre­ate such a future. We know they do. And we know they are about to have more pow­er than ever. How much pow­er remains to be seen. But the Domin­ion­ists like Tim Dunn aren’t wast­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty. And they’re clear­ly going to have plen­ty of Nazi fel­low trav­el­ers eager to go along with what­ev­er they deem God’s will. The clos­er to Gilead, the bet­ter:

    Newsweek

    Women Report Increased Misog­y­ny Online Post-Elec­tion

    Pub­lished Nov 08, 2024 at 3:14 PM EST
    Updat­ed Nov 09, 2024 at 10:58 AM EST
    By Dan Good­ing

    A social media post from a far-right polit­i­cal pun­dit pro­claim­ing “your body, my choice” has gone viral, as women report a rise in online abuse fol­low­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    Nick Fuentes’ post on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, which adapt­ed the pro-abor­tion phrase “my body, my choice”, saw an imme­di­ate reac­tion, with some users say­ing they were wor­ried that many oth­ers would agree with him.

    “Your body, my choice. For­ev­er,” he shared, with the com­ment find­ing its way into the replies of wom­en’s posts on var­i­ous social media plat­forms over the past few days.

    The Insti­tute for Strate­gic Dia­logue (ISD) tracked the com­ments, as well as oth­er misog­y­nis­tic remarks includ­ing “get back to the kitchen” and “repeal the 19th”, refer­ring to the right to vote.

    While these lat­ter two had appeared in some posts in the past month, instances soared after Nov. 5. “Your body, my choice” went from few­er than 20 men­tions a day to near­ly 2,000.

    ISD found posts from female users on Tik­Tok, with one stat­ing: “I had to delete a video because I was being threat­ened and sev­er­al men com­ment­ing [sic] say­ing they could­n’t wait until I get raped or ‘your body my choice.’ ”

    Anoth­er said she had wok­en up to men post­ing sim­i­lar com­ments on her con­tent, while on Red­dit anoth­er said Tik­Tok had declared the com­ment was not a vio­la­tion of its poli­cies.

    Tik­Tok told Newsweek that the term vio­lates its guide­lines for hate speech and posts con­tain­ing it would be removed.

    Young girls were also report­ing hear­ing the phrase chant­ed at them at school, ISD said, while 52,000 posts includ­ing it had appeared on Face­book with­in a 24 hour peri­od.

    Who is Nick Fuentes?

    Fuentes, 26, is a white nation­al­ist pod­cast­er. He’s known for his long his­to­ry of misog­y­nis­tic and anti­se­mit­ic remarks online and hosts his own show called Amer­i­ca First.

    He pre­vi­ous­ly brand­ed sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump as being part of a cult and refused to endorse him this year, but he did show sup­port for the Repub­li­can in 2020.

    Fuentes lat­er had din­ner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, along­side Ye (for­mer­ly known as Kanye West).

    On elec­tion night, Fuentes dou­bled down on his com­ment about wom­en’s bod­ies, post­ing: “I’d just like to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank men for sav­ing this coun­try from stu­pid b*****s who want­ed to destroy the world to keep abor­tion.”

    In a stream Thurs­day night, Fuentes said it had been a joke but then poked fun at women for cry­ing over his com­ments.

    How Trump secured the “bro vote”

    Fuentes’s streams on video site Rum­ble, which often exceed three hours, receive upwards of 100,000 views, some more than dou­ble that, and the top­ics reflect a sim­i­lar trend of pod­casts which speak to younger male vot­ers who shift­ed in Trump’s favor.

    ...

    What is the 4B Move­ment?

    Amid the rise in misog­y­nis­tic rhetoric, some women are embrac­ing the 4B move­ment, a trend that began in South Korea and means they abstain from roman­tic rela­tion­ships with men.

    The four Bs refers to: bihon (no mar­riage), bichul­san (no child­birth), biyeon­ae (no dat­ing), and bisek­seu (no sex) and it encour­ages women to reclaim auton­o­my over their bod­ies and reject tra­di­tion­al gen­der norms of mar­riage and child­bear­ing.

    ...

    “Trump’s vic­to­ry has lit a flame for a lot of women,” said Abby, a 27-year-old from Flori­da with the Tik­Tok han­dle @rabbitsandtea. In a video with 1.7 mil­lion likes and 9.3 mil­lion views, she shared her sto­ry of break­ing up with her Repub­li­can boyfriend and offi­cial­ly join­ing the 4B move­ment. She chose not to dis­close her last name due to safe­ty con­cerns since she has since received death threats online.

    ————-

    “Women Report Increased Misog­y­ny Online Post-Elec­tion” By Dan Good­ing; Newsweek; 11/08/2024

    “Fuentes’s streams on video site Rum­ble, which often exceed three hours, receive upwards of 100,000 views, some more than dou­ble that, and the top­ics reflect a sim­i­lar trend of pod­casts which speak to younger male vot­ers who shift­ed in Trump’s favor.

    A Nazi leader for the inter­net age, where the extrem­ist ‘trolling’ on his Rum­ble stream rou­tine­ly receives Tens of thou­sands of views. It’s not hard to see why Trump would have been inter­est­ed in din­ner with some­one like Fuentes. He’s a fas­cist voice for the con­tem­po­rary infor­ma­tion age of Manos­phere video streams. A vet­er­an troll who knows how to troll­ish­ly couch real threats as harm­less jokes:

    ...
    Fuentes lat­er had din­ner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, along­side Ye (for­mer­ly known as Kanye West).

    On elec­tion night, Fuentes dou­bled down on his com­ment about wom­en’s bod­ies, post­ing: “I’d just like to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank men for sav­ing this coun­try from stu­pid b*****s who want­ed to destroy the world to keep abor­tion.”

    In a stream Thurs­day night, Fuentes said it had been a joke but then poked fun at women for cry­ing over his com­ments.
    ...

    And note how the “Your body my choice” slo­gan Fuentes shared was part of a much larg­er meme that surged fol­low­ing Trump’s vic­to­ry. Along with open rape threats across social media. The psy­cho­log­i­cal ter­ror tac­tics that have long been a core aspect of fas­cist move­ments are easy than ever to engage in and the fas­cists have fig­ured it out. Fas­cists who, in many cas­es, are just teenage males who got rad­i­cal­ized months or years ago from exact­ly the kind of online con­tent Fuentes spe­cial­izes in. Again, you can see why Jonathan Stick­land had peo­ple meet with Fuentes for a day of meet­ings at his offices last year. Fuentes is clear­ly the future of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics:

    ...
    The Insti­tute for Strate­gic Dia­logue (ISD) tracked the com­ments, as well as oth­er misog­y­nis­tic remarks includ­ing “get back to the kitchen” and “repeal the 19th”, refer­ring to the right to vote.

    While these lat­ter two had appeared in some posts in the past month, instances soared after Nov. 5. “Your body, my choice” went from few­er than 20 men­tions a day to near­ly 2,000.

    ISD found posts from female users on Tik­Tok, with one stat­ing: “I had to delete a video because I was being threat­ened and sev­er­al men com­ment­ing [sic] say­ing they could­n’t wait until I get raped or ‘your body my choice.’ ”

    Anoth­er said she had wok­en up to men post­ing sim­i­lar com­ments on her con­tent, while on Red­dit anoth­er said Tik­Tok had declared the com­ment was not a vio­la­tion of its poli­cies.

    Tik­Tok told Newsweek that the term vio­lates its guide­lines for hate speech and posts con­tain­ing it would be removed.

    Young girls were also report­ing hear­ing the phrase chant­ed at them at school, ISD said, while 52,000 posts includ­ing it had appeared on Face­book with­in a 24 hour peri­od.
    ...

    But anoth­er part of the future of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics is the response to the “4B move­ment” of female celiba­cy. Just giv­ing up on men entire­ly. The “4B” move­ment that’s been import­ed out of South Kore­a’s #MeToo fem­i­nist back­lash against per­va­sive misog­y­ny. The US is in a social doom spi­ral. Exact­ly the kind of social doom spi­ral that some­one like Fuentes thrives in:

    ...
    Amid the rise in misog­y­nis­tic rhetoric, some women are embrac­ing the 4B move­ment, a trend that began in South Korea and means they abstain from roman­tic rela­tion­ships with men.

    The four Bs refers to: bihon (no mar­riage), bichul­san (no child­birth), biyeon­ae (no dat­ing), and bisek­seu (no sex) and it encour­ages women to reclaim auton­o­my over their bod­ies and reject tra­di­tion­al gen­der norms of mar­riage and child­bear­ing.

    ...

    “Trump’s vic­to­ry has lit a flame for a lot of women,” said Abby, a 27-year-old from Flori­da with the Tik­Tok han­dle @rabbitsandtea. In a video with 1.7 mil­lion likes and 9.3 mil­lion views, she shared her sto­ry of break­ing up with her Repub­li­can boyfriend and offi­cial­ly join­ing the 4B move­ment. She chose not to dis­close her last name due to safe­ty con­cerns since she has since received death threats online.
    ...

    And, again, Fuentes isn’t just a Nazi. He’s a Catholic reac­tionary who is very ok with the kind of Domin­ion­ism Tim Dunn is try­ing to impose. Try­ing to impose and like­ly to suc­ceed in impos­ing in com­ing year. The train­ing wheels are off. This is going to be full blown fas­cism com­ing. With fig­ures like Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn play­ing sig­nif­i­cant roles in shap­ing how this unchecked fas­cism man­i­fests. What is that going to do to the rep­u­ta­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty when this is all over? Assum­ing it end. How will reli­gion in US be changed by the com­ing nation­al trau­mas about to unfold. Trau­ma upon trau­ma. When key Project 2025 archi­tect Russ Vought laid out his plans for inflict­ing “trau­ma” on US fed­er­al work­ers and mak­ing them dread wak­ing up each day and send­ing in the mil­i­tary against pro­tes­tors, it was pret­ty clear he had plans for trau­ma that went well beyond fed­er­al works. Soci­etal trau­ma is the plan. In the name of a par­tic­u­lar­ly misog­y­nis­tic and cru­el ver­sion of Jesus.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 11, 2024, 5:00 pm
  28. It was fun at first. Excit­ing even. But the wel­come is wear­ing thin. This whole ‘co-pres­i­dent’ sit­u­a­tion that’s emerg­ing is unten­able. Elon has got to go. That’s the nar­ra­tive that’s been emerg­ing in one arti­cle after anoth­er in recent days. Trump tran­si­tion team insid­ers whis­per­ing to the press about this whole Elon Musk as ‘co-pres­i­dent’ shtick is get­ting old and in the way. Musk isn’t just a no longer wel­come guest. He’s get­ting in the way of busi­ness.

    Part of what makes the reports about these Musk-relat­ed murm­ers so bizarre is the fact he’s been tasked with what is effec­tive­ly car­ry­ing out the Repub­li­can mega-donors’ decades-long dreams of evis­cer­at­ing fed­er­al spend­ing with his new ‘Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy’. It’s not just that Musk has already promised to find more than $2 tril­lion in cuts. As we saw, the Trump team is look­ing at tac­tics like the pres­i­den­tial pow­er to uni­lat­er­al­ly impound spend­ing to impose what­ev­er cuts its wants witout con­gres­sion­al author­i­ty. Musk is going to be the pub­lic face of Grover Norquist’s dream. ‘I don’t want to abol­ish gov­ern­ment. I sim­ply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bath­room and drown it in the bath­tub,’ as Norquist declared in 2001. It took about 23 more years, but they did it. Or are about to do it. And Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Don­ald Trump have signed up to be the pub­lic faces of it. You would think the mega-donors express­ing their frus­tra­tions with Musk would show at least some appre­ci­a­tion. He’s about to deliv­er one of the biggest polit­i­cal pay­outs to the super-rich in his­to­ry.

    But, alas, the right-wing bil­lion­aire net­works that are going to actu­al­ly to be run­ning the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are get­ting annoyed and let­ting the world know. Because while Musk’s ‘effi­cien­cy com­mis­sion’ has 18 months to start find­ing cuts, the folks tru­ly run­ning the show aren’t plan­ning on wait­ing that long. If Musk and Ramaswamy can man­aged to deliv­er on tril­lions in cuts some time in 2026, won­der­ful, but mega-donors aren’t wait­ing until then. The cuts they’re think­ing about are com­ing much soon­er.

    And that brings us to anoth­er remark­able nar­ra­tive to emerge regard­ing to Trump tran­si­tion process. A nar­ra­tive that actu­al­ly first popped in a New York Times report in late Octo­ber, days before the elec­tion. A report about two alleged­ly com­pet­ing tran­si­tion projects. One, the Project 2025 project that every­one had heard so much about for months and that Trump had loud­ly dis­owned months ear­ly. And a sec­ond tran­si­tion project ped­dling itself as some­how sep­a­rate from Project 2025. An Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (AFPI) tran­si­tion project. Of course, as we’ve seen, when Jonathan Swan first report­ed on the ongo­ing Sched­ule F scheme in Axios back in July of 2022 with a pair of giant reports sourced heav­i­ly from the insid­ers of this effort, the AFPI was cit­ed as one of the enti­ties that was going to be involved, along with oth­er enti­ties like the Her­itage Foun­da­tion and Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA). Of course, as we’ve seen, it was Her­itage’s CEO, Kevin Roberts, who made head­lines back on July 2 when he made his com­ments about how they were prepar­ing for the “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion” which would be “blood­less” if the “the left allows it”. And the founder of the CRA, Russ Vought, was recent­ly exposed giv­ing speech­es at CRA events where he spoke about the plans to use Project 2025 to “inflict trau­ma” on the fed­er­al work­force. In oth­er words, a lot of the enti­ties behind Project 2025 have already racked up some rather unpleas­ant press. That’s part of the con­text of this sto­ry pre­sent­ing the AFPI as being engaged in its own inde­pen­dent efforts that are some­how com­pe­ti­tion for Project 2025.

    Recall how, as we saw in that ini­tial giant July 2022 Axios piece about the Sched­ule F scheme, the AFPI, run by Trump’s for­mer Domes­tic Pol­i­cy Coun­cil direc­tor Brooke Rollins, had brought in Michael Rigas to lead AFPI’s 2025 per­son­nel project. Rigas pre­vi­ous­ly ran the Office of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment under Trump’s first term. The AFPI was, at that point, work­ing on a per­son­nel data­base for whichev­er Repub­li­can wins the GOP nom­i­na­tion. One of Trump’s PAC’s donat­ed $1 mil­lion to the group in June of 2021. The AFPI was clear­ly part of the col­lec­tive schem­ing that flow­ered into “Project 2025”. A major part of the schem­ing. Com­ing up with per­son­nel data­bas­es of MAGA loy­al­ists to replace the tens of thou­sands of civ­il ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als who are about to be mass-fire­dis kind of half the scheme. But now, we are being told in the fol­low­ing New York Times report that there’s this AFPI tran­si­tion project that is a com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent com­peti­tor to Project 2025 that’s been oper­at­ing under the radar this whole time.

    So what is this tran­si­tion pro­jec­t’s agen­da? Well, as we’re also going to see, like Project 2025, the AFPI pub­lished a book­let describ­ing its plans. A much less detailed book­let than the 900-ish page tomb put out by Project 2025 that captivated/terrified Democ­rats through the 2024 race. That lack of detail, and lack of any pub­lic pro­file, is appar­ent­ly part of what has the Trump admin­is­tra­tion look­ing favor­ably on the AFPI’s tran­si­tion plan in com­par­i­son to its Project 2025 com­peti­tor. That’s the nar­ra­tive. A com­plete­ly far­ci­cal nar­ra­tive that allows the Trump tran­si­tion team to fol­low the Project 2025 tran­si­tion script while pre­tend­ing that this is all from some com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent effort. And the New York Times is play­ing along.

    But this isn’t just a sto­ry about how the Trump team is deflect­ing the bad ‘Project 2025’ rep­u­ta­tion while stick­ing to the Project 2025 plan. It’s also a sto­ry about the increas­ing­ly close role Texas bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dunn seems to be play­ing in the affairs of MAGA world. Dunn isn’t just cap­tur­ing Texas any­more. He has much big­ger plans. As we’ve seen, Dunn has donat­ed heav­i­ly to the CRA, which means Russ Vought’s plans to ‘inflict trau­ma’ in the fed­er­al work­force are Dunn financed plans. He’s already invest­ing in influ­ence at the nation­al lev­el by mak­ing him­self once of Trump’s biggest mega-donors. And as one of the co-founders of the AFPI, we’re see­ing how Dunn is man­i­fest­ing that nation­al influ­ence at the very foun­da­tions of the Trump White House.

    Dunn, of course, is the same far right bil­lion­aire Texas oil­man theo­crat who built a polit­i­cal patron­age net­work that has already cap­tured con­trol of most of Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. A patron­age net­work that as its cen­ter­piece not long ago the Defend Texas Free­dom PAC whose direc­tor, Jonathan Stick­land, host­ed Nazi Catholic rad­i­cal youth leader Nick Fuentes for a still-mys­te­ri­ous Octo­ber 2023 day of sev­en hours os meet­ings at the head­quar­ters of his polit­i­cal con­sult­ing busi­ness. Tim Dunn is arguably the most pow­er­ful man in Texas. We could also say Tim Dunn is the most pow­er­ful per­son in Texas, but it goes with­out say­ing that in Tim Dun­n’s Texas, the most pow­er­ful per­son is going to be a man. A Chris­t­ian man. At least if Dunn gets his way. Because Tim Dunn is very con­ser­v­a­tive. And wants the rest of soci­ety be very con­ser­v­a­tive too. Tim Dunn is a Domin­ion­ist.

    So when we see the AFPI, co-found­ed by Dunn, qui­et­ly tak­ing a lead­ing role in the Trump tran­si­tion, it’s a reminder that the orga­nized force behind Project 2025 is much big­ger than just the Her­itage Foun­da­tion and it’s a theo­crat­ic force. The Her­itage Foun­da­tion was also sort of play­ing a ‘front man’ role for a much larg­er mul­ti-insti­tu­tion­al ini­tia­tive which includ­ed the AFPI from the begin­ning. To present it as some­how a com­peti­tor to the Her­itage Foun­da­tions efforts is an effort in play­ing dumb.

    There’s anoth­er rel­e­vant Dunn-relat­ed angle to this sto­ry worth men­tion­ing: we are told AFPI’s ori­gins start­ed soon after Trump’s defeat in 2020, when Brooke Rollins and Lin­da McMa­hon approach Dunn with the idea of cre­at­ing a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion that would lay the ground­work for a sec­ond Trump term. While we don’t know how exact­ly this trio first met, it’s not hard to imag­ine Rollins just picked up the phone and called Dunn since Rollins has already served as CEO of anoth­er think tank Dunn has long financed and helped run: the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF). Recall how Dunn is also one of the key mega-donors behind Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), anoth­er impor­tant Dunn-financed polit­i­cal influ­ence ‘think tank’, and Brooks Rollins served as the TPPF’s CEO. Dunn has served as a board mem­ber since 1998 and still serves as the TPPF’s Vice Chair­man. And let’s also not for­get how Kevin ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’ Roberts at the Her­itage foun­da­tion who has been serv­ing as the pub­lic face for Project 2025 is also the TPPF’s for­mer pres­i­dent. This is what an inter­lock­ing influ­ence net­work looks like. The inter­lock­ing influ­ence net­work like­ly guid­ing the Trump tran­si­tion at this point. A tran­si­tion that has already shocked with world with the low char­ac­ter of the nom­i­nees so far.

    Pete Hegseth? Matt Gaetz?! It real­ly does feel like Trump is try­ing to troll the nation with these picks. But Trump isn’t going to be mak­ing the tens of thou­sands of low­er lev­el picks to come fol­low­ing the mass fir­ings. The Project 2025 teams are going to be doing that and they’ve been work­ing on it since Trump’s 2020 loss. Four years of bil­lion­aire-financed orga­niz­ing.

    How will Don­ald Trump go low­er than Matt Gaetz? Time will tell. But can be con­fi­dent he’ll find a way. So as the hor­rors of Trump’s per­son­al cab­i­net picks pile up keep in mind Trump is going to be del­e­gat­ing the pick­ing process for the tens of thou­sands of fed­er­al work­ers he’s plan­ning on fir­ing to the same Sched­ule F/‘Project 2025’ team he start­ed with, whether that per­son­nel data­base is offi­cial­ly pro­vid­ed by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion or its ‘com­peti­tor’ at the AFPI. And the pri­or­i­ties of far right bil­lion­aire mega-donors like Tim Dunn are going to be the pri­or­i­ties reflect­ed by those mass hir­ing and fir­ing deci­sions either way:

    The New York Times

    The Group at the Cen­ter of Trump’s Plan­ning for a Sec­ond Term Is One You Haven’t Heard of

    Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute didn’t even exist four years ago. But it is poised to be more influ­en­tial than Project 2025.

    By Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahren­thold
    Oct. 24, 2024

    Late this sum­mer, a promi­nent right-wing think tank invit­ed con­ser­v­a­tives from around the coun­try to learn how to work in a sec­ond Don­ald J. Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    In a series of train­ing ses­sions in Wash­ing­ton, for­mer Trump offi­cials shared strate­gies with atten­dees for com­bat­ing left­ist civ­il ser­vants in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and deal­ing with the main­stream media. Par­tic­i­pants were sent home with a thick binder of mate­ri­als for fur­ther study. One section’s title: “Tales From the Swamp: How Fed­er­al Bureau­crats Resist­ed Pres­i­dent Trump.”

    The class­es could eas­i­ly have been the work of Project 2025, the con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy blue­print and per­son­nel project that was cre­at­ed by loy­al­ists to Mr. Trump and that has been turned into a polit­i­cal cud­gel by Democ­rats seek­ing to link its most rad­i­cal pre­scrip­tions to the for­mer pres­i­dent.

    But the meet­ings had noth­ing to do with that enter­prise or its prin­ci­pal backer, the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Instead, they were the work of the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, a right-wing think tank that has, with lit­tle fan­fare or scruti­ny, installed itself as the Trump campaign’s pri­ma­ry part­ner in mak­ing con­crete plans to wield pow­er again.

    Found­ed by three wealthy Tex­ans in late 2020, the group, known as A.F.P.I., has quick­ly insert­ed itself into near­ly every cor­ner of Mr. Trump’s polit­i­cal machine, and is clos­er than any oth­er out­side play­er in his plan­ning for a sec­ond term.

    Mr. Trump chose one of its lead­ers, Lin­da McMa­hon, a for­mer mem­ber of Mr. Trump’s cab­i­net and a long­time friend, as co-chair of his offi­cial tran­si­tion team. Brooke Rollins, who also worked in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and is cur­rent­ly the nonprofit’s chief exec­u­tive, has been dis­cussed as a can­di­date to be Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. The institute’s ranks are stocked with oth­er for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who have spent the past sev­er­al years plan­ning for a return, and in recent weeks sev­er­al have qui­et­ly moved over to work full time for the campaign’s tran­si­tion team.

    Like Project 2025, the insti­tute devel­oped a plan for staffing and set­ting the pol­i­cy agen­da for every fed­er­al agency, one that pri­or­i­tizes loy­al­ty to Mr. Trump and aggres­sive flex­ing of exec­u­tive pow­er from Day 1. Ms. Rollins declined an inter­view but has said that A.F.P.I. has already draft­ed near­ly 300 exec­u­tive orders ready for Mr. Trump’s sig­na­ture should he win the elec­tion.

    It’s impos­si­ble to pre­dict which poli­cies Mr. Trump will pri­or­i­tize, and a spokesman for the non­prof­it, Marc Lot­ter, not­ed that the group “does not speak on behalf of any can­di­date, cam­paign or tran­si­tion.”

    But unlike the cre­ators of Heritage’s Project 2025, the key archi­tects of A.F.P.I.’s tran­si­tion plan are now advis­ing the Trump cam­paign, a tes­ta­ment to the strat­e­gy and dis­cre­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion.

    “It under­stood what Her­itage didn’t: Tran­si­tion work is always best kept very qui­et,” said Heath Brown, a pro­fes­sor of pub­lic pol­i­cy at John Jay Col­lege of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice who stud­ies pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tions.

    The Agen­da

    The institute’s pol­i­cy book, titled “The Amer­i­ca First Agen­da,” is slim­mer than the much-debat­ed plans espoused in Project 2025’s 900-page “Man­date for Lead­er­ship.” Absent are atten­tion-grab­bing pro­pos­als such as ban­ning pornog­ra­phy, pro­hibit­ing the mail­ing of abor­tion pills or end­ing the Jus­tice Department’s sta­tus as an inde­pen­dent agency.

    But its vision is no less Trump­ist: It calls for halt­ing fed­er­al fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood and for manda­to­ry ultra­sounds before abor­tions, includ­ing those car­ried out with med­ica­tion. It seeks to make con­cealed weapons per­mits rec­i­p­ro­cal in all 50 states, increase petro­le­um pro­duc­tion, remove the Unit­ed States from the Paris Agree­ment, impose work require­ments on Med­ic­aid recip­i­ents and estab­lish legal­ly only two gen­ders.

    It also goes sig­nif­i­cant­ly fur­ther than Project 2025 in one key area, call­ing for the elim­i­na­tion of near­ly all civ­il ser­vice pro­tec­tions for fed­er­al work­ers by mak­ing them at-will employ­ees — a strat­e­gy sup­port­ers believe will allow Mr. Trump and his aides to root out career staff mem­bers who they believe stood in his way in his first admin­is­tra­tion.

    “Agen­cies should be free to remove employ­ees for any nondis­crim­i­na­to­ry rea­son, with no exter­nal appeals,” the institute’s pol­i­cy book states.

    That change could allow offi­cials to try to fire civ­il ser­vants for almost any rea­son, includ­ing for defy­ing Mr. Trump or speak­ing out on posi­tions like acknowl­edg­ing cli­mate change that chal­lenge admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies.

    With­in the offi­cial tran­si­tion team, Ms. McMa­hon, who led the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion under Mr. Trump, has been charged with pol­i­cy mat­ters, while her co-chair, Howard Lut­nick, the chief exec­u­tive of Can­tor Fitzger­ald, is prepar­ing to hire thou­sands of peo­ple to run the agen­cies.

    In a tele­vi­sion inter­view last week, Mr. Lut­nick said his main pri­or­i­ty in select­ing poten­tial appointees was fideli­ty to Mr. Trump. “He’s the C.E.O.,” he said.

    A Land­ing Pad

    The A.F.P.I. was born soon after Mr. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 elec­tion, when Ms. Rollins and Ms. McMa­hon approached Tim Dunn, a bil­lion­aire Texas oil­man, about cre­at­ing a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion that could lay the ground­work for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    Ms. Rollins, who served as Mr. Trump’s direc­tor of domes­tic pol­i­cy, had been the pres­i­dent of the con­ser­v­a­tive Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, where Mr. Dunn is a long­time board mem­ber. Togeth­er, they had helped pur­sue Mr. Dunn’s agen­da of reshap­ing Texas pol­i­tics, push­ing the State Leg­is­la­ture to send pub­lic fund­ing to pri­vate schools and to increase Christianity’s role in civic life.

    With­in weeks, Mr. Dunn and two oth­er wealthy direc­tors of the Texas non­prof­it, Cody Camp­bell and Tim Lyles, reg­is­tered A.F.P.I. Mr. Dunn and Mr. Camp­bell still sit on its board, along with a num­ber of oth­er deep-pock­et­ed donors, includ­ing the chief exec­u­tive of Goya Foods, Bob Unanue, and Trish Dug­gan, a Flori­da phil­an­thropist and a Sci­en­tol­o­gist.

    The group fast became a land­ing pad where for­mer Trump aides could col­lect six-fig­ure salaries while await­ing the next elec­tion. Dozens of Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials joined, includ­ing Hogan Gid­ley, who served as his deputy press sec­re­tary; Chad Wolf, who served as the inter­im sec­re­tary of home­land secu­ri­ty; and Dou­glas Hoelsch­er, who led the office of inter­gov­ern­men­tal affairs and recent­ly left the think tank to join the Trump tran­si­tion team.

    ...

    From the out­set, A.F.P.I. received the bless­ings of Mr. Trump, whose lead­er­ship PAC donat­ed $1 mil­lion to it in 2021. The for­mer pres­i­dent also spoke at the institute’s first pol­i­cy sum­mit, in July 2022, his first major speech in Wash­ing­ton since leav­ing the White House.

    The non­prof­it has found ways to stay on Mr. Trump’s radar, branch­ing out into seem­ing­ly every cor­ner of his polit­i­cal move­ment.

    Cur­rent board mem­bers have col­lec­tive­ly donat­ed more than $31 mil­lion to Mr. Trump’s super PAC, Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Inc., dur­ing the cur­rent elec­tion cycle, includ­ing $20 mil­lion from Ms. McMa­hon alone.

    Its sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion, Amer­i­ca First Works, is one of three groups work­ing direct­ly with the Trump cam­paign on get-out-the-vote activ­i­ties in bat­tle­ground states.

    And its legal arm, led by Pam Bon­di, a for­mer lawyer for Mr. Trump, has been fil­ing vot­ing law­suits in bat­tle­ground states. In May, for exam­ple, it sued the board of elec­tions in Ful­ton Coun­ty, Ga., on behalf of a board mem­ber who sought the right not to cer­ti­fy an elec­tion based on sus­pi­cion of fraud.

    A coun­ty judge reject­ed that argu­ment last week, stat­ing that “our Con­sti­tu­tion and our elec­tion code do not allow for that to hap­pen.”

    The group has made sure to keep itself in Mr. Trump’s good graces. While the for­mer pres­i­dent has pri­vate­ly com­plained that A.F.P.I. was rais­ing mon­ey off his “Amer­i­ca First” slo­gan, the insti­tute has made sure to send some of its mon­ey back his way.

    All three of its annu­al fund-rais­er galas have been held at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s pri­vate club in Palm Beach, Fla. In tax fil­ings, the group said it spent a total of $1.7 mil­lion on these galas in 2021 and 2022, includ­ing fees paid to Mr. Trump’s busi­ness for using the facil­i­ty. Mr. Lot­ter, the nonprofit’s spokesman, said that the pay­ments also cov­ered oth­er events at near­by prop­er­ties, and that the mon­ey did not all go to Mar-a-Lago.

    “Brooke, what a job you’re doing,” Mr. Trump said while deliv­er­ing the keynote speech at the group’s 2021 fund-rais­er, which net­ted the non­prof­it rough­ly $385,000 after expens­es.

    A Con­test With Her­itage

    But the core of the institute’s mis­sion has been prepar­ing for a new Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion. And on that front, it has had com­pe­ti­tion.

    For over two years, since A.F.P.I. for­mal­ly began its tran­si­tion project, it has vied with the Her­itage Foun­da­tion to become the gate­keep­er to a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Her­itage, a much larg­er fix­ture of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that for decades has helped Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates make plans to assume pow­er, did not take kind­ly to the com­pe­ti­tion.

    Ten­sions burst into view just over a year ago, when a Her­itage employ­ee accused A.F.P.I. of “rip­ping off” its tran­si­tion project “down to the name, lan­guage and logo” in an email that end­ed up in news reports. Ms. Rollins respond­ed by say­ing that the groups were “ful­ly aligned.”

    Last Novem­ber, Mr. Trump’s top cam­paign advis­ers, Chris LaCivi­ta and Susie Wiles, pub­licly com­plained that they were “see­ing more and more sto­ries about var­i­ous groups’ inten­tions for lead­ing a Trump tran­si­tion,” adding that “these sto­ries are nei­ther appro­pri­ate nor con­struc­tive.”

    A.F.P.I. appeared to take the hint. Its lead­er­ship clammed up, mak­ing scant pub­lic com­ment about its tran­si­tion plan­ning. Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s pres­i­dent and him­self a for­mer head of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, went in the oppo­site direc­tion, using Project 2025 to increase fund-rais­ing and pro­mote his still-unre­leased book.

    The com­pe­ti­tion came to an abrupt con­clu­sion this sum­mer, when the Trump cam­paign, in the face of grow­ing pub­lic out­cry over Project 2025’s well-pub­li­cized pol­i­cy goals, thor­ough­ly dis­avowed the Her­itage enter­prise.

    Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be great­ly wel­comed,” said Mr. LaCivi­ta and Ms. Wiles, in a state­ment at the end of July.

    ...

    ———–

    “The Group at the Cen­ter of Trump’s Plan­ning for a Sec­ond Term Is One You Haven’t Heard of” By Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahren­thold; The New York Times; 10/24/2024

    “The class­es could eas­i­ly have been the work of Project 2025, the con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy blue­print and per­son­nel project that was cre­at­ed by loy­al­ists to Mr. Trump and that has been turned into a polit­i­cal cud­gel by Democ­rats seek­ing to link its most rad­i­cal pre­scrip­tions to the for­mer pres­i­dent.”

    Class­es on how to plan for a sec­ond Trump term put on by a con­ser­v­a­tive think-tank. It sounds like Project 2025, and yet we are assured this is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent oper­a­tion. No, no, these were class­es put on by the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (AFPI). A com­plete­ly sep­a­rate endeav­or, we are assured. That’s the nar­ra­tive bizarrely get­ting pushed at this point despite the fact that, as we saw in those mas­sive Axios arti­cles by Jonathan Swan in July of 2022, the AFPI was very much on board with the broad­er Sched­ule F schem­ing long before the name “Project 2025” was even rolled out. AFPI’s CEO, Brook Rollins, was sim­i­lar­ly named as one of the Sched­ule F orga­niz­ers from the begin­ning. There is noth­ing at all sur­pris­ing or remark­able about learn­ing that the AFPI has been work­ing on a ver­sion of Project 2025. That’s long been the case. What’s remark­able is how this is being por­trayed as some­how sep­a­rate from Project 2025. It’s like a Project 2025 rebrand­ing effort, which makes this a good time to recall how one of the most remark­able aspects of Jonathan Swan’s ini­tial pair of giant reports on the scheme back in 2022 was how exten­sive­ly his sourc­ing for the reports came from the orga­niz­ers them­selves. It was their nar­ra­tive Swam was report­ing on. And now we find a new nar­ra­tive about the same net­work being devel­oped for pub­lic con­sump­tion. Is this a reflec­tion of the poor brand­ing of Project 2025 and a recog­ni­tion that their agen­da is deeply unpop­u­lar? Or was hav­ing two seem­ing­ly inde­pen­dent Project 2025 vari­ants the plan all along?

    ...
    But the meet­ings had noth­ing to do with that enter­prise or its prin­ci­pal backer, the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Instead, they were the work of the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, a right-wing think tank that has, with lit­tle fan­fare or scruti­ny, installed itself as the Trump campaign’s pri­ma­ry part­ner in mak­ing con­crete plans to wield pow­er again.

    Found­ed by three wealthy Tex­ans in late 2020, the group, known as A.F.P.I., has quick­ly insert­ed itself into near­ly every cor­ner of Mr. Trump’s polit­i­cal machine, and is clos­er than any oth­er out­side play­er in his plan­ning for a sec­ond term.

    Mr. Trump chose one of its lead­ers, Lin­da McMa­hon, a for­mer mem­ber of Mr. Trump’s cab­i­net and a long­time friend, as co-chair of his offi­cial tran­si­tion team. Brooke Rollins, who also worked in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and is cur­rent­ly the nonprofit’s chief exec­u­tive, has been dis­cussed as a can­di­date to be Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. The institute’s ranks are stocked with oth­er for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who have spent the past sev­er­al years plan­ning for a return, and in recent weeks sev­er­al have qui­et­ly moved over to work full time for the campaign’s tran­si­tion team.

    Like Project 2025, the insti­tute devel­oped a plan for staffing and set­ting the pol­i­cy agen­da for every fed­er­al agency, one that pri­or­i­tizes loy­al­ty to Mr. Trump and aggres­sive flex­ing of exec­u­tive pow­er from Day 1. Ms. Rollins declined an inter­view but has said that A.F.P.I. has already draft­ed near­ly 300 exec­u­tive orders ready for Mr. Trump’s sig­na­ture should he win the elec­tion.
    ...

    And note how, con­ve­nient, this par­ti­tion­ing of the Project 2025 scheme from the AFPI’s efforts come at the moment when we are learn­ing how the AFPI’s orga­niz­ers also hap­pened to be advis­ing the Trump cam­paign. In oth­er words, while the Trump cam­paign may claim that it had noth­ing to do with Project 2025, such claims can’t be plau­si­bly made about the AFPI’s ver­sion. Hence, pre­sum­ably, this absurd attempt to por­tray the AFPI as some­how com­plete­ly sep­a­rate from the rest of the Sched­ule F scheme its been involved with the start:

    ...
    It’s impos­si­ble to pre­dict which poli­cies Mr. Trump will pri­or­i­tize, and a spokesman for the non­prof­it, Marc Lot­ter, not­ed that the group “does not speak on behalf of any can­di­date, cam­paign or tran­si­tion.”

    But unlike the cre­ators of Heritage’s Project 2025, the key archi­tects of A.F.P.I.’s tran­si­tion plan are now advis­ing the Trump cam­paign, a tes­ta­ment to the strat­e­gy and dis­cre­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion.

    “It under­stood what Her­itage didn’t: Tran­si­tion work is always best kept very qui­et,” said Heath Brown, a pro­fes­sor of pub­lic pol­i­cy at John Jay Col­lege of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice who stud­ies pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tions.
    ...

    Sim­il­iar­ly, note how the AFPI put out its own Project 2025 hand­book, just one not one near­ly as detailed as the rough­ly 900+ ‘offi­cial’ hand­book put out by the Her­itage foun­da­tion that has ter­ri­fied so much of the Amer­i­can pub­lic. Which, agains, begs the ques­tion: was the plan to put out two ver­sion of Project 2025 the plan all along? A high­ly detailed plan designed to grab all the atten­tion and a much vaguer real plan that will actu­al­ly get imple­ment­ed? Or is a response to unin­tend­ed bad press?

    ...
    The institute’s pol­i­cy book, titled “The Amer­i­ca First Agen­da,” is slim­mer than the much-debat­ed plans espoused in Project 2025’s 900-page “Man­date for Lead­er­ship.” Absent are atten­tion-grab­bing pro­pos­als such as ban­ning pornog­ra­phy, pro­hibit­ing the mail­ing of abor­tion pills or end­ing the Jus­tice Department’s sta­tus as an inde­pen­dent agency.

    But its vision is no less Trump­ist: It calls for halt­ing fed­er­al fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood and for manda­to­ry ultra­sounds before abor­tions, includ­ing those car­ried out with med­ica­tion. It seeks to make con­cealed weapons per­mits rec­i­p­ro­cal in all 50 states, increase petro­le­um pro­duc­tion, remove the Unit­ed States from the Paris Agree­ment, impose work require­ments on Med­ic­aid recip­i­ents and estab­lish legal­ly only two gen­ders.

    It also goes sig­nif­i­cant­ly fur­ther than Project 2025 in one key area, call­ing for the elim­i­na­tion of near­ly all civ­il ser­vice pro­tec­tions for fed­er­al work­ers by mak­ing them at-will employ­ees — a strat­e­gy sup­port­ers believe will allow Mr. Trump and his aides to root out career staff mem­bers who they believe stood in his way in his first admin­is­tra­tion.

    “Agen­cies should be free to remove employ­ees for any nondis­crim­i­na­to­ry rea­son, with no exter­nal appeals,” the institute’s pol­i­cy book states.

    That change could allow offi­cials to try to fire civ­il ser­vants for almost any rea­son, includ­ing for defy­ing Mr. Trump or speak­ing out on posi­tions like acknowl­edg­ing cli­mate change that chal­lenge admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies.
    ...

    So when we see nar­ra­tive-estab­lish­ing out­lets like the New York Times por­tray the AFPI’s scheme as some­one sep­a­rate from Project 2025, and mere­ly a small­er “tran­si­tion project”, keep in mind that we’re see­ing the estab­lish­ment media basi­cal­ly play along with this rhetor­i­cal cha­rade here. Who knows why the AFPI is being allowed to por­tray this as a dis­con­nect­ed project from the joint scheme they were all talk­ing about to Axios back in 2022, before the label “Project 2025” was even announced. But that’s what’s hap­pen­ing. The press if going along with this ‘AFPI, not Project 2025’ nar­ra­tive for some rea­son:

    ...
    But the core of the institute’s mis­sion has been prepar­ing for a new Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion. And on that front, it has had com­pe­ti­tion.

    For over two years, since A.F.P.I. for­mal­ly began its tran­si­tion project, it has vied with the Her­itage Foun­da­tion to become the gate­keep­er to a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Her­itage, a much larg­er fix­ture of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that for decades has helped Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates make plans to assume pow­er, did not take kind­ly to the com­pe­ti­tion.

    Ten­sions burst into view just over a year ago, when a Her­itage employ­ee accused A.F.P.I. of “rip­ping off” its tran­si­tion project “down to the name, lan­guage and logo” in an email that end­ed up in news reports. Ms. Rollins respond­ed by say­ing that the groups were “ful­ly aligned.”

    Last Novem­ber, Mr. Trump’s top cam­paign advis­ers, Chris LaCivi­ta and Susie Wiles, pub­licly com­plained that they were “see­ing more and more sto­ries about var­i­ous groups’ inten­tions for lead­ing a Trump tran­si­tion,” adding that “these sto­ries are nei­ther appro­pri­ate nor con­struc­tive.”

    A.F.P.I. appeared to take the hint. Its lead­er­ship clammed up, mak­ing scant pub­lic com­ment about its tran­si­tion plan­ning. Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s pres­i­dent and him­self a for­mer head of the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, went in the oppo­site direc­tion, using Project 2025 to increase fund-rais­ing and pro­mote his still-unre­leased book.

    The com­pe­ti­tion came to an abrupt con­clu­sion this sum­mer, when the Trump cam­paign, in the face of grow­ing pub­lic out­cry over Project 2025’s well-pub­li­cized pol­i­cy goals, thor­ough­ly dis­avowed the Her­itage enter­prise.

    Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be great­ly wel­comed,” said Mr. LaCivi­ta and Ms. Wiles, in a state­ment at the end of July.
    ...

    And that far­ci­cal ‘Project 2025 com­peti­tor’ nar­ra­tive brings us to one of the most sig­nif­i­cant aspects of this sto­ry: the AFPI was formed by Texas Bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dunn. The same bil­lion­aire who built a polit­i­cal patron­age net­work that has already cap­tured con­trol of most of Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. A patron­age net­work that as its cen­ter­piece not long ago the Defend Texas Free­dom PAC whose direc­tor, Jonathan Stick­land, host­ed Nazi youth leader Nick Fuentes for a still-mys­te­ri­ous sev­en hour day of meet­ings at the head­quar­ters of his polit­i­cal con­sult­ing busi­ness. Beyond that, Dunn is also one of the key mega-donors behind Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), anoth­er impor­tant Dunn-financed polit­i­cal influ­ence ‘think tank’, and Brooks Rollins served as the TPPF’s CEO. Beyond that, Dunn has donat­ed heav­i­ly to the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, a think tank run by key Project 2025 oper­a­tive Russ Vought. This is a close net­work of bil­lion­aire mega-donors and trust­ed oper­a­tives. That’s why the same names keep pop­ping up, for both Project 2025 and its alleged AFPI ‘com­peti­tor’. They’re just two faces of the same oli­garchic theo­crat­ic plot:

    ...
    The A.F.P.I. was born soon after Mr. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 elec­tion, when Ms. Rollins and Ms. McMa­hon approached Tim Dunn, a bil­lion­aire Texas oil­man, about cre­at­ing a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion that could lay the ground­work for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    Ms. Rollins, who served as Mr. Trump’s direc­tor of domes­tic pol­i­cy, had been the pres­i­dent of the con­ser­v­a­tive Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, where Mr. Dunn is a long­time board mem­ber. Togeth­er, they had helped pur­sue Mr. Dunn’s agen­da of reshap­ing Texas pol­i­tics, push­ing the State Leg­is­la­ture to send pub­lic fund­ing to pri­vate schools and to increase Christianity’s role in civic life.

    With­in weeks, Mr. Dunn and two oth­er wealthy direc­tors of the Texas non­prof­it, Cody Camp­bell and Tim Lyles, reg­is­tered A.F.P.I. Mr. Dunn and Mr. Camp­bell still sit on its board, along with a num­ber of oth­er deep-pock­et­ed donors, includ­ing the chief exec­u­tive of Goya Foods, Bob Unanue, and Trish Dug­gan, a Flori­da phil­an­thropist and a Sci­en­tol­o­gist.

    The group fast became a land­ing pad where for­mer Trump aides could col­lect six-fig­ure salaries while await­ing the next elec­tion. Dozens of Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials joined, includ­ing Hogan Gid­ley, who served as his deputy press sec­re­tary; Chad Wolf, who served as the inter­im sec­re­tary of home­land secu­ri­ty; and Dou­glas Hoelsch­er, who led the office of inter­gov­ern­men­tal affairs and recent­ly left the think tank to join the Trump tran­si­tion team.

    ...

    From the out­set, A.F.P.I. received the bless­ings of Mr. Trump, whose lead­er­ship PAC donat­ed $1 mil­lion to it in 2021. The for­mer pres­i­dent also spoke at the institute’s first pol­i­cy sum­mit, in July 2022, his first major speech in Wash­ing­ton since leav­ing the White House.
    ...

    And don’t for­get that this report was from less than two weeks before elec­tion day in the New York Times. That’s a sub­tle sig­nal of what to expect should Trump win. And he won. The AFPI’s tran­si­tion plan is run­ning the show. At least for the deci­sions Trump isn’t per­son­al­ly mak­ing. Which is obvi­ous­ly the vast major­i­ty.

    So while we can be con­fi­dent that much of the mad­ness ema­nat­ing from the Trump tran­si­tion team is per­son­al­ly deliv­ered by Trump, as we move for­ward with the detailed dirty work of the Trump tran­si­tion it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that that it’s going to be a scheme unfold­ing financed by the same theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aires who have been close­ly plan­ning for this moment with Trump world for the past four years now, whether they call it Project 2025 or the ‘not Project 2025 com­pe­ti­tion’. It’s the same fas­cist net­work. Fas­cist theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aires who have zero inter­est in leav­ing. Much like Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago, except he’s much more flam­boy­ant about it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 18, 2024, 4:59 am
  29. That did­n’t take long: Matt Gaetz cir­cus act has come to an abrupt end. He’s out of the run­ning for Attor­ney Gen­er­al after it become clear Gaet­z’s under­age sex traf­fick­ing alle­ga­tions were going to make his nom­i­na­tion unten­able. There’s a new Sher­iff-to-be in town: Pam Bon­di.

    It was an unsur­pris­ing pick on many lev­els. For starters, Bon­di checks off all the box­es in terms of what Don­ald Trump is look­ing for: She’s a staunch Trump loy­al­ist. There’s just one box, but boy does she check it.

    But let’s not for­get the oth­er major rea­son we absolute­ly should have expect­ed some­one like Bon­di get­ting tapped for this role: she’s deeply involved in the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. Or rather, the ‘total­ly not Project 2025!’ scheme at the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (AFPI), one of the many enti­ties that came into being fol­low­ing Trump’s 2020 loss for the expressed pur­pose of prepar­ing for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. As we saw, the AFPI ver­sion of Project 2025 is now being put for­ward as the ‘not Project 2025’ tem­plate for Trump’s ‘reform’ plans. And Pam Bon­di serves as the head of the AFPI’s legal arm. Bon­di is basi­cal­ly going to be the Project 2025 point per­son for gut­ting the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and staffing it was cor­rupt cronies.

    As we’re going to see, beyond her work as the head of the AFPI’s legal arm, Bon­di also serves at the co-chair of the AFPI’s Flori­da state chap­ter, along­side co-chair Omeed Malik. Keep in mind that Omeed Malik not only helped to launch Tuck­er Carl­son’s lat­est media ven­ture but he was one of the top donors to RFK Jr.‘s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, along with Repub­li­can mega-donor Tim­o­thy Mel­lon. So if it turns out RFK Jr, as head of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, ends up being weird­ly open to a slew of pro­pos­als ema­nat­ing from the AFPI, try not to be shocked.

    And that brings us to a third major qual­i­fi­ca­tion Bon­di has for the job of Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al: she’s cor­rupt. In fact, she was cor­rupt on Trump’s behalf even before he entered the polit­i­cal are­na. Recall that incred­i­bly cor­rupt $25k dona­tion Trump’s char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion made to her PAC back in 2013 at the same time Bon­di was inves­ti­gat­ing Trump Uni­ver­si­ty? A dona­tion that was­n’t just ille­gal­ly made by a ‘char­i­ty’ but came after Bon­di per­son­al­ly asked Trump for a con­tri­bu­tion? It’s hard to imag­ine some­thing that would have made her more qual­i­fied to be Attor­ney Gen­er­al in Don­ald Trump’s eyes.

    Inter­est­ing, there’s anoth­er more recent Trump cor­rup­tion scan­dal that Bon­di is involved in: the scheme to take con­trol of Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas giant Naftogaz, with Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man at the cen­ter: After leav­ing office due to term lim­its, Bon­di worked for Bri­an Bal­lard, a lob­by­ist described as hav­ing deep ties to Trump. Both Bon­di and Bal­lard showed in in the orbit of Par­nas and Fru­man. As we saw, Lev Par­nas’s lawyers start­ed effec­tive­ly trolling the Trump team with pho­tos show­ing how wel­come Par­nas was in MAGA world. That includ­ed a tweet made in Jan­u­ary of 2020, after then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump announce Bon­di was join­ing his legal team, where Par­nas’s lawyer tweet­ed out a pho­to of Par­nas and Bon­di seat­ed at a table togeth­er, their arms around each oth­er’s shoul­ders. When asked by reporters about the pho­to, Trump insist­ed he did­n’t “know who this man is,” despite the over­whelm­ing evi­dence to the con­trary.

    Bal­lard, a lob­by­ist, appeared to know Par­nas and Fru­man by virtue of the fact that they were all attend­ing these weird din­ners with Trump as Mar-a-Lago were US for­eign pol­i­cy was effec­tive­ly hashed out between Trump and these lob­by­ists. As we saw, Bal­lard’s role in this sto­ry did­n’t appear to be direct­ly relat­ed to the Naftogaz scheme. Instead, it was an April 20, 2018, gath­er­ing at Mar-a-Lago where Don­ald Trump met with a small group of donors — includ­ing Par­nas and Fru­man — where they dis­cussed all sorts of for­eign pol­i­cy intrigue, includ­ing the Naftogaz scheme. Bal­lard attend­ed the gath­er­ing, seem­ing­ly as part of the lob­by­ing effort he was engaged in on behalf of a Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can lob­by­ing effort led by Rim Al-Bezem, a Penn­syl­va­nia car­di­ol­o­gist who is the pres­i­dent of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion group called Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca. Al-Bezam donat­ed a total of $18,800 to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and its Sen­ate cam­paign arm and rais­es mon­ey from oth­er Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can activists, which was basi­cal­ly the cost of get­ting into that din­ner. Five days before the April 20 meet­ing, Bri­an Bal­lard, a top fund-rais­er for Trump and the Repub­li­can Par­ty, reg­is­tered to lob­by for Al-Bezem’s Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca, which paid Ballard’s firm $350,000 in 2018 and 2019. This was two days after the April 13 US airstrikes on Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment air­fields in retal­i­a­tion for the alleged use of chem­i­cal weapons by the Assad gov­ern­ment against the rebels (based on OPCW find­ings that were chal­lenged by whistle­blow­ers). Al-Bezem is heard on the video thank­ing Trump for the airstrikes and lob­by­ing for a hard­er line against Assad and the need for his over­throw. Tak­en togeth­er, it’s hard to imag­ine both Bon­di and Bal­lard don’t know A LOT more about the cor­rupt nature of Trump’s pol­i­cy-mak­ing meth­ods.

    But as we’re going to see, there’s anoth­er rather inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship between Pam Bon­di and the AFPI’s ‘total­ly not Project 2025’ Project 2025 scheme: recall how the large donors to the AFPI includ­ed Trish Dug­gan, a wealthy Sci­en­tol­o­gist, which was extra inter­est­ing giv­en that the AFPI was ini­tial­ly formed at the behest of Tex­an bil­lion­aire theo­crat­ic Tim Dunn. Well, it turns out Bon­di has a more exten­sive his­to­ry with the Sci­en­tol­o­gists. At least when it comes to polit­i­cal fundrais­ing. Which, to some extent, isn’t a sur­prise. She’s a Flori­da Repub­li­can and Clear­wa­ter, Flori­da, is the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy’s head­quar­ters. So we should­n’t be par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­prised that she report­ed­ly attend­ed attend­ed a fundrais­ing event in 2014 — not long after that shady 2013 $25k dona­tion from Trump’s char­i­ty — at the home of two wealthy Sci­en­tol­o­gist with a sug­gest­ed min­i­mum $1,000 dona­tion. Trish Dug­gan was one of the guests. In oth­er words, Trish Dug­gan, a major AFPI donor, has a per­son­al dona­tion his­to­ry with Bon­di too. So when the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy needs a spe­cial favor from Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bon­di, they’ll pre­sum­ably not have too much dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting her ear.

    But let’s not con­clude the GOP’s ties to Sci­en­tol­ogy is pure­ly a Flori­da thing. Don’t for­get that the ‘Fair­Tax’ bill pro­posed by Repub­li­cans that year — that would replace the income tax, estate, and cor­po­rate tax­es with a sales tax — was based on ideas orig­i­nal­ly pro­mot­ed by a promi­nent Sci­en­tol­o­gist back in the 1980s. In fact, House Repub­li­cans were so in favor of the plan that Stephen Moore even col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Sci­en­tol­o­gist who was pro­mot­ing the idea in order to dilute the Sci­en­tol­ogy taint. The GOP and the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy have long been fel­low trav­el­ers.

    That’s all part of the utter­ly unsur­pris­ing selec­tion of Pam Bon­di as Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al: She’s a Trump loy­al­ists who is deeply enmeshed in the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme that’s about to be made into real­i­ty. And she’s demon­stra­bly cor­rupt. Pam Bon­di has the right stuff:

    Politi­co

    Trump picks a dif­fer­ent Flori­da loy­al­ist for attor­ney gen­er­al: Pam Bon­di

    Trump said in a state­ment she will be able to “refo­cus” the Jus­tice Depart­ment.

    For­mer Flori­da Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di speaks.

    By Gary Fine­out, Mia McCarthy and Eri­ca Orden
    11/21/2024 06:47 PM EST
    Updat­ed: 11/21/2024 08:50 PM EST

    Don­ald Trump said he will nom­i­nate for­mer Flori­da Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di as his attor­ney gen­er­al, hours after his first pick for the role, for­mer Rep. Matt Gaetz, with­drew from con­sid­er­a­tion for the posi­tion.

    In select­ing Bon­di, Trump again chose a staunch loy­al­ist who is seen as an overt­ly polit­i­cal oper­a­tor. She defend­ed Trump dur­ing his first impeach­ment in 2019 and appeared with him on the trail in the final days of the 2024 cam­paign. She is co-chair of the law and jus­tice divi­sion at the pro-Trump Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, which has been likened to a Trump admin­is­tra­tion in wait­ing.

    And in 2013, while Bon­di was serv­ing as Flori­da attor­ney gen­er­al, Trump donat­ed $25,000 to a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee sup­port­ing her reelec­tion. The tim­ing was lat­er scru­ti­nized because Bondi’s spokesper­son had told a news­pa­per just days before the dona­tion that Bondi’s office was review­ing a class action law­suit New York had brought against Trump Uni­ver­si­ty for fraud.

    ...

    Though Bon­di may prove anoth­er polar­iz­ing pick, she is like­ly to be at least some­what less con­tro­ver­sial than Gaetz, who had few qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the job and whose pri­ma­ry expe­ri­ence with the Jus­tice Depart­ment came when it inves­ti­gat­ed whether he engaged in child sex traf­fick­ing. He denied the alle­ga­tions and was nev­er charged. Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham (R‑S.C.), a close ally of the pres­i­dent-elect, pre­dict­ed that Bon­di “will be con­firmed quick­ly because she deserves to be con­firmed quick­ly.”

    Lib­er­al groups blast­ed the pick. “Not being Matt Gaetz does not qual­i­fy you to be attor­ney gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States,” Robert Weiss­man, the co-pres­i­dent of the lib­er­al gov­ern­ment watch­dog Pub­lic Cit­i­zen, said in a state­ment. “We should expect an Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bon­di to serve as a Trump loy­al­ist and attack dog at the expense of the Department’s inde­pen­dence and integri­ty.” Like many who jock­eyed for jobs in a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Bon­di attend­ed Trump’s crim­i­nal tri­al in New York and took to TV to crit­i­cize the pro­ceed­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly the gag order the judge over­see­ing the tri­al imposed on Trump.

    Bon­di, 59, served as Florida’s attor­ney gen­er­al from 2011 to 2019. She was first elect­ed to the posi­tion as part of the same tea par­ty wave that brought then-Gov. Rick Scott into office. She had worked for the top pros­e­cu­tor in the Tam­pa area and was the lead pros­e­cu­tor in a case against guards accused of killing Mar­tin Lee Ander­son, a teenag­er who was in a juve­nile boot camp.

    Bon­di trans­formed the job in one key way by end­ing the prac­tice of hav­ing the attor­ney gen­er­al weigh in on the side of con­sumers in bat­tles against util­i­ties. Instead, Bon­di focused on crim­i­nal cas­es and human traf­fick­ing. She came under fire ear­ly on in her tenure after fir­ing two employ­ees in her office who were respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing mort­gage fraud.

    Bon­di ini­ti­at­ed Florida’s lit­i­ga­tion against opi­oid man­u­fac­tur­ers that was even­tu­al­ly set­tled after she left office. She also launched a probe of alleged sex­u­al abuse by Catholic priests in the state fol­low­ing rev­e­la­tions in Penn­syl­va­nia.

    In 2016, Bon­di was crit­i­cized after rev­e­la­tions that she request­ed the $25,000 dona­tion that Trump made through one of his char­i­ties in 2013 to a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee rais­ing mon­ey for her reelec­tion. The con­tri­bu­tion came as Bondi’s office was weigh­ing whether to take action in response to com­plaints against Trump Uni­ver­si­ty. Bondi’s office nev­er pur­sued any inves­ti­ga­tion and did not join the class action law­suit led by New York. While the dona­tion was report­ed at the time, the issue flared back up after Bon­di acknowl­edged that she had per­son­al­ly asked Trump for the con­tri­bu­tion.

    Bon­di also defend­ed Florida’s ban against same-sex mar­riage and in one court fil­ing from her office told a fed­er­al court that rec­og­niz­ing mar­riages in oth­er states would dis­rupt Florida’s exist­ing law and would “impose sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic harm.”

    Some social con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing Ralph Reed, a Trump ally who leads the con­ser­v­a­tive-lean­ing Faith & Free­dom orga­ni­za­tion, defend­ed the choice on Thurs­day evening.

    “Pam is a thor­ough pro­fes­sion­al, a sea­soned and capa­ble pros­e­cu­tor, and a woman of enor­mous integri­ty who has Trump’s respect and con­fi­dence,” he said. “She is unique­ly qual­i­fied to restore the rule of law and put the blind­fold back on Lady Jus­tice and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice.”

    Bon­di left office due to term lim­its and went to work for Bri­an Bal­lard, a lob­by­ist with deep ties to Trump. She briefly left that job to help with Trump’s defense against impeach­ment charges lev­eled against him in 2019.

    ...

    ———–

    “Trump picks a dif­fer­ent Flori­da loy­al­ist for attor­ney gen­er­al: Pam Bon­di” By Gary Fine­out, Mia McCarthy and Eri­ca Orden; Politi­co; 11/21/2024

    Though Bon­di may prove anoth­er polar­iz­ing pick, she is like­ly to be at least some­what less con­tro­ver­sial than Gaetz, who had few qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the job and whose pri­ma­ry expe­ri­ence with the Jus­tice Depart­ment came when it inves­ti­gat­ed whether he engaged in child sex traf­fick­ing. He denied the alle­ga­tions and was nev­er charged. Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham (R‑S.C.), a close ally of the pres­i­dent-elect, pre­dict­ed that Bon­di “will be con­firmed quick­ly because she deserves to be con­firmed quick­ly.””

    Well, at least she’s not Matt Gaetz. Not that Bon­di is with­out con­tro­ver­sy, but they aren’t child sex traf­fick­ing alle­ga­tions. It’s an improve­ment, at least from a polit­i­cal pure­ly optics stand­point. Still, what about that incred­i­bly cor­rupt $25k dona­tion Trump’s char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion made to her PAC back in 2013 at the same time Bon­di was inves­ti­gat­ing Trump Uni­ver­si­ty? A dona­tion that was­n’t just ille­gal­ly made by a ‘char­i­ty’ but came after Bon­di per­son­al­ly asked Trump for a con­tri­bu­tion? It’s not child sex traf­fick­ing, but it’s still the kind of track record that should pre­clude some­one from serv­ing as the Attor­ney Gen­er­al:

    ...
    And in 2013, while Bon­di was serv­ing as Flori­da attor­ney gen­er­al, Trump donat­ed $25,000 to a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee sup­port­ing her reelec­tion. The tim­ing was lat­er scru­ti­nized because Bondi’s spokesper­son had told a news­pa­per just days before the dona­tion that Bondi’s office was review­ing a class action law­suit New York had brought against Trump Uni­ver­si­ty for fraud.

    ...

    In 2016, Bon­di was crit­i­cized after rev­e­la­tions that she request­ed the $25,000 dona­tion that Trump made through one of his char­i­ties in 2013 to a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee rais­ing mon­ey for her reelec­tion. The con­tri­bu­tion came as Bondi’s office was weigh­ing whether to take action in response to com­plaints against Trump Uni­ver­si­ty. Bondi’s office nev­er pur­sued any inves­ti­ga­tion and did not join the class action law­suit led by New York. While the dona­tion was report­ed at the time, the issue flared back up after Bon­di acknowl­edged that she had per­son­al­ly asked Trump for the con­tri­bu­tion.
    ...

    Also note how Bon­di, as Flori­da’s AG, not only end­ed the prac­tice of the attor­ney gen­er­al weigh in on the side of con­sumers in bat­tles against util­i­ties, but also fired the employ­ees in her office respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing mort­gage fraud. The more we learn about Pam Bondi’s career, the more unqual­i­fied she gets. It’s not a lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions over her knowl­edge of the law. It’s a lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions over char­ac­ter:

    ...
    Bon­di, 59, served as Florida’s attor­ney gen­er­al from 2011 to 2019. She was first elect­ed to the posi­tion as part of the same tea par­ty wave that brought then-Gov. Rick Scott into office. She had worked for the top pros­e­cu­tor in the Tam­pa area and was the lead pros­e­cu­tor in a case against guards accused of killing Mar­tin Lee Ander­son, a teenag­er who was in a juve­nile boot camp.

    Bon­di trans­formed the job in one key way by end­ing the prac­tice of hav­ing the attor­ney gen­er­al weigh in on the side of con­sumers in bat­tles against util­i­ties. Instead, Bon­di focused on crim­i­nal cas­es and human traf­fick­ing. She came under fire ear­ly on in her tenure after fir­ing two employ­ees in her office who were respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing mort­gage fraud.

    Bon­di ini­ti­at­ed Florida’s lit­i­ga­tion against opi­oid man­u­fac­tur­ers that was even­tu­al­ly set­tled after she left office. She also launched a probe of alleged sex­u­al abuse by Catholic priests in the state fol­low­ing rev­e­la­tions in Penn­syl­va­nia.
    ...

    And then we get to Bondi’s very inter­est­ing employ­er after leav­ing office as Flori­da’s AG: lob­by­ist Bri­an Bal­lard. Again, recall the fas­ci­nat­ing ties both Bon­di and Bal­lard have with the Lev Parnas/Igor Frum­man Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas scheme to take con­trol Naftogaz and cre­ate a high­ly lucra­tive US-to-Ukraine LNG export busi­ness. First, recall how, in Jan­u­ary of 2020, after then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump announce Bon­di was join­ing his legal team, Par­nas’s lawyer tweet­ed out a pho­to of Par­nas and Bon­di seat­ed at a table togeth­er, their arms around each oth­er’s shoul­ders. When asked by reporters about the pho­to, Trump insist­ed he did­n’t “know who this man is,” despite the over­whelm­ing evi­dence to the con­trary. Now, As we saw, Bal­lard’s role in this sto­ry did­n’t appear to be direct­ly relat­ed to the Naftogaz scheme. Instead, it was an April 20, 2018, gath­er­ing at Mar-a-Lago where Don­ald Trump met with a small group of donors — includ­ing Par­nas and Fru­man — where they dis­cussed all sorts of for­eign pol­i­cy intrigue, includ­ing the Naftogaz scheme. Bal­lard attend­ed the gath­er­ing, seem­ing­ly as part of the lob­by­ing effort he was engaged in on behalf of a Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can lob­by­ing effort led by Rim Al-Bezem, a Penn­syl­va­nia car­di­ol­o­gist who is the pres­i­dent of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion group called Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca. Al-Bezam donat­ed a total of $18,800 to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and its Sen­ate cam­paign arm and rais­es mon­ey from oth­er Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can activists, which was basi­cal­ly the cost of get­ting into that din­ner. Five days before the April 20 meet­ing, Bri­an Bal­lard, a top fund-rais­er for Trump and the Repub­li­can Par­ty, reg­is­tered to lob­by for Al-Bezem’s Cit­i­zens for a Secure and Safe Amer­i­ca, which paid Ballard’s firm $350,000 in 2018 and 2019. This was two days after the April 13 US airstrikes on Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment air­fields in retal­i­a­tion for the alleged use of chem­i­cal weapons by the Assad gov­ern­ment against the rebels (based on OPCW find­ings that were chal­lenged by whistle­blow­ers). Al-Bezem is heard on the video thank­ing Trump for the airstrikes and lob­by­ing for a hard­er line against Assad and the need for his over­throw. Bon­di and Bal­lard both have expe­ri­ence with the kind of cor­rupt behind-the-scenes hag­gling that defined much of Trump’s first term. Expe­ri­ence that will pre­sum­ably be put to exten­sive use as Trump’s AG:

    ...
    Bon­di left office due to term lim­its and went to work for Bri­an Bal­lard, a lob­by­ist with deep ties to Trump. She briefly left that job to help with Trump’s defense against impeach­ment charges lev­eled against him in 2019.
    ...

    And when we see promi­nent theo­crat Ralph Reed tout­ing Bon­di as being some­one who is “She is unique­ly qual­i­fied to restore the rule of law and put the blind­fold back on Lady Jus­tice and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice”, it’s a reminder that Bon­di, as co-chair of the AFPI, is serv­ing in a key role for the larg­er CNP-backed Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme...even if the AFPI is being disin­gen­u­ous­ly ped­dled in the media as some sort of ‘not Project 2025’ alter­na­tive. Of course Ralph Reed is excit­ed to see Pam Bon­di as AG. She’s an ide­o­log­i­cal fel­low trav­el­er of theocrats like Reed:

    ...
    Bon­di also defend­ed Florida’s ban against same-sex mar­riage and in one court fil­ing from her office told a fed­er­al court that rec­og­niz­ing mar­riages in oth­er states would dis­rupt Florida’s exist­ing law and would “impose sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic harm.”

    Some social con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing Ralph Reed, a Trump ally who leads the con­ser­v­a­tive-lean­ing Faith & Free­dom orga­ni­za­tion, defend­ed the choice on Thurs­day evening.

    “Pam is a thor­ough pro­fes­sion­al, a sea­soned and capa­ble pros­e­cu­tor, and a woman of enor­mous integri­ty who has Trump’s respect and con­fi­dence,” he said. “She is unique­ly qual­i­fied to restore the rule of law and put the blind­fold back on Lady Jus­tice and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice.”
    ...

    Now, of course, as we’ve seen, Bon­di her­self is a key play­er in AFPI’s ‘not Project 2025’ schem­ing as the leader of the AFPI’s legal arm. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle from a year ago also note, Bon­di is also the co-chair of the AFPI’s new Flori­da state chap­ter, along­side co-chair Omeed Malik. Keep in mind that Omeed Malik not only helped to launch Tuck­er Carl­son’s lat­est media ven­ture but he was one of the top donors to RFK Jr.‘s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, along with Repub­li­can mega-donor Tim­o­thy Mel­lon. Oth­er promi­nent AFPI fig­ures men­tioned in the arti­cle include Lin­da McMa­hon, now the nom­i­nee for Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, where she is expect­ed to gut the depart­ment. How many more AFPI fig­ures will we see join­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion? Time will tell, but as we see Bon­di tapped to be Trump’s next Attor­ney Gen­er­al, don’t for­get that putting an AFPI fig­ure like Bon­di in a posi­tion like Attor­ney Gen­er­al is very much in keep with the broad­er Sched­ule F/Project 2025 agen­da, if even we’re main­tain­ing the ‘not Project 2025’ AFPI pre­tense:

    Flori­da Pol­i­tics

    Pam Bon­di to lead new state chap­ter of new Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute

    Anne Geg­gis
    Novem­ber 22, 2023

    The for­mer state Attor­ney Gen­er­al has strong ties to for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

    Some well-known names in state pol­i­tics are going to be lead­ing the new state chap­ter of the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (AFPI).

    For­mer State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di will be the Chair of the state branch of the nation­al think tank based near Wash­ing­ton. It start­ed in 2021, found­ed by for­mer offi­cials with Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion to fur­ther pro­mul­gate “Amer­i­ca First” val­ues.

    ...

    Mia­mi-based entre­pre­neur Omeed Malik, who found­ed Far­va­har Part­ners and 1789 Cap­i­tal, is the Flori­da chapter’s Co-Chair. And Mia­mi-Dade Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Kevin Cabr­era, will be APFI-Florida’s State Direc­tor.. He was elect­ed Repub­li­can State Com­mit­tee­man for the Mia­mi-Dade GOP this week.

    The AFPI bills itself as a “non-par­ti­san research cen­ter” but it’s led by a host of senior lead­ers from the Trump pres­i­den­cy, includ­ing Lin­da McMa­hon, Chair of AFPI’s board and for­mer admin­is­tra­tor of the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion; Lar­ry Kud­low, Vice Chair of the AFPI Board, who was Direc­tor of the Nation­al Eco­nom­ic Coun­cil. AFPI’s Pres­i­dent and CEO is Brooke Rollins, who was the for­mer Direc­tor of the Domes­tic Pol­i­cy Coun­cil and Chief Strate­gist for the White House.

    Bon­di suc­ceed­ed Corey Lewandows­ki as the head of Trump’s super PAC, Make Amer­i­ca Great Again, two years ago after a donor accused Lewandows­ki of mak­ing unwant­ed sex­u­al advances. Bon­di has also appeared fre­quent­ly as a Trump sur­ro­gate.

    Cabr­era also has strong ties to Trump. He was the Flori­da State Direc­tor for Don­ald J. Trump for Pres­i­dent and Trump endorsed him in his 2022 bid for elec­tion to the Mia­mi-Dade Coun­ty Com­mis­sion.

    ...

    ————

    “Pam Bon­di to lead new state chap­ter of new Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute” by Anne Geg­gis; Flori­da Pol­i­tics; 11/22/2023

    For­mer State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di will be the Chair of the state branch of the nation­al think tank based near Wash­ing­ton. It start­ed in 2021, found­ed by for­mer offi­cials with Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion to fur­ther pro­mul­gate “Amer­i­ca First” val­ues.”

    Pam Ban­di isn’t just the head of the AFPI’s legal arm. She’s the co-chair of group’s Flori­da branch, along with Mia­mi-based entre­pre­neur Omeed Malik. As we saw, Malik not only helped to launch Tuck­er Carl­son’s lat­est media ven­ture but he was one of the top donors to RFK Jr.‘s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, along with Trump mega-donor Tim­o­thy Mel­lon. The quest to reelect Trump through any means nec­es­sary includ­ed the financ­ing of RFK Jr’s cam­paign. And it worked:

    ...
    Mia­mi-based entre­pre­neur Omeed Malik, who found­ed Far­va­har Part­ners and 1789 Cap­i­tal, is the Flori­da chapter’s Co-Chair. And Mia­mi-Dade Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Kevin Cabr­era, will be APFI-Florida’s State Direc­tor.. He was elect­ed Repub­li­can State Com­mit­tee­man for the Mia­mi-Dade GOP this week.
    ...

    But while Bondi’s ties to the AFPI or that cor­rupt fundrais­ing Trump Foun­da­tion episode should be seen as high­ly alarm­ing to the pub­lic’s inter­ests, there’s anoth­er chap­ter in Bondi’s polit­i­cal back­ground with a very inter­est­ing AFPI tie-in: It turns out Pam Bon­di has a his­to­ry of attend­ing fundrais­ers host­ed by and for wealthy Sci­en­tol­o­gists. It’s unclear how often she’s held these fundrais­ers, but we know she attend­ed at least one fundrais­er held for her cam­paign at the home of promi­nent Sci­en­tol­o­gists Liz and Michael Bay­bak back in 2014, with a num­ber of oth­er wealth Sci­en­tol­o­gist in atten­dance and a sug­gest­ed min­i­mum dona­tion of $1,000 to Bondi’s cam­paign. Keep in mind 2013 was the year Bon­di solicit­ed $25k from Don­ald Trump at the same time she was inves­ti­gat­ing Trump Uni­ver­si­ty. So this fundrais­er would have tak­en place around this same peri­od.

    To some extent, this episode could be seen as a ‘Flori­da Man’ sto­ry for Flori­da Repub­li­cans. Clear­wa­ter, Flori­da, is the Sci­en­tol­ogy head­quar­ters, after all. Of course the Sci­en­tol­o­gist are going to get involved with polit­i­cal lob­by­ing. And as we saw back in 2017 dur­ing Trump’s first term when the GOP major­i­ty in Con­gress passed his bud­get-bust­ing ‘tax reform’ bill, the ‘Fair­Tax’ bill pro­posed by Repub­li­cans that year — that would replace the income tax, estate, and cor­po­rate tax­es with a sales tax — was based on ideas orig­i­nal­ly pro­mot­ed by Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy back in the 1980s. The GOP’s Sci­en­tol­ogy sit­u­a­tion­ship isn’t just a Flori­da thing.

    And let’s also not for­get the Sci­en­tol­ogy who is cit­ed as one of the AFPI’s major donors: Trish Dug­gan. As we’re going to see, Dug­gan was at that 2014 fundrais­er. And here she is today, a major donor for the AFPI, the ‘not Project 2025’ enti­ty poised to imple­ment Project 2025, with Pam Bon­di as the new Attor­ney Gen­er­al. So while we don’t how much in total Bon­di has raised from Sci­en­tol­o­gists, it’s clear at this point that was mon­ey well spent:

    Tam­pa Bay Times

    Pam Bondi’s Clear­wa­ter fundrais­er orga­nized by Sci­en­tol­o­gists

    By Times Staff Writer
    Pub­lished July 1, 2014

    Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di, who already has raised mil­lions for her re-elec­tion cam­paign, can expect to pull in more dol­lars tonight at a Clear­wa­ter fundrais­er where all six orga­niz­ers are promi­nent mem­bers of the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy.

    ...

    Host­ing the event are Liz and Michael Bay­bak, own­ers of a 23rd-floor pent­house in the swank Water’s Edge con­dos down­town. The tow­er, perched on a 40-foot bluff, affords stun­ning views of Clear­wa­ter Har­bor to the west and, in every oth­er direc­tion, Sci­en­tol­ogy’s many build­ings.

    Bay­bak is chief exec­u­tive of Michael Bay­bak and Com­pa­ny, a Clear­wa­ter-based busi­ness ser­vices con­sult­ing firm. Bay­bak and his wife have been major donors to Sci­en­tol­ogy. They also have been occa­sion­al con­trib­u­tors to con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates, fed­er­al elec­tions records show. They could not be reached for com­ment.

    Oth­er orga­niz­ers are Brett Miller, who has been active for years in local Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, and his wife, Dr. Jill Hagan, a Clear­wa­ter den­tist; and Joanie and Steve Sigal, co-founders of a Clear­wa­ter mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny, SJS Asso­ciates. The two cou­ples also have con­tributed to local, state and con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates, most of them Repub­li­cans.

    ...

    Bon­di is aware Sci­en­tol­o­gists are stag­ing the event, said cam­paign spokes­woman Christi­na John­son. She said Bon­di first con­nect­ed with Sci­en­tol­o­gists in 2010 when she and oth­er elect­ed offi­cials toured some of the church’s Clear­wa­ter facil­i­ties. Bon­di spoke then to a group of Sci­en­tol­o­gists about human traf­fick­ing and the evils of pill mills, a top­ic that res­onat­ed because Sci­en­tol­o­gists spon­sor what they tout as the largest antidrug pro­gram in the world.

    At Tues­day’s fundrais­er, she will return to those themes, John­son said. “It’s like-mind­ed folks shar­ing the same goals: Pro­tect­ing chil­dren against drug over­dos­es and human traf­fick­ing,” John­son said.

    One of those top­ics rings with irony. From 2009 to 2011, the FBI inves­ti­gat­ed church work sites, pri­mar­i­ly in Cal­i­for­nia, focus­ing on phys­i­cal and men­tal restric­tions and prob­ing whether they con­sti­tut­ed human traf­fick­ing. The inves­ti­ga­tion end­ed with no charges filed.

    ...

    Bon­di has been aggres­sive in pro­pelling her cam­paign cof­fers. Last year, she took heat after per­suad­ing Gov. Rick Scott to post­pone an exe­cu­tion because it con­flict­ed with her re-elec­tion kick­off recep­tion.

    Tonight’s recep­tion like­ly will pro­duce an added surge — con­tri­bu­tions are sug­gest­ed to start at $1,000.

    ...

    ———-

    “Pam Bondi’s Clear­wa­ter fundrais­er orga­nized by Sci­en­tol­o­gists” By Times Staff Writer; Tam­pa Bay Times; 07/01/2014

    “Bon­di is aware Sci­en­tol­o­gists are stag­ing the event, said cam­paign spokes­woman Christi­na John­son. She said Bon­di first con­nect­ed with Sci­en­tol­o­gists in 2010 when she and oth­er elect­ed offi­cials toured some of the church’s Clear­wa­ter facil­i­ties. Bon­di spoke then to a group of Sci­en­tol­o­gists about human traf­fick­ing and the evils of pill mills, a top­ic that res­onat­ed because Sci­en­tol­o­gists spon­sor what they tout as the largest antidrug pro­gram in the world.”

    As we can see, Pam Bon­di was­n’t some­how tricked into attend­ing a fundrais­er host­ed by a wealthy Sci­en­tol­o­gist cou­ple, Liz and Michael Bay­bak. Also keep in mind that this 2014 fundrais­er fol­lowed Bondi’s 2013 $25k dona­tion from Trump’s char­i­ty while she was inves­ti­gat­ing Trump Uni­ver­si­ty. Bon­di had some real­ly inter­est­ing fundrais­ing ethics:

    ...
    At Tues­day’s fundrais­er, she will return to those themes, John­son said. “It’s like-mind­ed folks shar­ing the same goals: Pro­tect­ing chil­dren against drug over­dos­es and human traf­fick­ing,” John­son said.

    One of those top­ics rings with irony. From 2009 to 2011, the FBI inves­ti­gat­ed church work sites, pri­mar­i­ly in Cal­i­for­nia, focus­ing on phys­i­cal and men­tal restric­tions and prob­ing whether they con­sti­tut­ed human traf­fick­ing. The inves­ti­ga­tion end­ed with no charges filed.
    ...

    And keep in mind that it’s not like the Bay­baks were the only wealthy Sci­en­tol­o­gists to attend. The oth­er orga­niz­ers — cou­ples Brett Miller and Jill Hagan and the Sigals — also show up on Sci­en­tol­ogy donor lists. This was a Sci­en­tol­ogy fund-rais­er for Bon­di. And look who else was report­ed­ly in atten­dance: AFPI mega-donor Trish Dug­gan:

    The Under­ground Bunker

    Sci­en­tol­ogy Sun­day Fun­nies: The Nan­cy Cartwright freak-out edi­tion

    By Tony Orte­ga | June 29, 2014

    Watch out! Nan­cy Cartwright is hav­ing some kind of naval res­tim and she’s reach­ing for your wal­let!

    Yes, it’s time for anoth­er wacky col­lec­tion of Scientology’s lat­est mail­ers and fliers as the church tries des­per­ate­ly to find a new strat­e­gy to get mem­bers to actu­al­ly come to events and open up a few more cred­it cards for dona­tions!

    Speak­ing of dona­tions, a tip­ster point­ed out that Sci­en­tol­o­gists are help­ing to raise mon­ey for Flori­da Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di in her re-elec­tion effort.

    Super-rich church mem­bers Michael and Liz Bay­bak — huge donors to Sci­en­tol­ogy — are host­ing a par­ty for Bon­di on Tues­day, and you can go too — as long as you fork over a min­i­mum of $1,000…

    [see screen­shot of invi­ta­tion to fundrais­ing event for Bon­di with a post­ed sug­gest­ed min­i­mum con­tributed of $1,000 and host­ed at the home of Michael and Liz Bay­bak]

    Our tip­ster tells us that Scientology’s whales have been invit­ed to the event, which is being orga­nized by OT 8s Brett Miller and Jill Hagan. (The Sigals are also high on the Bridge.) Besides the Bay­baks, Trish Dug­gan is also expect­ed to attend. (Bob and Trish Dug­gan are by far the biggest donors to Sci­en­tol­ogy, hav­ing giv­en what we esti­mate to be more than $50 mil­lion.)

    We’re also told that Sci­en­tol­o­gists are spread­ing the rumor that Bon­di has vis­it­ed the Fort Har­ri­son Hotel sev­er­al times, and that she also had the church’s “Truth About Drugs” mate­r­i­al avail­able in her office. Church mem­bers are being told that Bon­di is in a tough race, and Sci­en­tol­o­gists need to do what they can to help her win. (Actu­al­ly, Bon­di, a Repub­li­can and an incum­bent, is expect­ed to sail eas­i­ly to re-elec­tion in Novem­ber.)

    Now that’s some good “safe­point­ing” in action. You think Pam will go home with a full copy of RON: The Ency­clo­pe­dia?

    ...

    ———-

    “Sci­en­tol­ogy Sun­day Fun­nies: The Nan­cy Cartwright freak-out edi­tion” By Tony Orte­ga; The Under­ground Bunker; 06/29/2014

    “Our tip­ster tells us that Scientology’s whales have been invit­ed to the event, which is being orga­nized by OT 8s Brett Miller and Jill Hagan. (The Sigals are also high on the Bridge.) Besides the Bay­baks, Trish Dug­gan is also expect­ed to attend. (Bob and Trish Dug­gan are by far the biggest donors to Sci­en­tol­ogy, hav­ing giv­en what we esti­mate to be more than $50 mil­lion.)

    Yep, even Trish Dug­gan was at the fundrais­er. The same Trish Dug­gan list­ed as one of the deep-pock­et­ed donors who has been fund­ing the AFPI. An enti­ty start­ed short­ed after Trump’s 2020 defeat at the behest of bil­lion­aire Texas theo­crat Tim Dunn. And now, as a team, they are poised to enact sweep­ing changes across the US under a plan they’ve been co-devel­op­ing for years. A plan co-financed by a rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ist and a promi­nent Sci­en­tol­o­gist. So while it remains to be seen how exact­ly that plan will man­i­fest, we can be con­fi­dent it’s going to be extreme­ly cor­rupt and extreme­ly cultish. Which, again, is why Pam Bon­di is absolute­ly per­fect for this moment.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 22, 2024, 5:31 pm
  30. It’s trolling, but it’s not just trolling. There’s a strat­e­gy at work: The Amer­i­ca First Legal Foun­da­tion (AFLF) just sued Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice John Roberts. Yep. But this isn’t a per­son­al law­suit direct­ed specif­i­cal­ly at Roberts. No, it’s anoth­er pow­er grab. One that goes beyond the ongo­ing Uni­tary Exec­u­tive pow­er grab. Because while the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive pow­er grab has effec­tive­ly been a renun­ci­a­tion of the sys­tem of checks and bal­ances between the exec­u­tive, judi­cial, and leg­isla­tive branch­es, the new AFLF law­suit is an asser­tion of exec­u­tive branch pow­er over the judi­cia­ry. It’s like the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive the­o­ry on steroids.

    And while it’s the AFLF, and not the Trump admin­is­tra­tion itself, that is wag­ing this law­suit, it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that the AFLF is oper­at­ing as a Trump admin­is­tra­tion proxy. The AFLF is Stephen Miller’s baby, after all. Miller is, of course, cur­rent­ly serv­ing as Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Beyond that, the lead attor­ney in the law­suit, Daniel Z. Epstein, cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents Pres­i­dent Trump in his per­son­al capac­i­ty in anoth­er joke law­suit that nonethe­less appears to be on the cusp of a vic­to­ry: the legal­ly spe­cious law­suit against CBS over an Octo­ber 60 Min­utes inter­view with Kamala Har­ris. Yes, Pres­i­dent Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney is lead­ing this suit against Chief Jus­tice John Roberts.

    But as we’ve seen, the AFLF isn’t just some inde­pen­dent MAGA-themes enti­ty cre­at­ed by Stephen Miller in 2021 to keep the MAGA flame lit. The AFLF is effec­tive­ly the legal arm of a much larg­er mul­ti-insti­tu­tion­al rad­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, large­ly orches­trat­ed by the pow­er­ful theo­crat­ic Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) through the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI). In fact, as we’re going to see in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt below, the con­stel­la­tion of insti­tu­tions financed by the CPI was part of a vision of tak­ing the Her­itage Foun­da­tion mod­el and break­ing it up into sev­en sep­a­rate think tanks, each focused on a par­tic­u­lar domain but all work­ing togeth­er. Oth­er CPI-financed groups, like the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA), help devise MAGA poli­cies while the AFLF leads the charge in the court­rooms. That’s how this mul­ti-insti­tu­tion­al next-gen­er­a­tion Her­itage net­work was sup­posed to oper­ate and, sure enough, that’s what’s hap­pen­ing. Even as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion exe­cutes Project 2025 in real-time.

    So what is this AFLF law­suit argu­ing? Well, it’s mak­ing the claim that, while judges might remain inde­pen­dent of the exec­u­tive branch, the staff that play key roles in the func­tion­ing of court­rooms do fall under exec­u­tive branch author­i­ty, and, there­fore, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has the right to make key staffing deci­sions for the US court sys­tem. This claim includes what observers describe as a kind of ‘pro­tec­tion rack­et’ threat when it points out that the staff that would fall under exec­u­tive branch author­i­ty includes facil­i­ty man­age­ment and secu­ri­ty. In oth­er words, if the Trump admin­is­tra­tion decides to pull the secu­ri­ty details for court­rooms it has the pow­er to do so.

    At least that the AFLF legal claim. Observers point out that this appears to be a joke law­suit designed to allow the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to effec­tive­ly dis­play defi­ance towards the Supreme Court as part of the ongo­ing efforts to resist and ignore the Supreme Court’s rul­ings on high-pro­file show­downs like the court order to facil­i­tate the return of a wrong­ly removed Sal­vado­ran man and the invo­ca­tion of the Alien Ene­mies Act. But, as we’ve seen with the CBS law­suit, it’s not like it mat­ters if the under­ly­ing legal pre­text is a joke. This is a time when the joke is on us.

    And as we’re going to see in the third arti­cle excerpt below — an arti­cle from 2022 about the AFLF’s emerg­ing legal strat­e­gy — there’s anoth­er key ele­ment to the AFLF’s strat­e­gy to keep in mind as this plays out: judge shop­ping. Yes, the AFLF has spe­cial­ized in wag­ing its court bat­tles in high­ly sym­pa­thet­ic court­rooms. Texas court­rooms, in par­tic­u­lar. Yes, the AFLF has as big focus on Texas legal fights. Because it knows that where it can find the MAGA-ori­ent­ed judges that will rule in its favor. Beyond that, the AFLF has craft­ed a num­ber of law­suits that effec­tive­ly expands the pow­er of Texas Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott and state attor­ney gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton.

    We’re also learn­ing that the AFLF’s Texas-cen­tric strat­e­gy hap­pens to rely on coor­di­nat­ing with Jonathan Mitchell, the for­mer solic­i­tor gen­er­al of Texas who helped devise the nov­el legal strat­e­gy behind the state’s 2021 near-com­plete abor­tion ban. As we’ve seen, Mitchel­l’s legal phi­los­o­phy does­n’t just con­ve­nient ban the right to abor­tions. It bans ALL rights EVER gained through a Supreme Court rul­ing. The ONLY legit­i­mate rights, accord­ing to Mitchell, are those explic­it­ly laid on in the US Con­sti­tu­tion. ALL oth­er com­mon­ly accept­ed rights that have been won through court rul­ings over the decades are to be rescind­ed. So if you’re won­der­ing what the AFLF’s end goals look like, just imag­ine almost all rights ever won through the courts being rescind­ed.

    But when we look into the AFLF donors list, there’s anoth­er end goal we should keep in mind: in addi­tion to dona­tions from the Koch-backed DonorsTrust dark mon­ey out­fit, AFLF has also received funds from Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance one of the main groups behind the ongo­ing push to rewrite the US Con­sti­tu­tion. And don’t for­get how one of the Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance co-founders was none oth­er than Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn. So if there’s an upcom­ing legal fight over whether or not the Con­ven­tion of States 34-state thresh­old has been reached, expect the AFLF to get involved.

    That’s all part of the con­text of the AFLF’s new law­suit designed to assert Pres­i­dent Trump’s pow­ers over the judi­cia­ry’s staff. It’s tech­ni­cal­ly the AFLF’s law­suit, but it’s clear­ly being done on both the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s behalf. But also on behalf of the CNP and its oli­garchic bene­fac­tors, most espe­cial­ly those in Texas:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    Trump Allies Sue John Roberts To Give White House Con­trol Of Court Sys­tem

    A think tank found­ed by Stephen Miller sued Roberts and the office that admin­is­ters the judi­cia­ry, claim­ing that the White House should run the fed­er­al courts.

    By Josh Koven­sky
    May 2, 2025 10:42 am

    Close allies of Pres­i­dent Trump are ask­ing a judge to give the White House con­trol over much of the fed­er­al court sys­tem.

    In a lit­tle-noticed law­suit filed last week, the Amer­i­ca First Legal Foun­da­tion sued Chief Jus­tice John Roberts and the head of the Admin­is­tra­tive Office of U.S. Courts.

    The case osten­si­bly pro­ceeds as a FOIA law­suit, with the Trump-aligned group seek­ing access to judi­cia­ry records. But, in doing so, it asks the courts to cede mas­sive pow­er to the White House: the bod­ies that make court pol­i­cy and man­age the judiciary’s day-to-day oper­a­tions should be con­sid­ered inde­pen­dent agen­cies of the exec­u­tive branch, the suit argues, giv­ing the Pres­i­dent, under the con­ser­v­a­tive legal movement’s the­o­ries, the pow­er to appoint and dis­miss peo­ple in key roles.

    Mul­ti­ple legal schol­ars and attor­neys TPM spoke with react­ed to the suit with a mix­ture of dis­may, dis­dain and laugh­ter. Though the core legal claim is invalid, they said, the suit seems to be a part of the fight that the admin­is­tra­tion launched and has con­tin­ued to esca­late against the courts over the past sev­er­al months: ignor­ing a Supreme Court order to facil­i­tate the return of a wrong­ly removed Sal­vado­ran man, pro­vid­ing min­i­mal notice to peo­ple sub­ject to the Alien Ene­mies Act, flaunt­ing an aggres­sive crim­i­nal case against a state court judge.

    The exec­u­tive branch has tried to encroach on the pow­er of the judi­cia­ry in oth­er ways too, prompt­ing a degree of con­ster­na­tion and alarm unusu­al for the nor­mal­ly-staid Admin­is­tra­tive Office of U.S. Courts. As TPM has doc­u­ment­ed, DOGE has already caused dis­or­der at the courts and sent out mass emails to judges and oth­er judi­cia­ry employ­ees demand­ing a list of their recent accom­plish­ments. Per one recent report in the New York Times, fed­er­al judges have expressed con­cern that Trump could direct the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice —an exec­u­tive branch agency tasked with pro­tect­ing judges and car­ry­ing out court orders — to with­draw pro­tec­tion.

    These are all facets of an esca­lat­ing cam­paign to erode the inde­pen­dence of the judi­cia­ry, experts told TPM. The law­suit demon­strates anoth­er prong of it: close allies of the pres­i­dent are effec­tive­ly ask­ing the courts to rule that they should be man­aged by the White House.

    “It’s like using an invalid legal claim to taunt the judi­cia­ry,” Anne Joseph O’Connell, a pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Law School, told TPM.

    “To the extent this law­suit has any val­ue oth­er than click­bait, maybe the under­ly­ing mes­sage is, we will let our imag­i­na­tions run wild,” Peter M. Shane, a con­sti­tu­tion­al law schol­ar at NYU Law School, told TPM. “The Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the MAGA com­mu­ni­ty will let our imag­i­na­tions run wild in our attempts to fig­ure out ways to make the life of the judi­cia­ry mis­er­able, to the extent you push back against Trump.”

    A FOIA from Amer­i­ca First

    The Amer­i­ca First Legal Foun­da­tion filed the suit on April 22.

    It came after the group first filed a FOIA request in July 2024 to the Judi­cial Con­fer­ence of the Unit­ed States and the Admin­is­tra­tive Office of U.S. Courts ask­ing for “all records refer­ring or relat­ing to (1) Clarence Thomas or (2) Samuel Ali­to” and all com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Sen. Shel­don White­house (D‑RI) and Rep. Hank John­son (D‑GA), start­ing in April 2023. Both Democ­rats have led inves­ti­ga­tions into the influ­ence of wealthy polit­i­cal donors’ mon­ey on the court, the con­ser­v­a­tive legal movement’s long-term plan to cap­ture the high court, and alleged eth­i­cal vio­la­tions by Jus­tices Thomas and Ali­to. The Judi­cial Con­fer­ence, which is com­posed of senior fed­er­al judges and oper­ates via an array of com­mit­tees, sets pol­i­cy for the judi­cia­ry.

    Ethan V. Tor­rey, legal coun­sel of the Supreme Court, reject­ed the request in a Sep­tem­ber 2024 let­ter, per an exhib­it filed along with the com­plaint.

    Daniel Z. Epstein filed the FOIA request, and is list­ed as lead attor­ney on the law­suit. Epstein cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents Pres­i­dent Trump in his per­son­al capac­i­ty in the law­suit against CBS over an Octo­ber 60 Min­utes inter­view with Kamala Har­ris.

    Stephen Miller, the long­time Trump aide, found­ed the Amer­i­ca First Legal Foun­da­tion in April 2021, describ­ing it as the “long-await­ed answer to the ACLU.” Over the next few years, the group suc­ceed­ed in slow­ing down or block­ing sev­er­al Biden admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies, often by fil­ing in the North­ern Dis­trict of Texas’s Amar­il­lo cour­t­house, which is presided over by a judge who is notably recep­tive to con­ser­v­a­tive argu­ments. Its pri­or­i­ties often match those of Trump’s sec­ond term; it attacked diver­si­ty pro­grams, pro­tec­tions for LGBT stu­dents, immi­gra­tion, and sup­posed “wok­e­ness” in cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. Miller him­self has been a pub­lic dri­ving force in the most aggres­sive and law­less ele­ments of the sec­ond Trump administration’s effort to bull­doze through civ­il lib­er­ties in the name of increas­ing the tem­po of depor­ta­tions.

    In an email after pub­li­ca­tion, an Amer­i­ca First Legal spokesper­son cit­ed a 1991 9th Cir­cuit deci­sion in a case brought by a fed­er­al judge seek­ing to force the Admin­is­tra­tive Office to pay for a pri­vate defense attor­ney he want­ed to hire in a law­suit brought over his work as a judge. In that rul­ing, the 9th Cir­cuit found that AO was a “non-Arti­cle III adjunct,” akin to a mag­is­trate judge or spe­cial mas­ter: a body that serves the courts, but is not a court itself. Amer­i­ca First Legal didn’t imme­di­ate­ly reply to a fol­low-up ques­tion from TPM about whether it could address its claim that the Judi­cial Con­fer­ence is also an inde­pen­dent agency of the exec­u­tive branch.

    ...

    Legal experts sug­gest­ed to TPM that the FOIA piece is some­thing of a tro­jan horse. The Judi­cial Con­fer­ence and Admin­is­tra­tive Office’s denial of the FOIA request pro­vides stand­ing to sue, and there­by ask a fed­er­al judge to declare that the two judi­cial bod­ies “are sub­ject to the FOIA as inde­pen­dent agen­cies with­in the exec­u­tive branch.”

    In terms of impor­tance, a judge find­ing that core parts of the judi­cia­ry are inde­pen­dent agen­cies of the exec­u­tive branch would dwarf any FOIA mate­r­i­al Amer­i­ca First Legal might receive. The law­suit itself seems to acknowl­edge this. At one point, in lan­guage chan­nel­ing that of a pro­tec­tion rack­et, Amer­i­ca First Legal observes that “Fed­er­al courts rely on the exec­u­tive branch for facil­i­ty man­age­ment and secu­ri­ty. Fed­er­al judges, as offi­cers of the courts, need resources to ful­fill their con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tions.”

    New extreme for an old the­o­ry

    There is a lev­el of irony here.

    For years, con­ser­v­a­tive legal schol­ars have pushed the idea that pow­er in the exec­u­tive is uni­tary, grant­i­ng the Pres­i­dent the abil­i­ty to exert direct con­trol over all fed­er­al offi­cials who car­ry out fed­er­al law. It opens the door to a lev­el of pres­i­den­tial pow­er that hasn’t been seen until this admin­is­tra­tion, and which the Supreme Court may rat­i­fy this term.

    This law­suit asks the judi­cia­ry to extend that log­ic to its own oper­a­tions, poten­tial­ly deal­ing a fatal blow to judi­cial inde­pen­dence.

    This argu­ment reach­es a provoca­tive peak when it comes to the Judi­cial Con­fer­ence of the Unit­ed States. There, the Chief Jus­tice of the Supreme Court can appoint mem­bers to com­mit­tees. The law­suit says that this means Roberts may, at times, fall under the President’s pow­er —for FOIA pur­pos­es, of course.

    “Accord­ing­ly, if the Chief Jus­tice does indeed have this pow­er to appoint offi­cers, then he must be act­ing as an agency head, sub­ject­ing the Judi­cial Con­fer­ence to the FOIA,” the suit reads.

    Melis­sa Mur­ray, a pro­fes­sor at NYU Law, point­ed out that the suit rais­es a num­ber of bizarre sce­nar­ios. If it makes it to the Supreme Court, “does the Chief Jus­tice have to recuse him­self?” she asked.

    “It does seem like pok­ing the bear,” she added.

    As of this writ­ing, lawyers for Roberts and the U.S. Courts direc­tor have not appeared on the dock­et. In oth­er cas­es filed against parts of the judi­cia­ry, the Jus­tice Department’s Civ­il Divi­sion has appoint­ed attor­neys.

    ...

    This doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that fed­er­al cour­t­hous­es will soon start serv­ing Trump steaks, or that Kid Rock will be called on to pro­vide filler sound dur­ing side­bar ses­sions.

    Blake Emer­son, a pro­fes­sor at UCLA Law, called the suit’s claims “out­landish,” and said that if it some­how suc­ceed­ed, it would grant the White House con­trol over “the means by which the judi­cial branch func­tion­al­ly oper­ates.”

    O’Connell, the Stan­ford Law Pro­fes­sor, described it to TPM as more of an attempt to tell a sto­ry about “how much pow­er they think the exec­u­tive should have” than a seri­ous legal claim.

    “There is no chance that this will pre­vail,” she said.

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump Allies Sue John Roberts To Give White House Con­trol Of Court Sys­tem” By Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 05/02/2025

    “In a lit­tle-noticed law­suit filed last week, the Amer­i­ca First Legal Foun­da­tion sued Chief Jus­tice John Roberts and the head of the Admin­is­tra­tive Office of U.S. Courts.

    John Roberts just got MAGA-sued. This might not be how he was hop­ing the Con­ser­v­a­tive move­men­t’s long-desired sack­ing of US insti­tu­tions would go, but this is how it’s going. With Stephen Miller’s Amer­i­ca First Legal Foun­da­tion (AFLF) lead­ing the way. But, of course, this isn’t real­ly an AFLF law­suit. This is a Pres­i­dent Trump law­suit, being waged on his behalf by AFLF. Stephen Miller’s pow­er is derived the fact that he speaks and acts for Trump and every­one knows it. Sim­i­lar­ly, while it’s basi­cal­ly a nui­sance law­suit giv­en the spe­cious­ness of the legal claim that’s not the point. It’s a show of defi­ance and pow­er. Pres­i­dent Trump’s defi­ance and pow­er. The bla­tant spe­cious­ness is the point. That’s why we should­n’t be sur­prised to see lan­guage in the AFLF claim that seems to almost have a ‘pro­tec­tion rack­et’ feel, with the obser­va­tion that, “Fed­er­al courts rely on the exec­u­tive branch for facil­i­ty man­age­ment and secu­ri­ty. Fed­er­al judges, as offi­cers of the courts, need resources to ful­fill their con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tions.” A pro­tec­tion rock­et feel is what they’re going for giv­en that the AFL’s pro­tec­tion rack­et threats are real­ly Pres­i­dent Trump’s pro­tec­tion rack­et threats:

    ...
    The case osten­si­bly pro­ceeds as a FOIA law­suit, with the Trump-aligned group seek­ing access to judi­cia­ry records. But, in doing so, it asks the courts to cede mas­sive pow­er to the White House: the bod­ies that make court pol­i­cy and man­age the judiciary’s day-to-day oper­a­tions should be con­sid­ered inde­pen­dent agen­cies of the exec­u­tive branch, the suit argues, giv­ing the Pres­i­dent, under the con­ser­v­a­tive legal movement’s the­o­ries, the pow­er to appoint and dis­miss peo­ple in key roles.

    Mul­ti­ple legal schol­ars and attor­neys TPM spoke with react­ed to the suit with a mix­ture of dis­may, dis­dain and laugh­ter. Though the core legal claim is invalid, they said, the suit seems to be a part of the fight that the admin­is­tra­tion launched and has con­tin­ued to esca­late against the courts over the past sev­er­al months: ignor­ing a Supreme Court order to facil­i­tate the return of a wrong­ly removed Sal­vado­ran man, pro­vid­ing min­i­mal notice to peo­ple sub­ject to the Alien Ene­mies Act, flaunt­ing an aggres­sive crim­i­nal case against a state court judge.

    ...

    These are all facets of an esca­lat­ing cam­paign to erode the inde­pen­dence of the judi­cia­ry, experts told TPM. The law­suit demon­strates anoth­er prong of it: close allies of the pres­i­dent are effec­tive­ly ask­ing the courts to rule that they should be man­aged by the White House.

    ...

    In terms of impor­tance, a judge find­ing that core parts of the judi­cia­ry are inde­pen­dent agen­cies of the exec­u­tive branch would dwarf any FOIA mate­r­i­al Amer­i­ca First Legal might receive. The law­suit itself seems to acknowl­edge this. At one point, in lan­guage chan­nel­ing that of a pro­tec­tion rack­et, Amer­i­ca First Legal observes that “Fed­er­al courts rely on the exec­u­tive branch for facil­i­ty man­age­ment and secu­ri­ty. Fed­er­al judges, as offi­cers of the courts, need resources to ful­fill their con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tions.”

    ...

    For years, con­ser­v­a­tive legal schol­ars have pushed the idea that pow­er in the exec­u­tive is uni­tary, grant­i­ng the Pres­i­dent the abil­i­ty to exert direct con­trol over all fed­er­al offi­cials who car­ry out fed­er­al law. It opens the door to a lev­el of pres­i­den­tial pow­er that hasn’t been seen until this admin­is­tra­tion, and which the Supreme Court may rat­i­fy this term.

    This law­suit asks the judi­cia­ry to extend that log­ic to its own oper­a­tions, poten­tial­ly deal­ing a fatal blow to judi­cial inde­pen­dence.

    This argu­ment reach­es a provoca­tive peak when it comes to the Judi­cial Con­fer­ence of the Unit­ed States. There, the Chief Jus­tice of the Supreme Court can appoint mem­bers to com­mit­tees. The law­suit says that this means Roberts may, at times, fall under the President’s pow­er —for FOIA pur­pos­es, of course.

    “Accord­ing­ly, if the Chief Jus­tice does indeed have this pow­er to appoint offi­cers, then he must be act­ing as an agency head, sub­ject­ing the Judi­cial Con­fer­ence to the FOIA,” the suit reads.

    Melis­sa Mur­ray, a pro­fes­sor at NYU Law, point­ed out that the suit rais­es a num­ber of bizarre sce­nar­ios. If it makes it to the Supreme Court, “does the Chief Jus­tice have to recuse him­self?” she asked.

    “It does seem like pok­ing the bear,” she added.
    ...

    And note how the orig­i­nal FOIA request from July 2024 that evolved into the cur­rent exec­u­tive branch pow­er-grab only began in response to Democ­rats in Con­gress inves­ti­gat­ing the gross cor­rup­tion of Supreme Court jus­tices Thomas and Ali­to that had been report­ed on so exten­sive­ly by ProP­ub­li­ca. And Daniel Z. Epstein, Don­ald Trump’s per­son attor­ney in the CBS-inter­view pow­er-grab nui­sance law­suit, is the attor­ney who filed this pow­er-grab ‘FOIA request’. The faux-right­eous indig­na­tion in this law­suit is ulti­mate­ly Pres­i­dent Trump’s faux-right­eous indig­na­tion:

    ...
    It came after the group first filed a FOIA request in July 2024 to the Judi­cial Con­fer­ence of the Unit­ed States and the Admin­is­tra­tive Office of U.S. Courts ask­ing for “all records refer­ring or relat­ing to (1) Clarence Thomas or (2) Samuel Ali­to” and all com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Sen. Shel­don White­house (D‑RI) and Rep. Hank John­son (D‑GA), start­ing in April 2023. Both Democ­rats have led inves­ti­ga­tions into the influ­ence of wealthy polit­i­cal donors’ mon­ey on the court, the con­ser­v­a­tive legal movement’s long-term plan to cap­ture the high court, and alleged eth­i­cal vio­la­tions by Jus­tices Thomas and Ali­to. The Judi­cial Con­fer­ence, which is com­posed of senior fed­er­al judges and oper­ates via an array of com­mit­tees, sets pol­i­cy for the judi­cia­ry.

    Ethan V. Tor­rey, legal coun­sel of the Supreme Court, reject­ed the request in a Sep­tem­ber 2024 let­ter, per an exhib­it filed along with the com­plaint.

    Daniel Z. Epstein filed the FOIA request, and is list­ed as lead attor­ney on the law­suit. Epstein cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents Pres­i­dent Trump in his per­son­al capac­i­ty in the law­suit against CBS over an Octo­ber 60 Min­utes inter­view with Kamala Har­ris.
    ...

    Except, as the fol­low­ing Nation arti­cle from May of 2024 reminds us, while the AFLF is clear­ly close­ly aligned with Don­ald Trump and the MAGA agen­da, Don­ald Trump is not the AFL’s exclu­sive mas­ter. The dark mon­ey mega-donor net­work that has long financed and direct­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment in the US — the agen­da of the Koch net­work, the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, and Leonard Leo — is financ­ing and guid­ing the AFLF too, with the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI) tak­ing the dark-mon­ey lead. And as the arti­cle describes, when we’re look­ing at the actions of the CPI and the many new MAGA-themed insti­tu­tions its heav­i­ly financed in recent years, we are effec­tive­ly look­ing at a strat­e­gy of split­ting the Her­itage Foun­da­tion into 7 sep­a­rate ‘think tanks’ that are all ‘inde­pen­dent­ly’ work­ing towards the same goal and fre­quent­ly join­ing forces. It’s like Her­itage Foun­da­tion Voltron:

    The Nation

    The Right’s Part­ners in Weaponized Pol­i­cy­mak­ing

    How Jim Demint’s think-tank net­work is set­ting the stage for a sec­ond Trump term.

    Chris Lewis and Toni Aguilar Rosen­thal
    May 8, 2024

    In remark­ably short order, Don­ald Trump has trans­formed from the face of a hard-right insur­gency in the GOP to the care­tak­er of the party’s future. This change has been any­thing but acci­den­tal; it’s the result of strate­gi­cal­ly deployed donor sup­port, the MAGA takeover of key insti­tu­tions such as the Repub­li­can Nation­al Committee—and, in the nexus of these shifts, the rise of a new pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment made over in Trump’s polit­i­cal image.
    One key orga­ni­za­tion has presided over this devel­op­ment is the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI), a net­work of close­ly affil­i­at­ed think tanks, legal groups, and train­ing cen­ters ded­i­cat­ed to the thor­ough makeover of the fed­er­al government—and by exten­sion, the Amer­i­can social order—to advance a hard-right, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da. The CPI, found­ed in 2017, announces that its prin­ci­pal goal is to “deliv­er real, tan­gi­ble results for the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. Our team arms, trains, and unites con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton and across the coun­try to take ground and win.” It’s amassed a $36 mil­lion annu­al bud­get to pur­sue this agenda—mostly from big-tick­et con­ser­v­a­tive donors such as the Koch net­work and Richard Uih­lein. CPI was in the news ear­li­er this week when a New York Times inves­ti­ga­tion found that, since 2021, the group had dis­bursed $3.2 mil­lion to con­trac­tors who were either mem­bers of its senior lead­er­ship team or their rel­a­tives.

    This sort of self-deal­ing is quite com­mon in the age of dark-mon­ey financ­ing of polit­i­cal initiatives—but it’s more strik­ing in the CPI’s case because of the group’s gate­keep­er role in bring­ing tra­di­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es in line with the pri­or­i­ties of MAGA world. The CPI’s direc­tor and founder is Jim DeMint, the for­mer South Car­oli­na sen­a­tor and pre­vi­ous head of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar right-wing think tank that has helped shape the GOP pol­i­cy agen­da since Ronald Rea­gan came to pow­er. In his role at the CPI, DeMint has effec­tive­ly bro­ken down and expand­ed the Her­itage mod­el into a net­work of issue- and tac­tic-spe­cif­ic satel­lite oper­a­tions, rang­ing from per­son­nel recruit­ment shops to lit­i­ga­tion clear­ing­hous­es. The sev­en groups under the CPI umbrel­la main­tain their own exec­u­tive boards, staffs, and mis­sions, but remain focused on real­iz­ing key ele­ments of the MAGA agen­da.

    Take the best known group in the CPI’s orbit, the Amer­i­can Account­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion (AAF). The group has mount­ed a long series of smear cam­paigns that have suc­cess­ful­ly top­pled Biden nom­i­nees to key exec­u­tive branch posts. The AAF tar­get­ed the nom­i­na­tion of Sarah Bloom Raskin, the spouse of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamie Raskin, to the Fed­er­al Reserve Board with a push to pub­li­cize to oil and gas inter­ests her utter­ly benign com­mit­ments to cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion and clean ener­gy. The AAF was also instru­men­tal in the racist and sex­ist char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion of Saule Omaro­va when she was nom­i­nat­ed to be comp­trol­ler of the cur­ren­cy. And the group helped spear­head the homo­pho­bic and misog­y­nis­tic attacks on Gigi Sohn when she was nom­i­nat­ed to the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion. Each of these can­di­dates was com­mit­ted to advanc­ing poli­cies that serve the wider pub­lic interest—which posed a poten­tial threat to the inter­ests of the CPI’s nexus of bil­lion­aire fun­ders and cor­po­rate back­ers. At the end of the AAF smear cam­paigns, each with­drew their name from con­sid­er­a­tion.

    ...

    Oth­er CPI-affil­i­at­ed groups pur­sue a lit­i­ga­tion strat­e­gy to fur­ther right-wing causes—an effec­tive means of cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the right’s ongo­ing makeover of the fed­er­al court sys­tem. Often part­ner­ing with high-pro­file Repub­li­can attor­neys gen­er­al, Amer­i­ca First Legal (AFL) is led by known white suprema­cists such as the fierce­ly nativist Trump con­sigliere Stephen Miller and Gene Hamil­ton, anoth­er for­mer Trump offi­cial who worked tire­less­ly to end the pop­u­lar pro­gram to phase in cit­i­zen­ship for the US-born chil­dren of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. From their perch­es atop the AFL, Miller and Hamil­ton have fought to thwart incre­men­tal bor­der reforms under Biden while push­ing to restore the bru­tal bor­der crack­downs advanced by Trump. The group has mount­ed key test cas­es to roll back basic rights at the bor­der, expand state-lev­el denials of repro­duc­tive free­dom, and chal­lenge core pro­tec­tions against dis­crim­i­na­tion for queer and trans-iden­ti­fy­ing peo­ple in the fields of med­i­cine and edu­ca­tion.

    Mean­while, the CPI’s Cen­ter for Renew­ing America—another part­ner in Project 2025—is a far-right think tank run by Rus­sell Vought, Don­ald Trump’s for­mer direc­tor of the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get and a diehard Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist. The CRA close­ly fol­lows Vought’s own port­fo­lio of hard-right pol­i­cy inter­ests, includ­ing attacks on crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion ini­tia­tives and on vac­cine man­dates, and dra­con­ian crack­downs on immi­gra­tion.

    ...

    Yet the CPI has proven most effec­tive in spread­ing its influ­ence indi­rect­ly via its net­work of advo­ca­cy groups. This frac­tured mod­el allows the net­work to pur­sue short-term and long-term goals of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Its mem­ber groups can move nim­bly through the exec­u­tive branch, Con­gress, and the courts to gut long-estab­lished reg­u­la­to­ry regimes, while its lead pol­i­cy wonks and lit­i­ga­tors can car­ry out what the­o­rists of New Left pol­i­tics used to call “the long march through the institutions”—ensuring that true-believ­ing appa­ratchiks of the right take per­ma­nent con­trol of the admin­is­tra­tive state.

    The Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, for instance, recent­ly released a pol­i­cy paper encour­ag­ing state gov­er­nors to take over the country’s south­ern bor­der, and the cor­re­spond­ing suite of poli­cies over­see­ing bor­der enforce­ment, via, their states’ nation­al guards. That pol­i­cy inter­ven­tion was cal­cu­lat­ed to help legit­imize Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott’s bid to claim uni­lat­er­al sov­er­eign­ty over bor­der enforce­ment. Anoth­er CPI group took the baton from there, with sup­port­ing state­ments issued by State Free­dom Cau­cus Net­work affil­i­ates, such as the Ida­ho Free­dom Cau­cus. Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton mount­ed the legal defense of Abbott’s pow­er play—a nat­ur­al exten­sion of Paxton’s ear­li­er col­lab­o­ra­tions with Amer­i­ca First Legal Ser­vices to attack even piece­meal efforts to reform immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy.

    ...

    All of which serves as a like­ly pre­view of a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Inside play­ers like the CRA’s Vought and 2020 coup plot­ter Cle­ta Mitchell are already seek­ing to use the CPI’s impri­matur to regain clout in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Long before Project 2025 made its debut this past win­ter, the CPI was stak­ing out the seri­ous busi­ness of com­man­deer­ing the shock troops to bring the long-term Trump agen­da to fruition.

    ———-

    “The Right’s Part­ners in Weaponized Pol­i­cy­mak­ing” by Chris Lewis and Toni Aguilar Rosen­thal; The Nation; 05/08/2024

    “This sort of self-deal­ing is quite com­mon in the age of dark-mon­ey financ­ing of polit­i­cal initiatives—but it’s more strik­ing in the CPI’s case because of the group’s gate­keep­er role in bring­ing tra­di­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es in line with the pri­or­i­ties of MAGA world. The CPI’s direc­tor and founder is Jim DeMint, the for­mer South Car­oli­na sen­a­tor and pre­vi­ous head of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar right-wing think tank that has helped shape the GOP pol­i­cy agen­da since Ronald Rea­gan came to pow­er. In his role at the CPI, DeMint has effec­tive­ly bro­ken down and expand­ed the Her­itage mod­el into a net­work of issue- and tac­tic-spe­cif­ic satel­lite oper­a­tions, rang­ing from per­son­nel recruit­ment shops to lit­i­ga­tion clear­ing­hous­es. The sev­en groups under the CPI umbrel­la main­tain their own exec­u­tive boards, staffs, and mis­sions, but remain focused on real­iz­ing key ele­ments of the MAGA agen­da.”

    For­mer Her­itage head — and CNP mem­ber — Jim DeMint has effec­tive­ly bro­ken down and expand­ed the Her­itage mod­el into a net­work of issue- and tac­tic-spe­cif­ic satel­lite oper­a­tions, rang­ing from per­son­nel recruit­ment shops to lit­i­ga­tion clear­ing­hous­es. Her­itage Voltron. Each of the think tanks work­ing in con­cert, play­ing their role, with the AFLF arguably serv­ing as the Voltron ‘head’ because its the one tasked with being the legal voice:

    ...
    One key orga­ni­za­tion has presided over this devel­op­ment is the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI), a net­work of close­ly affil­i­at­ed think tanks, legal groups, and train­ing cen­ters ded­i­cat­ed to the thor­ough makeover of the fed­er­al government—and by exten­sion, the Amer­i­can social order—to advance a hard-right, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da. The CPI, found­ed in 2017, announces that its prin­ci­pal goal is to “deliv­er real, tan­gi­ble results for the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. Our team arms, trains, and unites con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton and across the coun­try to take ground and win.” It’s amassed a $36 mil­lion annu­al bud­get to pur­sue this agenda—mostly from big-tick­et con­ser­v­a­tive donors such as the Koch net­work and Richard Uih­lein. CPI was in the news ear­li­er this week when a New York Times inves­ti­ga­tion found that, since 2021, the group had dis­bursed $3.2 mil­lion to con­trac­tors who were either mem­bers of its senior lead­er­ship team or their rel­a­tives.

    ...

    Oth­er CPI-affil­i­at­ed groups pur­sue a lit­i­ga­tion strat­e­gy to fur­ther right-wing causes—an effec­tive means of cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the right’s ongo­ing makeover of the fed­er­al court sys­tem. Often part­ner­ing with high-pro­file Repub­li­can attor­neys gen­er­al, Amer­i­ca First Legal (AFL) is led by known white suprema­cists such as the fierce­ly nativist Trump con­sigliere Stephen Miller and Gene Hamil­ton, anoth­er for­mer Trump offi­cial who worked tire­less­ly to end the pop­u­lar pro­gram to phase in cit­i­zen­ship for the US-born chil­dren of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. From their perch­es atop the AFL, Miller and Hamil­ton have fought to thwart incre­men­tal bor­der reforms under Biden while push­ing to restore the bru­tal bor­der crack­downs advanced by Trump. The group has mount­ed key test cas­es to roll back basic rights at the bor­der, expand state-lev­el denials of repro­duc­tive free­dom, and chal­lenge core pro­tec­tions against dis­crim­i­na­tion for queer and trans-iden­ti­fy­ing peo­ple in the fields of med­i­cine and edu­ca­tion.
    ...

    And with Russ Vought — key Project 2025 archi­tect — now play­ing a lead­ing role in imple­ment­ing the plan as a core focus of Pres­i­dent Trump’s gov­ern­men­tal blitzkrieg, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that much of the pol­i­cy agen­da AFLF is fight­ing for in the courts was an agen­da heav­i­ly craft­ed by Vought’s Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA), a key pol­i­cy arm of the CPI net­work. It’s a dark-mon­ey bil­lion­aire-financed group effort, with both Rus­sell Vought and Stephen Miller play­ing lead­ing roles:

    ...
    Mean­while, the CPI’s Cen­ter for Renew­ing America—another part­ner in Project 2025—is a far-right think tank run by Rus­sell Vought, Don­ald Trump’s for­mer direc­tor of the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get and a diehard Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist. The CRA close­ly fol­lows Vought’s own port­fo­lio of hard-right pol­i­cy inter­ests, includ­ing attacks on crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion ini­tia­tives and on vac­cine man­dates, and dra­con­ian crack­downs on immi­gra­tion.

    ...

    All of which serves as a like­ly pre­view of a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Inside play­ers like the CRA’s Vought and 2020 coup plot­ter Cle­ta Mitchell are already seek­ing to use the CPI’s impri­matur to regain clout in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Long before Project 2025 made its debut this past win­ter, the CPI was stak­ing out the seri­ous busi­ness of com­man­deer­ing the shock troops to bring the long-term Trump agen­da to fruition.
    ...

    And as the arti­cle also notes, the CPI’s over­all strat­e­gy includes more than just break­ing the Her­itage Foun­da­tion mod­el into a set of think tanks. Anoth­er core ele­ment of this strat­e­gy is rely­ing on the courts in Texas, where the judge-shop­ping is par­tic­u­lar­ly easy those with a MAGA agen­da. Espe­cial­ly when that agen­da is craft­ed to advance the agen­da of pow­er­ful Texas Repub­li­cans like Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton. The CRA knows which fights to pick and where to pick them:

    ...
    Yet the CPI has proven most effec­tive in spread­ing its influ­ence indi­rect­ly via its net­work of advo­ca­cy groups. This frac­tured mod­el allows the net­work to pur­sue short-term and long-term goals of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Its mem­ber groups can move nim­bly through the exec­u­tive branch, Con­gress, and the courts to gut long-estab­lished reg­u­la­to­ry regimes, while its lead pol­i­cy wonks and lit­i­ga­tors can car­ry out what the­o­rists of New Left pol­i­tics used to call “the long march through the institutions”—ensuring that true-believ­ing appa­ratchiks of the right take per­ma­nent con­trol of the admin­is­tra­tive state.

    The Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, for instance, recent­ly released a pol­i­cy paper encour­ag­ing state gov­er­nors to take over the country’s south­ern bor­der, and the cor­re­spond­ing suite of poli­cies over­see­ing bor­der enforce­ment, via, their states’ nation­al guards. That pol­i­cy inter­ven­tion was cal­cu­lat­ed to help legit­imize Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott’s bid to claim uni­lat­er­al sov­er­eign­ty over bor­der enforce­ment. Anoth­er CPI group took the baton from there, with sup­port­ing state­ments issued by State Free­dom Cau­cus Net­work affil­i­ates, such as the Ida­ho Free­dom Cau­cus. Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton mount­ed the legal defense of Abbott’s pow­er play—a nat­ur­al exten­sion of Paxton’s ear­li­er col­lab­o­ra­tions with Amer­i­ca First Legal Ser­vices to attack even piece­meal efforts to reform immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy.
    ...

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing Decem­ber 2022 Wash­ing­ton Post piece about the Texas-based strat­e­gy behind the AFLF’s ‘anti-white big­otry’ legal cru­sade. A cru­sade that includ­ed nui­sance law­suits like the law­suit to end an aid pro­gram for minor­i­ty farm­ers because it exclud­ed “white eth­nic groups that have unques­tion­ably suf­fered eth­nic prej­u­dice,” refer­ring to Irish, Ital­ian, Ger­man and oth­er Euro­pean immi­grants and Jews. A law­suit waged on behalf of Sid Miller, Tex­as­’s white Repub­li­can Trump-endorsed Agri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er. It’s trolling, or was at the time. Now it’s pol­i­cy:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    How a Trump-allied group fight­ing ‘anti-white big­otry’ beats Biden in court

    Amer­i­ca First Legal was found­ed last year by Stephen Miller, the archi­tect of Trump’s immi­grant fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion pol­i­cy

    By Beth Rein­hard and Josh Dawsey
    Decem­ber 12, 2022

    The deal in ear­ly 2021 was hailed by advo­cates for Black farm­ers as the most sig­nif­i­cant piece of leg­is­la­tion since the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964 — about $4 bil­lion in Pres­i­dent Biden’s mas­sive pan­dem­ic stim­u­lus pack­age to rec­ti­fy decades of dis­crim­i­na­tion. Minor­i­ty farm­ers began invest­ing in new machin­ery and oth­er improve­ments, antic­i­pat­ing tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in gov­ern­ment aid.

    But today, the land­mark deal on behalf of his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged farm­ers is dead — suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged in court by a fledg­ling con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion that argued the pro­gram racial­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against White farm­ers.

    Amer­i­ca First Legal is head­ed by Stephen Miller, the archi­tect of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s crack­down on ille­gal immi­grants. While AFL lacks the name recog­ni­tion and finan­cial heft of many con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ter­parts, it has racked up notable court vic­to­ries over the Biden admin­is­tra­tion. Cast­ing itself as “the long-await­ed answer to the ACLU,” AFL has weaponized the griev­ance pol­i­tics embod­ied by Trump’s “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” move­ment through dozens of fed­er­al law­suits, chal­leng­ing efforts to rem­e­dy racial dis­par­i­ties, sup­port LGBTQ stu­dents and expand the pool of ear­ly vot­ers.

    AFL-backed suits helped doom a $29 bil­lion pro­gram that pri­or­i­tized strug­gling female and minor­i­ty-owned restau­rants last year, and last week, a coun­cil cre­at­ed by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion that con­ser­v­a­tive par­ents groups viewed as par­ti­san. AFL has won in part by con­sis­tent­ly fil­ing law­suits in a con­ser­v­a­tive-friend­ly judi­cial dis­trict in Texas and tak­ing advan­tage of a larg­er fed­er­al court sys­tem revamped by Trump’s pre­dom­i­nant­ly con­ser­v­a­tive nom­i­nees.

    ...

    “Many of these law­suits are cen­tered on mak­ing sure that White peo­ple remain in con­trol and con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from unearned priv­i­leges, and on main­tain­ing the sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­to­ry poli­cies that have harmed Black peo­ple and oth­er peo­ple of col­or for gen­er­a­tions,” said David Hino­josa, an attor­ney with the Lawyers’ Com­mit­tee for Civ­il Rights Under Law. “To argue that White men are being pushed to the back of the line is unfound­ed and ridicu­lous. What they’re being asked to do is share a place in line with oth­er peo­ple who do not look like them.”

    In an inter­view, Miller said AFL is fill­ing a void in the con­ser­v­a­tive legal move­ment by chal­leng­ing what he termed “a hyper­ra­cial­iza­tion of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal and cor­po­rate life.” Pro­grams seek­ing to rem­e­dy past injus­tices and boost his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged groups are pun­ish­ing peo­ple based on their skin col­or, he said.

    “I believe that the equi­ty agen­da rep­re­sents one of the sin­gle great­est threats to the sur­vival of our con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem,” he said.

    The group’s mis­sion was fueled by more than $6.3 mil­lion in dona­tions last year, recent tax fil­ings show, includ­ing about $1.3 mil­lion from the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, whose lead­er­ship includes key fig­ures in the effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion. Steve Wynn, the casi­no mag­nate who resigned as finance chair of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee in 2018 amid alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, is an AFL donor, accord­ing to two peo­ple famil­iar with the group’s work who were not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about its fundrais­ing. Wynn, who has denied the alle­ga­tions, declined to com­ment.

    AFL is part of a con­stel­la­tion of groups led by Trump allies that rep­re­sent an admin­is­tra­tion-in-wait­ing upon his poten­tial return to the White House. AFL’s all-White, all-male board includes loy­al­ists who recent­ly trekked to Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s 2024 cam­paign announce­ment, includ­ing Miller, who helped write the speech, for­mer Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get head Rus­sell Vought and for­mer act­ing attor­ney gen­er­al Matthew G. Whitak­er. Miller, who is expect­ed to work for the 2024 cam­paign, received $110,762 from AFL last year, about $134,000 from his Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal com­mit­tee since Trump left office, and is slat­ed to be paid about $80,000 by the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion as part of Trump’s post-pres­i­den­cy funds, gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments show.

    In the lead-up to the midterm elec­tion, AFL also bankrolled a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar ad cam­paign that includ­ed inflam­ma­to­ry radio and TV spots demand­ing an end to “anti-white big­otry” and accus­ing the White House, busi­ness­es and uni­ver­si­ties of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against White peo­ple.

    Trump crit­ics see AFL as the exten­sion of a White House that fre­quent­ly stoked racial divi­sion and a for­mer pres­i­dent who last month dined at his Flori­da home with two well-known anti­semites.

    “The Trump admin­is­tra­tion didn’t care about peo­ple like me, it was for White men, and that’s what this group rep­re­sents and is fight­ing for,” said John Boyd, pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Black Farm­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, which inter­vened in the AFL-backed law­suit chal­leng­ing the aid to minor­i­ty farm­ers. “It’s con­tin­u­ing the lega­cy of divi­sive­ness.”

    Miller, though, argues that AFL is fight­ing against “big­otry and insan­i­ty.”

    “I think that it is inescapably true that there is insid­i­ous and explic­it dis­crim­i­na­tion against White Amer­i­cans, Asian Amer­i­cans, Indi­an Amer­i­cans and Jew­ish Amer­i­cans based on their skin col­or and their ances­try,” he said.

    Accord­ing to Trump advis­ers who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions, Miller stays in close touch with Trump, con­tributes to his speech­es and gave sig­nif­i­cant input on his endorse­ments in the midterm elec­tion, where many Trump-backed can­di­dates who reject­ed Biden’s 2020 vic­to­ry and took oth­er far-right posi­tions were defeat­ed. Miller repeat­ed­ly com­plained dur­ing the cam­paign that Repub­li­can can­di­dates were not talk­ing enough about cul­ture war issues and immi­gra­tion and focus­ing too heav­i­ly on an eco­nom­ic mes­sage, peo­ple who spoke to him said. Amer­i­ca “is the apex of achieve­ment of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion,” Miller said, with “a her­itage to be jeal­ous­ly guard­ed.”

    Miller found­ed AFL in ear­ly 2021, as a new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent Biden issued a flur­ry of exec­u­tive orders dis­man­tling the for­mer president’s nativist agen­da. Miller was involved in poli­cies fer­vid­ly chal­lenged by civ­il rights groups that banned immi­gra­tion from sev­er­al Mus­lim-major­i­ty coun­tries and sep­a­rat­ed immi­grant chil­dren from their par­ents.

    “Dur­ing the four years of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion — espe­cial­ly in the are­na of immi­gra­tion — every sin­gle exec­u­tive action, no mat­ter how rig­or­ous­ly law­ful, was sub­ject­ed to a nev­er-end­ing stream of activist lit­i­ga­tion,” Miller said. “One of my goals when I left the admin­is­tra­tion was to try to help and inspire and coor­di­nate a larg­er legal move­ment on the con­ser­v­a­tive side of the spec­trum to do the same.”

    AFL was among sev­er­al groups incu­bat­ed in the first year of the Biden admin­is­tra­tion by the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, a cen­tral hub of the GOP’s pro-Trump wing. CPI describes AFL as a “part­ner” on its web­site, and three AFL board mem­bers, includ­ing Mark Mead­ows, who served as a chief of staff to the for­mer pres­i­dent, also have top CPI posts.

    Nei­ther of these tax-exempt groups is required to dis­close its donors to the pub­lic, though fed­er­al cam­paign records show Trump’s polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, Save Amer­i­ca, donat­ed $1 mil­lion to CPI last year. In its 2021 annu­al report, CPI called AFL “the sling that hard­work­ing, patri­ot­ic Amer­i­cans can use to fight back against the abu­sive Goliath of the Biden Administration’s Deep State.”

    CPI’s rev­enue explod­ed last year to $45 mil­lion, up from about $7 mil­lion in 2020, accord­ing to its lat­est tax fil­ing, obtained by Accountable.US and the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy. Its $1.3 mil­lion dona­tion to AFL was the largest of eight grants that it made last year. Tax records also show AFL last year received $25,000 from DonorsTrust, a non­prof­it that con­tributes to a num­ber of right-wing caus­es, and $10,000 from Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance, which favors a con­ven­tion of states to lim­it the pow­er of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

    ...

    A Wash­ing­ton Post review found at least four dozen AFL-backed law­suits filed in fed­er­al courts around the coun­try since April 2021, some of which have received lit­tle atten­tion out­side of right-wing media.

    To attack Biden’s aid to dis­ad­van­taged, minor­i­ty farm­ers, Miller’s group made a brash choice for lead plain­tiff: Sid Miller, the Trump-endorsed agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er of Texas, who has ques­tioned Biden’s dire warn­ings about white suprema­cy and com­pared Syr­i­an refugees to rat­tlesnakes in social media posts.

    Sid Miller did not respond to inter­view requests. The law­suit was lat­er amend­ed to include four White plain­tiffs who, unlike Sid Miller, actu­al­ly car­ried fed­er­al farm­ing loans, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

    The suit argued that the debt relief approved by Con­gress was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it exclud­ed “white eth­nic groups that have unques­tion­ably suf­fered eth­nic prej­u­dice,” refer­ring to Irish, Ital­ian, Ger­man and oth­er Euro­pean immi­grants and Jews. Sid Miller is White, with pri­mar­i­ly Scotch and Irish roots, but said in the law­suit that he has 2 per­cent African Amer­i­can ances­try.

    “Any per­son with a trace­able amount of minor­i­ty ances­try must be regard­ed as a mem­ber of a ‘social­ly dis­ad­van­taged group,’” the suit said.

    Sid Miller earns a $140,938 annu­al salary as a statewide offi­cial. He report­ed own­ing about 145 acres of land, a nurs­ery, land­scap­ing busi­ness and a ranch, as well as stock in dozens of com­pa­nies, accord­ing to pub­lic records. Known for his sig­na­ture white cow­boy hat, he was first elect­ed agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er in 2014 and pre­vi­ous­ly served as a state law­mak­er.

    To Black farm­ers who say they have felt the sting of racial bias, mak­ing Sid Miller the face of the legal chal­lenge was an insult.

    “Here is this very pow­er­ful per­son in a huge state who instead of want­i­ng to assist Black farm­ers filed a law­suit to block aid?” asked Boyd, who farms soy­beans and oth­er crops in south­ern Vir­ginia. “It’s real­ly dis­heart­en­ing.”

    Judge Reed O’Connor, who was nom­i­nat­ed by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, ruled in July 2021 in favor of the White plain­tiffs, the third of four fed­er­al court orders that sum­mer against the pro­gram. Con­gress repealed the pro­gram in August.

    Boyd and three oth­er minor­i­ty farm­ers rep­re­sent­ed by civ­il rights attor­ney Ben Crump sued the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment two months lat­er, alleg­ing breach of con­tract by doing away with the debt relief pro­gram. That case is ongo­ing. Black farm­ers have lost more than 12 mil­lion acres in the past cen­tu­ry, which agri­cul­tur­al experts attribute in part to dis­crim­i­na­tion in gov­ern­ment loan pro­grams.

    Three weeks after AFL chal­lenged the aid to minor­i­ty farm­ers, it turned to an even larg­er fed­er­al pro­gram: the Restau­rant Revi­tal­iza­tion Fund, which gave women, minori­ties and vet­er­ans a head start to sub­mit appli­ca­tions for near­ly $29 bil­lion in pan­dem­ic relief. The suit argued that the fund was like­ly to run out of mon­ey before White restau­rant own­ers got a chance to apply and thus dis­crim­i­nat­ed against them.

    A fed­er­al court in Texas agreed in late May of 2021, as did an appeals court in Ten­nessee that reviewed a sim­i­lar law­suit. At the same time, Gre­go­ry León, the son of a Venezue­lan immi­grant and the own­er of Amilin­da restau­rant in Mil­wau­kee, received notice that he would receive $285,000 from the fund to help him get through the pan­dem­ic-relat­ed down­turn. Just two weeks lat­er, as León strug­gled to pay ven­dors, he was among about 3,000 restau­rant own­ers who got anoth­er gov­ern­ment let­ter: The fund had been quashed by lit­i­ga­tion.

    León said he seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered clos­ing down.

    ...

    AFL has notched some of its biggest suc­cess­es in the North­ern Dis­trict of Texas, a pop­u­lar venue for con­ser­v­a­tive plain­tiffs because it includes divi­sions where one to three judges nom­i­nat­ed by Repub­li­can pres­i­dents han­dle all civ­il cas­es. The law­suits oppos­ing fed­er­al aid for minor­i­ty farm­ers and restau­rant own­ers, among oth­ers, were all filed in that dis­trict., a pop­u­lar venue for con­ser­v­a­tive plain­tiffs because it includes divi­sions where one to three judges nom­i­nat­ed by Repub­li­can pres­i­dents han­dle all civ­il cas­es. The law­suits oppos­ing fed­er­al aid for minor­i­ty farm­ers and restau­rant own­ers, among oth­ers, were all filed in that dis­trict.

    Lib­er­al orga­ni­za­tions are also known for “forum shop­ping,” and fre­quent­ly chal­lenged Trump poli­cies in the North­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia, where most judges were nom­i­nat­ed by Democ­rats. But the small size of some divi­sions in the North­ern Dis­trict of Texas allows con­ser­v­a­tive plain­tiffs to essen­tial­ly hand­pick a par­tic­u­lar judge by fil­ing in cer­tain cour­t­hous­es.

    That strat­e­gy was appar­ent in an AFL law­suit filed in August 2021, which argued that the Afford­able Care Act does not out­law dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty. The case was filed in the Amar­il­lo divi­sion, where Matthew Kac­s­maryk, a Trump nom­i­nee whose anti-LGBTQ views set off alarms, is assigned all civ­il cas­es. In response to ques­tions from U.S. sen­a­tors in 2017 about those views, Kac­s­maryk promised to impar­tial­ly apply the law.

    Last month, Kac­s­maryk ruled in favor of the AFL-backed plain­tiffs, includ­ing two Texas doc­tors unwill­ing to pre­scribe hor­mone ther­a­py to trans­gen­der minors. The judge had pre­vi­ous­ly cer­ti­fied the case as a class-action law­suit, extend­ing its impact on health-care providers nation­wide.

    “This is obvi­ous­ly a case that rais­es con­cerns about the most extreme form of judge shop­ping,” said Omar Gon­za­lez-Pagan, coun­sel at Lamb­da Legal, an LGBTQ rights group. “This is also a case that ignores the real­i­ty and preva­lence of health dis­crim­i­na­tion against the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty in the health care con­text and the seri­ous harm that caus­es.”

    Miller called the rul­ing “epochal” and an “inflec­tion point for what I believe is going to be the biggest legal bat­tle for the next gen­er­a­tion.”

    ...

    Anoth­er ongo­ing AFL-backed law­suit assigned to a judge nom­i­nat­ed by Trump argues that the Texas A&M University’s hir­ing prac­tices are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al “by giv­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pref­er­ences to female or non-Asian minori­ties at the expense of white and Asian men,” lead­ing to pro­mo­tions for “infe­ri­or fac­ul­ty.”

    A Texas A&M spokesper­son, Lay­lan Copelin, said the uni­ver­si­ty is plan­ning to recruit fac­ul­ty whose research is focused on “under­rep­re­sent­ed com­mu­ni­ties” but does not make hir­ing deci­sions based on gen­der or racial pref­er­ences that would hold back White or Asian men.

    “It appears they were more inter­est­ed in using Texas A&M to sup­port their fundrais­ing and pub­lic­i­ty efforts, as opposed to address­ing any actu­al mis­con­duct,” Copelin said.

    AFL part­nered in this case and sev­er­al oth­ers filed in Texas with the state’s for­mer solic­i­tor gen­er­al, Jonathan Mitchell, who is cred­it­ed with the nov­el legal strat­e­gy behind the state’s 2021 ban on most abor­tions after six weeks.

    Most of the AFL-backed law­suits are still pend­ing and allege that fed­er­al agen­cies are with­hold­ing pub­lic records about a range of right-wing tar­gets, includ­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of Jan. 6, 2021, riot­ers, cen­sor­ship by Big Tech, the ori­gin of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and a lap­top used by Pres­i­dent Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Many of the records requests echo alle­ga­tions made by the far right and are treat­ed as news sto­ries by con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets. AFL has also demand­ed near­ly every fed­er­al agency to pro­duce doc­u­ments relat­ed to Biden’s exec­u­tive order pro­mot­ing racial equi­ty, which Miller has called “gov­ern­ment spon­sored and direct­ed racism.”

    In some of the requests, AFL claims “wide­ly rec­og­nized sta­tus as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the news media” to expe­dite its requests.

    Fed­er­al court judges have ruled against AFL in law­suits oppos­ing admis­sions cri­te­ria to ensure racial diver­si­ty at Philadel­phia mag­net schools, a New York pro­gram that con­sid­ered race in deter­min­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty for covid-19 treat­ment, a vac­cine man­date for civil­ian fed­er­al employ­ees, and Biden’s removal of Sean Spicer, a White House press sec­re­tary under Trump, and Vought, an AFL board mem­ber, from the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my Board of Vis­i­tors. AFL is appeal­ing most of those cas­es.

    ...

    As a non­prof­it char­i­ty that receives tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tions, AFL is pre­clud­ed from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any activ­i­ty that urges vot­ers to sup­port or oppose par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal can­di­dates. Instead, the group spent on ads and mail­ers this fall that broad­ly attacked the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and the left wing in states with high-stakes races for gov­er­nor and Sen­ate.

    The ads, which includ­ed mis­lead­ing and false claims about Biden’s poli­cies on racial and LGBTQ issues, were con­demned by left-lean­ing civ­il rights groups. “They’re try­ing to cre­ate mass hys­te­ria and fear,” said Joni Madi­son of the Human Rights Cam­paign.

    AFL Vice Pres­i­dent Gene Hamil­ton, who worked in Trump’s Jus­tice and Home­land Secu­ri­ty depart­ments, defend­ed the ads in a pre­vi­ous state­ment that speaks to the group’s broad­er mis­sion.

    “The Biden admin­is­tra­tion and left-wing offi­cials in edu­ca­tion, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ments across the coun­try are impos­ing poli­cies that sys­tem­i­cal­ly and rou­tine­ly dis­crim­i­nate against Amer­i­can cit­i­zens based sole­ly on the col­or of their skin. That is ille­gal,” he said. “Our adver­tise­ments make the point that racism is always wrong — regard­less of who it is tar­get­ed against.”

    ———–

    “How a Trump-allied group fight­ing ‘anti-white big­otry’ beats Biden in court” By Beth Rein­hard and Josh Dawsey; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/12/2022

    “AFL-backed suits helped doom a $29 bil­lion pro­gram that pri­or­i­tized strug­gling female and minor­i­ty-owned restau­rants last year, and last week, a coun­cil cre­at­ed by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion that con­ser­v­a­tive par­ents groups viewed as par­ti­san. AFL has won in part by con­sis­tent­ly fil­ing law­suits in a con­ser­v­a­tive-friend­ly judi­cial dis­trict in Texas and tak­ing advan­tage of a larg­er fed­er­al court sys­tem revamped by Trump’s pre­dom­i­nant­ly con­ser­v­a­tive nom­i­nees.

    Yes, AFLF has won, in part, by con­sis­tent­ly fil­ing law­suits in one par­tic­u­lar judi­cial dis­trict in Texas. It’s hard­ly judge shop­ping at this point because they already know where to do. It’s judge bing­ing, on cas­es that will have nation­al impli­ca­tions. A demon­stra­bly potent strat­e­gy capped off with a com­pli­ant Supreme Court court right-wing major­i­ty:

    ...
    AFL has notched some of its biggest suc­cess­es in the North­ern Dis­trict of Texas, a pop­u­lar venue for con­ser­v­a­tive plain­tiffs because it includes divi­sions where one to three judges nom­i­nat­ed by Repub­li­can pres­i­dents han­dle all civ­il cas­es. The law­suits oppos­ing fed­er­al aid for minor­i­ty farm­ers and restau­rant own­ers, among oth­ers, were all filed in that dis­trict., a pop­u­lar venue for con­ser­v­a­tive plain­tiffs because it includes divi­sions where one to three judges nom­i­nat­ed by Repub­li­can pres­i­dents han­dle all civ­il cas­es. The law­suits oppos­ing fed­er­al aid for minor­i­ty farm­ers and restau­rant own­ers, among oth­ers, were all filed in that dis­trict.

    Lib­er­al orga­ni­za­tions are also known for “forum shop­ping,” and fre­quent­ly chal­lenged Trump poli­cies in the North­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia, where most judges were nom­i­nat­ed by Democ­rats. But the small size of some divi­sions in the North­ern Dis­trict of Texas allows con­ser­v­a­tive plain­tiffs to essen­tial­ly hand­pick a par­tic­u­lar judge by fil­ing in cer­tain cour­t­hous­es.

    That strat­e­gy was appar­ent in an AFL law­suit filed in August 2021, which argued that the Afford­able Care Act does not out­law dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty. The case was filed in the Amar­il­lo divi­sion, where Matthew Kac­s­maryk, a Trump nom­i­nee whose anti-LGBTQ views set off alarms, is assigned all civ­il cas­es. In response to ques­tions from U.S. sen­a­tors in 2017 about those views, Kac­s­maryk promised to impar­tial­ly apply the law.

    Last month, Kac­s­maryk ruled in favor of the AFL-backed plain­tiffs, includ­ing two Texas doc­tors unwill­ing to pre­scribe hor­mone ther­a­py to trans­gen­der minors. The judge had pre­vi­ous­ly cer­ti­fied the case as a class-action law­suit, extend­ing its impact on health-care providers nation­wide.

    “This is obvi­ous­ly a case that rais­es con­cerns about the most extreme form of judge shop­ping,” said Omar Gon­za­lez-Pagan, coun­sel at Lamb­da Legal, an LGBTQ rights group. “This is also a case that ignores the real­i­ty and preva­lence of health dis­crim­i­na­tion against the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty in the health care con­text and the seri­ous harm that caus­es.”

    Miller called the rul­ing “epochal” and an “inflec­tion point for what I believe is going to be the biggest legal bat­tle for the next gen­er­a­tion.”
    ...

    And as we can see, these AFLF legal chal­lenges were effec­tive­ly trolling oper­a­tions even back in 2022 when it was the Biden admin­is­tra­tion’s poli­cies they were oppos­ing. Like suing to end a pro­gram for minor­i­ty farm­ers on behalf of Sid Miller, Tex­as­’s white Trump-endorsed agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er who appar­ent­ly feels that “white eth­nic groups that have unques­tion­ably suf­fered eth­nic prej­u­dice,” while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly point­ing to a 2 per­cent African Amer­i­can ances­try that he argues should qual­i­fy him for the pro­gram too. It’s trolling. But the fact that all this trolling is tak­ing place in Texas, where they know they will have sym­pa­thet­ic judges, makes it more than just trolling. It’s judge shop­ping too, on such an epic scale that the law­suits can dou­ble as trolling oper­a­tions and still stand a good chance of win­ning:

    ...
    A Wash­ing­ton Post review found at least four dozen AFL-backed law­suits filed in fed­er­al courts around the coun­try since April 2021, some of which have received lit­tle atten­tion out­side of right-wing media.

    To attack Biden’s aid to dis­ad­van­taged, minor­i­ty farm­ers, Miller’s group made a brash choice for lead plain­tiff: Sid Miller, the Trump-endorsed agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er of Texas, who has ques­tioned Biden’s dire warn­ings about white suprema­cy and com­pared Syr­i­an refugees to rat­tlesnakes in social media posts.

    Sid Miller did not respond to inter­view requests. The law­suit was lat­er amend­ed to include four White plain­tiffs who, unlike Sid Miller, actu­al­ly car­ried fed­er­al farm­ing loans, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

    The suit argued that the debt relief approved by Con­gress was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it exclud­ed “white eth­nic groups that have unques­tion­ably suf­fered eth­nic prej­u­dice,” refer­ring to Irish, Ital­ian, Ger­man and oth­er Euro­pean immi­grants and Jews. Sid Miller is White, with pri­mar­i­ly Scotch and Irish roots, but said in the law­suit that he has 2 per­cent African Amer­i­can ances­try.

    “Any per­son with a trace­able amount of minor­i­ty ances­try must be regard­ed as a mem­ber of a ‘social­ly dis­ad­van­taged group,’” the suit said.

    Sid Miller earns a $140,938 annu­al salary as a statewide offi­cial. He report­ed own­ing about 145 acres of land, a nurs­ery, land­scap­ing busi­ness and a ranch, as well as stock in dozens of com­pa­nies, accord­ing to pub­lic records. Known for his sig­na­ture white cow­boy hat, he was first elect­ed agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er in 2014 and pre­vi­ous­ly served as a state law­mak­er.

    To Black farm­ers who say they have felt the sting of racial bias, mak­ing Sid Miller the face of the legal chal­lenge was an insult.

    “Here is this very pow­er­ful per­son in a huge state who instead of want­i­ng to assist Black farm­ers filed a law­suit to block aid?” asked Boyd, who farms soy­beans and oth­er crops in south­ern Vir­ginia. “It’s real­ly dis­heart­en­ing.”

    Judge Reed O’Connor, who was nom­i­nat­ed by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, ruled in July 2021 in favor of the White plain­tiffs, the third of four fed­er­al court orders that sum­mer against the pro­gram. Con­gress repealed the pro­gram in August.

    Boyd and three oth­er minor­i­ty farm­ers rep­re­sent­ed by civ­il rights attor­ney Ben Crump sued the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment two months lat­er, alleg­ing breach of con­tract by doing away with the debt relief pro­gram. That case is ongo­ing. Black farm­ers have lost more than 12 mil­lion acres in the past cen­tu­ry, which agri­cul­tur­al experts attribute in part to dis­crim­i­na­tion in gov­ern­ment loan pro­grams.
    ...

    That Texas-based legal vic­to­ry of the minor­i­ty farm­ers fund was fol­lowed up with a suit against a $29 bil­lion pan­dem­ic relief fund for restau­rants that gave women, minori­ties and vet­er­ans a head start to sub­mit appli­ca­tions. The AFLF filed a law­suit in a Texas fed­er­al court, win­ning and killing the fund entire­ly after argu­ing that it dis­crim­i­nat­ed against white restau­rant own­ers:

    ...
    Three weeks after AFL chal­lenged the aid to minor­i­ty farm­ers, it turned to an even larg­er fed­er­al pro­gram: the Restau­rant Revi­tal­iza­tion Fund, which gave women, minori­ties and vet­er­ans a head start to sub­mit appli­ca­tions for near­ly $29 bil­lion in pan­dem­ic relief. The suit argued that the fund was like­ly to run out of mon­ey before White restau­rant own­ers got a chance to apply and thus dis­crim­i­nat­ed against them.

    A fed­er­al court in Texas agreed in late May of 2021, as did an appeals court in Ten­nessee that reviewed a sim­i­lar law­suit. At the same time, Gre­go­ry León, the son of a Venezue­lan immi­grant and the own­er of Amilin­da restau­rant in Mil­wau­kee, received notice that he would receive $285,000 from the fund to help him get through the pan­dem­ic-relat­ed down­turn. Just two weeks lat­er, as León strug­gled to pay ven­dors, he was among about 3,000 restau­rant own­ers who got anoth­er gov­ern­ment let­ter: The fund had been quashed by lit­i­ga­tion.

    León said he seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered clos­ing down.
    ...

    And as we can see, part of this Texas-focused strat­e­gy involves part­ner­ing with Jonathan Mitchell, the for­mer solic­i­tor gen­er­al of Texas who helped devise the nov­el legal strat­e­gy behind the state’s 2021 near-com­plete abor­tion ban. As we’ve seen, Mitchel­l’s legal phi­los­o­phy does­n’t just con­ve­nient ban the right to abor­tions. It bans ALL rights EVER gained through a Supreme Court rul­ing. The ONLY legit­i­mate rights, accord­ing to Mitchell, are those explic­it­ly laid on in the US Con­sti­tu­tion. ALL oth­er com­mon­ly accept­ed rights that have been won through court rul­ings over the decades are to be rescind­ed. That’s the legal phi­los­o­phy guid­ing the AFLF’s Texas-based strat­e­gy:

    ...
    “Many of these law­suits are cen­tered on mak­ing sure that White peo­ple remain in con­trol and con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from unearned priv­i­leges, and on main­tain­ing the sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­to­ry poli­cies that have harmed Black peo­ple and oth­er peo­ple of col­or for gen­er­a­tions,” said David Hino­josa, an attor­ney with the Lawyers’ Com­mit­tee for Civ­il Rights Under Law. “To argue that White men are being pushed to the back of the line is unfound­ed and ridicu­lous. What they’re being asked to do is share a place in line with oth­er peo­ple who do not look like them.”

    In an inter­view, Miller said AFL is fill­ing a void in the con­ser­v­a­tive legal move­ment by chal­leng­ing what he termed “a hyper­ra­cial­iza­tion of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal and cor­po­rate life.” Pro­grams seek­ing to rem­e­dy past injus­tices and boost his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged groups are pun­ish­ing peo­ple based on their skin col­or, he said.

    “I believe that the equi­ty agen­da rep­re­sents one of the sin­gle great­est threats to the sur­vival of our con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem,” he said.

    ...

    Anoth­er ongo­ing AFL-backed law­suit assigned to a judge nom­i­nat­ed by Trump argues that the Texas A&M University’s hir­ing prac­tices are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al “by giv­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pref­er­ences to female or non-Asian minori­ties at the expense of white and Asian men,” lead­ing to pro­mo­tions for “infe­ri­or fac­ul­ty.”

    A Texas A&M spokesper­son, Lay­lan Copelin, said the uni­ver­si­ty is plan­ning to recruit fac­ul­ty whose research is focused on “under­rep­re­sent­ed com­mu­ni­ties” but does not make hir­ing deci­sions based on gen­der or racial pref­er­ences that would hold back White or Asian men.

    “It appears they were more inter­est­ed in using Texas A&M to sup­port their fundrais­ing and pub­lic­i­ty efforts, as opposed to address­ing any actu­al mis­con­duct,” Copelin said.

    AFL part­nered in this case and sev­er­al oth­ers filed in Texas with the state’s for­mer solic­i­tor gen­er­al, Jonathan Mitchell, who is cred­it­ed with the nov­el legal strat­e­gy behind the state’s 2021 ban on most abor­tions after six weeks.

    Most of the AFL-backed law­suits are still pend­ing and allege that fed­er­al agen­cies are with­hold­ing pub­lic records about a range of right-wing tar­gets, includ­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of Jan. 6, 2021, riot­ers, cen­sor­ship by Big Tech, the ori­gin of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and a lap­top used by Pres­i­dent Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Many of the records requests echo alle­ga­tions made by the far right and are treat­ed as news sto­ries by con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets. AFL has also demand­ed near­ly every fed­er­al agency to pro­duce doc­u­ments relat­ed to Biden’s exec­u­tive order pro­mot­ing racial equi­ty, which Miller has called “gov­ern­ment spon­sored and direct­ed racism.”
    ...

    And as we can see, while Rus­sell Vought has been doing exten­sive work on behalf of this agen­da through the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, he’s also an AFLF board mem­ber. Which one reaons we should­n’t be sur­prised so see the AFLF suing to pre­vent the Biden admin­is­tra­tion from remov­ing Vought — and Sean Spicer — from the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my Board of Vis­i­tors. Which is a rather iron­ic law­suit giv­en Vought’s cen­tral role at Project 2025, a project ded­i­cat­ed to giv­ing pres­i­dents max­i­mum pow­ers to hire and fire fed­er­al employ­ees at will. This is a pow­er project. Not an integri­ty project:

    ...
    The group’s mis­sion was fueled by more than $6.3 mil­lion in dona­tions last year, recent tax fil­ings show, includ­ing about $1.3 mil­lion from the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, whose lead­er­ship includes key fig­ures in the effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion. Steve Wynn, the casi­no mag­nate who resigned as finance chair of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee in 2018 amid alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, is an AFL donor, accord­ing to two peo­ple famil­iar with the group’s work who were not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about its fundrais­ing. Wynn, who has denied the alle­ga­tions, declined to com­ment.

    AFL is part of a con­stel­la­tion of groups led by Trump allies that rep­re­sent an admin­is­tra­tion-in-wait­ing upon his poten­tial return to the White House. AFL’s all-White, all-male board includes loy­al­ists who recent­ly trekked to Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s 2024 cam­paign announce­ment, includ­ing Miller, who helped write the speech, for­mer Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get head Rus­sell Vought and for­mer act­ing attor­ney gen­er­al Matthew G. Whitak­er. Miller, who is expect­ed to work for the 2024 cam­paign, received $110,762 from AFL last year, about $134,000 from his Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal com­mit­tee since Trump left office, and is slat­ed to be paid about $80,000 by the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion as part of Trump’s post-pres­i­den­cy funds, gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments show.

    ...

    In some of the requests, AFL claims “wide­ly rec­og­nized sta­tus as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the news media” to expe­dite its requests.

    Fed­er­al court judges have ruled against AFL in law­suits oppos­ing admis­sions cri­te­ria to ensure racial diver­si­ty at Philadel­phia mag­net schools, a New York pro­gram that con­sid­ered race in deter­min­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty for covid-19 treat­ment, a vac­cine man­date for civil­ian fed­er­al employ­ees, and Biden’s removal of Sean Spicer, a White House press sec­re­tary under Trump, and Vought, an AFL board mem­ber, from the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my Board of Vis­i­tors. AFL is appeal­ing most of those cas­es.

    ...

    As a non­prof­it char­i­ty that receives tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tions, AFL is pre­clud­ed from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any activ­i­ty that urges vot­ers to sup­port or oppose par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal can­di­dates. Instead, the group spent on ads and mail­ers this fall that broad­ly attacked the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and the left wing in states with high-stakes races for gov­er­nor and Sen­ate.
    ...

    And note how the financ­ing for this CPI uni­verse of polit­i­cal activ­i­ty does­n’t just include a dona­tions from groups like the Koch-backed DonorsTrust. It also receives dona­tions from Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance, one of the main groups behind the ongo­ing push to rewrite the US Con­sti­tu­tion. And don’t for­get how one of the Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance co-founders was none oth­er than Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn along with Mark Meck­ler. In oth­er words, don’t be shocked if AFLF starts get­ting involved with con­sti­tu­tion­al over­haul legal bat­tles if a Con­ven­tion of States gets under­way:

    ...
    Nei­ther of these tax-exempt groups is required to dis­close its donors to the pub­lic, though fed­er­al cam­paign records show Trump’s polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, Save Amer­i­ca, donat­ed $1 mil­lion to CPI last year. In its 2021 annu­al report, CPI called AFL “the sling that hard­work­ing, patri­ot­ic Amer­i­cans can use to fight back against the abu­sive Goliath of the Biden Administration’s Deep State.”

    CPI’s rev­enue explod­ed last year to $45 mil­lion, up from about $7 mil­lion in 2020, accord­ing to its lat­est tax fil­ing, obtained by Accountable.US and the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy. Its $1.3 mil­lion dona­tion to AFL was the largest of eight grants that it made last year. Tax records also show AFL last year received $25,000 from DonorsTrust, a non­prof­it that con­tributes to a num­ber of right-wing caus­es, and $10,000 from Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance, which favors a con­ven­tion of states to lim­it the pow­er of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.
    ...

    Final­ly, note how the AFLF agen­da described in these pieces is the Project 2025 agen­da. Which makes the fact that it was Stephen Miller who appar­ent­ly heav­i­ly influ­enced Don­ald Trump in his deci­sion to endorse far right can­di­dates in the 2022 mid-terms, an elec­tion cycle where Repub­li­cans had a his­tor­i­cal­ly poor show­ing for the out-of-pow­er par­ty in the con­gres­sion­al elec­tions. It’s that fun­da­men­tal­ly unpop­u­lar agen­da that is now being made a real­i­ty under Project 2025. So, on the one hand, Project 2025 is kind of doing the AFLF’s job for it. But on the oth­er hand, the AFLF’s legal threats are going to be more impor­tant than ever to keep those ide­o­log­i­cal gains and extend them fur­ther. The Project 2025 era is the AFLA era. They are the same team work­ing towards the same agen­da:

    ...
    Accord­ing to Trump advis­ers who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions, Miller stays in close touch with Trump, con­tributes to his speech­es and gave sig­nif­i­cant input on his endorse­ments in the midterm elec­tion, where many Trump-backed can­di­dates who reject­ed Biden’s 2020 vic­to­ry and took oth­er far-right posi­tions were defeat­ed. Miller repeat­ed­ly com­plained dur­ing the cam­paign that Repub­li­can can­di­dates were not talk­ing enough about cul­ture war issues and immi­gra­tion and focus­ing too heav­i­ly on an eco­nom­ic mes­sage, peo­ple who spoke to him said. Amer­i­ca “is the apex of achieve­ment of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion,” Miller said, with “a her­itage to be jeal­ous­ly guard­ed.”
    ...

    And while we have yet to see how the AFLF’s pow­er grab law­suit tar­get­ing the judi­cial branch will play out, we can be con­fi­dent Stephen Miller, Rus­sell Vought, and the rest of the Project 2025 co-schemers are fever­ish­ly work­ing on their next pow­er grab. Maybe it will be anoth­er swipe at the leg­isla­tive branch’s inde­pen­dence. Or maybe a new con­sti­tu­tion. Either way, it will be about hand­ing more pow­er to Pres­i­dent Trump. And, ulti­mate­ly, the oli­garchs behind him who will be wield­ing that pow­er under a new pup­pet long after Trump has shucked off his mor­tal coil. Don­ald Trump won’t live for­ev­er. But the dam­age he is doing to the US con­sti­tu­tion and sys­tem of checks and bal­ances just might endure, thanks, in large part, to the tire­less efforts of Stephen Miller’s AFLF and the rest of its Her­itage Voltron think tank fel­low trav­el­ers. Although Voltron fought evil and defend­ed the weak. It’s more of an anti-Voltron giant mon­ster sit­u­a­tion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 5, 2025, 8:17 pm
  31. @Pterrafractyl–

    Oh well, I’m sure Brain­worm Bob­by, Tul­si Gab­bard, Amaryl­lis Fox et al will save the day for us.

    Along with Anna Pauli­na Luna.

    Bril­liant work, as usu­al.

    Ter­ri­fy­ing and sad.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | May 8, 2025, 10:21 pm

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