Post-election, a hopeful way of thinking

The election outcome was overall bad. But here are some of the election wins, as collected by Popular Information:

• "Voters protect abortion rights in seven states"
• "Voters in three red states guarantee paid sick leave; two boost minimum wage"
• "Three states vote to protect public school funding"
• "Florida voters reject school board politicization"
• "Florida attorney suspended by DeSantis wins reelection"
• "Voters elect first transgender member of Congress; send two Black women to the Senate"

— Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims, Through the darkness, some rays of light, Popular Information, Nov 7, 2024

---

"How will we conduct this resistance?

By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media."

— Robert Reich, The Resistance Starts Now: I still have faith in America, but we must mobilize to protect those at risk if Trump achieves his worst impulses. Nov 6, 2024

Reich continued:

"The work includes:

• Monitoring Trump and his government — despite the disinformation, propaganda, and lies we’ll be receiving — and disseminating the truth.
• Maintaining a watch over the people and institutions we value.
• Being ready to sound the alarm in our communities and networks when those people and institutions are under assault.
• Organizing and mobilizing nonviolent resistance to such assaults.
• Using civil disobedience wherever possible.
• Litigating through state and federal courts where possible.
• Speaking out against malicious lies like those that spread during the election by Elon Musk on his propaganda machine X and against vicious lies amplified on other MAGA mouthpieces.
• Using our economic muscle to boycott corporations that support Trump, Musk, and other centers of MAGA power."

Robert Reich, What will YOU do?: Acknowledging what we are up against, Nov 12, 2024

---

"American Democracy, as we know it, is likely over. That creates space for something new to emerge. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t tell you exactly what will happen next. But I know what Trump and MAGA want America to become and that they’re empowered to make a lot of it happen. We keep competing by the rules even though the competition is rigged, and every cycle, our opponents find ways to rig the system even more in their favor. Personally, I’ve never been more open to new ideas and things I haven’t considered before. Not because I don’t think democracy can work but because I think achieving a true multiracial democracy will mean rebuilding from the ground up. I’d encourage us to be open to new ways of thinking and systems for change. Because the space for that now exists."

— Melissa Ryan, Clarity: I don’t have all the answers, but here’s where I’m at today. Ctrl Alt Right Delete, Nov 6, 2024

"Trump’s foreign policy worldview has been clear ever since he entered political life. He believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States. To change that imbalance, Trump wants to restrict inward economic flows such as imports and immigrants (although he likes inward foreign direct investment). He wants allies to shoulder more of the burden for their own defense. And he believes that he can cut deals with autocrats, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, that will reduce tensions in global trouble spots and allow the United States to focus inward.

Equally clear are Trump’s preferred means of getting what he wants in world politics. The former and future president is a strong believer in using coercion, such as economic sanctions, to pressure other actors. He also subscribes to the “madman theory,” in which he will threaten massive tariff increases or “fire and fury” against other countries in the firm belief that such threats will compel them into offering greater concessions than they otherwise would. At the same time, however, Trump also practices a transactional view of foreign policy, demonstrating a willingness during his first term to link disparate issues to secure economic concessions.

* * *

During the [2024] campaign, Trump promised to bomb Mexico and to deport legal immigrants, called opposition politicians the “enemies from within,” and claimed that migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country. Despite all this—or perhaps because of it—Trump won a popular majority. When the rest of the world looks at Trump, they will no longer see an aberrant exception to American exceptionalism; they will see what America stands for in the twenty-first century."

— Daniel W. Drezner, The End of American Exceptionalism: Trump’s Reelection Will Redefine U.S. Power, Foreign Affairs, November 12, 2024

There are people with the skills needed

When they say they want a Joe Rogan of the left they mean, strictly, a shitty white guy

[image or embed]

— Maggie Tokuda-Hall (@maggietokudahall.bsky.social) June 22, 2025 at 9:08 PM

U.S. presidential elections are coin flips

With some exceptions like 1996 and 2008, U.S. presidential elections are coin flips. We just do not know. The fact that neither pulls ahead doesn't mean that either candidate is running ineffectively.

“why is the election a coin flip” every single presidential election since 2000 — basically other than 2008 — has been essentially a coin flip in the polls. if you ignore ‘08, the last time the outcome was essentially known in advance was in *1996*

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) October 27, 2024 at 11:41 AM

This election, though, is indeed especially close. CNN’s senior political data reporter Harry Enten said in October: "Based upon the polls at this point, we are heading into the election with the closest polls in the Electoral College that we have ever seen at least over the last 50 years."

there is this belief that it should be easy to win a presidential election against a clearly unfit opponent and that if you haven’t opened up a big lead in polls, it’s because you’re running a bad campaign. i’m here to tell you that there is just nothing to support this supposition.

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) October 27, 2024 at 11:48 AM

My opinion: Rather than blaming the Black candidate for not outperforming the racist candidate in public opinion, please blame the racist candidate for his racism. It's far more productive.

Nebraska

It can’t be stressed enough that what Nebraska Republicans did here was essentially a criminal conspiracy to unlawfully deny voting rights to qualified citizens. A great outcome, but a conscience-shocking story of corrupt public officials breaking the law. slate.com/news-and-pol...

[image or embed]

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) October 16, 2024 at 6:37 PM

Trump won 59% of the Nebraska vote and Harris won 39%.

Post-inauguration

"There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things."
A view from north of the border, Robert Reich, Jan 24, 2025

2024: Anti-trans politics didn't win elections for Canadian Conservatives this time

Erin Reed tells us:

"Blaine Higgs, in an interview with the Canadian Press, defended his record as the first Canadian premier to unilaterally implement anti-trans policies in schools, stating that he “would not change anything” and calling the idea an election winner. His revisions to what is collectively known as Policy 713 required that transgender youth under the age of 16 be forcibly outed to their parents. The policy also mandated that teachers misgender and deadname trans students if they did not have parental consent or were not out to their parents.

* * *

On Tuesday [today, October 22], it became clear that the Progressive Conservative party, the right-leaning party in the province, faced a decisive defeat. In 2020, the party won 27 seats compared to the Liberals' 17, but this year, the Liberals secured 31 seats to the PCs' 16. Not only did Blaine Higgs' party lose power, but the premier also lost his own “safe” seat in Quispamsis, the most conservative district in 2020."

— Erin Reed, Conservative Canadian Premier Blaine Higgs Loses Election After Calling Anti-Trans Stances "A Political Winner", October 22, 2024

Scapegoating liberals for a political shooting

Regarding what Vance said:

"Anyone who cares about preserving a livable planet must reject this argument forcefully. Not only is it baseless — no one actually knows what motivated the young Republican who shot Trump — it is a blatant attempt to silence legitimate criticism."
— Don’t turn the rhetoric down: If a person poses an existential threat to the planet, it’s OK to say that. In fact, it’s our responsibility to. Emily Atkin, HEATED, July 16, 2024.

We’re Blamed For It Sideways (Since Republicans Are Still Anti-Trans)

"I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to have your city’s downtown [Milwaukee] taken over by a major political convention, particularly when just a few days previously the Presidential candidate being feted responded to an assassination attempt by raising his fist and yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Pretty damn weird. That’s the answer. It feels pretty damn weird."
— In the room where (nothing much) happens: Dispatches the edge of the Republican National Convention, Day One Garrett Bucks, The White Pages (Substack), July 16, 2024

"Edward Luce of the Financial Times noted, 'Almost any criticism of Trump is already being spun by Maga as an incitement to assassinate him. This is an Orwellian attempt to silence what remains of the effort to stop him from regaining power.' Indeed, MAGA Republicans appear to be trying to stop discussion of their extremist plans — which are enormously unpopular — by claiming that such a discussion is polarizing."
— Heather Cox Richardson, July 14, 2024, Letters From an American (Substack), July 15, 2024

She patiently explains:

"Republicans under Trump have increasingly advocated violence as a way to gain power because they know their unpopular positions cannot lead their candidates to victory in free and fair elections. In this moment, when there is still little evidence about yesterday’s tragedy, it appears they are projecting their own behavior onto Biden and the Democrats, blaming them for advocating violence when in fact, Biden and the Democrats have tried hard to enact commonsense gun safety laws and have consistently condemned the violent language and normalizing of political violence by Republicans."

After the shooting, Biden did call for everyone to "lower the temperature" and remember that "we're neighbors" who "must stand together."

Trump declares himself a uniter, but is he acting like one? No. He's still defending the January 6 rioters.

Some media figures are eager to portray Trump as a "uniter" after the shooting. Axios is pushing this hard. But Trump just unleashed a rant that wrecks this storyline, calling Jan 6 a "hoax" and depicting our Justice System as corrupt to its core. 2/ newrepublic.com/article/1838...

[image or embed]

— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) Jul 16, 2024 at 7:13 AM

As a reward for eight years of purging anyone who dared to resist Trumpism - and extensive self-purges due to violent threat - the Republican Party gets effusive praise from establishment media for presenting a “united front.” Not surprising, I guess, but still quite remarkable. 1/

— Thomas Zimmer (@thomaszimmer.bsky.social) Jul 19, 2024 at 12:38 PM

Protect your safety

Elad Nehorai says:

"...start thinking about your safety. ...this is not a matter of a theoretical future but a concrete reality we must face as it becomes more urgent.

This is particularly true if you plan to publicly dissent. You should be more thoughtful about how. You should be more thoughtful about where. You should be more thoughtful about who.

You should operate with intent and strategy. You should plan ahead, not wait until things get worse. You should coordinate with others, not operate alone. You should be part of and build community. You should understand that your family comes first.

— Elad Nehorai, It's Time to Start Thinking About Your Safety: The fascists may be on the verge of winning their biggest battle yet. The time to protect yourself is now. July 17, 2024.

"Threats and Harassment Against Local Officials Spiked in July, New Data Shows," Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI), Princeton University, August 22, 2024

Democrats do need to worry about media narratives

You're not a farm animal: A plea to journalists to release themselves from Trump's press pens: This campaign has abused the media on a scale previously unseen in American politics. It's time to take a stand, Eric Boehlert, Salon, April 1, 2016

Eric Boehlert ("America isn't guaranteed a happy ending: A failure of imagination", Oct 06, 2021):

"This country has been facing a looming and open threat for a year now, ever since Trump signaled in September 2020, that he would not abide by the election results and assure a peaceful transfer of power – then everything unraveled from there. But news organizations still see themselves primarily as witnesses in the drama, paid to document the beating that democracy is taking at the hands of radical Republicans who try to dismantle the concept of free and fair elections in America.

It's almost 2022 and outlets like Washington Post are still pointlessly, and sheepishly, referring to incessant Trump lies about the election as “baseless claims” and “false allegations.”

Too many journalists don’t see themselves as having a vested interest in America maintaining a functioning democracy. They’re afraid that’s seen as picking sides so they remain reluctant to call out the party that’s purposely threatening it."

A new idea is gaining traction: Because most newspaper readers and network news viewers are already Biden voters, Dem efforts to influence media narratives and improve journalism are largely wasted. The idea is based on a false conceit, and (thus) wrong.

[image or embed]

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) Jun 7, 2024 at 11:41 AM

The false conceit is that what appears, e.g., on the front page of the New York Times has no effect on the factoids and memes and propaganda people marinate in on social media, YouTube, and elsewhere. They cross-pollinate. www.offmessage.net/p/democrats-...

[image or embed]

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) Jun 7, 2024 at 11:49 AM

Here's that link: Yes, Democrats Should Still Care How Real Journalists Cover The News (www.offmessage.net)

"...we are now three decades into a right-wing takeover of our information ecosystem that is fundamentally changing people's frameworks. We're talking about the loss of local news. More than half of American counties have no access or very limited access to local news. We're talking about Sinclair, a right-wing operation taking over local broadcasts that reaches over 70% of the American population, with a deliberate agenda and a focus on crime, homelessness, and drugs. Add in social media — where so many people get their news — and how easily manipulable that is at its best. And at its worst, it's Elon Musk.

* * *

[Post 2024 election,] Democrats are in the wilderness. So we're not going to be able to govern and deliver in most places. Certainly not at the federal level. But we can really recognize the monumental task of the information ecosystem problem for what it is and start rebuilding there."

— How to compete with the right-wing meaning-making media machine: Writer and policy wonk Heather McGhee on how Democrats failed to reach voters on policy, why having Beyoncé on your side isn't enough, and what it will take to build a left media in the Trump years. The Ink, Nov 11, 2024

These guys are obsessed with forfeiting framing to the right, asking clarifying questions and saying "if the president doesn't denounce this, that will be the time to really start asking more questions". How's it so hard to just say "This is BAD! Stop it! BAD DOG!" when you catch the dog eating shit

[image or embed]

— Mike.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ (@dumbmike.bsky.social) March 29, 2025 at 5:13 PM

On the role of a liberal, reasonable columnist

Jonathan Chait's essay, "In Defense of Punching Left: The problem with ‘Solidarity'," appeared in the NY Intelligencer on May 10.

My perception is that perhaps he is describing not so much what it is to be a liberal as what it is to be a columnist.

We might say that to ask anyone to be an activist uncritically riding the wave of collective movement is to expect them to ride a car with no brakes. Chait says this self-awareness is true specifically of liberals, as if liberals were somehow different.

We might say that everyone wants to be reasonable. Chait implies that liberals are the only ones who really try.

To me, this seems to be a viewpoint on what it means to be a liberal, reasonable columnist. It isn't the only possible viewpoint.

For some, the work of a columnist might mean examining the world through principles of liberalism and reason and trying to understand people and things in liberal, reasonable ways.

For others, it might mean asserting: I'm the liberal, reasonable one, and everyone I'm critiquing isn't.

In my view, those are different endeavors.

I also hear them use words like complexity, objectivity, nuance, balance. How this works: The columnist says: Everything those people say is simplistic and biased. It lacks nuance, and the conversation is one-sided because they're the only ones who ever get to talk. Now it's time to listen to me — only me! And so they set themselves up as immune from critique.

This allows them to lack any expertise for what they're saying. Dr. Johnathan Flowers on Bluesky: "As Talia Mae Bettcher notes, this kind of arrogance is why people in philosophy try to opine about trans issues without ever talking to a trans philosopher or a trans person. We're taught to act as though no subject is free from our inquiry, even if our tools aren't up to the task of doing it." (May 15, 2024)

It's kind of what I was saying yesterday about one's perception of flaws in others. *You* are capable of nuance and holding separate ideas in your head at once; *they* are a faceless mob of cardboard cutouts who just parrot what they're told by the perfidious forces of [thing you hate].

— Small Robots (@smolrobots.bsky.social) November 3, 2024 at 8:14 AM

Another direction

Sometimes it's unproductive to think about our correctness as individuals and may be better to think about the correctness of entire movements over the long term.

Osita Nwanevu in The Guardian today:

"The student left is the most reliably correct constituency in America. Over the past 60 years, it has passed every great moral test American foreign policy has forced upon the public, including the Vietnam war, the question of relations with apartheid South Africa, and the Iraq war. Student activists were at the heart of the black civil rights movement from the very beginning. ... They have not always been right; even when right, their prescriptions for the problems they've identified and their means of directing attention to them have not always been prudent. But...it has made a habit of telling the American people, in tones that discomfit, what they need to hear before they are ready to hear it."

I wrote about the protests. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

[image or embed]

— Osita Nwanevu (@ositanwanevu.bsky.social) May 13, 2024 at 11:50 AM

The 'indestructible exoneration' we give to supremacists by being 'fair' to them

"In fact, whenever you mention that Trump's "very fine people" defended the Nazis, you'll always get people—even proudly anti-Trump people, good liberals who want to be sure that no matter what we do in this struggle against facism, we always play fair—who rush in to take on the fascist framing uncritically, and let you know that well actually Trump was defending the non-Nazis that marched with the Nazis, not the Nazis themselves. It's a distinction we are meant to find meaningful; a sort of indestructible exoneration offered to supremacists and their allies."
A.R. Moxon, interviewed by Parker Molloy (Patreon), May 30, 2024

Mike Johnson is Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Previously, I wrote about Why the Republicans Chose Mike Johnson on Medium.

New Speaker Mike Johnson’s Long History With The Religious Right
Come for the Noah's Ark theme park, stay for the relentless efforts to strip women's and LGBTQ+ rights.
Jennifer Bendery
HuffPost
Oct 25, 2023

"'...what we read in the Bible are actual historical events,' Johnson said in a 2021 interview with Ark Encounter founder Ken Ham while guest-hosting the radio show of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an evangelical activist group."
New House Speaker Thinks Creationist Museum Is 'Pointing People To The Truth' An ark replica with dinosaurs "is one way to bring people to this recognition ... that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events,” Mike Johnson said.
Liz Skalka and Paul Blumenthal
HuffPost
Oct 26, 2023

New House Speaker Tells Hannity, ‘Go Pick Up a Bible Off Your Shelf and Read It – That’s My Worldview’
Michael Luciano
Mediaite
Oct 26, 2023

New House speaker's views on LGBTQ issues come under fresh scrutiny Rep. Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has called same-sex marriage a “dark harbinger of chaos” and suggested it could lead to people wedding their pets. Matt Lavietes, NBC News, October 26, 2023

“House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Louisiana hometown guided by faith and family.” Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Washington Post, October 29, 2023

"Johnson spoke about the lawsuit at his church, the Airline Drive Church of Christ in Shreveport, before taking on the case. He warned the congregation what was at stake with cases like the Jewish family suing to keep Christian activities out of a public school.

'The ultimate goal of the enemy is silencing the gospel,' said Johnson, according to an April 2004 story in the Shreveport Times about the lawsuit. 'This is spiritual warfare.'"

— House Speaker Mike Johnson Spent Years Defending Christian Speech In Public Schools “The ultimate goal of the enemy is silencing the Gospel," the Republican said in 2004 after Jewish parents sued a school for pushing Christianity on their kids. Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost, Nov 24, 2023

Thomas Zimmer on Substack called this article "ostensibly an investigation into Johnson’s roots, written by a Post reporter whose beat is described as 'Red states.' Yet the final product is indistinguishable from a political ad campaign for the politician at the center of the 'reporting' – or from a sympathetic home story for a reality TV contestant. This is a rather bizarre kind of political journalism: It is 'reporting' in the sense that a reporter goes to a place and collects impressions and interviews. But the result is a tendentious collage that entirely obscures that which it supposedly set out to illuminate." For example, one individual quoted in the article says "People here are rugged individualists who want to make their own decisions." "Well," Zimmer points out, "and also the freedom to impose their decisions, their faith, their ideas on the rest of the country – after all, the new Speaker is co-sponsoring a national 'Don’t Say Gay' bill, and he is rather all in on mobilizing the coercive powers of the state to criminalize all those whose behaviors he deems 'deviant.' But sure, 'rugged individualists.'" As another example, while the reporter quotes two people described as "Democratic," one of them voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and the other simply expresses unfounded optimism that Johnson will "help all those back home."

'Fox & Friends' Simply Cannot Separate Church And State In Gush Over Mike Johnson
Kayleigh McEnany and Ainsley Earhardt served up an awkward slice of piety in promoting an interview with the new speaker of the House.
Ron Dicker, HuffPost, Oct 31, 2023

"Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group," Andrew Kaczynski, CNN, November 1, 2023

"Does New Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Have a Bank Account?" Speaker Mike Johnson has never listed a bank account on his financial disclosure. In fact, on his newest disclosure he doesn’t list a single asset at all. Roger Sollenberger, Daily Beast, Nov 01, 2023

The New York Times explains covenant marriage, November 3, 2023

"The Supreme Court Shot Down Mike Johnson’s Argument Against Certifying The 2020 Election." In 2023’s Moore v. Harper, the court rejected the independent state legislature theory that Johnson used to try to justify voting to steal the 2020 election. Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost, Nov 4, 2023

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"
Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone, November 5, 2023

"He not only hates LGBQT people and finds them the source of all evil, he actually ran a gay conversion clinic several years ago. And he bragged that his wife had spent the last three weeks on her knees praying for something or other.

Being a good wife, in other words.

Then he proposed a bill to fund Israel but tied it to another provision crippling the IRS’s ability to go after rich tax cheats. That

connection drew the wrath of Mitch McConnell and a bunch of Senate Republicans, who understand something about political reality and why we defend Ukraine (which Johnson doesn’t support).

This bone-headed move tells us everything we need to know about the degree of fanaticism that drives this guy. He is on a mission from God, always a problem in a profession that relies on common sense and compromise."

— "The Witness Chronicles November 8, 2023," Martin Edic, The Grasshopper (Substack)

On November 14, 2023, on CNBC, Johnson said "we need more" religion in American life. "Not an establishment of any national religion, but we need everybody’s vibrant expression of faith because it’s such an important part of who we are as a nation." He said: "The separation of church and state is a misnomer, people misunderstand it." — HuffPost

On December 5, 2023, Johnson told the National Association of Christian Lawmakers’ award gala in Washington, D.C. that God told him to be "the new Moses."

Of Johnson's ascendancy, Sarah Kendzior says: "I'm less worried about the specific seditionist selected to head the House than I am the lack of accountability for a coordinated and violent coup attempt."

That's an ongoing issue. Speaking of that coup attempt, I've also written about The Narrative of the January 6th Committee (unpaywalled friend link on Medium).

Climate Hawks Urge Biden To Reject Latest GOP Demand For Ukraine Aid: An emerging plan from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would condition U.S. aid to Ukraine on more permits for liquefied natural gas exports. Igor Bobic and Jonathan Nicholson, HuffPost, Apr 1, 2024

"Biden’s LNG ‘pause’ threatens Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry: Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), The Hill, April 3, 2024

"It took less than six months for Speaker Mike Johnson to reach his existential moment...Now, as Johnson tries to pass billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — vital to protecting US allies from Russian, Iranian and Chinese totalitarianism and preserving US power and prestige – he’s having to put his own job on the line to confront GOP extremists who accuse him of betraying the party’s base." (Stephen Collinson, CNN, April 18, 2024)

Speaking of Taiwan, fast-forward to 2025:

FT reports that there is "deep disappointment" in the Takaichi Administration over the lack of public support she has received from Trump over her remarks about defending Taiwan. The article notes that Elbridge Colby had been pushing Japan to take such a stance. www.ft.com/content/bf8b...

[image or embed]

— Jeffrey J. Hall (@mrjeffu.bsky.social) December 7, 2025 at 4:26 AM

How Johnson came to embrace Ukraine aid and defy his right flank, Annie Grayer, Melanie Zanona and Manu Raju, CNN, April 21, 2024

Mike Johnson and the "homosexual agenda": Trump's ally in Congress has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ hate The Republican House Speaker has for decades lobbied against efforts to extend legal rights to the LGBTQ+ community, Nicholas Liu, June 5, 2024

Mike Johnson: There’s No Rush For Congress To Approve Hurricane Relief “We’ll be back in session immediately after the election,” the House speaker said of waiting until November for Congress to vote on emergency funding. Nina Golgowski, HuffPost, Oct 7, 2024

GOP House speaker struggles to defend Trump’s Arnold Palmer penis rant by Oliver Willis, Daily Kos Staff, Oct 21, 2024

"Johnson was previously a litigator and spokesperson for the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, a self-described “Christian law firm” whose legal strategy often pits Christians unfairly against LGBTQ+ people in a legal gambit to undermine nondiscrimination laws through claims of “religious freedom.” The strategy implies and asserts that Christianity and LGBTQ+ identity are inherently mutually exclusive. The group also claims credit for helping overturn constitutional protections for abortion and, in 2023, led the legal push to eliminate access to reproductive and LGBTQ+ health care primarily by amplifying pseudoscientific claims about abortion and LGBTQ+ identity. Speaker Johnson’s ascension, despite his association with the hate group and parroting of conspiracy, is testament to the level of influence these theocratic ideologies wield within the Republican Party.

That relationship was perhaps most clearly revealed in 2023 with the release of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project” and its accompanying 900-plus-page “Mandate for Leadership,” a sweeping plan to reshape presidential powers and the federal bureaucracy in the image of dominionism. Since its release, many of Project 2025’s recommendations were adopted or parroted by former President Trump’s election campaign."

— A Year of Preparation Under the Specter of Conspiracy, R.G. Cravens, Alon Milwicki, and Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon, SPLC, June 4, 2024

Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell wants to pretend he opposes Trump now, in an upcoming book The Price of Power...

McConnell says ‘MAGA movement is completely wrong’ and Reagan ‘wouldn’t recognize’ Trump’s GOP, Morgan Rimmer, CNN, October 23, 2024

...but it wasn't 4 years ago that he voted to acquit Trump for inciting an insurrection.

McConnell blames Trump but voted not guilty anyway, Alex Rogers and Manu Raju, CNN, February 13, 2021

Update: McConnell seems dead. "Andy Beshear Says He's Heard 'Absolutely Nothing Back' From Mitch McConnell" August 16, 2026

Is anything wrong?

RAJU: If defenseless survivors were killed, would that constitute a violation of the laws of war? MIKE JOHNSON: I'm not going to prejudge any of that. I was pretty busy yesterday. I didn't follow a lot of the news.

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 2, 2025 at 11:01 AM

Mike Johnson to Unleash ‘Catastrophic’ Attack on Endangered Species Act “When wildlife is already under immense pressure from habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, and industrial development, Congress should be strengthening the Endangered Species Act,” said one advocate. Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, Apr 20, 2026

In ‘Death Knell for America’s Wildlife,’ Trump Admin Guts Habitat Protections for Endangered Species: “If animals don’t have a place to live, they can’t live,” said one critic. Brad Reed, Common Dreams, July 10, 2026

Also fuck Mike Johnson for saying politicians can't survive off $175k salaries but they expect citizens to live off $40k or $7.25 an hour. Fuck all the way off

— 4fuxake (@blueheartedly1.bsky.social) May 17, 2026 at 4:36 PM

Beyond absurd. A budget is a moral document.

[image or embed]

— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) July 18, 2026 at 7:48 PM

Hey, your phone's about to ring (USA)

2:20 p.m. Eastern: A nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alerts.
(per CNN)
EAS alert goes to radio and TV. (EAS was first tested in 2011. This is the 7th test of EAS.)
WEA alert goes to your cell phone. (This is the second-ever WEA test that goes to consumer cell phones.)

In 2004, I wrote an article on the reform of the public warning system. It was published in April 2005. So that's why I'm thinking about your phone ringing.

Klein's 'Doppelganger': 'The thing that becomes unfamiliar is you'

A few takeaways from Naomi Klein's Doppelganger:

To start with, the doppelganger is an individual: "the thing that becomes unfamiliar is you." The double is "an unwelcome kind of mirror, showing the protagonist a vain and venal version of themselves." One's own double “represents the most repressed, depraved, and rejected parts of ourselves that we cannot bear to see — the evil twin, the shadow self, the anti-self, the Hyde to our Jekyll," such that "the person encountering their double is invariably pushed to their limits by the frustration and uncanniness of it all.” Emilio Uranga called it zozobra in 1952; Alfred Hitchcock called it ‘vertigo’ in 1958.

In literature,

“doppelgangers consistently signal that the protagonist’s life is about to be upended, with the double turning their friends and colleagues against them, destroying their career, or framing them for crimes, and — very often — having sex with their spouse or lover. A standard trope in the genre is a nagging uncertainty about whether the double is real at all. Is this actually an identical stranger, or are they a long-lost twin? Worse, is the double a figment of the protagonist’s imagination — an expression of an unhinged subconscious?”

Socially:

"There is a certain inherent humiliation in getting repeatedly confused with someone else, confirming, as it does, one’s own interchangeability and/or forgettableness. That’s the trouble with doppelgangers: anything you might do to dispel the confusion just draws attention to it, and runs the risk of further cementing the unwanted association in people’s minds."

It tells us that "no matter how deliberately we tend to our personal lives and public personas, the person we think we are is fundamentally vulnerable to forces outside of our control."

But it's more than just a personal or even social event. It tells us about the culture. “When reality starts doubling, refracting off itself," Klein says, "it often means that something important is being ignored or denied — a part of ourselves and our world we do not want to see — and that further danger awaits if the warning is not heeded.” Watching Wolf (the Other Naomi), Klein felt "as if I were seeing not only undesirable parts of myself but a magnification of many undesirable aspects of our shared culture as well."

During the “time of great loneliness” during the pandemic, “a lot of us were watching the world go by with our mouths hanging open.” Klein’s speechlessness wasn’t only “the result of my own highly specific Naomi-Naomi problem.” Rather, her feeling was more profoundly rooted in “a feeling of near violent rupture between the world of words and the world beyond them." Of all the meanings of the doppelganger, she's especially worried about "the fascist clown state that is the ever-present twin of liberal Western democracies."

Topics that progressives fail to address (successfully, or at all, in words or actions) are ripe for distortion in the right-wing conspiracy theorist Mirror World. That's a "larger and more dangerous form of mirroring — a mimicking of beliefs and concerns." That's what Wolf represents to Klein.

And so:

"all of politics increasingly feels like a mirror world, with society split in two, and each side defining itself against the other — whatever one says and believes, the other seems obliged to say and believe the exact opposite. The deeper I went, the more I noticed this phenomenon all around me: individuals not guided by legible principles or beliefs, but acting as members of groups playing yin to the other’s yang — well versus weak; awake versus sheep; righteous versus depraved. Binaries where thinking once lived."

The book

Naomi Klein. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

My story

Read my own doppelganger story, inspired by Klein's: "Transphobia is a bellybutton mirror" (unpaywalled "friends link". It's an 18-minute read on Medium.

The 'Intellectual Dark Web' isn't being silenced

Lisa Sugiura's book The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere and the Virtual War Against Women (2021) is open access.

Sugiura explains the Intellectual Dark Web's complaint against what they call "grievance studies," modern academic pursuits that they see as driven by biased political agendas:

"In 2017, three scholars linked with the intellectual dark web – James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian, who describe themselves as left-leaning liberals and seemingly have more time at their disposal than most academics – coordinated a scam against gender, queer, critical race, masculinities studies, amongst others nicknamed Sokal Squared. Heavily influenced by the Sokal Hoax, the ploy involved the creation of 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon submitted to various journals in these fields, with the aim of exposing ridiculous conclusions."

Alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos pushes the envelope with his overtly antisemitic and racist comments. Along with Jordan Peterson, he claims his right to speak is being curtailed:

"Yiannopoulos rationalised his comments, emphasising his homosexuality and alleging that he is a victim of child abuse, as well as referring to his Jewish mother and being raised Jewish...In 2019, he was permanently banned along with other far right commentators – Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan and Paul Nehlen, from Twitter and Facebook for breaching their hate speech rules."

In March 2021, Yiannopoulos declared he is now ‘ex-gay’ and his husband is now his housemate, Sugiura said.

They aren't being silenced

Sugiura explains this:

"Loud claims about being silenced from people with significant political and institutional power demonstrate that the exact opposite is occurring. If they were truly silenced, as those who are oppressed, then we would not hear or see them, and they certainly would not have the wealth of access to the public consciousness in the manner they do. As Sara Ahmed so eloquently puts it 'whenever people keep being given a platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a performative contradiction; you are witnessing a mechanism of power'. Claiming to be silenced amplifies and distributes reactionary forms of speech generating outrage. This is how figures such as Jordan Peterson and Milo Yiannopoulos have created platforms, by alleging they have none." [emphasis mine]

By the way:

"There is a current loophole within the proposed law, that protections for free speech could result in perverse outcomes, where a user could complain that legal racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic content has been removed and therefore should be re-uploaded on a platform."

However

On August 23, 2023, an Ontario court upheld a November 2022 order from the College of Psychologists of Ontario which said Peterson must take social media training to improve his professionalism in his public statements.

Also: Climate change denial

"Magatte Wade, who heads an internal Atlas project called the Center for African Prosperity, frequently cites de Soto as an inspiration for her take on Africa and climate change. In multiple op-eds over the past few years, and in an interview this year with Canadian professor and right-wing figurehead Jordan Peterson, Wade, who was born in Senegal but moved to Germany when she was 7, describes climate activists as the new colonialists, arguing that climate action will keep Africans poor and deprive them of access to energy. Wade often depicts those who would deny the continent its current fossil fuel boom as out-of-touch elitists and regularly claims that climate action will kill a billion Africans—all while refusing to engage with the fact that African climate activists are being arrested at an alarming rate."
— Meet the Shadowy Global Network Vilifying Climate Protesters For decades, the Atlas Network has used its reach and influence to spread conservative philosophy—and criminalize climate protest. Amy Westervelt and Geoff Dembicki, New Republic, September 12, 2023.

On which point, I encourage you to read my article: "When you claim that experts don't know their stuff", about Jordan Peterson's January 2022 appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast in which he claimed that climate scientists have no idea what they're talking about because "climate" doesn't refer to anything in particular. For $5 you can read this article and millions of others on Medium for a whole month.

Listened to an NPR story this morning about mass child starvation in Senegal without a single mention of Elon Musk, the guy who gleefully created the conditions for the mass starvation

— Denny Carter (@dennycarter.bsky.social) June 13, 2026 at 7:27 AM

Pro-Trump podcasters are divided over Trump's immigration and deportation policies: Figures like Joe Rogan are facing backlash from some in conservative media after calling Trump’s mass deportations “insane” and “barbaric”. Noah Dowe & Ben Van Bloem. Media Matters. 11/07/25

From Jimmy Carter's biography

Observations from The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter by Kai Bird, Crown Publishing Group, 2022.

---

James Earl Carter, Jr. was born Oct 1, 1924 and grew up in a small town with fewer than 500 people. His father, who held segregationist beliefs, was a farmer, “growing peanuts, corn, and cotton and drawing ‘rents’ from his Black tenants.” The family lived in “a three-bedroom single-story house assembled from a Sears, Roebuck kit. The structure lacked electricity and insulation and had no running water until 1935, when Carter’s father bought a small windmill to pump water from the backyard well into a water tank.” And: “Although electricity came to Atlanta in 1884, it took more than a half century to reach [the small town of] Archery in 1938.”

At age 21, he graduated from the Naval Academy and married Rosalynn Smith.

Carter, though “a southern white man,” was “the first president to feel entirely comfortable worshipping and speaking in a Black church.”

“Many in the Washington pundit class ridiculed his soft Georgian twang and peanut farmer persona.”

“He personally disapproved of abortion, but he always defended a woman’s right to choose and lobbied for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. He criticized busing as a tool of integration but ardently supported affirmative action.”

“…he was willing to sacrifice some social programs—but not the defense budget—in an effort to control what he thought were inflationary budget deficits. … Liberals complained that he could have spent more on social programs to stimulate job creation and less on a defense budget still premised on Cold War assumptions.”

“His self-confidence bordered on arrogance. As a Southern Baptist he was painfully self-aware that his pride was the deepest of sins.”

“He put solar panels on the roof of the White House before they were economical. He talked about climate change before it was ever fashionable.”

“As a white boy growing up in South Georgia, Jimmy Carter lived a childhood steeped in segregation and a culture of white supremacy. And yet his childhood playmates were mostly African Americans. His only neighbors were Black tenants. He experienced from the ground the great chasm between America’s beliefs about itself and the reality of inequality, poverty, and racism.”

In 1955,

“a dozen of Carter’s peanut warehouse customers paid him a visit and suggested that he join the White Citizens’ council—basically the Klan in business suits. When he politely declined, they offered to pay on his behalf the $5 annual membership fee. At this, Carter lost patience, angrily took out his own $5 bill, and announced that he’d sooner ‘flush it down the toilet’ than give it to the White Citizens’ Council.”

As governor of Georgia, Carter worked to reform the judiciary and prisons, but “reluctantly signed a bill that reinstated the death penalty” (which his wife opposed); “no one was executed during his four-year tenure.” He appointed liberal judges, “including the first Jewish judge to the Georgia Court of Appeals.”

---

Books that influenced him

"He read books by theologians and philosophers, including Paul Tillich, Soren Kierkegaard, and the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. He took to quoting Tillich on how ‘religion is a search.’ From Karl Barth he accepted the notion that the Bible could not be read literally. He read the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. In 1965, his good friend William Gunter lent him a copy of Reinhold Niebuhr: On Politics—essays that ratified what he already believed: that he could be both a successful politician and a good Christian. ... ‘One of my greatest regrets,’ Carter later said, ‘was not meeting Niebuhr before he died [in 1971].’"

"...when [James] Fallows had first met Carter in August 1976, the presidential candidate had made a point of saying that he had read Fallows’s 1971 book The Water Lords, a Nader study-group report on water pollution in Savannah."

More than four decades later, a secret revealed: How a prominent Texas politician says he unwittingly joined a mission to sabotage Jimmy Carter's 1980 campaign by urging the Iranians to hold 52 American hostages until after the election. https://t.co/VHhYt0iD0A

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) March 18, 2023

My god, read this and weep for the country we might live in now, what world we might live in, if this fool had come clean 43 years ago, if the hostages had been freed (imagine bargaining to keep them imprisoned), if Carter had won? https://t.co/sFENAVWtYV

— THE UNDERTOW, by Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) March 18, 2023

U.S. Neo-Nazi Homeschool Network

A couple years ago, this story about Pennsylvania:

Hate and extremist groups emboldened across Pa. last year Ivey DeJesus. PennLive. Feb. 22, 2021.

Today, this:

Inside a US Neo-Nazi Homeschool Network With Thousands of Members: A Ohio couple has been unmasked as leaders of the neo-Nazi “Dissident Homeschool” Telegram channel that distributes lesson plans to 2,400 members. David Gilbert. Vice. January 29, 2023.

"Inside The Online Community Where Home-Schoolers Learn How To Turn Their Kids Into ‘Wonderful Nazis’". Christopher Mathias. HuffPost. January 29, 2023.

Follow-up the next day:

Nazi Homeschool Network Under Investigation by Ohio’s Department of Education: They are investigating a group that advocates white supremacist ideologies with the aim to make sure the children they teach "become wonderful Nazis." David Gilbert. Vice. January 30, 2023.

Related, in fiction:

In this novel, after the US collapses, Nazis take control of the upper Midwest.

Amazon deforestation: Comments from Gustavo Petro, president-elect of Colombia

"Gustavo Petro Wins the Election, Becoming Colombia’s First Leftist Leader," Julie Turkewitz, New York Times, June 19, 2022:

"Gustavo Petro, a former rebel and a longtime legislator, won Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday, galvanizing voters frustrated by decades of poverty and inequality under conservative leaders, with promises to expand social programs, tax the wealthy and move away from an economy he has called overly reliant on fossil fuels.

His victory sets the third largest nation in Latin America on a sharply uncertain path, just as it faces rising poverty and violence that have sent record numbers of Colombians to the United States border; high levels of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon, a key buffer against climate change; and a growing distrust of key democratic institutions, which has become a trend in the region."

Also from that article:

"Mr. Petro, in an interview earlier this year, said he believed he could work well with the government of President Biden, adding that his relationship with the United States would focus on working together to tackle climate change, specifically halting the rapid erosion of the Amazon.

“There is a point of dialogue there,” he said. “Because saving the Amazon rainforest involves some instruments, some programs, that do not exist today, at least not with respect to the United States. It is, in my opinion, the priority.”"

---

"Chicken from Tesco linked to deforestation in the Amazon" Adam Vaughan, Times UK, April 13, 2023

Colombia declara un nuevo Parque Nacional Natural: Serranía de Manacacías, El Espectador, December 2023

---

"When considering Indigenous American civilizations, it’s important to understand that they had different resources at hand, different pressure to respond to, and different values guiding how they approached things. Metallurgy may not have developed to the same extent, but much of the Amazon rainforest is the product of intensive management by indigenous peoples across several “civilizations.” It may not have required direct and active management throughout its existence, but I would be comfortable arguing that a food forest the size of Western Europe equals the scope of the construction of all the cathedrals of the Middle Ages."
— Cameron Summers, What is Technology? (Contraslop, Part 1), Broken Hands, June 19, 2024

See my art essay We secrete a shell.

Image by Heike Hartmann from Pixabay

24 de octubre de 2024: 361 ambientalistas han sido asesinados en Colombia desde 2018. Más de 350 ambientalistas han sido asesinados desde 2018 en Colombia, país anfitrión de la COP16, reveló la ONG Fundación Paz y Reconciliación (PARES) en un informe publicado el miércoles.

Connecting climae and poverty

Related:

"Climate studies, to me, is a sort of branch of development studies. I realize this is not a mainstream position, but it’s the one that makes sense to me.

That’s my starting point, and it’s different from the starting point of a lot of people in the climate movement."

How to Save the Planet Without Screwing Over Poor People A manifesto. Quico Toro, Apr 23, 2026

When the US had a federal ban on assault weapons (1994–2004)

A bit of history:

In 1994, a federal assault weapon ban was passed during Bill Clinton’s presidency. One of the compromises that had to be made in order for it to pass was that a 10-year sunset provision was built into it. During that decade when assault weapons were banned, experts say mass shootings in this country were reduced by 43 percent. Then, in 2004, Republicans in Congress voted against extending the ban, and immediately after the ban expired, mass shootings went up by almost 250 percent.

So we have solid research proving that it worked — and frankly, it wasn’t even a perfect piece of legislation. It had a lot of loopholes in it. It allowed for lots of assault weapons to be grandfathered in. It didn’t completely ban those weapons, and still it made a massive difference.

— Robyn Thomas, executive director at Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, interviewed by Katie Couric (June 1, 2022)

Knowing that others are likely to have guns will not deter a would-be mass shooter. Jillian Peterson says:

"I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed."

"Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention?" Melanie Warner, interviewing Jillian Peterson and James Densley. Politico. May 27, 2022.

USPS May Soon Allow People To Ship Handguns Through The Mail, HuffPost, 2026

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

U.S. Representative openly embraces the term 'Christian nationalism'

The First Amendment does say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," but that does not stop lawmakers from endorsing Christian nationalism.

Cross by sspiehs3 from Pixabay

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says that Christian nationalism is nothing to fear because it's the only thing that can stop school shootings, crime, and sexual immorality, declaring that anyone who opposes it is a "domestic terrorist." pic.twitter.com/0WhcAfFeCT

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) June 3, 2022

Remember how researchers of Christian nationalism were called „alarmist“ and „hysterical“ because they warned of its dangers? Well, the Right has started to openly admit that they in fact ARE Christian nationalists. Just fyi. https://t.co/wnpiOA5M9H

— Annika Brockschmidt (@ardenthistorian) June 3, 2022

One of many, many related phenomena we might bring up is that some guns are Christian.

I am not over the fact that a gun company made a gun named the Crusader, stamped Psalm 144:1 on it, it's in such high demand that there's a 12-18 month waiting period, and we don't treat it as a call for religious terrorism.

— Thomas Lecaque (@tlecaque) June 6, 2022

I. Am. Literally. A. Historian. Of. The. Crusades. https://t.co/Z2PfHTTCGL

— Thomas Lecaque (@tlecaque) June 7, 2022

Hemant Mehta blogged: "On July 1 [2022], a slew of conservative Christians, including conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and anti-abortion zealot Abby Johnson, gathered..." The event was hosted by Gene Bailey who said they should pledge to "watch over the nation and make sure it’s run according to conservative Christian principles." He asked them to recite something called the "Watchmen Decree."

On July 23, 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene told Next News Network: “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

If you're interested in context, please see my posts on Sarah Posner's Unholy and Katherine Stewart's The Good News Club (both on this blog); Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and American Rule by Jared Yates Sexton (on Medium — these links get you around the paywall); and The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones (on Goodreads). In September 2023, Jones has a new book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future, and in an interview refers to White Christian Americans' "counterfactual myth of impossible innocence."

---

Doug Mastriano is the Republican Party nominee for Pennsylvania governor. He supports QAnon and Christian nationalism. He's promoted his campaign on the social media site Gab, which was founded by Andrew Torba. Torba said, as Raw Story paraphrased it, that "he believes American conservatism should be for Christians only, and that conservatives should reject right-wing Jewish figures such as Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin."

Torba's words:

>"We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country. We're not saying we're going to deport all these people or whatever. You're free to stay here. You're not going to be forced to convert or anything like this because that's not biblical whatsoever. But you're going to enjoy the fruits of living in a Christian society under Christian laws and under a Christian culture and you can thank us later."

Oh, an update on Ben Shapiro in 2025:

Fascinated how the guy who made superstars of Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Jordan Peterson, and Michael Knowles thought that unfettered racism and every phobia in existence wouldn't eventually include anti-semitism

[image or embed]

— The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) (@theserfstv.bsky.social) October 12, 2025 at 2:21 PM

---

The US isn't a Christian nation, but that's a myth that enables its believers, says Jared Yates Sexton, "to understand the world and accept the type of violence and oppression that is coming." (tweet, July 27, 2022) One of their sayings is "There is no crime for those with Christ," meaning the ends justify the means. (tweet from the same thread) There was violence and political scapegoating between Catholics and Protestants ever since Protestantism arose. Then, in the US, "the Founders wanted to destroy the religious-backed institution of the monarchy, which relied on the Christian mythology in order to hold power. They wanted to move to a different system where entrenched wealth and power could be shifted." (tweet from the same thread) "Because Christianity held such power, the Founders and others like them formed secret societies and organizations where they could discuss options to move beyond the old systems and form something less chaotic and beyond the old hierarchies." (tweet from the same thread) It was the instinct of liberal democracy to have a religion-free government, and the instinct of conservatism to assume that liberals wanted "to destroy Christianity itself...[and that this was] part of a larger, sinister plot. This is the definitive mindset of conservatism and their goal is to reconstruct the hierarchies of the past." (tweet from the same thread) There is "the original conspiracy theory: that a sinister and evil plot is being carried out to destroy Christianity and destroy the nation." (tweet from the same thread) The New World Order conspiracy theory is also used by Putin and Orbán. The Christian myth "gives them a world to live in in which these things can be carried out." (tweet from the same thread) Trumpism prepared the way. QAnon is a modernized version of "sinister, Evil plots that can only be answered by violence and the destruction of liberal democracy." (tweet from the same thread) Sexton adapted this information from his forthcoming book, The Midnight Kingdom (January 2023).

---

Quote from NPR's Morning Edition (July 1, 2022):

"These legal wins for the Christian Right, though, are happening at a time when a growing majority of Americans are strongly opposed to their views.

'This is the most disproportionate power that the Christian Right has had in my lifetime,' says Robert Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute — a nonpartisan group that conducts research on the intersection of politics, culture and religion."

---

Thom Hartmann, "So where did all this right-wing religious nuttery come from?," Salon, July 12, 2022:

"...what's so astonishing about the entire situation is that we have reached this point not because the American public wants religious doctrine running our law, and not because most religious people agree with an arrogant prick working at Walgreens.

Instead, it's because a small group of right-wing billionaires didn't want to pay their taxes, wanted to get rid of their unions and didn't want regulation of the pollution from their refineries and other operations.

Seriously.

They put billions of dollars over five decades into a project to seize control of the legislatures of a majority of the states, jam up the U.S. Congress and pack the Supreme Court — and it was all about taxes, unions and regulation.

So where did the religious nuttery come from?

The right-wing billionaires and the corporations and foundations aligned with them knew back in 1971 — when Lewis Powell laid out their strategy in his infamous "Powell Memo," the year before Richard Nixon put him on the Supreme Court — that most Americans wouldn't happily vote to lower billionaires' taxes, end unions and regulation of gun manufacturers, or increase the amount of refinery poisons in our air.

How to convince the public that taxes, regulations, and organized labor cause more harm than benefit? Not only "five decades and billions of dollars to subsidize think tanks and policy groups," not only right-wing media like Fox News, not only an alliance with the NRA to increase the number of guns 8-fold in the US over the four decades since Reagan was first elected. No, they also needed Jerry Falwell, "an inveterate grifter, hustling Jesus to build a multimillion-dollar empire while ignoring Jesus' teachings about humility, poverty and the need to care for others. A new, muscular Jesus — a Jesus who endorsed assault weapons and private jets for preachers — came to dominate much of America's Protestant Christianity."

The result of the politicized Christianity, of course, is that in 2022 we no longer have abortion access in all 50 states because we lost Roe v. Wade.

---

Very difficult to overstate how dangerous this is. A Supreme Court justice suggesting that "secular society" is a risk, that the government somehow favors or even is dependent on religion and believers over others is a step toward theocracy and away from our founding principles. https://t.co/3kid6XiGQS

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) July 30, 2022

This is the work of white Christian nationalism. It is the work of incipient fascism. It is the work of those who seek to enshrine the narrow superstitions of a small minority in laws and rulings that will in fact replace religious freedom with religious obligations.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) July 30, 2022

---

"Our national poll included 2,091 participants, carried out May 6-16, 2022, with a margin of error of +/- 2.14 percent.

We started by asking participants if they believed the Constitution would even allow the United States government to declare the U.S. a “Christian Nation.” We found that 70 percent of Americans — including 57 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats — said that the Constitution would not allow such a declaration. (Indeed, the First Amendment says Congress can neither establish nor prohibit the practice of a religion.)

* * *

Fully 61 percent of Republicans supported declaring the United States a Christian nation. In other words, even though over half of Republicans previously said such a move would be unconstitutional, a majority of GOP voters would still support this declaration."

— "Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation: New polling shows the appeal — and limits — of a Christian nationalist message." Stella Rouse and Shibley Telhami. Politico. Sept. 21, 2022.

Annika Brockschmidt (Twitter: @ardenthistorian) wrote a book about the rise of the religious right and white Christian Nationalism in the US. The book is in German. Amerikas Gotteskrieger: Wie die Religiöse Rechte die Demokratie gefährdet

Episode of Trumpcast: "White Supremacy, Tulsa, and the Mythology of America." One more conversation before this weekend’s ill-fated Trump rally. Description: "Virginia Heffernan talks to author Jared Yates Sexton about evangelical mythology, Bill Barr, rural understandings of globalism, the Confederacy, the coming Trump rally in Tulsa, how some Christian Trumpists may view COVID, and the “cult of the shining city."

---

Robert Reich observes (Substack, July 13, 2023):

“Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes,” Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis proclaimed at the Christian Hillsdale College (substituting “left’s schemes” for the “devil's schemes” of Ephesians 6:11).

* * *

The paradox is that religious observance has shown a steep decline over the past quarter century. In 1999, Gallup found that 70 percent of Americans belonged to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. In 2020, the number was 47 percent. For the first time in nearly a century of polling, worshippers were the minority in America.

Does this precipitous decline help explain the militance of white Christian nationalism? A fierce minority religious movement has taken over the Republican Party — giving the GOP fervor and purpose that are now being championed by Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, Republican state legislators, and Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

We're in this situation now.

"Christian nationalism, separate from the Christian religion, is a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian beliefs and symbols with national identity and public policy. Christian nationalists believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and Christianity should be infused in all aspects of American society. They believe that their god is the only thing that should influence laws and determine our rights, and as such, any laws and any governing body that is not based on the authority of their god, is essentially meaningless. For Christian nationalists, our government, the television shows we watch, the music we consume, how we structure our family life, how we engage with one another, and more, should be informed by their god. The true danger of this ideology lies not in that they believe this (although plenty could be said on that), but in that they are actively trying to enact it into our policies."

— Unveiling Christian Nationalism: Examining its Influence Through Current Legislative Trends, Meredith Thompson, The Humanist, March 15, 2024

Seen in May 2024

One of the most important things you can do as an ally and as fighter of fascism is stop laughing at evangelical Christians and realize they mean every single word they say. They’re not funny, they’re absolutely terrifying. Take them extremely seriously and act accordingly.

— Erin Biba (@erinbiba.bsky.social) May 26, 2024 at 4:14 PM

Responses to this included (paraphrased):

• They worship power.
• They will reject their own family rather than give up any of that power.
• They will use their power to cause harm.
• They're trying to bring about the apocalypse.
• They're aware of what they're doing.
• They're organized and shrewd.
• They apply the concept of "religious freedom" inconsistently — they mean it for them and no one else.
• They're conscious and intentional about their inconsistency, which means you can't shame them simply by pointing out their hypocrisy.

Recommendation: Listen to Chrissy Stroop www.bugbeardispatch.com (and on Bluesky)

June 2024

It's long past time for a broader discussion about what "Christian" means in America. It is far more a political identifier than a shared faith: 43% of Evangelicals reject the divinity of Christ.

[image or embed]

— Max Kennerly (@maxkennerly.bsky.social) Jun 18, 2024 at 8:55 AM

Washington Post opinion: "Trump has changed what it means to be evangelical"

July 2024

Josh Hawley embraces the Christian nationalism label at NatCon:

[image or embed]

— Sarah Posner (@sarahposner.bsky.social) Jul 9, 2024 at 12:41 PM

Marjorie Taylor Greene

"sees what her fellow Republicans either don’t see or aren’t willing to acknowledge: Trump’s second administration has already failed and will doom its party in upcoming elections. And she wants to get credit for being the first prominent elected Republican to say this out loud.

Late on Friday, in a statement that took everyone by surprise, Greene announced that she would be resigning from Congress in January. Once one of Trump’s most vocal allies, she had been fighting an increasingly bitter war with him in recent months, attacking him on everything from health care to the Epstein files to foreign policy. Trump, she has argued, is betraying his movement, selling out his voters as his administration ignores rising costs, attempts to hide embarrassing secrets, and props up a failing government in Argentina and a murderous one in Israel." (Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Playing the Long Game: The resigning Georgia congresswoman understands something that other Republicans don’t. Alex Shephard, The New Republic, November 25, 2025)

See also: The biggest myth about White Christian nationalism (12 min read), John Blake, CNN, Jan 25, 2026

On March 22, 2026, CNN will air Pamela Brown's video report, "The Rise of Christian Nationalism," on The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper. See this interview with Robert Jones aired on March 20.

"And in Oklahoma, the Christian nationalist founder of Pastors for Trump, Jackson Lahmeyer, announced his candidacy for Congress this week in the city he calls “Tulsarusalem.” Lahmeyer gained notoriety during the COVID pandemic for selling vaccine exemption slips and making inflammatory statements on social media. He preaches about a religiopolitical war between good Christians and evil “Luciferians.” A member of Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board, Lahmeyer purports to be a defender of religious liberty, though he does not believe the First Amendment applies to Muslims."

— email from American Atheists, March 27, 2026

New Survey Reveals An Alarming Number Of Women Support Christian Nationalism: How men and women support Christian nationalism is consistent, but there's one key difference. Monica Torres, HuffPost, Mar 30, 2026

The Religious Right is desperate these days to pretend that "Christian Nationalism" is (1) a recently-invented term and (2) a pejorative invented by their enemies, but neither of those claims is remotely true. Here's a short thread, but I'm sure other historians will have examples too.

[image or embed]

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) May 17, 2026 at 10:38 AM

Of this, Task Force Publishes Report on Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias and Restoring Religious Liberty (April 30, 2026), Scott MacConomy, Director of Policy and Government Affairs for the Secular Coalition for America, says in an email sent by the organization that the report "tries to argue that government actions sometimes infringed on religious liberty and portrays conservative Christians as targets of ideological hostility. In reality, the report mostly relies on anecdotal evidence and coincidences to conclude that members of the religion that includes almost two-thirds of the American population, 87 percent of members of Congress, and 100 percent of the Supreme Court are victims of bias and persecution. ... Next year they will release a second report full of policy recommendations, likely to include recommendations to expand religious exemptions and roll back civil rights protections. I think we should start referring to this as Project 2027. It’s going to be that bad."

Related:

"Sriram Krishnan, who has served as the White House senior policy adviser for AI, is leaving his role at the end of June [2026], an anonymous source told The Washington Post.

Krishnan played a major role in the Trump administration's 28-page “AI Action Plan," which, in part, was concentrated on "winning the AI race" through expanding AI infrastructure and removing regulations. He also helped create Trump's executive order restricting state-level AI laws.

To me that seems related because those are AI policy documents that say that AI must not have ideological bias.

Gorsuch Calls Out U.S. Conservatives For Pushing Myth Of White, Christian Founding, Ryan Grenoble, July 27, 2026