Out Of The Closet

Gay folks came out of the closet several years ago. These days, it’s “Christian” Nationalism that is emerging, “out and proud.” A number of “Christian” congregations (note quotation marks) have decided to ignore that “woke” stuff in the Sermon on the Mount–not to mention biblical admonitions about widows, orphans and strangers–and have chosen to refashion religion as political ideology.

I’ve previously written about the book published in 2023 by Tim Alberta, titled “The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,” in which Alberta–himself a very devout Evangelical–shared his horrified observations of that transformation, and the thousands of Evangelical churches that have essentially jettisoned theology for the political ideology of the MAGA movement. 

Here in my city of Indianapolis, just a couple of weeks ago, the Sure Foundation Baptist Church recently advocated for the death penalty for LGBTQ+ individuals. The pastor, Stephen Falco, suggested they should kill themselves. (He made these remarks during a “Men’s Preaching Night,” and his “sermon” was streamed online.) 

Talking Points Memo recently reported on an Idaho church that has moved to Washington, D.C., where it “ministers” to MAGA movers and shakers like Pete Hegseth and assorted Republican operatives. Pastor Jared Longshore opened the initial service by declaring that “The option before you is quite plain. It is Christ or chaos, Christ or destruction.”

According to the reporter who wrote the piece, the church in D.C. is part of a growing, international network of churches that someone named Doug Wilson founded. It is called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).

I attended what the CREC called the “planting” of a D.C. church on Sunday after spending months growing increasingly fascinated with Wilson and his influence on the New Rightthat is ascendant in Trump’s Washington. America is full of people with big, apocalyptic visions and hardline views on how the country can redeem itself. But Wilson is a rare bird: along with the CREC, he’s built a small, theocratic empire in Moscow, Idaho, far away from D.C. And yet, through his own sermons, those of affiliated pastors like Longshore, and a publishing house, Christ Kirk (also known as Christ Church) has managed to bridge the geographic divide and gain a following among right-wingers across the country. It’s spawned what some call the “Moscow Mood” — a postmillennialist view that the Christian right should employ a new level of aggression in fighting to dominate the culture, and use the government to enact policies in accordance with its religious teachings…

Planting a church in the nation’s Capitol follows naturally from the organization’s vision: just as a member must incorporate their religious belief into every aspect of their personal life, so too must they fight for the group’s favored ideas in politics and culture: banning homosexuality, embracing more patriarchal family structures, ending abortion, and removing female soldiers from combat roles. In a phone interview after the sermon, Longshore told TPM that he wants a Christian government in the most direct sense: all government officials must “acknowledge that Christ is Lord and then actually listen to what he is telling them to do.” That would include the need to “execute the wrath of God against the wrongdoer,” he said. 

Members of this church–like so many of those described by Alberta– are self-described “warriors” of the Christian right. They believe they are fighting a war against modern America. Those members see themselves, as the author of the report notes, as “underdogs, besieged on all sides by a secularism that’s violent and bent on destroying the remnants of a Christian America that they’re trying to revive.” That victimization mentality has persisted, even while the influence of the Christian right as grown. (The author lists the end of Roe, the hard-right, Christian SCOTUS majority, and rising church attendance among young men.) They believe they exist within what Longshore, in his sermon, described as “a lapsed nation, a fallen nation, a nation that was Christian to the core, nearly to a man when it was founded.” (Accurate history wasn’t his strong suit.)

 In a conversation after the sermon, Longshore told TPM’s reporter that the problem he sees is the “emphasis on democracy.” Democracy, he said, leads to falsity: people start “trusting the mind of man to determine how things should go,” while “ultimately God is the one who has spoken.”

And of course, we know who speaks for God…

When I encounter “religious” people so devoid of anything remotely resembling loving-kindness or humility, I always think of that quote by Anne Lamott: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

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I Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

As regular readers of this blog know, I don’t suffer what I consider foolishness (or worse) in silence. At times, as I survey the political landscape, words positively spew out. But every once in a while, I read something that captures my perspective so perfectly–that so eloquently captures my angst, anger and perspective– that it deserves copious quotation.

That’s the case with a recent essay from Lincoln Square, titled “The Complicity of the Gutless, Self-Gelding Beltway Barnacles.”

The tirade perfectly expresses my feelings about the non-“true believing” Republicans who have enabled America’s flight from democracy and rational government–the GOP elected officials like Indiana Senator Todd Young. No one sane expected anything better from the crazy “Christian” MAGA morons like our other Senator, but–as the author, a former Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party writes–our current situation can be firmly laid at the feet of the quislings who know better.

Permit me to share some of his diatribe, with which I entirely agree.

This is a pox on every current or former Republican elected official, every D.C. policy wonk, every think-tank libertarian, every “principled” conservative, every consultant and operative, every comms flack who flinched at Trump in 2016, held their nose in 2020, and now in 2025 are all-in, pretending they never saw the flames. They saw the incompetence. The ignorance. The corruption. The racism. The appeals to violence. The fascist cosplay. They watched Trump mismanage a pandemic that killed a million Americans. They watched him try to shake down Ukraine. They watched the tear gas fly at Lafayette Square. They watched January 6th.

After Trump lost to Biden, he writes,

They let the tumor grow back. And now that he’s returned to power — with a vengeance, a vendetta list, a castrated Congress, and a perverted and retributive Justice Department in his pocket — they’ve decided to go along to get along. Because “we need to win,” because “it’s about judges,” because “Biden was too old,” because their taxes will be lower, because “Harris was too progressive,” because of some freshman DEI policy at Oberlin College or the University of Michigan…

There is no Trump 2.0 without these Vichy collaborators. He doesn’t have the IQ or impulse control to govern without them. They write the policies. They run the agencies. They polish the lies. MAGA isn’t a grassroots movement — it’s a fascist aesthetic wrapped around a cynical, calculating elite that knows exactly what it’s doing: Dismantling democracy for profit and power.

Look around. The Department of Justice is now a MAGA war room. News agencies are threatened with being frog-marched into courtrooms for asking the wrong questions. State National Guards have been federalized — and active duty Marines deployed — to occupy Los Angeles. And those “respectable” Republicans? The ones who were “uncomfortable” with Trump before? They’re writing op-eds praising his “leadership.” They’re spinning the gutting of civil liberties as “order.” They’re appeasing tyranny but collecting paychecks.

These aren’t rubes at a rally in Sheboygan or the MAGA meth chorus from Bumfuck County. These are the guys in the green rooms and boardrooms, at the Capitol Hill Club, in the donor retreats and Capitol cloakrooms. They know better. They knew better.

This piece isn’t about the true believers. It’s about the Quisling converts. The ones who once winced when Trump called the press “enemies of the people,” and would now cheer if he arrests them. The ones who once said, “This is not conservatism,” and now insist, “This is what the people want.”

If and when we emerge from this dark time, the most important question we’ll need to ask won’t involve the manifest pathologies of Trump. It won’t even focus on the intellectual and emotional deficits of the MAGA faithful–after all, numerous humans in every generation have joined cults, clung to their tribal affiliations and hated the “other.” What is new–or at least seems unprecedented to my inaccurate historical memory–is the wholesale defection of an entire cohort of public figures from anything resembling integrity.

There was, of course, the author’s absolutely accurate reference to quislings, the French who submitted during WWII, a term defined as a citizen or politician of an occupied country who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. It is a perfect description of today’s GOP lawmakers. If any reader is aware of a psychological profile of those collaborators, I hope you will point us to that scholarship in the comments.

As the author notes, “They were in the house. They saw the fire. And instead of helping us put it out, they grabbed a lawn chair and roasted hot dogs. ” What explains that reaction?

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What Dobbs Hath Wrought…

Lots of people cheered when our rogue Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, and began what has turned out to be a flight from constitutional principles–especially the principle that government has an obligation to protect individual liberty and autonomy.

Faux Christians celebrated the obvious fact that the decision was a win for their particular religious beliefs. Those who’d piously pretended to care about religious liberty were delighted when the Court ignored the liberties of adherents of religions that differ on the issue. (It’s been clear for quite a while that the “liberty” these Christian warriors want to advance is the liberty to impose their own beliefs on others.)

Men (and some women) whose worldviews are paternalistic celebrated the Court’s declaration that women would no longer be permitted to govern themselves. After all, those sweet little females were never meant to have self-determination; pesonal autonomy is for men. (Mostly straight and White…)

Dobbs was also welcomed by the legions of authoritarians who believe–in contrast to the nation’s founders–that  government should make life decisions for its citizen/subjects, rather than protecting their right to believe and live as they see fit.

Dobbs was handed down in 2022, so enough time has passed to see whether all that celebrating was justified, or whether the desired results have failed to materialize. A recent essay in the Guardian assessed that “progress.”

Here’s the lede:

Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the US supreme court case that rescinded the constitutional right to abortion, is failing on its own terms. Since the ruling, in June 2022, the number of abortions in the US has risen. Support for reproductive rights is on the upswing. And the rate of voluntary sterilization among young women – a repudiation of Trumpian pronatalism, if a desperate one – jumped abruptly after Dobbs, and there’s no reason to believe it will drop off.

Also rising at an alarming clip are preventable maternal deaths and criminal prosecutions of pregnant people.

The Guttmacher Institute reports that abortions rose 1.5% between 2023 and 2024, on top of a 11.1% increase in the first year after Dobbs. That’s probably a significant undercount, since Guttmacher reports only “clinician-provided abortions”, either surgical or medical (using abortion pills), and doesn’t estimate how many abortions are happening outside the formal healthcare system. As we know, numerous women are obtaining abortion medications directly from suppliers or from the multiple feminist underground networks that have been organized in the wake of the decision.

The essay notes that the 21 state legislatures that, like my own state of Indiana, have imposed total or near-total bans have failed to do anything that might give doctors legal leeway to save the health and lives of pregnant women in medical distress. Indeed, rather than trying to save lives, several are prosecuting pregnant women who handle those emergencies on their own.

The fact that we have seen more abortions, not fewer ones (not to mention increases in pro-abortion public opinion and contraception) has infuriated the anti-abortion activists, who are searching for stronger disincentives. They seem to have settled on more punishment–and have no apparent problem with more deaths among the already born. (Evidently, the death of pregnant women is an unfortunate–but acceptable– consequence of saving the “pre-born.”)

The Trump administration and MAGA want to see more babies. (Fewer immigrants, more “real American” babies…). But if one goal of banning abortion was to produce more of those babies, that’s clearly not working.

Public health researchers saw “an abrupt increase in permanent contraception procedures” – sterilization – following Dobbs among adults in their prime reproductive years, ages 18 to 30. Unsurprisingly, the increase in procedures for women (tubal ligations) was twice that for men (vasectomies).

As the essayist notes, the carrots haven’t been appetizing enough, and the sticks not effective enough, so Red-state legislators “are bringing out the AR-15s.” Republican lawmakers in at least 10 states have introduced bills defining abortion as homicide, and criminalizing both the provider and the patient. The bills are based on “fetal personhood” – the strategy of conferring full legal rights to a fetus from conception. By 2024, 39 states had fetal homicide laws.

While they work toward criminalizing the ending of a pregnancy, anti-abortion lawmakers and prosecutors are making creative use of existing law to punish miscarriages.

A 31-year-old South Carolina woman who miscarried and disposed of the tissue in the trash was arrested for “desecration of human remains”, a crime carrying a 10-year sentence. In March, a woman found bleeding outside her Georgia apartment after a miscarriage was jailed for “concealing the death of another person” and “abandonment of a dead body” for placing the remains in the bin. 

Rational people have always known this movement isn’t “pro-life.” It’s anti-woman.

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What “Separation of Powers”?

I spent 21 years teaching university students that lawmakers’ policy decisions are constrained by the U.S. Constitution. I approached my classes in Law and Public Policy through a constitutional lens–an approach that began by emphasizing that Separation of Powers is a fundamental element of America’s governing structure.

Separation of Powers is the technical term for the division of government authority among the three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. When the men we now think of as “the founders” undertook revision of the Articles of Confederation (a revision that turned into a wholesale jettisoning), their concern for limiting the power of government led them to divide governmental power two ways–through federalism, which separated the jurisdictions of local, state and national government units, and through Separation of Powers--the allocation of specific powers to each of the three branches. They were very explicit about the purpose of that structure, which was to limit the ability of any one branch of government to exercise too much control.

When media pundits talk about Trump’s persistent violations of the Constitution, they tend to focus on how his actions violate specific elements of that Constitution (the assault on birthright citizenship, fiscal  decisions that are specifically within the purview of Congress, etc.). What we are experiencing, however, is an even more fundamental breach of our founding philosophy–a breach quite correctly identified in the recent “No Kings” protests.

The incredible damage that Trump has done and is continuing to do has been dependant on the abdication of the legislative branch, and the evisceration of the power of the courts. Not all the courts, but very definitely the Supreme Court.

The fecklessness and cowardice of the few Congressional Republicans who haven’t drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid is widely understood. (Here in Indiana, we have one of each: a Christian Nationalist MAGA idiot who was elected because he had an R by his name in our deep-Red state, and a far brighter coward who undoubtedly understands how destructive this administration is, but displays continued fealty to our would-be King in order to protect his re-election prospects.)

The GOP cult that currently controls Congress has neutered the authority of the legislative branch, turning it into a body that obediently acquiesces to whatever passes for policy from the increasingly insane occupant of the Oval Office.

The situation of the courts is different. As Talking Points Memo recently reported, the lower courts have been doing their jobs. District and appellate judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents have handed down decisions that are consistent with both the constitutional text and longstanding precedents.

Stanford University political scientist Adam Bonica compiled data on the administration’s win/loss record in federal courts from May 1 through June 23. He found that in cases brought against its sprawling excesses the Trump administration has lost 94% of the time at the district court level. That’s a truly terrible litigation record. But at the Supreme Court, Bonica found, DOJ won 94% of the time.

The Trump administration has eviscerated the Department of Justice, turning a once-storied, independent agency into Trump’s personal law firm. In its current iteration, the agency has brought cases that would once have been considered legally ludicrous, hoping that the Supreme Court would eventually counter the anticipated negative rulings of the lower courts.

“We are witnessing something without precedent,” Bonica wrote. “[A] Supreme Court that appears to be at war with the federal judiciary’s core constitutional function.”

Administration officials are well aware of how their Supreme Court allies have their back in this campaign to delegitimize the trial courts. “All these district courts throughout the country are tying our hands,” complained Attorney General Pam Bondi, under questioning from Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing yesterday. “And here’s how we will follow them—when we get to SCOTUS, we’re winning.”

The Talking Points article accuses Trump’s Department of Justice of  “a completely unprecedented and coordinated vendetta to undermine the authority of federal district courts.” (Not just the federal courts: in April, FBI agents arrested a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge,  charging her with interference with an arrest by ICE. The FBI’s claims have been contradicted by eyewitnesses who were in the courtroom.) As unthinkable as it would have been in any other administration, the  Department recently sued every sitting judge in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. Why? Trump’s DOJ wants to invalidate a standing order that ensures an automatic two-day reprieve for immigrant detainees.

When neither the legislature nor the courts assert their constitutional powers, the Mad King is unconstrained. And the U.S. Constitution is history…

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That Pesky Thing Called Reality

There’s an old adage that counsels us to be careful what we wish for.

Before our mad king’s ascension to a second term, lots of Americans held negative views of immigrants. Political pundits attributed a good deal of Trump’s support to his promise to rid the country of these terrible people, the majority of whom (he asserted) were criminals and rapists.

That’s one promise the Trump administration is trying to keep, unlike its promises to curb inflation and cut out government “waste and fraud.” ICE has sent masked, armed enforcers after those nefarious lawbreakers–well, really, after everyone who “looks” undocumented (basically, engaging in racial profiling, yet another Trump administration unconstitutional practice).

So, how much has the keeping of that promise– the delivery of a result that MAGA folks ardently wished for–increased support for the administration? Strangely enough, it turns out that reality has punctured the always dishonest portrayals of America’s undocumented immigrants.

Gallup polling has charted that unanticipated turnaround:

Just months after President Donald Trump returned to office amid a wave of anti-immigration sentiment, the share of U.S. adults saying immigration is a “good thing” for the country has jumped substantially — including among Republicans, according to new Gallup polling.

About 8 in 10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now, down from 32% last year.

What has caused the shift? 

Well, first of all, despite Trump’s dishonest descriptions of an “invasion” of undocumented criminals, it turns out that there really aren’t many criminals out there. Experts have calculated that there may be–at most– only around 78,000 undocumented immigrants with any sort of  criminal record, and of that number, only 14,000 have been convicted of violent crimes. Given Stephen Miller’s demand that ICE arrest 3,000 people a day, ICE has turned its attention to farm workers and day laborers.

For example, multiple media sources have confirmed that the great majority of detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz, the immigration detention center (concentration camp) built in the Florida Everglades, do not have criminal records or charges pending against them in the U.S. — despite Donald Trump claiming the facility would hold “the most vicious people on the planet.”

For that matter, in the case of immigrants who do have records, most of those records are for immigration violations, which are technically civil offenses.

Business owners–especially landscape companies, construction companies and restaurant/hotel owners–have lost significant segments of their workforces, as ICE has rounded up workers who may have been undocumented but who were anything but dangerous criminals. Grocers (and their customers) are dealing with increased prices, as farmers have lost numerous undocumented workers who picked their crops.

And as ICE has moved to deport their friends and neighbors, many more Americans have come to recognize the indiscriminate cruelty of these sweeps. It turns out that abstract promises about ridding the country of undocumented criminals is conflicting with the reality of these roundups.

Masked ICE agents have refused to show ID as they continue to engage in a variety of offensive and unconstitutional behaviors, sparking outrage.

Not only have ICE “enforcers” engaged in racial profiling, “immigration enforcement” is increasingly being used as a barely-veiled cover for efforts to chill the exercise of free speech. Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained by ICE, his student visa revoked, and he was threatened with deportation– not for criminal activity, but for involvement in pro-Palestinian protests. His arrest was widely–and accurately– seen as a part of Trump administration efforts to crack down on student activism. Another widely reported example was the arrest of Rümeysa Öztürk, a 30-year-old Tufts University student. She was taken off the street by masked ICE agents near her home. A court subsequently determined that her arrest had been prompted by her co-authorship of an article about the ongoing war in Gaza. 

There’s much more.

The bottom line is that there is a difference between fantasy and reality. When political promises are based on “alternate realities,” the effort to fulfill them can become an (unintentional) educational exercise. 

It turns out that the American economy is heavily dependant on immigrants, both documented and “illegal.” It turns out that constitutional guarantees for everyone are weakened when an administration decides that some people aren’t entitled to them.

It turns out that immigration enforcement is “more complicated than that,” and that pesky realities are significantly different from the racist fantasies that spawned them.

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