- Cleve R. Wootson Jr. @ The Washington Post: America’s 250th birthday celebration increasingly centers on Trump
From a $250 bill to special passports to a presidential rally, many Independence Day commemorations will revolve around the president.
- Harry Thompson @ The Daily Beast: MAGA Rep Blames Someone Else for Vile Deleted Post
He previously said, “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”
- Mary Ziegler @ Slate: The Real Reason North Carolina’s GOP Is Proposing the Most Radical Anti-Abortion Bill Yet
Another anti-abortion abolitionist proposal has been in the news. This time, conservative lawmakers in North Carolina have asked voters to approve a state constitutional amendment recognizing the personhood of embryos and establishing that anyone who ends an embryonic life is guilty of first-degree murder. Those penalties might also apply to people pursuing in vitro fertilization or using some contraceptives, given that abortion foes sometimes view either as requiring the taking of unborn life. And that’s the most ordinary part of the proposal: The bill also provides that private individuals have a right to use deadly force to prevent “the willful destruction of life.”
- Illiberalism Studies Program: Trump and the Messiah: The Iconography of an American Heresy
References to the Christian religion and the return of the Messiah are not new features of American politics. While John Winthrop may have provided one of the most famous such invocations when he described the United States as the “city upon a hill” from Matthew 5:14, the idea of Manifest Destiny—that of America as a nation chosen by God—has been constitutive of national identity since the mid-nineteenth century. Donald Trump, however, brings a radical shift to this history by rendering Manifest Destiny into the first person singular.
- Andra Watkins @ For Such A Time As This: Why Markwayne Mullin's Religious Extremism Could Be His Downfall
As soon as he was appointed, those of us who understand White Christian Nationalism said he would be worse. He’s a radicalized WCN extremist, a zealot member of City Elders, an NAR/Dominionist White Christian Nationalist sect based in Oklahoma.
- Matt Ford @ The New Republic: Trump’s “Christian Nationalism” Is Neither of Those Things
The president may dress himself in the trappings of patriotism and religiosity, but make no mistake: His administration is sinful to its core.
- Haley Orion @ The Informant: Ex-Navy SEAL who claims to have killed bin Laden appears on neo-Nazi show
Robert J. O’Neill, who claims to have killed Osama bin Laden, recently did a friendly interview with a pro-Hitler podcaster.
- Bobby Allyn @ NPR: DOJ is investigating former congressman George Santos for insider trading on Kalshi
In February, four months after being released from federal prison, former Republican congressman George Santos took to social media to express his enthusiasm about attending President Trump's upcoming State of the Union address.
