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christian nationalism
Holy Grift! Trump Bibles Miraculously an Exact Match for Oklahoma Public Schools Mandate
"Ryan Walters' multimillion-dollar school Bible scheme appears to be a grift to funnel taxpayer dollars to Donald Trump and his allies."
Oct 04, 2024
Journalists in Oklahoma revealed Friday that the Christian Bibles peddled by former President Donald Trump are potentially the only ones on the market that meet the specific list of requirements for volumes the state controversially plans to purchase for its public schools.
The Oklahoma Watch reporting sparked a fresh wave of criticism on several fronts, including the Republican presidential nominee's ongoing Bible grift; Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters' attempt to spend millions in taxpayer dollars on religious books for public classrooms; and broader efforts by Christian nationalist forces to assert themselves within the modern GOP.
As Oklahoma Watch detailed:
Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.
A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters.
But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement.
Mardel doesn't carry the God Bless the USA Bible or another Bible that could meet the specifications, the We The People Bible, which was also endorsed by Trump. It sells for $90.
The outlet also noted Walters' support for Trump. The official reportedly said earlier this week: "We are going to be so proud here in Oklahoma to be the first state in the country to bring the Bible back to every single classroom and every state should be doing this... President Trump praised our efforts. President Trump has been the leader on this issue."
In response to the reporting, The Atlantic's David Graham simply said, "Incredible grift."
Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall declared that "this is somewhere being hilarious and grotesque."
Activist Olivia Julianna asserted that "this cannot be legal."
Julianna may be correct. Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, a Democrat, told Oklahoma Watch that "if the bid specs exclude most bidders unnecessarily, I could consider that a violation."
The reporting provoked praise for Oklahoma Watch's Paul Monies, Jennifer Palmer, and Heather Warlick. Arms Control Today chief editor Carol Giacomo said, "Local journalism, uncovering the facts—and the grift."
Even before the Trump Bible development, civil rights groups have spent months sounding the alarm over Walters' push to mandate Christian teachings in public schools.
On Thursday, a coalition including the ACLU and Americans United requested "records related to Walters' announced funding for the mandate, made at a September 26 meeting where the Oklahoma State Board of Education approved a $3 million budget request for the 2025-26 fiscal year 'to provide Bibles to the Oklahoma classrooms.'"
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United, said in a Thursday statement that "Oklahoma taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll Superintendent Walters' Christian nationalist agenda."
"His latest scheme—to mandate use of the Bible in Oklahoma public school curriculum—is a transparent, unlawful effort to indoctrinate and religiously coerce public school students," Laser added. "Not on our watch. Public schools are not Sunday schools."
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Project 2025 Would Clamp Down on Global Abortion Rights, Too
What happens here matters to the planet. And while the world doesn’t vote in U.S. elections, there is, and will be, a rippling international impact.
Aug 29, 2024
It has been two years since the U.S. Supreme Court blew up federal protection for abortion, handing states the power to enact abortion bans and realizing the decades-long fever-dream of anti-rights actors.
Though a minority in the U.S., these extremists are loud and determined and won’t stop at our borders. Their plans for the future are outlined in Project 2025, which is already being implemented in the U.S. and abroad through anti-abortion and anti-LGBTIQ+ initiatives and would be fully executed if radical conservative forces reclaim the White House.
While political ads have featured Project 2025, no one is talking about the profound global impact of this manifesto. It would revive anti-gender U.S. human rights policy frameworks like the Commission on Unalienable Human Rights and the Geneva Consensus Declaration, favoring anti-rights alliances and networks with other authoritarian regimes. Essentially, this amounts to a gutting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the cornerstone of multilateral engagement for the past 76 years.
Imagine the impact globally if foetuses are given the same rights as women.
Project 2025 would also reinstate and expand the anti-abortion foreign policy known as the Global Gag Rule (GGR) to all U.S. foreign assistance. The rule, which was repealed in 2021, bans foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that receive U.S. global health assistance from providing legal abortion services or referrals and advocating for abortion law reform.
This implicates upwards of $51 billion, assuming U.S. foreign assistance holds somewhat stable, which is not guaranteed. The architects of this agenda would take a transactional and punitive approach to multilateralism, putting at risk the U.S.’ entire $18.1 billion contribution to the United Nations. Particularly vulnerable are the U.S.’ $122 million contribution to the World Health Organization and $32.5 million to the United Nations Population Fund—which aims to improve reproductive and maternal health worldwide—as well as other U.N. agencies that were targeted by the 2017-2021 administration.
“Protecting life,” according to Project 2025, “should be among the core objectives of the United States foreign assistance.” It goes on to urge the United States Agency for International Development to stop “supporting the global abortion industry.”
Project 2025 seeks not only to reinstate the GGR—which is also known as the Mexico City Policy—but to expand it so that it also applies to multilateral organisations, foreign governments, and U.S.-based NGOs. This would be the most significant expansion of the GGR since it was enacted 40 years ago during the Reagan administration.
This would all be on top of the existing Helms Amendment, which is particularly egregious and has been in place since 1973. Though the Helms Amendment prohibits only the use of U.S. foreign aid for abortion as a “method of family planning,” the policy has in many countries been used to implement a total ban on abortion services, including in instances of rape, incest, and life endangerment even in humanitarian settings.
Helms has contributed to maternal deaths that disproportionately impact women of colour, and to the stagnation of maternal mortality rates globally. According to a Guttmacher Institute analysis, there could be approximately 19 million fewer unsafe abortions and 17,000 fewer maternal deaths each year if Helms were repealed.
The thing is, Project 2025 isn’t something that will happen in the future. As Robin Marty, who runs a clinic that had been the main abortion provider in Alabama, told The New York Times: “...That is what is happening here. We are Project 2025.” And no matter who wins the election, Christian nationalism is growing within the United States, and this has global repercussions. We ignore it at our peril.
The fall of Roe v. Wade was an extreme example of what a very loud minority has been working toward for decades—limiting access to abortion, taking away bodily autonomy, and undermining human rights.
This same extremism is exported around the world and just like in the U.S., it is forcing people to endure even greater hardships just to access essential healthcare. It is costing lives, risking health, and compromising people’s futures. Imagine the impact globally if foetuses are given the same rights as women.
As former U.S. President Barack Obama said at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week about the U.S. Presidential election: “The world is watching.”
Reproductive justice is a global, human rights issue, and the U.S. shares space with nearly 200 other nations. What happens here matters to the planet. And while the world doesn’t vote in U.S. elections, there is, and will be, a rippling international impact.
As we fight for reproductive freedom for all in the U.S., so must we fight for reproductive freedom for all around the world.
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Project 2025's Terrifying Christian Nationalist Vision for America
The wholesale capture of the state is the ultimate goal of its Christian nationalist architects. If you're not frightened, it's because you haven't studied what they explicitly say they will do if given the chance.
Jul 30, 2024
Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase “bread and circuses” nearly 2,000 years ago for the extravagant entertainment the Roman Empire used to distract attention from imperial policies that caused widespread discontent. Imagine the lavish banquets, gladiatorial bouts, use and abuse of young men and women for the pleasure of the rich, and so much more that characterized the later years of that empire. And none of it seems that far off from the situation we, in these increasingly dis-United States, find ourselves in today.
Although the Roman Empire described itself as being in favor of life and peace, the various Caesars and their enablers regularly dealt death and destruction in their wake. They spread the Pax Romana (the Roman Peace), including a taxation system that left the poor in debt servitude, a military that caused terror and violence across the then-known world, and a ruling authority that pitted whole communities against each other, while legislating who could associate with whom (passing marriage laws, for instance, that banned gay, inter-racial, or even cross-class marriages). The emperor in power in Jesus’s time, Caesar Augustus, was known for ushering in a Golden Age of Moral Values that went hand in hand with that Pax Romana, and it meant war and death, especially for the poor.
Perhaps scarier than either Trump’s or Vance’s connection to this regressive plan, however, is the fact that, despite popular distaste for such policies, it may not take a second Trump presidency to implement significant parts of Project 2025.
Fast forward millennia and that world bears a strange resemblance to the media distractions, violence, and regressive policies that MAGA and other extremists are pushing forward in our times. Whether it’s Donald Trump’s assertion that “I alone can fix your problems”; Supreme Court and state legislative attacks on reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, and trans youth in the name of family values; cuts to welfare, healthcare, worker’s rights and other life-sustaining programs to protect corporate interests; the militarizing of endless communities by allowing guns (especially AR-15 rifles) to proliferate, while offering only thoughts and prayers to the victims of violence, the MAGA movement is promoting culture wars and extremist policies under the banner of Christian nationalism. In doing so, its leaders are perfecting a disdain for the excluded, exploited, and rejected that hurts the poor first and worst, but impacts all of society.
And now, after decades of neoliberal plunder and the coronation of an avowed Christian nationalist — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — to the third most powerful position in the government, the Christian Right and its wealthy patrons have their eyes set on an even more ambitious power-grab: Project 2025. Articulated through the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, it’s a sprawling plan to maximize presidential power with hundreds of newly trained and deployed political operatives during Donald Trump’s next presidency. It was seen in full display recently at the Republican National Convention and made all the more likely by the recent assassination attempt against him with (yes!) an AR-15! The nearly 900-page document outlines a plan to ramp up U.S. military might, slash social welfare programs, and prioritize “traditional marriage.” A reflection of the Republican Party today, including several Christian nationalist organizations and billionaire funders listed among its 100 institutional sponsors, Project 2025 is a roadmap for what could be thought of as a new Pax Romana.
The Formal Project 2025 Takeover
As Project 2025’s official website explains (and doesn’t this sound like it could come directly from the mouth of vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance?): “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.” Although its authors unabashedly deploy the language of conservative populism — decrying wokeness and “cultural Marxists” — the plan is chiefly concerned with how to put ever greater control of both people and resources in the hands of a small minority of mostly white, mostly male, wealthy Christians.
The wholesale capture of the state is the ultimate goal of its Christian nationalist architects. Project 2025 simply clarifies just how they plan to implement their drive for power. Each of its sections — from “taking the reins of government” by centralizing executive authority in the office of the President to securing “the common defense” by expanding every branch of the military — is worth reviewing.
The longest section focuses on “general welfare” and it should be no surprise that the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development are subject to significant cutbacks, including:
- Imposing yet stricter eligibility standards, work requirements, and asset tests to constrain access to Medicaid, even though more than 23 million Americans have been unenrolled from that program since 2023;
- Revisiting how the “Thrifty Food Plan” is formulated to minimize food-stamp allocations, while imposing onerous work requirements on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), even though most of its recipients work and/or are in households with children, elderly people, or people with disabilities;
- Ending universal free school meals by removing the “community eligibility provision,” which allows school districts with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch programs to all children in need;
- Eliminating Head Start, which has served 39 million children and families since 1965 and currently serves more than 800,000 poor families with young children, while shuttering the Department of Education;
- Ending “Housing First” programs and prohibiting non-citizens, including mixed-status families, from living in low-income public housing; and
- Imposing a “life agenda” and a “family agenda” that will restrict access to abortion and reproductive rights, and otherwise curtail LGBTQ+ rights.
Such proposals would undoubtedly be deeply unpopular. In fact, as people learn more about Project 2025, opposition is growing, even across party lines. Most Americans want a government that would provide for the down-and-out, who are a growing segment of the population and the electorate, as well as one that supports abortion rights, voting rights, and the freedom of expression. At least 40% of us — 135-140 million people — are either poor or one emergency away from economic ruin, including 80 million eligible voters. Project 2025’s social welfare cuts would, in fact, push significant numbers of people across the poverty line into financial ruin.
Even Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 as attention has moved toward its distinctly (di)visionary agenda. However, more than half of the project’s listed authors, editors, or contributors were once part of his administration — and no one doubts that his vice-presidential nominee is 100% pro-Project 2025!
The Informal Takeover Already Underway
Perhaps scarier than either Trump’s or Vance’s connection to this regressive plan, however, is the fact that, despite popular distaste for such policies, it may not take a second Trump presidency to implement significant parts of Project 2025. In this sense, it reflects the ancient world of the Pax Romana. Rather than being dependent on particular emperors, its “peace” was a political and ideological program that punished the poor and marginalized so many, while keeping all its subjects in line.
From its recent rulings, it’s clear that the Supreme Court is hastening Project 2025’s agenda judicially, both in terms of specific future policies and the executive power grab at the heart of that mandate (and now of that court’s rulings). In June, for instance, it ruled in favor of the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, which enacted a law to fine, jail, and ultimately expel its unhoused residents. That precedent will only exacerbate the already hostile terrain confronting unhoused people, seeding firm ground to 2025’s plan to eliminate even more housing projects.
Worse yet, as the Nation’s Elie Mystal recently made clear, in just a few weeks of rulings, the court “legalized bribery of public officials, declared the president of the United States absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for ‘official acts,’ and made the power to issue regulations subject to the court’s unelected approval.” As he warns, “There’s no legislative fix for the problems the court has created… [and] they will continue to do all the things Republicans want that nobody elected them to do.”
In addition, in the legislative arena, Congressional debates around the Farm Bill echo Project 2025’s plan to cut food assistance by limiting updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the current formula that determines SNAP allocations. For example, at the state level, a Republican supermajority in Kansas voted last year to override the governor’s veto and enact work requirements for older recipients of SNAP benefits.
Overall, various Project 2025 priorities are already being implemented at the state and local level, with reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, public education, social welfare programs, and unhoused people under serious threat in Republican-run states across the country. Since the Supreme Court decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, 21 states have enacted full or partial bans on abortion. Meanwhile, far-right groups like Moms of Liberty are seeking to capture local school boards as part of a “war on wokeness.”
There is also a multi-state strategy underway to preempt community-led efforts to implement guaranteed income programs. At least 10 states have challenged basic income programs with legislative bans, funding restrictions, constitutional challenges, and court injunctions, while four Republican-led states — Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota — have already completely prohibited such programs.
And in lockstep with Project 2025’s call for military expansion, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker recently released a report proposing that $55 billion be added to the Pentagon’s already humongous budget in fiscal year 2025 while raising military spending by hundreds of billions of dollars in the next five to seven years. The report, “Peace Through Strength,” revives the false idea that spending ever more on war preparations makes us safer. Not only is Wicker distorting Cold War history, but his prescriptions ignore our experience of the past 20 years of military buildup and the disastrous Global War on Terror. According to the Costs of War Project and the National Priorities Project, this country’s post-9/11 wars have cost at least $8 trillion, taken millions of lives, and displaced tens of millions of people globally, while precipitating climate chaos through their polluting emissions. If implemented, Wicker’s plan would only increase the risk of yet more destabilizing conflicts, offering a modern Pax Romana promise for yet more war and death.
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace
While extremist Republican politicians and appointees are leading the way on Project 2025, both major parties align around building up the war economy. Indeed, bipartisan support for military aid to Israel is contributing to what the United Nations has labeled a genocide in Gaza.
Nor is this new. Every year, the Pentagon budget invariably passes with widespread bipartisan support, even if a few representatives vote otherwise. Since the 9/11 attacks, in fact, $21 trillion has been funneled into war, surveillance, policing, border control, and incarceration. In Fiscal Year 2023, nearly two-thirds of the federal discretionary budget funded the military-industrial complex and militarized spending. This year, a Democratic amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act will automatically register every male citizen and resident aged 18-26 in the selective service database. This measure has only passed in the House of Representatives, but it suggests interest across party lines in increasing the number of individuals who could someday be called up for military service. While this is not (yet) a draft, it hints at one — and it was introduced by Pennsylvania’s Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan.
The state and local counterpart to militarism is support for the police. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers seem intent on adopting “tough on crime” legislation, including hiring more police officers, deploying the National Guard more widely, expanding surveillance measures, and recriminalizing drug possession. Of course, the 1033 program allows local police forces to be armed and trained by the U.S. military.
This remarkably bipartisan consensus for a war economy shouldn’t just be considered another “issue,” but an approach to governance that relies on force and violence, rather than consent, to establish social control. And as noted above, the nation may have automatic registration for the selective service system before we have automatic registration to vote. After all, the same Congress that supports ever more resources for war has failed to stop voter suppression, expand voting rights, or adequately protect our democracy.
Jobs and Homes, Not Death in the Streets
The greatest violence of the Pax Romana was always borne by the poor, who were often ripped from their families, enslaved in back-breaking labor, and dispossessed of their land and resources. To maintain its authoritarian rule over millions of people, the Roman Empire relied on its military might and the fear inspired by its brutal army. And yet it was from the ranks of the poor that Jesus and his disciples led a non-violent revolution for peace.
As in other moments of history, the struggle of the poor for life and dignity in a world that denies them both is a struggle for the best that we can be as a society.
Today, tens of millions of poor people in this country are on the front lines of our failing democracy and increasingly militarized society. They are the true canaries in the coal mine, already living through the violence of a society that has prioritized war and profits over addressing the pain and toll of low-wage jobs, crushing debt burdens, polluted water and land, and lives cut short by poverty, the police, and the denial of basic human rights. They can undoubtedly also foresee the drive toward an ever-deeper warfare state and the possible fallout from Project 2025 if Donald Trump and J.D. Vance win this year.
Forged in the crucible of violence, the criminalized and impoverished still call out for a true peace.
On June 29th, Reverend Savina Martin, a military veteran and formerly homeless mother, took to the stage of the Poor People’s Campaign’s Mass Assembly in Washington, D.C., and shared these thoughts:
“I am a US Army veteran and I was impacted by homelessness many years ago. Today, thousands of homeless veterans are fighting for [their] benefits, housing… navigating a complex system while sick and suffering, trying to survive the war waged against the poor. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson permits cities to criminalize homelessness by enforcing bans on sleeping outside when no shelter is available. How can sleeping while homeless be against the law? If you sleep, you get arrested?
“This system depends on us to fight their wars, but we can’t depend on [our government] to guarantee housing or healthcare? Instead, [our government] allocates $1.1 trillion to war, weapons, and a system that criminalizes the poor, leading to mass incarceration, deportations, and detentions. We want jobs and homes, not death in the streets.”
Savina was speaking of the war on the poor, the power of the military-industrial complex, and an extremist agenda that will connect her in unsettling ways with 140 million poor and low-income people in this country — and billions more around the world. As in other moments of history, the struggle of the poor for life and dignity in a world that denies them both is a struggle for the best that we can be as a society. In their leadership lies the hope for us all — not in Project 2025, a future Trump administration, or the all-too-devastating version of a Pax Americana that would go with it, but in the peace (and justice) that Savina and so many others are demanding, and will continue to push for, until it is ours.
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