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christian nationalism
The Right Uses ‘Religious Freedom’ to Attack Trans People—What About Mine?
When politicians attempt to ban gender-affirming care, bar trans kids from playing sports, and legally erase trans people, they are not protecting religious freedom; they are imposing Christian nationalism.
Jul 02, 2026
This week, the Supreme Court dealt transgender Americans another devastating blow, upholding state bans on transgender athletes’ participation in girls' and women's sports. The decision represents the latest in a long series of attacks on trans lives, as we remain in the crosshairs of a manufactured culture war. The architects of these attacks usually wrap their bigotry in a familiar defense: “religious freedom.” They claim their faith compels them to legislate a strict, inflexible gender binary, and that any deviation from it is a threat to their religious liberty.
But as a trans Jew, and a leader of a major national Jewish organization, I have a question for them: What about my religious freedom? What about the freedom to live our Judaism?
My grandmother was born at home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, spoke Yiddish as her first language, and was raised by immigrants who worked 12 hour physical jobs six days a week. She would not have known the phrase “gender identity” if her life depended on it. And yet, when I transitioned two decades ago, she did not hesitate. She took a deep breath, took a long look at me, decided it was still me she was seeing, and accepted me completely from that moment on.
When politicians attempt to ban gender-affirming care, bar trans kids from playing sports, and legally erase trans people, they are not protecting religious freedom. They are imposing Christian nationalism. Real religious freedom—the principle this country was founded on—only counts if it applies to all of us. Christian nationalists advocating against the rights of LGBTQ+ people are actively suppressing Judaism and other religions that don't neatly align with their theology.
We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me.
For years, the far-right has successfully monopolized the concept of religious liberty in this country, weaponizing it as a license to discriminate. But our past does not have to be our future. The theology they are attempting to encode into law is not a universal truth. In fact, it runs in direct opposition to my own religious tradition.
Judaism is a deeply embodied religion. It does not view the physical body as a prison, a shameful secret, or a rigid test of obedience; it delights in it. More than a thousand years before the advent of contemporary thinking about gender identity, the rabbis of the Talmud recognized seven different embodied genders. When faced with the reality of human diversity, they didn’t panic or attempt to legislate it out of existence. They acknowledged it, discussed it, and made space for it in Jewish law.
Today, the major streams of American Judaism, including the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements, as well as plenty of Orthodox communities, explicitly affirm that being transgender is real, and healthy, and holy. And again, that affirmation is grounded in ancient theology and Jewish religious law.
At Bend the Arc, we organize progressive Jews because we understand attacks on trans people are a part of the authoritarian playbook. The very same political forces attempting to erase trans lives are the ones mainstreaming antisemitism, suppressing votes, abducting immigrants, and attacking reproductive freedom. They demand conformity because human diversity is a fundamental threat to their consolidation of power.
When I transitioned, my Jewish grandmother understood on a theological level that I was still me, and still made in the image of God. She also taught me that we do not abandon our people to appease bullies.
We cannot let a vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority dictate the narrative on religious freedom in America. We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me. LGBTQ+ people and everyone who loves us must wield our joy and pride every day as a weapon against Christian nationalism and authoritarianism, and we must stand unapologetically in our own traditions as we insist on living that joy in public.
My faith commands it. My humanity demands it. And our democracy depends on it.
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The Danger of Trump's Evangelical Theater
Christian nationalism is reshaping the moral language of US foreign policy and endangering pluralist democracy.
Jun 10, 2026
Less than a week after American bombs started to drop on Iran in late February, evangelical pastors famously gathered in the Oval Office to lay hands on a president unilaterally executing a war. It remains an emblematic moment, one of the more clarifying silhouettes of our political mood now sweeping through digital spaces.
That image and many more like it circulated instantly around the country and the world lifting the veil of a bigger story that's gone under-reported: Christian nationalism reshaping the moral language of US foreign policy and endangering pluralist democracy, as the Oval Office is transformed into a quasi-liturgical space in which war is cast as divine sanction, one that is specifically hostile to American Muslims in important ways.
The consecration of a president by a covey of clergy (eyes closed and heads bowed) in the heart of a secular and multicultural democracy illuminates a political culture in which narrow religious narratives are permitted to exert greater influence on how foreign conflicts are imagined and justified in the American public sphere. In our current context, Iran is cast not simply as a strategic adversary but as an apocalyptic antagonist that must be defeated because it is God’s plan. In other words, a major geopolitical event is refashioned into a scriptural caricature that prefigures war in the presumed theater of Armageddon.
What is hardly considered in our context at home is the domestic consequence of that caricature. The United States is not an evangelical nation, despite the bloated conceits of mega-churches, maudlin politicians, and rock star preachers. It is a pluralistic one—home to millions of Catholics, mainline Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and nonbelievers. When a specific strand of evangelical eschatology is invited to run the theological grammar of American foreign policy, it shapes how Washington thinks about Iran, a Muslim country; and it also messages how Washington may think about the millions of American Muslims who share a religious tradition with the country being bombed and caricatured. The revival of Crusade-like language among those at the apex of American political and military authority thickens the margins of already marginalized and vulnerable communities. The San Diego mosque shooting, undoubtedly horrific, was one of several indicators of the rise of Islamophobia since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
An administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong.
These observations are not a call to police theological conviction. But those steering American power toward a militant democracy owe the public transparency about how directly end-times rhetoric about the Muslim world is shaping the foreign policy of a government that still boasts about its pluralism. It should also reckon with the domestic costs of the language of demonization, which places at great risk on the mosques and neighborhoods of American cities and towns.
This dynamic is precarious not merely because of the literalist theology itself but because of its digital velocity. Christian Zionist eschatology has interpreted Middle Eastern events through biblical end-times prophecy for decades; spread through pews, big tents, publishing houses, radio ministries, and cable television. What has changed is the infrastructure of mediation. Images that are dense with symbolism, such as those of evangelical pastors pressing their hands on a president whom they know is irreligious, traverse the globe, crossing denominational boundaries and reaching international audiences instantly.
Free of the guardrails of moral premises, algorithms now act as transnational religious authorities made not of flesh and intellect but of unseen codes, engineered to decide which images and voices are amplified and which are left behind. Algorithmic power does not operate with corrections—no scholarly review or denominational pushback. Its only function is to maximize attention. The meta-platform effect reinforces the frame that American power and divine providence are aligned, and that Iran and the larger Muslim world stand in opposition to both.
Evangelical militancy circulating through algorithmic feeds that reaches tens of millions is structural in a precise sense: Digital scale generates not merely larger audiences but a self-righteous zealotry that feeds on an epistemic apparition—rationales for war and self-defense narratives that present themselves as a well-reasoned, evidence-based mandate.
An administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong and that the prayers of the pastors who laid hands on the president spectacularly failed—an extraordinary sacred cost with no secular equivalent.
That cost is borne not only by strategists calculating political survival, but by every American citizen whose religious identity, ancestry, and moral convictions place them outside the religious consensus that currently holds the room and exposes their communities and institutions to the kinetic costs of pernicious public discourses.
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How to Defeat Trump's Unholy Alliance
Can the rest of us organize a powerful, humane alternative to Donald Trump's politics of hatred and division that could transform this country and the world?
May 28, 2026
Donald Trump’s America is a scary place in significant part thanks to an unholy alliance of MAGA devotees who don’t believe in science and see intellectuals as public enemy number one, and a gaggle of Silicon Valley militarists who think that they’re the smartest people in the room, if not the universe. Add in white Christian nationalists who abuse religious precepts to sow hatred and division and you have the foundations of the political base that elected Donald Trump (twice!). And worse yet, those groupings are likely to be with us long after our current president has gone off to that great cheeseburger stand in the sky.
Still, it’s worth reflecting on whether such an odd coalition of allies can survive without Donald Trump, or even with a president whose policies have become so harmful and irrational that they’re doing severe human and economic damage even to his most loyal supporters (not to mention the rest of us). And it’s also worth considering whether the pillars of the MAGA movement can manage to stick together in the ever-grimmer Trumpian years to come, not to speak of the post-Trumpian ones, or whether the rest of us can organize a powerful, humane alternative to his politics of hatred and division that could transform this country and the world.
The Know-Nothings Meet the Know-It-Alls
As a start, we have the latter-day “Know Nothings,” a term borrowed from a 19th century political movement. It’s not that members of that group literally know nothing. Some of them are quite skilled in their given professions and astute at assessing certain kinds of situations. Some are intelligent but woefully misguided. Trump supporter and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, for example, is a brain surgeon.
Members of the anti-science crowd are also often very good at communicating their messages, however wrongheaded or offensive they may be. The problem isn’t that they can’t take in information; it’s that they are distinctly anti-knowledge when it comes to, among other things, separating compelling conspiracy theories from well-documented facts.
Rather than DEI programs that stop at raising tough questions about America’s long history of systematic discrimination, what’s needed are programs that truly change people’s lives by creating better-paying jobs and affordable, quality healthcare for all.
The results of their ingrained antagonism toward basic knowledge are profound, making them a threat to public health and democratic practices. After all, we now live in a country where millions of people are against vaccinating their children to prevent potentially deadly diseases and don’t believe that perhaps the gravest threat to continuing life on this planet—climate change—is caused, or even influenced, by human activity or perhaps is even happening at all.
The dangerous delusions of Trump Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now have the stamp of government approval and the power of the US government behind them. There is no way to estimate how many people have already fallen sick or even died unnecessarily due to the implementation of his crackpot theories, but the numbers will undoubtedly be significant. The American Public Health Association captured the grim mood of our moment perfectly in an April 2025 press release entitled “Secretary Kennedy and His Policies Are a Danger to the Public Health.”
On a different spiritual plane, tens of millions of Americans believe in the rapture—the notion that they and their kind will be called up to heaven in the end days, while the rest of us will be left behind, presumably to burn in hell (but not a climate-change version of the same). A 2022 Pew poll found that 39% of Americans believe “we are in the end times.” Already! And such a belief, of course, has an impact on how or even whether one wants to devote time and energy to fixing problems here on Earth.
Such an amalgam of opponents of science and skeptics about basic reality bears a distinct resemblance to the “Know Nothing” movement of the 19th century that thrived on anti-immigrant sentiments and half-baked conspiracy theories.
The anti-intellectual faction on the right has been propagandized for decades to believe that the biggest obstacle to a better life for them and their families isn’t the predatory corporations hollowing out our economy and manipulating our democracy, but a group of liberal intellectuals clustered on both coasts who allegedly want to replace this country’s bedrock beliefs with a set of “politically correct” prescriptions about how they should live their lives, especially when it comes to DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion. In such a rendering of reality, that “new class” is seen as sapping the country’s strength and undermining the basic values that would make America great (again!).
The use of that “new class” as a political epithet emerged from the neoconservative movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as Andrew Hartman has explained at his blog on American intellectual history:
Out of their political repositioning in the late 1960s and 1970s, neoconservatives developed a critical theory (co-opted from anti-Stalinist thinking) about a so-called "new class" of intellectuals, broadly defined to include all professionals tasked with manipulating language—although more narrowly applied to humanists and social scientists. Members of this "new class," so the theory went, had turned their backs on the society to which they owed their high-ranking status.
However, the current Trumpian war on DEI should be considered an extension of a longstanding conservative effort to distract Americans from the real sources of their problems by promoting a politics of division and hatred. Mainstream accounts of the drive to eradicate concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion from public life rarely point out that fighting DEI can fairly be characterized as fighting to make racism, misogyny, and anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination ever more acceptable in the sort of open, unapologetic fashion that prevailed before the modern-day civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements gained strength.
The crusade—and it’s nothing less than that—against DEI needs to be called out for what it is, not treated as some sort of skirmish over language. And rather than DEI programs that stop at raising tough questions about America’s long history of systematic discrimination, what’s needed are programs that truly change people’s lives by creating better-paying jobs and affordable, quality healthcare for all, regardless of race, gender, class status, or faith. Getting there will, however, require a flowering of faith of another kind—not religious faith, but faith that we can construct an accountable government that serves the public interest, rather than, as in the present age of Donald Trump, the interests of corporations and inhumane ideologues.
Silicon Valley Saviors
In contrast to the “know nothing” faction of the political right in America is the “know it all” faction—Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Elon Musk, and Palmer Luckey. They view themselves not just as business executives cashing in on the latest trend, but as superior beings who should be running the planet. They promise better living through technology and, as new age militarists, see robotic weapons as the future of warfare. But the idea that such new technologies will inevitably change our lives for the better or protect us from the worst has, at best, a mixed record. It depends, of course, on just who is using such technologies and for what purpose.
In addition to owning companies that create new systems grounded in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the new age militarists are angling to shape our foreign policy, our federal budget, and the future of our democracy. They literally want to become masters of the universe by figuring out how to live forever and promote the colonization of space. They dream of video games in which, as Palmer Luckey put it, “If you die in the game, you die in real life.”
To say that Thiel, Musk, Palmer Luckey, Alex Karp, and their financiers like Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have a high opinion of themselves—and of the potential of the technology their companies produce—would distinctly be an understatement.
The political reach of the Silicon Valley crowd has grown dramatically in the age of Donald Trump. JD Vance, his vice president, was, of course, groomed and financed by Peter Thiel, the founder of the omnipresent firm Palantir, which provides technology to patrol the border, helps Immigration and Customs Enforcement identify suspects, and has provided software to Israel that its leaders have used to step up the pace of bombing in their genocidal war in Gaza. After a stint at one of Thiel’s venture capital firms, Vance won a Senate election in Ohio with major financial backing from him and his allies.
When Trump chose Vance as his running mate, champagne corks popped in Silicon Valley and the money started flowing to help Trump get elected, including up to a quarter of a billion dollars in dark money from Elon Musk. As a result, Silicon Valley now has its man in the executive branch.
Nor is Vance alone. Former employees of tech firms like SpaceX and Anduril are now embedded in key agencies of the federal government, and Secretary of—yes!—War Pete Hegseth has gone all in on integrating AI into US military planning and practice to the delight of the billionaire tech moguls and their hangers-on.
To say that Thiel, Musk, Palmer Luckey, Alex Karp, and their financiers like Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have a high opinion of themselves—and of the potential of the technology their companies produce—would distinctly be an understatement.
Kathryn Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz, a self-appointed chief ideologist and cheerleader for the Silicon Valley tech takeover of America, gave a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute in February 2025 that analyst Gil Duran described as an effort to “equate most government actions with communist dictatorships… while positioning tech bros as the ordained saviors of the traditional family.” Boyle’s bread and butter argument—call it a potentially fatal kind of narcissism—was that only the “founders” (yes, they call themselves that!) are serious enough, skilled enough, and endowed by their creator with enough persistence to solve and reverse America’s imperial decline. The rest of us should just get out of the way and let the new techno-gods do their work.
Will Trump’s Patchwork Quilt Come Apart at the Seams?
The Trump coalition is a strange kaleidoscope of confusing views and contradictory cover stories: the know-nothings; the know-it-alls; the false prophets of white Christian nationalism, the billionaires and millionaires, the people who (once upon a time) watched too many episodes of "The Apprentice" and think Trump is a good businessman; those who want yet another tax break; those men among us who want to control what women do with their bodies, and the (mostly) men who feel liberated because Trump openly and repeatedly makes racist, sexist, anti-gay, and anti-trans statements, legitimizing vocal expressions of prejudice in a way not seen in decades.
Yes, his is a motley crew, but so far they have rallied around the president, no matter the promises he breaks or the harmful policies he jams down all of our throats (policies that could ultimately hit many die-hard Trump supporters who aren’t billionaires as hard or harder than they will hit his opponents). Fortunately, there are at least signs that his ability to thrive politically (even as his policies drive America into a ditch) may be fading. His brutal, illogical, illegal, ill-defined war on Iran—complete with genocidal rhetoric about ending an entire civilization—may be the beginning of the end of his grasp of our politics and our psyche.
Unfortunately, he may be as much a symptom of what’s wrong with America as he is a producer of deep damage to the future prospects of democratic governance and human cooperation in this country and on this planet.
Which Way Out?
Any resistance to such know-nothingism and incipient technofascism must start on a human scale. If we are ever going to build a tolerant, welcoming nation that meets the basic needs of its residents, while leaving ample room for scientific inquiry and creative endeavors of all sorts, we need to get off our machines and start talking to—and crucially, listening to—each other.
This is already happening more widely than you might imagine if you’re a prisoner of your news feed. And it’s happening not just in large gatherings like the No Kings rallies, but in local organizing around schools and housing, voter registration and education efforts, and attempts to help communities survive the double-injury of runaway capitalism and the shredding of the social safety net thanks, at least in part, to Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (which is the ugliest, most inhumane piece of legislation in living memory).
There are no guarantees in life, but in this disastrous Trumpian universe of ours, fighting the power should feel far more fulfilling than bending the knee.
We need to fight on at least three fronts—economically, politically, and culturally. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has shown just how a truly populist economic program could draw support even among diehard MAGA backers, and such a program is a necessity if we are ever to dig our way out of our current predicament.
But economics is hardly the only problem we have. There’s also the reality of racism to contend with, not to speak of a thriving anti-immigrant sensibility, and misogyny, as well as anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination—all deeply embedded in a nation that was founded as a colonial enterprise fueled by slavery and genocide. Such a history has to be transcended by embracing the values and elevating the leadership of the people most impacted by the legacy of America’s repressive past, while building a new culture based on tolerance, respect, and (yes!) love for our fellow human beings.
To be clear (as President Barack Obama would often say), by “transcend” I don’t mean ignore. We must fully acknowledge and seriously commit our society to repairing the crimes embedded in our development as a nation, not to speak of those being committed right now in Donald Trump’s America against so many of us and our planet as well.
And sadly, it’s all too obvious that coming together to save this planet and retain our basic humanity will not be easy. People are messy and, frankly, can be a pain to deal with (yours truly included). We are, however, all we have, and making the effort will matter.
I believe in the saying, attributed to leaders of the Wobblies (the radical union founded in 1905 and known formally as the Industrial Workers of the World), that we must sow the seeds of any new society in the shell of the old one. The way we treat each other in our homes, workplaces, schools, sites of worship, and other public and private spaces will determine whether we can build a better world or are fated to live in a never-endingly Trumpian one. In that context, it’s important not just to speak truth to power, but to begin trying to create alternative sources of power and good ideas aren’t enough for that. (If they were, we would already be living in a far better world.)
Building alternative power and charting a path to such a world will be a distinctly collective undertaking. A handful of charismatic leaders or courageous organizers can’t do it for us. We all need to be leaders since we are all experts (in the sense of knowing our communities and our bits of the world).
There are no guarantees in life, but in this disastrous Trumpian universe of ours, fighting the power should feel far more fulfilling than bending the knee, and if enough of us join that fight, we at least have a shot at building a society and a world worth sustaining for generations to come.
What are we waiting for?
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'Jubilee of Christian Nationalism': Trump Event Denounced as Attack on Church and State Separation
“If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish."
May 15, 2026
An all-day prayer event scheduled for Sunday on the National Mall is set to feature evangelical Protestant leaders as well as top White House and Republican Party officials as speakers, and is being promoted as a celebration of "thanksgiving" as well as an opportunity for participants to learn about the founding of the nation as the 250th anniversary of its independence approaches.
In reality, said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the "National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving" appears to be a "Jubilee of Christian Nationalism"—with evangelical Christians making up three-quarters of the scheduled speakers, despite the fact that they account for just a quarter of Americans overall.
“If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish in our country," said Laser. "Instead, they continue to threaten this foundational principle by advancing a Christian nationalist crusade to impose one narrow version of Christianity on all Americans."
The event, which is partly funded by taxpayer dollars earmarked for the nation's 250th anniversary, will feature Christian musical performers organized around three "pillars" that are labeled as "miracles" a Christian God bestowed on America, “personal testimonies of God’s healing,” and a "unified moment of rededication."
At a webinar last month, Rev. Paula White-Cain, who serves as a faith adviser to the White House, said the event is "really truly rededicating the country to God.”
The idea that the founders of the United States intended the country to be a Christian one has long been a fixation of evangelical Christian leaders, despite the lack of evidence for such a claim.
“Look at the document," Princeton University history professor Kevin Kruse told The Washington Post, referring to the Constitution. "The only rules they wrote about religion were ones that keep religion at arm’s length. No establishment, no limits on free exercise, no religious test for office... There’s a difference between saying America is a nation with many Christians in it and that America is a nation dedicated to Christianity and defined by it."
Robert Jones, president of the Public Religion Research Institute, told the Post that about a third of Americans currently report that they have no religious affiliation, making the US more religiously diverse than it's ever been.
“We proudly celebrate 250 years of American independence from kings who ruled over both church and state," said Laser. "For 250 years, America has been marching toward the promise of a country where all people can be free to live as themselves and believe as they choose, as long as they don’t harm others. Christian nationalists threaten that promise by undermining church-state separation, a pillar of our democracy."
The jubilee, which will also feature an 18-wheeler "Freedom Truck" featuring educational content made by the right-wing group PragerU and the Christian school Hillsdale College, comes after numerous displays of religiosity from the Trump administration.
Even many of the president's supporters on the Christian right were aghast at an artificial intelligence-generated image he posted last month on social media, appearing to depict him as a Christ figure. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is set to speak at the jubilee, has spoken about the US-Israeli war on Iran as Christian crusade and has hosted evangelical worship services at the Pentagon, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote, "He is Risen indeed!" in an Easter email to federal employees that recounted the biblical story of the resurrection.
Robert Weissman, co-president of government watchdog Public Citizen, noted that the corporate sponsors of Freedom 250, the public-private partnership that's organizing the 250th anniversary, "may want to curry favor with the Trump administration."
The sponsors, including John Deere, Oracle, and Lockheed Martin, "should be forced to answer whether they support the extreme agenda they are celebrating," he said.
“This outrageous event makes a mockery of a core constitutional tenet of American life, the separation of church and state, essentially promoting a particular flavor of white evangelical protestantism as state-sponsored religion,” said Weissman. “This self-proclaimed day of thanksgiving torpedoes the best of American traditions—inclusivity and diversity—and has no place being connected to the US government."
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Americans Shouldn't Take Democracy for Granted—It Erodes Faster than We Think
There is cause for serious concern about the future of US democracy, as exclusionary rhetoric and practices contribute to political instability.
Apr 27, 2026
It takes decades to build institutions and the norms and values that keep them working, but far less time to destroy them.
Less than two years into the second Trump administration, the United States finds itself in an undeclared war with Iran, while at home, efforts to undermine institutions like the Justice Department and the legitimacy of elections continue to grow, alongside the threat of Christian nationalism, an ideology that weakens democracy by narrowing the definition of who belongs. At the same time, immigration enforcement has been at the forefront of normalizing the repressive use of state power, with two US citizens killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and deaths in ICE custody reaching their highest levels in two decades. There is cause for serious concern about the future of US democracy, as exclusionary rhetoric and practices contribute to political instability.
I grew up in a politically unstable system. In just a few years at the end of the 1990s, Ecuador went through five presidents, a civilian-military uprising, a banking collapse, rising inflation, and widespread social unrest. When I first came to the United States as an exchange student, I didn’t understand the importance of “institutional legitimacy,” the idea that an institution is rightful, appropriate, and deserving of trust or respect. In my home country, no such legitimacy existed—and the consequences were dire.
Now, I see Americans’ confidence in institutions—particularly those meant to protect the public and uphold justice, such as the Justice Department and the police—being weakened in real time. At the same time, President Donald Trump continues to delegitimize the entire US electoral system by promoting his (baseless) claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Because of this misinformation, the majority of Republicans believe this to be the case (62%), compared with 31% of all Americans, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), where I am the director of research.
As we move through this election season and approach the nation’s 250th anniversary, it is worth reflecting on how diversity, trust, tolerance, respect, honesty, and empathy are hallmarks of the American democratic ideal.
It is deeply troubling to see continued messaging from the president that risks undermining confidence in the integrity of midterm elections, instilling widespread fear around voting, and advancing immigration rhetoric and policies that demonize vulnerable minorities and limit their rights. Freedom House, an organization that monitors democracy levels worldwide, reports that over the past decade, US democracy has declined from 92 (out of 100) to 81 in 2025, reflecting a gradual erosion in key democratic indicators, particularly in the protection of minority rights.
Despite recent changes in the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership, the Trump administration has continued to pursue its aggressive immigration agenda, conflating undocumented immigrants with violent criminal convictions, and, most recently, with Trump’s push for the Supreme Court to uphold his executive order ending birthright citizenship.
Diversity strengthens democracies by bringing different perspectives to decision-making. It also cultivates empathy by exposing individuals to experiences beyond their own and encouraging tolerance and mutual respect. By contrast, autocracies favor conformity, distrust, the concentration of power, intimidation of critics, and targeting of minorities, like immigrants.
Most, but not all, Americans disagree with the Trump administration’s divisive, dehumanizing policies. PRRI’s recent survey shows solid majorities of Republicans (61%) and Christian nationalism adherents (57%) favor “allowing ICE officers to arrest and relocate undocumented immigrants to detention centers in states far from their home without allowing them to challenge their detainment in court.” They also favor “allowing ICE officers to regularly conduct surveillance and arrests at sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, places of worship, and social service locations” (54% and 53%), suggesting a willingness among these groups to expand state power at the expense of due process and civil liberties.
In addition, a growing movement is challenging traditional understandings of empathy. Data from PRRI finds that while most Americans agree more with the idea that “empathy is a moral value that is the foundation of a healthy society” (80%) than that it is “a dangerous emotion that undermines our ability to set up a society that is guided by God’s truth (16%),” a quarter of Republicans (25%) and nearly 4 in 10 Christian nationalism adherents (37%) agree that empathy is dangerous.
I find myself asking: At what point did we lose sight of the democratic principles we used to uphold? What happened to our commitment to human rights, the fight against corruption, limits on the unchecked use of power, and, simply put, the truth? When did we stop caring about other human beings?
As we move through this election season and approach the nation’s 250th anniversary, it is worth reflecting on how diversity, trust, tolerance, respect, honesty, and empathy are hallmarks of the American democratic ideal. What is happening across the country and abroad should serve as a wake-up call about our commitment to democratic institutions and values, compelling us to come together to repair the damage.
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America Reads the Bible: the Horror of Trump Invoking John Winthrop
When the eyes of all people were upon Winthrop's 'city upon a hill,' what they saw was a community established by genocide and based on slavery. Winthrop advocated for, and participated in, both.
Apr 23, 2026
On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump participated in America Reads the Bible, in which hundreds of political, faith, business, and entertainment leaders will each read a passage until the entire bible has been read.
Trump read from II Chronicles 7:11-22, including the passage, “If My people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
According to many media outlets, the passage is “a hallmark of the religious right” that implies a covenant between God and the United States and advances the belief “that America has been and should be a Christian nation.”
In his “Message Commemorating 250 Years of the Bible in America,” Trump praised the marathon event and said, “The Bible has been indelibly woven into our national identity and way of life.” He said that throughout the history of the United States, “The truths of Holy Scripture remained deeply embedded in our culture—not only within the walls of our churches but in our homes, schools, courtrooms, and public square.” Continuing a theme that challenges the spirit of the separation of church and state, Trump added that “the Bible has enduringly illuminated our system of Government.”
And Winthrop participated in that slavery too. In his will, he left his slaves—he called them “my Indians”—to his son.
But the most offensive and appalling part of Trump’s Presidential Message was his invocation of John Winthrop to provide a historical foundation for America Reads the Bible and his participation in it. Trump said: “Nearly 400 years ago, a decade after the arrival of the Mayflower, the legendary John Winthrop powerfully invoked Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us,’ Winthrop said, imploring his fellow Christian settlers to stand as a beacon of faith for all the world to see.”
The horror of invoking John Winthrop as a foundation for America as a city upon a hill and a Christian land, is that when the eyes of all people were upon us what they saw was a community established by genocide and based on slavery. Winthrop advocated for, and participated in, both.
In 1620, the Mayflower landed in America. Most of the Indigenous people had died in an epidemic brought, unintentionally, by the British. The few Indigenous people who survived the epidemic helped the English survive that first harsh winter. But, because of the epidemic, the English found many once thriving villages empty.
The Puritans used the emptying results of the epidemic to justify the stealing of the land. They sanctioned their crime by appealing to divine providence. One of the leading spokesmen for divine justification for stealing Indigenous land was Winthrop: “God hath consumed the natives with a miraculous plague, whereby the greater part of the country is left void of inhabitants.”
Winthrop would go on to become one of the vanguards of a movement that defended the legal right to take any land that was not currently inhabited or developed without purchase or deed, ignoring the rights of Indigenous people if they were not currently or permanently on the land or if they were not developing it (or even if they were).
And he was not at all above helping the land to become empty. As Greg Grandin, history professor at Yale University told me, “Winthrop presided over the 1637 Pequot War, the first New World Anglo-American massacre, of hundreds of Pequot women and children who were burned alive in their village.” Grandin quotes Winthrop saying it was a “fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fier, and the streams of blood quenching the same.” Those who survived were taken as legal slaves having been captured in a just war.
And Winthrop participated in that slavery too. In his will, he left his slaves—he called them “my Indians”—to his son. In America, América: A New History of the New World, Grandin says that Winthrop’s “Indians” were taken in the Pequot War and made his property.
It is to this appalling history that Trump appeals in explaining his participation in America Reads the Bible.
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An Unholy War and the Blasphemy of Donald J. Trump
This must be a moment of entering the public square with the truths of the gospel, with love, the truth of the prophets, and the courage to say we are not afraid of this administration or any, and we won’t be silent any more.
Apr 18, 2026
Editor's note: The following remarks were delivered during an emergency press conference in New Haven, Connecticut on Tuesday, April 14, 2026 in response to recent comments and actions by President Donald J. Trump.
“You shall have no other gods before me.” —Exodus 20:3
“All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless.” —Isaiah 44:9
“Therefore, since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.” —Acts 17:29
“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in Spirit and in truth.” —John 4:24
There are times that compel people of faith to speak, servants of Jesus to speak, proclaimers of the gospel to speak and engage in truth-telling and forms public exorcism rooted in deep radical love with the hope of repentance and a commitment to faithful witness—without fear of what any man or woman administration can do to us.
Two weeks ago the Moral Monday movement held Moral Monday gatherings in Washington, DC, 16 states, and Canada to denounce this war and the President’s declaration that if another country didn’t do what he said, he would “reign” down Hell on them and wipe out their entire civilization.
Why has he been talking about “reigning” down hell? Why does he write "reign," not "rain"? What authority is he claiming to serve?
Why was he so threatened by Easter that he had to try to make it about him?
Why is the Pope teaching what Jesus and the church have always taught getting under his skin? The religious nationalist movement for so long has been saying he is an imperfect instrument being “used by God.” But he’s not satisfied with that. He wants to be God.
The AI image of him as Jesus is so bad that some of his own people have called it blasphemy. So now he’s trying to walk it back and say he thought it was a portrayal of him as a doctor.
This is exposing the madness that we’ve seen in policy. He wants to be some kind of God like messianic figure—to decide who lives and who dies; who gets citizenship and who doesn’t; which parts of the Constitution still matter and whose rights have to be respected.
Just 10 days ago, on the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, Trump told Russell Vought, the director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, "Don't send any money for day care, because the United States can't take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of day care. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars.”
And then during Holy Week, he went to the Supreme Court to seemingly intimidate them to support undoing birthright citizenship for babies.
Not only is war unholy, but when any human or president acts in word and deed as though they can determine who lives and who dies—who has citizenship and who can "reign" down hell and wipe out an entire civilization—assuming God-like authority, represents a war on divinity.
We live in a nation that has declared some things are inalienable, endowed by our Creator. And for people of faith, even if the nation didn’t say it, we believe and know that some things are only God’s authority, and to violate them is sin because the gospel of Jesus says so.
This AI pic represents idolatry—a false image offered for us to bow down to, and it is blasphemy and heresy and an affront to Jesus Christ. To do it represents a kind of demonic madness, no matter who would do it—Democrat or Republican. To equate Jesus with a person, a flag, bombs and war planes—and to say that’s what heals us and saves us: this is sin and attempts to exalt a person above God. It is a dangerous war on divinity that is a turn from the God of the gospels, the truths of the gospel.
This is why Pope Leo said: “I have no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the gospel.”
And he said this even after the reports of the Trump administration calling the ambassador of the Vatican to the Pentagon earlier this year.
I’m not Catholic, but as a bishop in the Lord’s church, in this moment, Pope Leo is my pope.
As much as Pope Francis was, as I had the opportunity to respond to his encyclical on the environment and address the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences as addressed the moral issue of poverty and people’s movements around the world.
But we must be careful in this moment to act as though this is the first moral and spiritual violation by Trump and religious nationalism. His embrace of a Messianic-type role has been pushed by the delusion of Franklin Graham and others.
When he allows people in his administration to say empathy is the cause of the decline of Western civilization.
These are deep, sinful contradictions of the gospel which says a nation will be judged by how it treats the least of these.
His constant demeaning of other nations and cultures and his constant claim that no one ever did anything as great and wonderful as him before him—the constant self-congratulation and adoration—is idolatry that, when unchecked, has led to where we are now.
Some of the church must repent of far too much silence in the public square confronting these thing public sins and idolatries and other policies with the truths of the gospel and our response to this image and his ridiculous attacks on the Pope cannot be one off.
This must be a moment of entering the public square with the truths of the gospel, with love, the truth of the prophets, and the courage to say we are not afraid of this administration or any, and we won’t be silent any more. We must lift a clear call that this nation and any nation in its words, deeds, and policies must work to have good news for the poor, healing of the broken hearted, deliverance to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, and a declaration of acceptance to all who have been marginalized if we even hope to be pleasing to God.
“The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism,” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote. This is why when we as people of faith enter into the public space, we do so not with partisan facts and focus, but with the truths of the gospel.
This is why we have been here in New Haven. More than 400 public theologians are returning to their communities later today with a renewed sense that we have a responsibility to help the nation make this choice and build a movement that can take back our government and insist that it serve all the people.
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Citing Scripture, Hegseth Compares Trump to Jesus and Journalists Covering Unpopular Iran War to the Pharisees
Hegseth has often used the Bible to sanctify violence against enemies he deems "ungodly." So far, more than 1,700 civilians have been killed in his and Trump's war in Iran.
Apr 16, 2026
Days after President Donald Trump elicited backlash with an artificially generated image likening himself to Jesus Christ, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down on the comparison, invoking scripture during a Pentagon press briefing.
Hegseth, an avowed Christian nationalist who has portrayed the war against Iran as part of a “crusade” against the Muslim world, has turned the Pentagon into a forum for proselytizing, with monthly prayer meetings featuring fundamentalist pastors.
And that posture has seeped into his regular briefings about the war, as it did on Thursday, when he likened reporters covering the war negatively to the “Pharisees,” who dismissed Jesus as a false prophet in the Bible.
“This past Sunday, I was sitting in church with my family, and our minister preached from the Book of Mark, the third chapter. And in the passage, Jesus entered a synagogue and healed a man with a withered hand," Hegseth said.
“The Pharisees came to watch, and as the scripture reads, they came to see whether He, Jesus, would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. You see, the Pharisees, the so-called elites of their time, were there to witness, to write everything down, to report. But their hearts were hardened,” he continued.
“Even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda,” Hegseth continued. “I sat there in church, and I thought, ‘These press are just like these Pharisees.’ Not all of you, but the legacy, Trump-hating press.”
Trump's portrayal of himself as a messiah over the weekend was met with so much outrage, including from many of his Christian supporters, that it is one of the few posts he has deleted from social media.
Other reporting from Axios on Thursday revealed that the controversial image was perhaps more deliberate than previously thought, having been discussed with one of his closest advisers, housing finance chief Bill Pulte, shortly before it was posted.
And Trump has since posted another image of himself being embraced by Jesus, accompanied by a caption stating that "God might be playing his Trump card."
As for Hegseth's comments on Thursday, there was little ambiguity in his description of Trump as a Christlike figure.
The defense secretary begged the press to "open their eyes" to the "historic goodness" of the war effort and referred to the operations by the US military to rescue downed bomber pilots in Iran as a "miracle."
Hegseth has often used scripture to sanctify "overwhelming violence" against enemies he deems "ungodly." During a Christian service at the Pentagon late last month, he said a prayer for the US military to deliver violence upon those "who deserve no mercy."
“Behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish,” Hegseth said. "Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield, protect the innocent and blameless in their midst, make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation."
Whatever overtures have been made toward protecting "the innocent," Hegseth's holy war has resulted in more than 1,700 dead civilians in Iran, including more than 250 children, according to the most recent casualty report from the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). More than 3 million people have been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.
The war that Hegseth suggested the press should be covering positively has been broadly unpopular from the beginning, with 56% of respondents to a Marist poll in early March disapproving of military action.
Just 24% of Americans said in a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week that the war has been worth the costs and benefits, with a divide even among Trump's core supporters. Twenty percent of Republicans said the war has not been worth it, and 24% were unsure.
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'Heretical and Batshit Crazy': Hegseth Rebuked for Bloodthirsty Prayer Asking God to Bless Iran War
Trump's Secretary of Defense called for US soldiers currently waging war against the people of Iran to be blessed with "overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy."
Mar 26, 2026
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ during an Evangelical Christian service at the Pentagon on Wednesday in which he called for American soldiers to be blessed with "overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy" and for "every round to find its mark" as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues despite widespread disapproval by a majority of US voters and global condemnation.
Hegseth, who has been under fire for the overtly sectarian monthly prayer services he's been hosting at the Pentagon, told those gathered that the prayer had been previously delivered as the "pre-mission reading" to soldiers before the January military against Venezuela, an attack on the sovereign nation which included the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady, Cilia Flores.
After quoting verses from the Bible's "Book of Psalms," Hegseth offered a prayer intended for US soldiers fighting against Iran in war ordered by President Donald Trump without congressional approval or popular support.
Pete Hegseth, at today's Christian Prayer & Worship Service at the Pentagon, prays for Almighty God to "pour out your wrath" and "break the teeth of the ungodly." He begs the Almighty to sanction "overwhelming violence" against "those who deserve no mercy" pic.twitter.com/eJyDeTANot
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 25, 2026
The full prayer, as read by Hegseth:
Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter for their day has come, the time of their punishment. Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.
Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield, protect the innocent and blameless in their midst. Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them. For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings and amen.
"May we pray such prayer for our men and women in harm's way right now," said Hegseth at the conclusion.
Critics of Hegseth, known for his far-right politics, denounced the prayer as just the latest example of his alarming blend of Christian Nationalist rhetoric with violent, pro-war policies at the Pentagon.
Journalist Scott Horton denounced Hegseth's performance as "heretical and batshit crazy Christianist gibberish."
"Looks like we are sliding back to the Old Testament," said Frank Giustra, an investor and philanthropist. "No more love, just the wrath of God. Nuts."
"These guys are a danger to the planet," said author Diana Butler Bass after reading a review of Hegseth's comments at the prayer service. "Jesus weeps."
Earlier this month, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem and a member of the Catholic Church, warned against the use of "psuedo-religious language" being deployed by people like Hegseth to justify their war making.
"The abuse and manipulation of God's name to justify this and any other war is the gravest sin we can commit at this time," Pizzablla said. "War is first and foremost political and has very material interests, like most wars."
Specifically responding to Hegseth's previous invocation of Psalm 144, a passage he repeated on Wednesday, the Cardinal said people of faith should reject any effort to frame the war against Iran in religious terms.
"There are no new crusades," he said. "If God is present in this war, He is among those who are dying, who are suffering, who are in pain, who are oppressed in various ways, throughout the Middle East," he added. "This conflict has religious connotations, but they are manipulations: those who wish to bring religion into it exploit the name of God."
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Pete Hegseth's Holy War
The US now finds itself in a long-term war waged by an angry, fanatical Fox journalist, not a competent secretary of defense.
Mar 20, 2026
Pete Hegseth is carrying out a Holy War at the Pentagon and abroad. He has rightly come under fire for incompetent leadership and mediocre management of the Iran war. The war was a mistake in the first place, both because Iran did not pose an immediate threat to US interests, and because President Donald Trump assumed a rapid victory and regime change would secure oil for the US and its allies for decades to come. But motivated by Christian Nationalism, fueled by angry masculinity, and blinded by ideological certainty, Hegseth’s crusade was doomed to failure from the start. Within the Pentagon, the battle against “woke” ideas and diversity has shaken leadership and hurt morale.
On the international front, Hegseth’s religious conviction about the immorality of Iran’s Islamic leadership led him to the conclusion that his god would protect the US in any war. Yet devoid of real goals and plans, motivated by ignorance about Iranian society, and discarding the intelligence community’s dire warnings about the chances of failure, Hegseth pushed on. The US now finds itself in a long-term war waged by an angry Fox journalist, not a competent secretary of defense.
The Crusader
Hegseth’s worldview is steeped in mistaken views of the 11th century Crusades, infused with white male privilege, and seasoned with ideology rather than intelligence briefings. Hegseth developed his views at Princeton University where he studied politics. He became a frequent contributor to and publisher of the Princeton Tory, the school’s conservative newspaper. In his writings he “strived to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.” He attacked the university for encouraging and supporting “pre-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion, and a general hostility toward faith and religion.” He declared that “the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.” He rankled at the buzzwords of diversity, tolerance, sexual liberation, and multiculturalism which he took to be anti-Western. He concluded that the university “has abandoned almost all its moral/truth-seeking guidance to undergraduates.”
Hegseth took advantage of Reserve Officers' Training Corps funding for his education at Princeton, seeking to overcome the dangers of multiculturalism by becoming a soldier of god. After graduation he joined the Army National Guard, becoming a major, and was deployed three times abroad earning two Bronze Stars. Hegseth’s tattoos carry his Christian nationalism for all to see: a Jerusalem cross on his chest, a Christogram here, a “Deus Vult” (“God Wills It,” a Crusader battle cry) there, an American flag here, crossed muskets there, and other grotesque inkings common in violent far-right communities.
Hegseth failed to understand that technology alone does not win a war, nor does his insistence on the elimination of “wokeness” in the Pentagon.
Hegseth’s holier than thou attitude about the need to wage war on “wokeness,” Islam, and other evils was hardly tempered by a whistleblower report on his tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), from 2013 until 2016, which describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated; sexually pursuing CVA female staffers; creating a hostile workplace; and drunkenly chanting in public, “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” A history of alcohol and sexual abuse suggests an individual unfit to lead the Department of Defense (DOD), and in fact Hegseth was forced out as chief executive of CVA amid allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.
Hegseth’s certainty that white males must control society seems confirmed by a string of abusive acts. His former sister-in-law claims that his second wife feared for her personal safety during their marriage, and often hid in a closet. She herself experienced an angry, intoxicated Hegseth screaming in her face. Claims of rape against Hegseth in 2017 did not result in charges against him, but did result in the future DOD secretary paying the woman in question a $50,000 settlement. His own mother, Penelope, sent him an email that said: “You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” Married three times and fathering a child out of wedlock, Hegseth said, "I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully, I'm redeemed by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Ultimately, Hegseth found salvation in the narcissism of Donald Trump. In 2017 Hegseth became co-host of "Fox & Friends Weekend." He ingratiated himself to the president by incessantly promoting the lie that vot
er fraud had led to Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
Purifying the Pentagon
Appointed secretary of defense by Trump, Hegseth announced, “We became ‘the woke department’… Not any more. We’re done with that shit.” He set out to purge the Pentagon of woke, gay, and transgender personnel that he believed weakened the US military. He said, “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons—based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.” Yet there were questions from the start about his own minimal “qualifications” as a Fox News host and Trump sycophant. In March 2025, only months into his Pentagon appointment, he risked the lives of US soldiers by proudly sharing classified war plans in unsecured communications with a journalist. Loyal to Trump, he kept his job.
Trump, who has no military experience, but four draft deferments and a FIFA soccer peace prize, began his second term by firing a distinguished F-16 fighter pilot, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth followed along, carrying the president’s racist water by ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the Pentagon, and by purging defense department libraries and websites that addressed anti-racism and sexism. His racism carried so far as an order to stop classifying nooses and swastikas as hate symbols (this effort to permit Nazi symbols among the Coast Guard was abandoned). But his white Christian chest-thumping intensifying, Hegseth ordered the renaming of Navy ships that honored African Americans; the purging by Pentagon archivists of the biography of Jackie Robinson; and the removal of a picture of the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, the Enola Gay, because “gay” is forbidden.
Hegseth’s goal, he said, was to eliminate the “social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.” There would be “no more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or, gender delusions, no more debris.” There would be no more fat soldiers, but only fit ones. And there would be no beards, “no more beardos,” only the paramount clean-shaven look of individual expression. Calling for Aryan purity, he said, “We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans, but unfortunately, we have had leaders who either refuse to call BS and enforce standards or leaders who felt like they were not allowed to enforce standards.” Women could serve only if they could kill as effectively as Hegseth’s warriors. To mold these warriors, Hegseth determined to permit bullying and hazing “to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second-guessing.”
Why his anger at “beardos”? Hegseth said that anyone who needs a shaving exemption for more than a year would be forced out of the service. This ended a policy created mainly for Black and brown troops with pseudofolliculitis barbae, a skin condition that makes daily shaving lead to cuts, sores, and scarring. For Hegseth, “grooming standards” were commensurate with the “warrior ethos.” In the name of the warrior mindset, Hegseth extended his purge to women, gays, and transgender individuals. Hegseth eliminated the Women, Peace, and Security program at the DOD as “woke” and “divisive” although it is codified in a 2017 law that Congress passed unanimously and was signed by Trump. Hegseth’s Pentagon is now forcing transgender service members to leave in the name of military preparedness. (Hitler, too, despised homosexuality. He had Ernst Röhm and other gay SA members murdered in 1934 because of their "degeneracy"; the Nazi regime made the persecution of homosexuals a priority. Perhaps Hegseth studied the Wehrmacht at Princeton?)
White Christian Officer Training
US Ivy League schools, MIT, CalTech, Chicago and other universities were crucial to the US to wage the Cold War, strategize the arms race, and build radars and other weapons. But the anti-intellectual Hegseth decided to end officer training, fellowships, and graduate-level education programs at Ivy League and other top-tier universities starting in the 2026-2027 academic year because of their allegedly “woke ideology” and anti-American sentiment. He claimed the need to refocus “the US military on maximum lethality, warfighting, and accountability; prioritizing combat effectiveness, merit-based standards, and a direct, combative culture over political correctness.” He insisted that the DOD needs “more troops, more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers… more innovation, more AI… more space, more speed.” And he believes he can achieve these goals by shifting programs to conservative schools that stress Christian nationalist thinking.
Toward those ends, Hegseth announced the elimination of several senior service college fellowship programs for the 2026-2027 academic year and beyond. He desired “strategic thinkers through education grounded in the founding principles and documents of the republic, embracing peace through strength and American ideals, and focused on our national strategies and grounded in realism.”
The failure of the Trump-Hegseth Holy War against Iran underlines the need to divorce religious beliefs from declarations of war.
What he meant by this was doctrine steeped in the ideas of limited government, free enterprise, constitutional originalism, and Christian morality. The new partner institutions included such conservative beacons of white Christianity as Liberty University (whose past president resigned in the midst of a sex scandal); Baylor University (whose past president ignored a campus rape scandal, helped Jeff Epstein avoid prosecution, and who investigated Bill Clinton over real estate deals and Oval Office oral sex at a cost of $52 million); Regent University (that has long pushed the Christian orientation of its founder, Pat Robertson, who called for letting LGBTQ advocates and Muslims kill themselves); Hillsdale College (whose president at the time of the Clinton infidelity was allegedly having a long affair with his daughter-in-law who then committed suicide); and Pepperdine University (which was long embroiled in a lawsuit over sexual orientation of students). The trainees will be ready for religious wars, if morally ambivalent.
War Crimes and Holy War
The failure of the Trump-Hegseth Holy War against Iran underlines the need to divorce religious beliefs from declarations of war. While the medieval Crusades had largely political-military significance for control of the Holy Land, such Christian nationalists as Hegseth have recast that history as a holy war against Moslem infidels. In the ongoing war that the US launched on the Islamic Republic, Hegseth emphasizes that the Christian god is on his side. He said: “Our capabilities are better. Our will is better. Our troops are better. The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops, and we’re committed to this mission.” He asserted that the Trump administration was carrying out hold battle against “religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon.”
Hegseth’s reliance on religious justifications—and his certainty that Trump expected a quick victory to distract Americans from the Epstein scandal—hurried the US into its attack. But there was no justification: Iran was not within days of deploying ICBMs or nuclear weapons, and was hardly prepared to attack the US. Indeed, negotiators on both sides were close to a US-Iran agreement to forestall nuclear weapons development—and recreate the agreement that Trump abrogated in 2018 in the first place.
The great danger, now realized, was that Hegseth confused personal religious and ideological imperatives with military need. The Nazis conflated Bolshevism, Judaism, and Slavic racial inferiority, hurried into a war with the USSR that Hitler expected to win within days or weeks, yet plunged the world into war. So, too, Hegseth mixes hatred of Islam, Iran in particular, with religio-spiritual embrace of the Christian Bible, Western civilization, and a sacred mission for Israel, in the end transforming a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran into a religious crusade.
Hegseth: Waging War with No Plans
Hegseth ignored real time challenges that, after initial “victories,” have left the DOD in a bind as to how to move forward. In the first two days of the attack, the US spent $5.6 billion in munitions: More than 2,000 munitions were rained down on nearly 2,000 Iranian targets. But the armaments are hardly in an unlimited supply, must be replaced, and it will take months to do so, especially for precision, smart weapons. This will leave the US vulnerable elsewhere in the world. Hegseth failed to understand that technology alone does not win a war, nor does his insistence on the elimination of “wokeness” in the Pentagon. Hegseth assumed that initial firepower would bring Iran to its knees, but he has only strengthened the resolve of Iran’s leaders to stand up to the US, and has even brought its oppressed people into some agreement with the theocracy.
Hegseth has worried so much about beards, DEI, and Holy Wars that he attacked Iran without minesweepers that the DOD decommissioned in the autumn. These might have opened the Strait of Hormuz to the world’s oil traffic, one-third of which passes through the Strait. And without allies—Trump’s odious behavior and policies have turned away even England, France, and Canada—the US is isolated in this war. It has little recourse to their stockpiles, let alone their minesweepers. How long will Hegseth—and his witless president—wait to ask Congress to replenish the Pentagon budget and secure more munitions to continue “the most intense strikes”? And how can Hegseth justify the fact that, when planning for his Holy War, he ordered the Pentagon to buy up tens of millions of dollars of steak and crustaceans in order to spend its budget authorization before the end of the fiscal year?
For Hegseth, who embraces quick, empty responses and has forgotten any analytical tools he may have learned in college, any negative comment is “fake news.”
The troubling subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war aims in Ukraine has handicapped the Hegeth and Trump Iran fiasco as well. Trump has both refused to condemn Putin’s support for Iran through intelligence sharing, military cooperation, and providing drone components and satellite imagery all of which are likely harming US soldiers. Russia is generally prolonging a war in the Middle East that benefits its closest Middle Eastern partner in the fight against the US and Israel. Trump has eased sanctions on Russian oil, which is permitting Putin to earn millions of dollars in oil revenues to fund his four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. Recall that in his first month as defense secretary, Hegseth endorsed Russia’s territorial occupation of Ukraine. At the very least, Hegseth is uninterested in Russian support for Iran.
Hegseth still promises in this war “intense strikes,” “the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes; intelligence more refined and better than ever.” He ridicules the Iranians as “desperate and scrambling.” Likely to justify the US murder of 180 children, he announced, “Like the terrorist cowards they are, they fire missiles from schools and hospitals... deliberately targeting innocents." The missile hit midmorning when children would certainly be present. Where is the Christian morality? Committed to a different Jesus than the one in the Bible, Hegseth told US soldiers to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement. Hegseth smirked in couplets, “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
What Has the War Department Wrought?
Hegseth, the former Fox News host, knows how to manipulate the messages to confuse the public. He uses press conferences to attack the media for their reporting on his and Trump’s war—from its initial justifications, to his overconfidence, to miscalculations regarding closure of the Strait of Hormuz, to faltering world oil supply, and to the massive unpopularity of the war as US deaths and costs accumulate. He might as well say to the American people, “Let them eat lobster.”
Into the third week, the Iran war has led to the deaths of at least 13 US service members and has burned through more than $11.3 billion worth of taxpayer dollars. The Persian Gulf has been plunged into chaos as Iran mounts retaliatory strikes against military bases and oil refineries in the region. But for Hegseth, who embraces quick, empty responses and has forgotten any analytical tools he may have learned in college, any negative comment is “fake news.”
The secretary of military propaganda admonished the press to learn the craft of Fox: “Allow me to make a few suggestions… I used to be in that business, and I know that everything is written intentionally, for example, a banner or a headline.” He called for right-wing takeover of CNN and other media. Pete needs one more tattoo: “What, me worry?”
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