Christian Nationalist Insiders Are Prepping for Trump's 'Dystopian' Return
"Nationwide abortion bans, attacks on same-sex marriage, and restrictions on contraception—this is the horrifying reality being openly discussed by Team Trump and the likely architects of his second term agenda."www.commondreams.org/news/trump-christian-nationalismAlthough former President Donald Trump is not personally religious, his close ties to Christian nationalists—whom he has relied on to gather support for his presidential campaigns—could place the United States on a path to embracing numerous far-right policies, according to documents penned by a leading right-wing think tank.
Politico, which obtained the documents, reported that staffers at the Center for Renewing America (CRA) included "Christian nationalism"—the promotion of the belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian country and should emphasize "Christian values" in its policies—on a list of priorities for a second Trump term.
CRA's president is Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, who Politico reported believes his continued close ties to the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee "will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term." The two speak at least once a month, the outlet reported.
Vought has been frequently named as a potential White House chief of staff should Trump win a second term, which could position him to carry out other proposals in the CRA document, including:
Invoking the Insurrection Act as soon as Trump takes office, allowing him to deploy the military to stop protests;
Impounding federal funds, or refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress, as former President Richard Nixon did to block agencies from taking on projects he opposed before Congress banned the practice; and
Creating other new ways to expand Trump's presidential power.
Politico reported on the plans to "elevate Christian nationalism" as Trump prepares to address the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Association in Nashville on Thursday—the world's largest association of Christian broadcasters.
Along with Vought, Politico reported that former Trump administration official William Wolfe is likely to significantly influence the White House should Trump win the election. A close associate of Vought's, Wolfe served as deputy assistant secretary of defense and director of legislative affairs at the State Department under Trump.
As recently as December, Wolfe called for a Christian nationalist government in which sex education in schools would be abolished and gestational surrogacy and no-fault divorce would be banned.
Vought is also an adviser to Project 2025, led by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation. The group aims to reshape the government by ousting federal employees who stand in the way of Trump's agenda—deploying "a wrecking ball for the administrative state," said Vought toldThe Associated Press last year.
The project goes hand-in-hand with the CRA's Christian nationalist agenda, Politico reported, with plans to repeal policies that "support LGBTQ+ rights, subsidize 'single-motherhood,' and penalize marriage... because subjective notions of 'gender identity' threaten 'Americans' fundamental liberties.'"
Supporters of Project 2025 also aim to increase surveillance of abortion and maternal mortality reporting, require the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of drugs used for medication abortions, and protect employers who refuse to include contraceptive coverage in insurance plans.
Former New York state Sen. Anna Kaplan, a Democrat, said the proposals of Project 2025 and the CRA show that "reproductive rights in all 50 states are on the ballot in 2024."
The Biden campaign said the new reporting laid bare "the dystopian reality if Trump is reelected: an America governed by religious extremism where Americans have fewer rights."
The proposals of Trump's allies are "straight out of The Handmaid's Tale," said Lauren Hitt, senior spokesperson for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. "Nationwide abortion bans, attacks on same-sex marriage, and restrictions on contraception—this is the horrifying reality being openly discussed by Team Trump and the likely architects of his second term agenda."
"Every day Donald Trump openly supports an agenda of restricting Americans' freedoms, dividing our country, and attacking our rights," said Hitt. "That's what he will do as president. It's not who we are as Americans."
Analysis Exposes Trumpian Project 2025 as 'Far-Right Playbook for American Authoritarianism'
"Our plea to political leaders and to the media is to accurately describe Project 2025 as a dangerous and unconstitutional attempt to move us towards an authoritarianism guided by Christian nationalism."www.commondreams.org/news/project-2025As former Republican U.S. President Donald Trump campaigns with openly fascist rhetoric, a research and advocacy group on Monday published an exposé of the Heritage Foundation-led 2025 Presidential Transition Project.
Project 2025, as it is also known, builds on Heritage's latest Mandate for Leadership, a series which since the Reagan administration has served as the right-wing think tank's to-do list for the next Republican president.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) put out a detailed analysis of Project 2025, which the group described as a "far-right playbook for American authoritarianism" and "a threat to a multiracial, diverse democracy."
"Project 2025 is an authoritarian roadmap to dismantling a thriving, inclusive democracy for all."
Across 13 sections, the GPAHE report introduces the project, explains the role of Christian nationalism, and details efforts to gut the civil service, reverse progress on racial equality, eviscerate LGBTQ+ rights, restrict reproductive freedom, impose hardline immigration rules, roll back climate action, end "woke" military policies, overhaul public education, and curb human rights.
The analysis also features a full list of organizational supporters and profiles of key backers, including the Family Research Council, Heartland Institute, Moms for Liberty, and Turning Point USA.
"The path to authoritarianism usually first involves democratic backsliding, propelled by political figures and parties with authoritarian instincts who employ specific tactics," the report states. "These factors are evident in Project 2025, which explicitly advocates politicizing independent institutions by replacing the federal bureaucracy with conservative activists and removing independence for many agencies."
"The entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the 'real' community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent," the document continues. "Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and 'replacing American values.' Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025."
"Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism. It rejects the constitutional separation of church and state, rather privileging religious beliefs over civil laws. Religious freedom is referenced throughout the plan and is seen to trump all other civil rights which should be subsumed to an individual's religious rights," the report adds. "The message that America must remain Christian, that Christianity should enjoy a privileged place in society, and that the government must take steps to ensure this is clear in every section of the plan, as is the idea that American identity cannot be separated from Christianity."
The document also stresses the role of Trump in degrading U.S. democracy and promoting the policies that the project aims to advance. Trump is facing four criminal cases—two of which relate to his efforts to flip the 2020 election—and lawsuits arguing that he is constitutionally disqualified from holding office again after inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Still, he is the GOP front-runner.
During a Saturday campaign rally, Trump pledged to "root out the communist, Marxist, fascist, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," claiming that "the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within." The comments fueled demands for more serious media coverage of his fascist threats.
Even before Trump's latest comments, GPAHE co-founder Heidi Beirich argued to Salon last week that given his chances of winning the White House next year, "the public needs to know about policy plans, such as the program being designed for the next conservative president by the Heritage Foundation, called Project 2025."
Beirich said in a statement Monday that the project "does not reflect the values of the American people, and our plea to political leaders and to the media is to accurately describe Project 2025 as a dangerous and unconstitutional attempt to move us towards an authoritarianism guided by Christian nationalism."
GPAHE co-founder Wendy Via—who, like Beirich, is an alumna of the Southern Poverty Law Center—similalry said that "voters, political figures, and the media must be on alert that Project 2025 is an authoritarian roadmap to dismantling a thriving, inclusive democracy for all."
The GPAHE report was released as Axiosreported Monday that Trump's inner circle plans to purge from government "anyone viewed as hostile to the hard-edged, authoritarian-sounding plans he calls 'Agenda47'" and his allies "are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists" in "legal, judicial, defense, regulatory, and domestic policy jobs."
"The government-in-waiting is being orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation's well-funded Project 2025, which already has published a 920-page policy book from 400+ contributors," the outlet explained. "Heritage president Kevin Roberts tells us his apparatus is 'orders of magnitude' bigger than anything ever assembled for a party out of power."
Trump's 2024 campaign claimed Monday that his Agenda47 "is the only official comprehensive and detailed look at what President Trump will do when he returns to the White House," and "while the campaign is appreciative of any effort to provide suggestions about a second term, the campaign is not collaborating with them."
Cowardly For-Profit Journalism Is Bringing Trump's Fascism Back to Our Door
For voters to make intelligent decisions about candidates, they must be well-informed. Sadly, that is very much not what is happening today in America. If we don't confront this crisis, democracy itself will pay the price.www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-coverage-trump-s-fascismOver at his excellent Substack newsletter, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich asks the question that’s probably on the minds of many: “Why are so many people prepared to vote for Trump?”
After all, there have been at least seven national polls conducted by reputable organizations in the past few weeks and not a single one shows Biden beating Trump in a 2024 matchup.
Reich cites the many crimes, lies, and outright fascistic statements attributed to Trump, followed by the considerable list of Biden’s accomplishments, and then offers a poll asking if people say they’re voting for America’s first true wannabee dictator because of ignorance, anger/fear, racism/xenophobia, or Biden’s age.
All are no doubt significant factors, but I believe the largest variable in Americans’ willingness to say they’ll vote for Trump is far simpler: the consequence of yellow journalism.
I’m not talking about a simple left/right bias, a political preference held by reporters or publishers and editors of the nation’s major media outlets. While there’s a strong case to be made for billion-dollar corporations and multimillionaire media personalities having a preference for low taxes and deregulation, for example, the bias I’m referencing has to do with spectacle.
Generations ago, we referred to newspapers that emphasized scandal and celebrity intrigue as “yellow journalism.” The phrase dates back to the 1890s when William Randolph Hearst bought, in 1895, the Journal, a New York newspaper that he used to successfully compete with Joseph Pulitizer’s then-dominant New York World.
Hearst hired away from Pulitzer’s papers a number of famous writers along with Richard Outcault, then arguably the nation’s most famous cartoonist, who penned the wildly popular series called The Yellow Kid. Between Outcault’s draw and Hearst’s emphasis on celebrity and sensationalism, from the 1890s until the WWII era, “yellow journalism” dominated the American media scene.
It quite literally took World War II to push public demand for real news and serious reporting — and a new emphasis on fact-based reporting and substance over flash — back into media dominance. It birthed what became the era of Walter Cronkite and Catherine Graham, with honest, credible reporting on everything from Nixon’s Watergate crimes to the horrors of the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War.
Cronkite competed with Huntley and Brinkley based on the quality of their reporting and the credibility of their sources, as did the nation’s major and even regional newspapers and radio news networks.
I trace the modern era of yellow journalism to the 1990s, when the nation was transfixed by Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr’s relentless and pornographic pursuit of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
After Reagan ended enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, radio and TV stations were no longer burdened by the requirement to “program in the public interest” to maintain their broadcast licenses; all three major TV networks moved their news divisions — which had universally been losing money because of the requirement for “real news” — under the arm of their entertainment divisions, where they remain to this day and have now become significant profit centers.
Rush Limbaugh’s 1988 national syndication and Rupert Murdoch’s 1996 Fox “News” set the tone for this era’s new yellow journalism, frontloading — as did Hearst back in the day — personality, celebrity, and scandal over the boring details of policy, debate, and the consequence of congressional and presidential decisions.
The “yellow” of this era’s “yellow journalism,” I’d argue, more accurately means “cowardly,” now that nobody remembers the cartoon of the 1890s. And, unlike the 1890s when there were still papers engaging in serious journalism, today’s yellow journalism is ubiquitous across the media consumed by the majority of Americans.
As a consequence, a SeptemberWall Street Journal poll found that 52% of voters today claim that Trump “has a strong record of accomplishments” but only 40% say the same for Biden.
And now the researchers are beginning to weigh in, documenting how 21st century yellow journalism has altered our political landscape and led to the rise of the ultimate scandal/celebrity/personality spectacle: Donald Trump and his fascist cult followers.
The Columbia Journalism Review, arguably the premiere watchdog of American news reporting, just published a scathing indictment of political coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Because these newspapers are so widely read and respected, they tend to set the agenda and tone for most other reporting in the United States, and what the Reviewfound was shocking:
“Both emphasized the horse race and campaign palace intrigue, stories that functioned more to entertain readers than to educate them on essential differences between political parties. …
“By the numbers, of four hundred and eight articles on the front page of the Times during the period we analyzed, about half—two hundred nineteen—were about domestic politics. A generous interpretation found that just ten of those stories explained domestic public policy in any detail; only one front-page article in the lead-up to the midterms really leaned into discussion about a policy matter in Congress: Republican efforts to shrink Social Security.
“Of three hundred and ninety-three front-page articles in the Post, two hundred fifteen were about domestic politics; our research found only four stories that discussed any form of policy. The Post had no front-page stories in the months ahead of the midterms on policies that candidates aimed to bring to the fore or legislation they intended to pursue. Instead, articles speculated about candidates and discussed where voter bases were leaning.”
This is the exact same type of yellow journalism “reporting” that led up to the 2016 election and brought us Donald Trump as president, and is a clear echo of the days of Hearst’s New York Journal.
But it’s not just selective reporting of the news of the day with a heavy tilt toward the GOP (or, more correctly, a steady refusal to report on the accomplishments of Biden and Democrats).
Another factor that Hearst played on heavily and has come to dominate what passes today for journalism is the inversion of expectation.
As any comedian can tell you, an involuntary laugh response comes when a person thinks they know what’s coming next and is then, instead, surprised by the unexpected.
“I just flew in from New York,” Red Skelton used to famously say, deadpan. “Boy, are my arms tired!”
In his 1941 book American Journalism. A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940, Frank Luther Mott famously noted the hallmark of Hearst’s time:
“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
In today’s yellow journalism era, reporters are far more interested in “man bites dog” stories than in examining the factors and history that may have provoked that bite, or even covering in any detail the frequency of dogs biting people.
The latest example comes from an in-depth analysis done by Media Matters comparing Hillary Clinton’s private comment about Trump’s followers being “a basket of deplorables” and Trump’s very public proclamation, literally echoing Hitler, that some of us are “vermin” who he intends to “root out” and eliminate from American society.
Clinton is a reasonable and thoughtful politician and former diplomat, so her “deplorables” comment was seen by our yellow press as “man bites dog.”
Trump, on the other hand, is a sadistic fascist whose call for the extermination of his political opponents could reasonably be expected: “dog bites man.”
The data proves the thesis, as Media Matters notes:
“Media Matters reviewed the nationally syndicated broadcast news shows — ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ This Morning, Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press — in the first week after each remark.
“We found that those programs aired 54 minutes of coverage of Clinton's ‘deplorables’ comment but just 3 minutes regarding Trump's ‘vermin’ remark.
“ABC News aired 20 minutes of ‘deplorables’ coverage across 13 segments and 3 teasers, but devoted only a single minute of coverage to the ‘vermin’ comment, during an interview with the network’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, about his new book.
“CBS News provided 13 minutes of ‘deplorables’ coverage across 11 segments and 3 teasers, compared to 1 passing mention of the ‘vermin’ remark on Face the Nation that comprised less than 30 seconds.
“And NBC News spent 21 minutes of airtime on the ‘deplorables’ comment across 11 segments, compared to 2 minutes on ‘vermin’ — one a passing mention, the other an interview in which Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker read the comment to Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and asked her, ‘Are you comfortable with this language coming from the GOP front-runner?’ (McDaniel declined to comment.)”
Cable news (CNN, Fox “News,” and MSNBC) wasn’t much different:
“On CNN, there were 553 mentions of ‘deplorable’ compared to 70 for ‘vermin.’
“On Fox News, there were 513 mentions of ‘deplorable’ compared to only 9 of ‘vermin.’
“And on MSNBC, there were 596 mentions of ‘deplorables’ compared to only 112 of ‘vermin.’
The reporters at Media Matters then turned their attention to the nation’s five largest newspapers by circulation: “the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post — in the first week following each remark.”
Here, they found the pattern repeated.
The LA Times published 3 articles about Clintons “deplorables” comment, two on the front page. But not even one single article during the week after Trump mentioned “vermin” made any reference whatsoever about his remark.
The New York Times had seven articles about Clinton’s comment, four on the front page; like the LA Times, there wasn’t a single news story mentioning Trump’s ‘vermin’ comment during that time period.
The Wall Street Journal similarly ignored Trump’s comment altogether, but ran 8 articles about Clinton’s faux pax, four of them on the front page.
The Washington Post at least mentioned Trump’s comment once, on page A2 (including it in the headline), but gave Clinton’s remark 9 stories, one on the front page, with five using the word “deplorables” in the headline.
USA Today covered Clinton’s comment in 2 news articles but, like three of the other four papers completely ignored Trump’s.
So far as I can tell there’s been no similar analysis of Obama’s leaked comment about Pennsylvania voters in areas that had been deindustrialized by Reagan’s neoliberal free trade policies and the GOP’s destruction of the trade union movement.
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter,” Obama told a closed-door group of donors, “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
The coverage at the time almost completely ignored the context of Obama’s remarks and, instead, focused on the “man bites dog” of a Black politician criticizing rural white voters.”
This Tuesday, Trump demanded “the government” must “come down hard” and “punish” MSNBC because Lawrence O’Donnell criticized him on-air.
In any other democratic nation a leading politician calling for the censorship or punishment of a media outlet would be front page news. Here in America, it was only covered by Deadline, a newspaper that covers Hollywood, and on Lawrence’s own show.
At the same time, while our economy in many ways is doing better than it has since the 1960s, there’s virtually no mention of that in the media, either. It doesn’t bleed, so it doesn’t lede.
As a result, The Wall Street Journalreported last week:
“Only 36% of voters in a new Wall Street Journal/NORC survey said the American dream still holds true, substantially fewer than the 53% who said so in 2012 and 48% in 2016 in similar surveys of adults by another pollster.”
Not only has this era’s yellow journalism facilitated the rise of a fascist demagogue and his cult; it has altogether warped Americans’ view of objective reality.
To paraphrase Clinton’s 1992 campaign, the answer to Reich’s plaintive question about why more voters are going for Trump than Biden regardless of the realities in the fact-based world: “It’s the media, stupid.” (With the highest respect for Reich.)
It’s almost a cliche these days to complain about the “infotainment” we see in TV and radio “news” reporting that has come about in the wake of Reagan ending enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine, but to see this same type of horserace coverage passing as news on the front pages of the nation’s largest newspapers is, frankly, a crime against our democracy.
For voters to make intelligent decisions about candidates, they must be well-informed. Sadly, that is very much not what is happening today in America, and our era’s yellow journalism bodes ill for the 2024 elections and the future of our democratic republic.
What can be done about this?
In 1983, President Reagan directed the DOJ, FTC, and SEC to essentially stop enforcing our nation’s antitrust laws. As a result, our media has been massively consolidated and is more driven by corporate boardrooms’ profit considerations than any thought about the future of our nation.
For example, today more than half of all our country’s local newspapers are owned by a handful of New York-based hedge funds.
Nonetheless, America’s media is not immune to pressure and demands from the public. Most media organizations allow for comments on their articles, letters to the editor, or simply private, typically email, feedback from readers.
Both Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Toqueville famously highlighted the critical importance to our democracy of a free and independent press.
Now that our nation’s massive media corporations have failed so tragically in their obligation to inform the public and hold power to account, that job falls to us.