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Ominous Goal of the Right’s "Religious Liberty” Crusade

The Felon continues to create chaos media distractions through the likely renewal of the Iran war, his unprecedented corruption and self-enrichment, his refusal to follow presidential norms, much less the law, the constant insults thrown at those he sees as political opponents, and threats against and betrayals of long standing American allies.  All of this provides distraction from the ominous white "Christian" nationalist agenda being pushed on the domestic front as the Felon - a man who embodies the seven deadly sins - panders to evangelicals and "Christian" white supremacists (the two are largely interchangeable) and an agenda that threatens the religious liberties and civil rights of those outside of far right "Christian" denominations.   Under this agenda, the few have rights while everyone's else's rights are made subordinate if not nullified completely.   It's an agenda long pushed by far right "Christians" who want nothing less than a de facto theocracy with themselves in charge. Ironically, these same people rail against Iran's Islamic theocracy and its abuse of citizens even as they seek to impose a theocracy of their own that will abuse and marginalize those who do not subscribe to their hate and fear based beliefs.  A piece at The New Republic looks at this ominous agenda:

“Religion is back in our country, bigger and stronger than it has been in many, many years,” [the Felon] President Donald Trump announced to the Faith and Freedom Coalition on June 26. . . . Great nations have God and religion, and, he added, “if you don’t have that, it just doesn’t seem to work out, does it?” It sounded almost like a threat.

That same day, Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission delivered a full draft of its 224-page report, the centerpiece of which is “12 Recommendations to Strengthen Religious Liberty for All Americans.” Those recommendations include the creation of a Justice Department “religious liberty task force,” production of “Know Your Rights” posters, repealing the Johnson Amendment, and creating “religious liberty violation reporting hotlines/online portals.”

The commission, housed in the DOJ, was established via executive order last year to advise the White House Faith Office and Domestic Policy Council by offering suggestions for how to “preserve and enhance religious liberty” in U.S. law and public life. Chaired by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and vice-chaired by Ben Carson, it is primarily composed of right-wing activists. A few have legal experience; others are prominent religious leaders, politicians, authors—and Dr. Phil.

The report itself is, as legal scholar Micah Schwartzman has put it, “an embarrassing document” (although “shameless” might be more fitting). Still, as we have learned and relearned over the past decade, government officials do not have to be thoughtful, competent, or serious to do real damage. Slapdash and unserious as the report might be, it does its job: laying out how to use the cause of religious liberty to advance right-wing goals.

For over two decades, the Christian conservative legal movement, led by well-funded groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom and with help from the Roberts court, has transformed the idea of religious freedom. . . . . Religious liberty is a banner under which the administration and its allies will continue to undermine other civil rights, dismantle public goods, and insulate certain favored citizens from public accountability.

The premise of the commission’s work is “a simple but profound truth: religious liberty is essential because religion itself is indispensable to a flourishing society.” In recent decades, high-profile cases have dramatized the conflict between individual religious freedom and the public good. The religious belief and speech of cake bakers, website designers, and licensed counselors—to refer to three Supreme Court cases in which ADF successfully sought exemption from or contested Colorado’s civil rights laws—come into conflict with the civil rights of others, particularly LGBTQ people. But, the commission argues, the “Founding Fathers recognized that religious liberty is not merely a private benefit for believers, but a public good for the nation.”

Here, they sidestep the fact that private benefits do in fact conflict with public goods—when business owners discriminate against their potential clients, when tax dollars are funneled to discriminatory private institutions and away from public schools, or when religious groups flout public health mandates during a pandemic—and instead assert that, because religion is ultimately good, religious liberty benefits everyone. . . . Church and state should not be completely separate but, “in reality,” should “strengthen and support one another.” There is no wall between the two, the commission concludes, but a “bridge.”

The report is divided into 14 chapters, most of which are devoted to a particular issue or arena of public life. . . . . The content of each is drawn largely from the commission’s seven hearings held over the past year. These hearings primarily served as platforms for supposedly persecuted believers—each one a potential “religious freedom celebrity”—to offer testimonials, with occasional subject-area experts adding their analysis. . . . Chapters conclude with pictures from the hearings of these heroes. It reads like a book of martyrs with policy recommendations.

The testimonies reveal their uses. . . . The commission wants Americans to be proud of religion, and of religious liberty. Perhaps even more than wanting to feel pride, they want some people not to feel shame. They want anti-sociality without consequent social stigma. As religious studies scholar Donovan Schaefer has written, for some conservatives, “it becomes easier to repudiate shame altogether than respond to the moral demands placed on them.”

Following this line of argument, religious studies scholar Finbarr Curtis explains, “Trumpism is the response to the fear that someone somewhere is threatening to take something that is rightfully yours. As a vigorous response to threats, Trump’s illiberalism makes his supporters feel safe.” The message of the commission’s report is that these threats abound, from vaccine mandates and “transgenderism” and “bad actors in the government and within institutions,” but the Department of Justice will protect you.

Even in this boom time for religious liberty, with religion’s stock going up, some claimants still lose their cases. In fact, the named claimant in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, the most recent religious freedom case at the Supreme Court, lost. And a landmark law—2000’s Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA—was significantly restricted. Naturally, it was a case that spelled out exactly who could expect to enjoy religious freedom and who should not.

The Public Religion Research Institute has found . . . . “In the U.S., when there is a conflict, the rights and religious freedom of Christians have priority over the rights and religious freedom of non-Christians and non-religious Americans.” Perhaps this is the “culture of Christian Nationalism” of which Perryman warns.

While Christian nationalist ideology might be a factor, the Religious Liberty Commission is better understood as a right-wing project. If its goal is to install Christian supremacy, it is only as a route to empower private actors to subvert the public good. It seeks to exempt certain people—Christians, yes, but more importantly conservatives—from public accountability, and from feeling bad about abridging the civil rights of disfavored groups. It advocates siphoning funds from public schools and rerouting them toward private institutions . . . .

It seeks to create a culture of fear and suspicion and, in so doing, alleviate the fears of anti-pluralists, their feelings of loneliness, exclusion, and shame. Throughout, the message is clear: Get religion. If you don’t, the commission suggests, it just doesn’t seem to work out, does it?

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Belgium Ousts USA From World Cup In 4-1 Rout

Everything the Felon touches or tries to influence ends up degraded, including the world's view of American and frequently Americans themselves.  Be it the Felon's supposed renovations to the Reflecting Pool, the garish decorations added to the Oval Office and other Washington structures, or the Felon's horrid treatment of long time allies and trading partners, the end result is America is reduced. His inappropriate intervention in the suspension of U.S. forward Folarin Balogun is yet another example of the Felon's inability to realize that his efforts often result in the opposite of what he intends. While FIFA boss, Gianni Infantino, at the Felon's bidding reversed the suspension and allowed Balogun to play in yesterday's game, the result was a large portion of the world rooting for Belgium and seemingly a supercharged Belgian team that soundly beat the American team 4 to 1. Had the American team won, its victory would have been tainted, not that the Felon would care given his obsession with "winning" at any costs, including jettisoning sportsmanship, honor and integrity. I suspect much of the world is thrilled by the Belgian victory and I feel sorry for the American team members who win or lose were merely the collateral damage of the Felon's sick ambition and ego. A column in the New York Times looks at the Felon's intervention:

According to soccer’s rules, as interpreted by most people who actually understand them, the red card decision against Mr. Balogun might have been wrong, but it should not have been reversible.

That’s until Mr. Trump called Mr. Infantino and suggested that the rule of law in soccer, just like the rule of law in the United States, doesn’t apply to him. According to the rarely used Article 27, which allows FIFA to suspend a disciplinary measure, the incorrect ruling that could not be corrected was in fact correctable.

Mr. Trump, of course, bragged about beating the charges and getting Mr. Balogun back for the critical knockout match against Belgium in Seattle. Mr. Balogun, it should be noted, is a Brooklyn-born player who was raised in England and plays in France for A.C. Monaco. He’s an American citizen by birthright, the kind of person targeted by the case the president lost last week in the Supreme Court.

We’re the fools to think that Mr. Infantino, a supposed reformer after the scandal-filled regime of his predecessor Sepp Blatter, would make FIFA more aboveboard. His organization has handed soccer’s biggest tournament to both Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the petro-potentates of Qatar, and Mr. Infantino has turned the whole thing into an ever more gigantic money machine. He presented Mr. Trump with the first FIFA Peace Prize, after all; nearly three months later, of course, the peace prize winner would start a war with Iran by bombing schoolchildren. A friend noted that he has now won the FIFA Appease Prize, too.

This is a very good American team playing in what has been, to this point, a wildly successful, fairly played tournament. We can compete with just about anyone, although it’s also fair to say we are still not part of the elite, the way Belgium is.

A victory over Belgium would indeed be a measure of achievement, another mile marker passed on the journey of progress the sport has made in the United States. And perhaps one forever tarnished by our commander in cheat.

A piece at NBC Sports continues the theme:

Some will dance around it. I’ll say it. The intervention of the president in the suspension of U.S. striker Flo Balogun’s suspension for the game killed the vibe. It removed the justifiable chip on the U.S. team’s shoulder arising from an unwarranted red card on Balogun and shifted it to Belgium’s squad. The Belgian players had something extra. The U.S. team simply couldn’t match it.

Would it have been any different if the Commander-in-Chief hadn’t tried to twist the arm of FIFA president Gianni Infantino? There’s no way to know. But it couldn’t have been any worse than it was tonight for the U.S. team.

And so the man who would have claimed full credit if the U.S. had won deserves at least some of the blame for the loss. He lit a fire for the Belgian team that it otherwise wouldn’t have had.

There’s no way to prove it objectively. But if you followed the story and watched all of the game, it’s a conclusion that is hard not to reach.

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The Rising Price of the Felon's Anti-Science Agenda

The architects of Project 2025 which the Felon has been steadily seeking to implement are white "Christian" nationalists who have both a racist and anti-science agenda.  The racist part is all about restoring white supremacy.  The anti-science part stems from the reality that the falsely named "Christian Right" has long been against science and knowledge because both undercut their mythical beliefs, many of which trace back to Bronze Age goat and sheep herders in Palestine. To these people, anything - and anyone - that opposes or undermines their house of cards belief system is to be condemned and marginalized - or worse.  All of this is made worse by the Felon's desire to keep this large element of his shrinking base happy and the Felon's own lack of curiosity and failure to fully focus on anything besides enriching himself and further inflating his own delicate ego (despite poor crowd turnout yesterday for his failed celebration, the Felon claimed there were incredible crowds). All of this hostility to science is taking a literal toll on the lives of Americans who already have seen their life expectancies fall compared to their European counterparts. We now see measles, once eradicated, returning as a threat to public health and huge funding cuts combined with RFK,JR.'s anti-vaccine fixation do not bode well for the future.   A piece at Salon looks at the severe damage being done:

There’s a well-known scene from a 2001 episode of “SpongeBob SquarePants” in which a mob of fish mistakes a feeble old man for a bully and attacks him. The gag happens again, leading a blue fish to famously quip, “How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?” As far as metaphors go, it’s a pretty apt one for how pathogens, parasites and other infectious organisms serve as lessons for [the Felon] President Donald Trump on basic principles of public health. The problem is he’s seemingly incapable of learning — and Americans are paying the price.

The reason I’m referencing a children’s cartoon is that this is the level of intellectual discourse that science has been reduced to under the MAGA and MAHA movements spurred by Trump and lackeys like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most of this anti-science policy amounts to plugging their ears and going “nah nah nah” whenever something about climate change, vaccines or racial injustice is mentioned.

The rest is standard schoolyard bullying, which, as a new tracker from the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists demonstrates, has resulted in 574 attacks on science and 187 potential scientific integrity violations since Trump began his second term. These attacks include censorship, appointing cronies to key agency positions, gutting regulations and funding and targeting scientists based on identity. Consequently, the last year and a half has been a disaster in almost all realms of scientific progress and public health in the U.S.

The examples of this administration flouting science and reaping the painful consequences are nearly endless and date back to Trump’s first term, when he flouted virus surveillance programs, essentially inviting COVID-19 in, then did little to stop it and let it flourish into a pandemic that has killed at least 1.1 million Americans and counting. But for more recent cases, we need only look at the last few weeks and boy, have the consequences of an anti-science agenda piled on recently.

To take an easy example, there’s the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool scandal, in which “renovations” ordered by Trump resulted in a nauseating algae bloom, because whoever the president hired to paint the pool bottom didn’t seem to grasp how this would trap heat and provide the perfect conditions for algae to thrive. This science experiment is far less consequential than the record-breaking Ebola crisis that has been worsened by cuts to foreign aid, for example, but it’s no less anti-science. Rather than admit he doesn’t understand basic pool science, Trump’s response has been to arrest at least six people and float accusations against rogue vandals, a “painfully stupid” conspiracy theory, . . .

This is far from the only rake the Trump admin has stepped on in recent days. There’s also the Pentagon announcement last week that it is reversing course on flu vaccines, making them mandatory yet again. This comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the shots optional in late April. It only took about two months for a serious outbreak to occur: this month, nearly 300 people have been sickened at Lackland Air Force Base in Bexar County, Texas, which has so far hospitalized four people and may have resulted in one death (the case is still being investigated).

But Hegseth seems to think you can deflect viruses with creatine powder and tanning lotion. Vaccines are “woke” — until you have hundreds of people sickened for no reason when there is a safe and effective vaccine that millions of people take each year. If more people got vaccinated, flu season wouldn’t be nearly as severe as it is every year in America. We collectively and effectively choose to get sick, slowing down the economy and killing vulnerable people, because some of us don’t like getting shots. I’ve argued before that the lack of flu vaccine uptake is one of many aspects of the American death cult, but for this shot in particular, mandates are unlikely to work on the broader public.

On the topic of vaccines that probably should be mandatory, measles continues to wreak havoc across the U.S., with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting 2,134 confirmed cases this year. In 2025, there were just shy of 2,300 cases, which means 2026 is almost certainly going to outpace that record. Approximately 93% of these measles patients are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccine status. The disease, which was once eliminated from the U.S., is now so embedded in our society that we have essentially lost that measles elimination status, whether anti-vaccine health officials like Kennedy acknowledge it or not, as Dr. Jess Steier argued in a recent op-ed for CIDRAP.

Meanwhile, Kennedy is working overtime to further restrict access to vaccines by rewriting the charter of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a federal committee that provides guidance on vaccines. If the ACIP votes to remove vaccines from a free vaccination program — unfortunately, a real possibility — more than half of US kids would lose access to that immunization, experts warn. Once again, it’s the American people who pay the price of the Trump admin’s anti-science agenda.

Yet another example of Trump’s anti-science policies coming back to bite him — this time, somewhat literally — is the return of New World Screwworm, a parasitic fly with larvae that bore into the open flesh wounds of its victims. For decades, the U.S. has maintained a program in which these flies are bred in a lab, bathed in sterilizing radiation and released around Panama, which prevents the insect from creeping northward.

[C]uts to these programs and Trump’s antagonism toward Mexico, Panama and other Latin American countries threatened to bring the parasite back to the United States. Now it’s happening, with the latest update from the Department of Agriculture reporting 27 cases in the last 30 days. It may not sound like much, but it will be a multi-billion-dollar effort to contain. The response from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has been, predictably, to blame immigration and former President Joe Biden.

When cases of screwworm began popping up in Mexico in 2024, Biden’s USDA shuttered southern ports of entry to live cattle imports to prevent the spread. Trump reopened those ports in Feb. 2025 to appease the cattle industry, while staffing cuts at the USDA and sluggish funding reviews have arguably contributed to screwworm’s return.

Screwworm is mostly a concern for cattle ranchers — and given the outsized climate impacts of factory farms, it would be a good thing if people eat less meat — but it still stands as yet another embarrassing neglect of science and public health that is egg on Trump’s face. It’s certainly bad news for the ranchers and farmers that President Screwworm has consistently screwed over.

How many times must he learn his lesson? Trump’s hostility to science isn’t just ignorant; it’s destructive. But it seems like no matter how many times a totally predictable result blows up in his face, he won’t stop the rancor toward science. He won’t stop attacking scientific leaders, cutting their funding or hampering their ability to do their job. He allows his flunkies to attack proven technologies like vaccines or deny the catastrophic decay of our environment due to burning fossil fuels, and on and on.

Trump is only tightening his grip on science, recently proposing rule changes to how federal research is funded under the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently overseen by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought. The rule changes would not only weaken the peer review process and forbid international scientific collaboration, but they would also ban research on gender and diversity, equity and inclusion. The blowback is impossible to predict, but if the last 18 months have indicated anything, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

These are far from the only enterprises that seek to rebuild what the Trump admin has demolished, and they all need our support. Unfortunately, it won’t be nearly enough to undo the damage — some of which could take decades to repair, with a staggering death toll in its wake — unless we finally rein in this out-of-control, anti-science crusade once and for all.

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