Kennedy, whom President Donald Trump nominated for secretary of Health and Human Services, has frequently spoken out against vaccines. But he spent part of Wednesday’s hearings denying that he was an anti-vaxxer and at one point insisted that his own children were vaccinated.
“What are you going to believe, his well-documented decades-long record, or the thing he said today when he was trying to get a job?” Kosta asked. “Besides, all of his kids are vaccinated. He definitely doesn’t regret that, right? Right? Right?”
Kosta rolled footage of Kennedy in 2020 saying that, if he could go back in time, he would stop his children from getting vaccinated.
“I would do anything for that,” Kennedy said. “I would pay anything to be able to do that.”
Kosta was flabbergasted.
“That is the worst answer to what you would do with a time machine that I have ever heard,” Kosta said, adding in disbelief: “You can’t think of anyone else in your family that you would go back in time and try to prevent a shot from happening, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? No one else?”
Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. His uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963.
See more in the Wednesday night “Daily Show” monologue:
Trump’s First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller’s Rage—Take Note Dems
Greg Sargent – January 29, 2025
Admitting failure is anathema to the authoritarian leader, who is perpetually in danger of being diminished only by those who are resentful of his glory—which is why White House adviser Stephen Miller is frantically searching for scapegoats to blame for the unfolding disaster around President Donald Trump’s massive freeze on federal spending. “Welcome to the first dumb media hoax of 2025,” Miller angrily tweeted on Tuesday night. “Leftwing media outright lied, and some people fell for the hoax.”
What Miller is actually angry about is that the media covered this fiasco aggressively and fairly. Miller insists that the press glossed over the funding pause’s supposed exemption for “aid and benefit programs.” But this is rank misdirection: The funding freeze, which is likely illegal, was indeed confusingly drafted and recklessly rolled out. This is in part what prompted the national outcry over the huge swath of programs that it threatened, Medicaid benefits included—and the media coverage that angered Miller.
All of which carries a lesson for Democrats: This is what it looks like when the opposition stirs and uses its power in a unified way to make a lot of what you might call sheer political noise. That can help set the media agenda, throw Trump and his allies on the defensive, and deliver defeats to Trump that deflate his cultish aura of invincibility.
“This has been a red-alert moment for weeks—but now no one can deny it,” Senator Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who has argued for an emergency footing against Trump, told me. “For my colleagues that didn’t want to cry wolf, the wolf is literally chomping at our leg right now.”
Until this crisis, the Democratic opposition has mostly been relatively tentative and divided. Democrats were not sufficiently quick, forceful, or unified in denouncing Trump’s illegal purge of inspectors general and his deranged threat to prosecute state officials who don’t comply with mass deportations. Internal party debates suggest that many Democrats believe that Trump’s 2024 victory shows voters don’t care about the dire threat he poses to democracy and constitutional governance, or that defending them against Trump must be reducible to “kitchen table” appeals.
But the funding-freeze fiasco should illustrate that this reading is highly insufficient. An understanding of the moment shaped around the idea that voters are mostly reachable only via economic concerns—however important—fails to provide guidance on how to convey to voters why things like this extraordinary Trumpian power grab actually matter.
Democrats need to think through ways to act collectively, to utilize something akin to a party-wide strategy, precisely because this sort of collective, concerted action has the capacity to alert voters in a different kind of way. It can put them on edge, signaling to them that something is deeply amiss in the threat Trump is posing to the rule of law and constitutional order.
Generally speaking, some Democrats have several objections to this kind of approach. One is that voters don’t care about anything that doesn’t directly impact them and that warnings about the Trump threat make them look unfocused on people’s material concerns. Another is that if Democrats do this too often, voters will stop believing there’s real cause for alarm.
The funding-freeze fiasco got around the first objection for Democrats because it did have vast material implications, potentially harming millions of people. But Democrats shouldn’t take the wrong lesson from this. A big reason this became a huge story was also that it represented a wildly audacious grab for quasi-dictatorial power. Democratic alarms about this dimension of the story surely helped prompt wall-to-wall coverage. Democrats can learn from that.
Faiz Shakir, a progressive dark-horse candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, suggests another way around the first objection—that Democrats can seize on Trump’s abuses of power in a way that does appeal to the working class. The party, he argues, can enlist elected officials and influencers with working-class credibility to explain that those abuses should matter, not just to working-class voters’ bottom lines but, critically, because his degenerate public conduct should disgust them as well. He says Democrats can argue: “The way he is acting is a betrayal of working-class values and your working-class interests.”
Shakir also suggests an intriguing way for the party to act in concert. As chair, he’d aggressively encourage as many elected officials as possible to use the video-recording studio at the DNC in moments like these, getting them to record short takes on why voters should care about them, then push the content out on social media.*
Shakir said he sees a model in Murphy, who regularly serves up short, hyper-timely videos that use phrases like “Let me tell you why this matters.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1884297054136021224
The goal, Shakir said, would be to provide Democrats with research and recording infrastructure enabling elected officials to find their own voices and flood information spaces with civic knowledge. This also would give Democrats who want to stick to a “kitchen table” approach a way to shape their own warnings around that.
Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, a leading DNC chair candidate, agrees that speed and unity are paramount. “We can’t be waiting several days to organize a response to each of these things from Trump—we have to move quick,” Martin said, adding that the “larger party apparatus” should all be “singing from the same sheet of music.”
The second objection to a concerted approach—that it risks a “cry wolf” effect—is also seriously flawed. It’s already clear some Democrats are using this to avoid hard fights, for instance in hints about “working with” Elon Musk or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who each pose serious threats to bedrock ideals of public service. Also, if Democrats bestow bipartisan legitimacy on Trumpian moves like appointing those two walking civic basket cases, it complicates sounding the alarm in even more grave situations.
“It is hard for us to argue that our democracy is falling if we’re helping to confirm all of his nominees,” Murphy told me.
Taking too much of an à la carte approach to Trump’s abuses of power also risks squandering leverage. Democratic strategist Jesse Lee notes that the party’s lawmakers could consider a unified, future-oriented approach to abuses like the funding freeze. “The fight is real and here,” Lee said, arguing that Democrats can “make it clear” to GOP leaders that “they will get no Dem votes bailing them out while this power grab is in place.” (On Wednesday, the Trump administration rescinded the funding pause, strengthening the case for an aggressive opposition.)
Nobody denies that the Democratic Party is a big, sprawling, highly varied organism with elected officials facing a huge spectrum of different political imperatives. Of course there will be variation in how they approach each Trumpian abuse. But as Brian Beutler puts it, the answer to this cannot be to “lodge passing complaints about Trump’s abuses of power, but turn every conversation back to the cost of groceries.” This incoherently implies that the abuses themselves are not serious on their own terms.
How to corral Democrats who don’t want to sound warnings in particular situations is not easy to solve. But some of the ideas above are a start. And regardless, at a minimum, we need clearer signs that party leaders, at the highest levels, are seriously thinking through how to act concertedly in ways that clearly signal to voters that we’re in a civic emergency, and will argue to wayward Democrats that this is in their interests as well.
“People will not take us seriously if we don’t do our jobs every day like we’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis,” Murphy told me. “Today, everybody understands that he’s trying to seize power for corrupt purposes. But tomorrow, we have to start acting with purpose to stop what he’s doing.” If you doubt the efficacy of this, Stephen Miller’s anger confirms it as clearly as anyone could want.
* This article is about a breaking news story and has been updated. It has also been edited to include mention of the DNC’s existing recording studio.
Trump’s Milley retribution sends chilling signal to military brass, critics say
Brad Dress – January 29, 2025
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President Trump this week revoked a security detail for retired Gen. Mark Milley and announced an investigation into the former Joint Chiefs chair’s conduct, enacting promised retribution while also sending a chilling message to military brass.
Trump, who also revoked Milley’s security clearance in orders to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has long clashed with Milley, who has been outspoken against the president in books and public comments.
But taking public revenge against him and launching an investigation are moves with little precedent in civil-military relations, and Democratic senators and experts called his actions reckless and petty.
“I think it is completely unjustified,“ said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “Another act of retribution and revenge that shows the smallness of the president.”
Richard Kohn, emeritus professor at the University of North Carolina and an expert on civil-military relations, said Trump’s move will discourage senior officers from doing their jobs and honestly advising the president, noting a former Joint Chiefs chair has never had their security detail revoked before.
“Trump will be very difficult to deal with because he’s really a very insecure person,” Kohn said. “I think he feels jealous of the legitimacy and the respect that senior officers get in American society. So as a result, it just makes it more difficult for them to do their job and to deal with political leadership in an honorable and candid way.”
Pentagon chief of staff Joe Kasper confirmed that Milley’s security detail and clearance were revoked and that the Defense Department Office of Inspector General will conduct an investigation into Milley’s conduct, which will include a review of whether a star can be revoked from the retired four-star general.
Kasper said that “undermining the chain of command is corrosive to our national security.”
“Restoring accountability is a priority for the Defense Department under President Trump’s leadership,” Kasper said in a statement.
Trump signaled he was out for revenge against Milley on the campaign trail, suggesting at one point the retired general should be executed, and on his first day back in office he decried pardons that former President Biden issued for Milley and other Trump foes.
Just hours later, the Pentagon confirmed that a portrait of Milley recognizing him as a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was taken down.
But critics say taking away Milley’s security detail is a much more serious move, risking the life of the former highest-ranking military officer who carried out Trump’s orders to strike on a top Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani, in early 2020.
Trump has also revoked security details for other former officials-turned-critics: former national security adviser John Bolton and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, both of whom Iran has threatened.
Roger Petersen, a professor of political science emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies civil-military relations, said he was concerned about Trump’s actions creating a more politicized civilian-military environment, particularly among high-ranking officials.
Petersen, the author of “Death, Domination, and State-Building: The US in Iraq and the Future of American Intervention,” also raised concerns that the current chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown, might resign if pressured to adhere to orders.
“That is giving a signal to military officers that if you go against the Trump program, we can reach you even in retirement, and affect your pension and your status,” he said.
Democrats were quick to slam Trump for revoking the security detail for someone he’s feuded with.
“Just like John Bolton, like Pompeo, these folks have been under real threats to their lives,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). “It’s wrong for the president to do that. We protect these individuals.”
Kelly expressed concern about the impact on the military at large, adding it sends a message that if “you do not fall in line, that there are consequences.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Milley “and other former Trump Administration officials continue to face credible, deadly threats from Iran because they carried out President Trump’s order to kill Iranian General Soleimani.”
“It is unconscionable and recklessly negligent for President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to revoke General Milley’s security detail for their own political satisfaction,” he said in a statement. “The Administration has placed Milley and his family in grave danger, and they have an obligation to immediately restore his federal protection.”
Republicans, however, were hesitant to comment on the move, both in person and on social media. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said he was unclear about the revocation of the security deal and hadn’t yet talked to Hegseth. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) did not answer a request for comment on Capitol Hill.
Milley and Trump’s feud has simmered for years. The retired U.S. Army general was tapped by Trump in 2019 to lead the Joint Chiefs, but the two soon clashed over the role of the military in responding to racial justice protesters in 2020. Milley also publicly apologized for appearing in a controversial photo shoot with Trump during the rioting.
Trump has also ripped Milley over reports the general called his Chinese counterpart to assure them that in the final days of Trump’s presidency, there was not a risk of escalating conflict or nuclear war.
Trump has tried to refute reports that Milley stopped him from launching an attack on Iran. The dispute is at the center of a now-shuttered Justice Department classified documents case against Trump, who was cited in an indictment as reading from an apparent classified document to make the case to people that Milley recommended an attack on Iran.
Milley, who retired in 2023, has admitted that he has been a source for anti-Trump commentary in books about his presidency. In the 2024 book “War” by journalist Bob Woodward, Milley called Trump “fascist to the core.”
Trump, in turn, has called Milley a “loser” and said he’s guilty of treason.
It’s unclear what exactly the Defense Department inspector general will investigate regarding Milley’s conduct.
In 2022, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who was then in the House, requested the inspector general investigate Milley. But Inspector General Robert Storch, who Trump fired last week, decided to drop the case after finding it unwarranted.
In a statement late Tuesday night, Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot said the inspector general will “conduct an inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding Gen. Milley’s conduct so that the Secretary may determine whether it is appropriate to reopen his military grade review determination.”
Milley’s call to his Chinese counterpart to reassure them could potentially be seen as overriding the chain of command, but Milley has also said he had spoken with a civilian counterpart before. Active-duty military have been punished for speaking against civilian authorities, including retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, whose aides were caught mocking then-Vice President Biden, leading to former President Obama firing him in 2010.
But most of Milley’s public criticism has come after retirement and not in active duty, analysts say.
Kohn, from the University of North Carolina, said although Milley has spoken a bit too candidly after leaving office, he does not believe there is anything to investigate.
“I don’t think he spoke against Trump. I think he tried to inform people and inform the other political leadership of how he behaved in the last, let’s say, six to eight months of his tenure, and why he did what he did,” he said. “But he didn’t really speak against Trump, except by implication.”
Peter Feaver, also a civil-military relations expert at the University of North Carolina, agreed.
Hegseth cutting Milley’s security detail, eyes stripping him of star
Ellen Mitchell – January 28, 2025
Hegseth cutting Milley’s security detail, eyes stripping him of star
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to announce the immediate rescission of the personal security detail and security clearance for former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, several news outletsare reporting.
The Trump administration is also aiming to demote Milley in retirement. Hegseth is expected to direct the Pentagon’s new acting Inspector General to conduct a review board to see if enough evidence exists for the four-star general to be stripped of a star based on his actions to “undermine the chain of command” during President Trump’s first term, multiple senior administration officials told Fox News, which first reported on the plan.
Additionally, a second portrait of Milley inside the Pentagon will be removed as soon as Tuesday night. That portrait sits in the Army’s Marshall Corridor on the third floor and honors Milley’s service as a former chief of staff of the Army. The first portrait of him, which was removed just hours after Trump was sworn into his second term on Jan. 20, depicted his time as the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Taking down both Milley portraits means there will be no imagery of him inside the Pentagon.
Defense Department officials declined to comment on the potential directives, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump and Milley have long had an acrimonious relationship, starting in Trump’s first term, when Milley apologized for accompanying the president for a photo opportunity at Lafayette Square near the White House in 2020 during racial justice unrest in the nation’s Capitol.
Later, in the final days of Trump’s first term, Milley reportedly — without Trump’s knowledge — reassured Chinese officials there would be no threat to China amid fears of instability within the White House. The incident infuriated Trump to the point that he posted on Truth Social that Milley was “treasonous,” suggesting he be executed.
Since then, Trump has often vowed to take revenge against his enemies, naming Milley often as one such foe.
But Trump might be hard-pressed to stick Milley with any criminal charges, as the retired general was given a preemptive pardon issued by former President Biden on Jan. 20, his last day in office.
Milley — who in public and private has reportedly called Trump unintelligent and a “fascist to the core” — had been assigned personal security details since 2020, when Iran vowed revenge for the Trump-ordered drone strike killing of Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani.
The removal of Milley’s security detail follows Trump’s decision last week to also end protective security details for his former national security adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his onetime deputy Brian Hook.
Trump administration orders sweeping freeze of federal aid
Jennifer Scholtes and Nicholas Wu – January 27, 2025
One week in, the Trump administration is broadening its assault on the functions of government and shifting control of the federal purse strings further away from members of Congress.
President Donald Trump’s budget office Monday ordered a total freeze on “all federal financial assistance” that could be targeted under his previous executive orders pausing funding for a wide range of priorities — from domestic infrastructure and energy projects to diversity-related programs and foreign aid.
In a two-page memo obtained by POLITICO, the Office of Management and Budget announced all federal agencies would be forced to suspend payments — with the exception of Social Security and Medicare.
“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” according to the memo, which three people authenticated.
The new order could affect billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments while causing disruptions to programs that benefit many households. There was also widespread confusion over how the memo would be implemented and whether it would face legal challenges.
While the memo says the funding pause does not include assistance “provided directly to individuals,” for instance, it does not clarify whether that includes money sent first to states or organizations and then provided to households.
The brief memo also does not detail all payments that will be halted. However, it broadly orders federal agencies to “temporarily” stop sending federal financial assistance that could be affected by Trump’s executive actions.
That includes the president’s orders to freeze all funding from the Democrats’ signature climate and spending law — the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure package enacted in 2021. It also imposes a 90-day freeze on foreign aid.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement decried the announcement as an example of “more lawlessness and chaos in America as Donald Trump’s Administration blatantly disobeys the law by holding up virtually all vital funds that support programs in every community across the country.”
The New York Democrat urged the administration to lift the freeze.
“They say this is only temporary, but no one should believe that,” he said. “Donald Trump must direct his Administration to reverse course immediately and the taxpayers’ money should be distributed to the people. Congress approved these investments and they are not optional; they are the law.”
Bobby Kogan, who worked at the White House budget office during the Biden administration, called the memo a “big, broad, illegal” order that violates impoundment law, which blocks presidents from unilaterally withholding money without the consent of Congress.
“This is as bad as we feared it would be,” said Kogan, who also served as a Democratic aide to the Senate Budget Committee and is now a director at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
The president of the National Council of Nonprofits, Diane Yentel, said in a statement that the order “could decimate thousands of organizations and leave neighbors without the services they need.”
The funding pause, first reported by journalist Marisa Kabas, is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. Tuesday, a day after the memo was sent to agencies.
Carmen Paun and Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
Taken during the Jan. 6insurrection, the photo shows a solitary White man, his head pressed in prayer against a massive wooden cross, facing the domed US Capitol building. An American flag stands like a sentinel on a flagpole beside the Capitol under an ominously gray sky.
The photograph depicts a foot soldier in an insurgent religious movement trying to storm the halls of American power. What’s unsettling about the photo four years later is that much of the religious zeal that fed the insurrection is no longer outside the gates of power. Many of that movement’s followers are now on the inside, because theirChosen One, Donald Trump, returns this month to the Oval Office.
A supporter of Donald Trump holds a large cross while praying outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington. – Win McNamee/Getty Images
This is the scenario Americans could face in Trump’s second term. Under Trump, Christian nationalists will have unprecedentedaccess to the power of the federal government. Trump’s GOP has unified control of Congress. And a conservative supermajority, which has already blurred the line between separation of church and state in a series of decisions favoring Christian interests, controls the US Supreme Court.
Trump has not been shy about what comes next. He ran a presidential campaign that was infused with White Christian Nationalist imagery and rhetoric. He vowed in an October campaign speech to set up a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” and restore preachers’ power in America while giving access to a group he calls “my beautiful Christians.”
“If I get in, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used before,” Trump told an annual gathering of National Religious Broadcasters in Tennessee during a campaign stop earlier this year.
Trump won the support of about 8 in 10 White evangelical voters in November’s presidential election. Nearly two-thirds of White evangelical Protestants in the US described themselves as sympathizers or adherents to Christian nationalism in a February 2023 survey.
Scholars have called White Christian nationalism an “ImposterChristianity” whose adherents use religious language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in a quest to create a White Christian America.
So what might life look like over the next four years for Americans who don’t subscribe to this movement?
CNN asked that question of Kristin Kobes Du Mez, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Christian nationalism. Du Mez is a historian and the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.” Her book has become a go-to source for understanding Christian nationalism. It explains how the movement’s tentacles reach deep into American history and pop culture.
To many people, declaring America a Christian nation may seem harmless. And it’s important to distinguish Christian nationalists from patriotic Christians who have a more inclusive view of what America should be. But Du Mez says Christian nationalism is ultimately incompatible with American democracy.
Kristin Du Mez: “They have seen their movement go mainstream, and now they have incredible access to power.” – Deborah Hoag
“This is not a pluralist vision for all of American coming together or a vision for compromise,” says Du Mez, a history professor at Calvin University in Michigan and a fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion. “It is a vision for seizing power and using that power to usher in a ‘Christian America.’”
CNN recently spoke to Du Mez about this movement and what Americans might expect during Trump’s second term. Her comments were edited for brevity and clarity.
What will Trump’s victory do for the White Christian nationalist movement?
It will embolden and empower the White Christian nationalist movement. In all likelihood, it will institutionalize White Christian nationalism. It will transform our government, with the goal of transforming our society. It will likely place White Christian nationalists in positions of enormous political power. It could be transformative.
How would that institutionalization of White Christian nationalism look in ordinary people’s lives?
We can expect this Christian nationalist agenda to transform the public school system. One of the proposals with Christian nationalists is to eliminate the Department of Education, to look to the privatization of schooling, but also to transform the curriculum throughout public schools. The anti-CRT (critical race theory) and anti-woke agenda that we have seen played out on a smaller scale in certain states — that is what we should expect to see on a national scale.
Project 2025 (a conservative blueprint for the next Republican president, although Trump tried to distance himself from it during the 2024 campaign) is explicit about cracking down on woke ideology, eliminating certain terms from laws and federal regulations, terms like “gender equality” and “reproductive rights.” This anti-woke agenda is a key point of unity between White Christian nationalists and the broader MAGA movement.
Is there any potential for book bans?
Any book that could be perceived as pro-LGBTQ, for example, or to contain a harmful political agenda — those are the books likely to be targeted, and certainly removed from school curriculums and school libraries. But in terms of everyday lives, part of the agenda of Christian nationalists is a redefinition of human rights and of civil rights according to their understanding of God’s laws or natural law.
The Bible is seen shelved alongside other books in August 2024 at the Bixby High School library in Bixby, Oklahoma. – Joey Johnson/AP
And in this respect, there is no right to same-sex marriage, there is no right to abortion, or broader LGBTQ rights. Those don’t exist within their understanding of the rights guaranteed by our Constitution. They read the Constitution through this Christian nationalist framework: God founded the nation, our founding documents reflect that and therefore they must be interpreted in light of God’s law, which in a sense, erases how we would normally understand constitutional rights and replaces them with essentially a Christian nationalist agenda.
Why are some Christian nationalists hostile to the Department of Education?
There’s a long history of opposition to the Department of Education within the Christian right, going back several decades. Schools are seen as a primary site of formation of children, and within this conservative Christian ideology there’s a very strong emphasis on the rights of the parent to shape the values and ideals of one’s children. When government steps in and takes on that role, they believe that it infringes on a parent’s God-given rights. They are extremely upset when these, quote unquote, government schools educate their children and teach them things that they do not believe in or that they would find harmful.
You could also trace this hostility back historically, and not coincidentally, to the kind of resistance to government schools that really welled up in the context of the civil rights movement and desegregation efforts. This was seen as the government intrusion into families and into communities.
With his victory, is Trump even more reveredin White Christian nationalist movement circles?
Absolutely. In every way, there is celebration in Christian nationalist spaces. The idea is widespread that Trump’s victory demonstrates a divine mandate that resonates with the framework that they have been using to explain and promote Trump dating back to 2016. He is somehow God’s anointed one. He is God’s chosen leader for this particularly fraught, historical political moment.
You saw that early on in 2016 with these prophecies that were coming from charismatic circles that no, he was not necessarily a Christian, but he was still God’s chosen one to save Christian America. The sense of his divine role certainly wasn’t dampened by the assassination attempt and his survival, which seemed miraculous to some. Trump leaned into that and said God had saved him because God had a divine purpose for him.
People stretch their hands towards former President Donald Trump as they pray at the National Faith Advisory Summit in Powder Springs, Georgia, on October 28, 2024. – Brendan McDermid/Reuters
You once said that Christian nationalism and militant patriarchy go hand in hand. What does that mean?
Christian nationalism is the idea that America is a distinctly Christian nation. But there’s a whole set of descriptors that go along with this that we see over and over again. There’s this idea that we need to restore Christian America. What does that look like? It looks like privileging the quote unquote, traditional family, the patriarchal family structure. They believe that the way that God has designed human flourishing is to have a male patriarch, and then to have a submissive wife, one who submits to her husband’s authority, and one whose primary role is a mother and a homemaker. Any family structure that does not look like that is seen as undermining society.
You’ll hear the rhetoric that we need strong Godly men to step up to defend faith, family and nation. And so when you get inside Christian nationalist spaces, there is all kinds of militant rhetoric about manly strength, about Christian men who need to step up and take power, and assert their leadership because that is their God-ordained role.
Given that description, was there even a remote chance that White Christian nationalists would support Kamala Harris?
No. No White Christian nationalist would vote for Kamala Harris.
No matter what she did?
No. Just an absolute nonstarter. I mean, how many strikes does she have against her? She’s a woman, and a woman of color. Her gender would probably be disqualifying for most. But no — because she’s a woman of color, and frankly a Democrat.
Christian nationalism thrives on this us-versus-them mentality. This militancy is linked to always needing an enemy. And in Christian nationalism today, the enemies are internal. Historically the enemies of Christian America were secular humanists, feminists and then more recently Democrats and the woke. This language of an enemy within that caught some attention in the last week of the campaign, when Trump said those words that resonate deeply with Christian nationalists. That fuels the sense that we need warriors to fight to save your family and Christianity. And to save America, you’re going have to fight fellow Americans who are threatening those values.
In some ways, is Trump just as much of a transformational figure for White evangelicals as Billy Graham?
I think we can say yes. The reason I pause is because I don’t think people fully understand the significance and legacy of Billy Graham. But yes, Trump is transformational but only because of the kind of deep roots of Christian nationalism. If you go back to the 1960s and 1970s and listen to the rhetoric of evangelical and fundamentalist pastors, and listened to how they talked about race, and their mission to save Christian America — that goes back a half of a century.
Evangelist Billy Graham addressing a large gathering in 1955. – Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Given that resonance, yes, he has been transformational with that promise to give Christians power. And there he means, of course, power to conservative, White evangelical types of Christians. That (promise) has excited his base and emboldened that faction. A few years ago, it might have been frowned upon in many Christian spaces to support somebody like Trump. Now, the tables have really turned. Now there’s no shame in embracing Trump. There has been a transformative effect. I see much unapologetically crude and belligerent language inside these spaces. This kind of militancy is no longer beneath the surface, and it is aimed at fellow Americans and at fellow Christians who do not toe the line.
What happens though to those White Christian evangelicals who don’t subscribe to Christian nationalism. Where do they go?
There are a lot of pressures to get on board with this Christian nationalist agenda. It doesn’t need to be overtly supported, but there’s enormous pressure not to object. A person who works in an evangelical media organization explained it to me this way. The memo is: You don’t have to support Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda — you just can’t speak against it, so you can keep your job. When I heard those words, I thought that exactly describes what I’m hearing from people and what I’m observing. So you can quietly hold onto your beliefs, but if you try to object to something that is part of this agenda, if you try to say, fellow Christians, should we be supporting a man like Trump? — that will get you into trouble.
If this movement gets everything it wants, what will this country look like?
There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the quote unquote, real Americans—those who buy into this, or pretend to — and then the rest of Americans. If you’re a person of no faith or a Muslim or anybody deemed not a true Christian, you will have a place, but you will not have a voice. The laws will be rewritten across the board. Rights as we understand them will cease to exist and instead, we’ll have the framework of biblical law.
The idea will be that true freedom comes from following God’s laws. So freedom will be redefined. You are free to follow the laws that we set out for you as a woman, or someone who is same-sex attracted. True freedom comes from submitting to God’s law, and we will help you do that, and it will ultimately be good for you. In our education system, our American history will be made up. It will be ideological.
A woman holds a crucifix during a prayer at a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump on September 21, 2024, in Wilmington, North Carolina. – Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
They want to erase the teaching of actual history to prop up a mythical understanding of what this country was founded to be to justify their radical transformation of the country. There will be no abortion rights, and there will be limited, if any, access to contraception. There will be harsh anti-immigration laws with exceptions for people who subscribe to this Christian nationalist vision or who are seen to fit within it, religiously, politically and perhaps ethnically.
There are potential mitigating factors: infighting or incompetence within Christian nationalist and MAGA circles, the role of the courts, resistance within government agencies and at the local and state levels. And of course, the extent to which various aspects of the Christian nationalist agenda align with Trump’s own priorities and with those of members of his inner circle, like Elon Musk.
What do you say to people who say you’re being alarmist and playing into doomsday scenarios? I mean, this isn’t “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
I would love to be wrong about this. The reason I’m saying these things is because I have been listening to what they (in this movement) have been saying and I have been reading what they have been writing for years. They have been writing these things and saying these things for decades. For a long time, they were a powerful strand in the broader evangelical world and within the Republican Party. But they were offset by a more secular and pro-business conservatism.
What we’ve seen now is that they’ve moved into a dominant position within the Republican Party. The MAGA brand is the Republican Party. These ideas are not new. What is new is that for the first time, they are really in a position to carry out these plans.
Do you think White Christian nationalists will someday regret this alliance with Trump?
No. It’s hard for me to envision why they would regret it, because what they most want is power — the power to achieve their ends. And he appears to be granting them that power. I suppose then there could be some regret, but that just seems so far-fetched at this point. They have seen their movement go mainstream, and now they have incredible access to power.
Russia is feeling the full impact of sanctions and the strain could force an end to the war this year, think tank says
Jennifer Sor – January 9, 2025
Russia’s economic pain will intensify this year, according to the Atlantic Council.
The think tank said Russia is feeling the full effects of sanctions after nearly three years of war.
Continued strain could cause Moscow to end the war in Ukraine this year, a note from the group said.
After almost three years of waging war in Ukraine, Russia is feeling the full impact of its economic punishment from the West — and it could prompt the Kremlin to end the war in Ukraine as soon as this year, a note from the Atlantic Council said this week.
The think tank pointed to the pressures building on Russia’s economy, primarily those stemming from Western sanctions. The sanctions packages over the last several years have included measures like cutting Russia off from SWIFT, the international financial communication system, as well as trade restrictions on several of Russia’s key exports, like oil and gas.
According to Mark Temnycky, a fellow at the think tank, those measures have had a definite impact on Russia’s economy, even after the Kremlin seemed to shrug off the initial volley of restrictions.
“Three years later, the picture looks different. The Russian economy is now beginning to see the full effects of international sanctions. If these trends continue, then the full impact of these financial punishments, combined with strong Ukrainian resistance to Russian forces, could at last put enough pressure on the Kremlin to end its war,” Temnycky said.
He pointed to various signs of economic strain in Russia, which suggested that the nation may not be able to continue its war effort for much longer.
Russia’s ruble, for one, has plunged more than 50% in value against the dollar and the euro — partly due to sanctions pressure on Russian institutions, according to an analysis from the Kyiv School of Economics. The ruble traded at around 102 against the dollar on Thursday, close to the lowest level since Russia first began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia’s energy business also appears to be struggling after years of trade restrictions and dwindling oil prices. Russia’s total energy revenue tumbled by nearly a quarter in 2023, and the government expects oil and gas revenue to keep shrinking until 2027, according to a draft budget viewed by Bloomberg.
Russian inflation is also soaring, with consumer prices rising 9.5% year-over-year in the last week of December, according to the nation’s central bank.
Even Putin has acknowledged that Russia’s inflation rate was “alarming,” a rare admission from the Russian leader of the problems facing the country.
“Putin’s points on inflation were telling. The Russian leader seldom discusses problems pertaining to Russian society. Thus, the fact that he felt the need to acknowledge inflation as a serious issue suggests that something greater is afoot,” Temnycky said, adding that Russia appears to be on track to enter a recession in 2025.
Other economists have warned of more pain headed for Russia’s economy in the coming year. The nation could see a “significant strain” on its budget in 2025, with the economy at risk of falling into a period of Soviet-style stagnation, economic experts previously told BI.
“Putin and the Kremlin will have to determine how to try to address these financial woes,” Temycky added. “This suggests that 2025 will be a difficult year for Russians and the economy. Time will tell how significant these events will be.”
Elon Musk Sets His Sights on Toppling Another World Leader
Malcolm Ferguson – January 9, 2025
Elon has zeroed in on his next political target: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The world’s richest man has been consulting with his right-wing allies to devise a strategy to oust the Labour Party’s Starmer before the next election, according to a report from the Financial Times Thursday.
Musk has been antagonizing Starmer on X for some time, but according to people familiar with the matter, he is now focused on finding a way to destabilize the Labour government and bolster other alternatives.
“His view is that Western civilisation itself is threatened,” one source told FT.
Musk has been rallying to free far-right, Islamaphobic hooligan Tommy Robinson from prison since the new year and thinks that all-out civil war is “inevitable” in the nation. He’s also been calling for a national investigation into the grooming and exploitation cases in the Midlands region of England. Musk blames Starmer, who was a director of public prosecutions at the time, for his oversight on the issue.
Musk’s attempted toppling of Starmer is another installment in his efforts to exert the same political influence he has in the United States in Europe. The billionaire has been singing the praises of Germany’s far-right, nativist Alternative for Germany, or AfD, Party. He published an op-ed in a German newspaper in which he wrote, “Portraying the AfD as far-right is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Come on!” He has since been accused of election interference by the German government but has shown no signs of stopping. He is also scheduled to host AfD leader Alice Weidel live on X sometime before the German elections in February.
Meanwhile, Musk is also closing in on a massive telecommunications deal with Italy’s far-right government, entrenching himself in the Eurozone.
Trump’s pick for defense secretary bodes ill for military sexual assaults
Christopher Kilmartin and Ronald Levant – January 8, 2025
When it comes to preventing and responding to military sexual assaults, leadership matters a great deal. Thus, we are very concerned about the safety of our service women and men under President-elect Donald Trump and his nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.
Both men have sexual assault allegations against them, and in both cases, there is reliable evidence that corroborates these reports. Trump seems to be an especially egregious offender who is named in more than 20 reports. This is not a case of he said, she said; it is a case of he said, they said.
The U.S. military publishes reliable estimates of sexual assaults every two years based on those both officially reported and recorded by survey. And this is not a problem only for women in the ranks — many of the assault victims are men.
Tracking the numbers tells us about the possible role that the president, as commander-in-chief, has in the increase or decrease in incidents in which a soldier experiences intentional harm from someone who wears the same uniform and took the same vow to serve and protect.
In 2006, the military estimated that there were about 34,000 assaults. That number dropped steadily the next 10 years by more than half (14,900), and the reporting rate nearly tripled between 2012 and 2016, from 11% to 32%. Although nearly 15,000 assaults are still 15,000 too many, we were going in the right direction: fewer assaults, more reports.
Experts believe that victim advocacy is the main factor in the rise of reporting rates. And several things happened to prevent the problem in the first place: more vigorous enforcement and removal of offenders from the ranks, leadership training, both for senior officers and on down the chain of command, bystander intervention training for all members, and environmental interventions.
But then in 2020, the number increased by more than a third to 20,600. (Reporting rates held fairly steady at 30%.) And then came the worst news of all: the 2022 number was 36,000, with the reporting rate dropping to 23.6%.
While the military changed how it collected data for the 2022 report, it still showed a shocking number of assaults and several steps back in progress.
The sharp increases in 2020 and 2022 were data collected during the first Trump administration.
The 2024 number, the first under President Joe Biden and the latest data available, once again indicated progress: 29,061 estimated assaults, more than 6,000 fewer than in 2022, though still higher than it had been 14 years earlier. We know Biden prioritized reducing this number: At his direction, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an independent commission to develop solutions to the crisis, including changes to the military justice system.
But now, we have a man found liable for sexual abuse at the head of the armed services again, and he has made matters even worse by nominating another man accused of sexual assault as second in command.
Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth meets Dec. 5, 2024, with Senator-elect Jim Banks, R-Indiana, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
A story about how much leadership matters: I (Kilmartin) was invited to San Antonio, Texas, in 2011 to do a training for Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month on three military bases.
At the first base, the general showed he was serious and passionate about reducing on-base violence by engaging in the training. At the second base, the “mandatory” training for 300 people resulted in only about 60 attendees. And at the third base, where attendance was voluntary, I presented to seven people.
Since leadership is so important, having a commander-in-chief from 2017-2021 who has been reported for sexual assault by more than 20 women could have been a critical factor in the 2022 increases. We fully expect that the 2024 numbers, the last under Biden, who has a long record of working to end gender-based violence, will again show a decrease.
The important lesson from the 2006-2016 progress is that we know what works, and so the task for the military is to redouble their efforts. Having two leaders with such callous disregard for others’ rights will surely make this work even more challenging than ever. Congressional pressure on Trump to nominate a defense secretary with a strong record on this critical issue would be a step in the right direction.
Christopher Kilmartin is a Fredericksburg, Virginia, author, trainer and activist in preventing violence in schools, the military, and the workplace internationally. His latest book is “The Fictions that Shape Men’s Lives” from Routledge.
Ronald Levant is a former president of the American Psychological Association and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron. His latest book is “The Problem with Men: Insights on Overcoming a Traumatic Childhood from a World-Renowned Psychologist” from Koehler Books Publishing.
Adam Kinzinger Says 1 Trump Nominee Is The Most Concerning: ‘A Huge Problem’
Marco Margaritoff – January 7, 2025
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) shared some unvarnished thoughts Monday on the people President-elect Donald Trump has announced he plans to nominate to key positions in his upcoming administration — and said one of them in particular is most concerning for U.S. democracy.
Trump’s picks include MAGA loyalist Kash Patel to run the FBI, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) — a former Democrat who joined the Republican Party in 2024 — as leader of national intelligence.
When asked on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” whom he has the strongest opinion on, Kinzinger stated bluntly: “I mean, for the country, Kash Patel, because I think once you weaponize Justice or the FBI, that’s a huge problem. … There’s really no oversight.”
Patel served in the first Trump administration and, in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” ominously ranked Trump’s “deep state” enemies — and vowed at the time to “come after” them.
Kinzinger told Colbert that Hegseth is the second-most-troubling pick, as the Defense Department “is the largest corporation in the world.” Hegseth, a military veteran turned television pundit, defended the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Fox News at the time.
“There’s people that put their lives on the line,” Kinzinger said Monday about the Defense Department, “and Pete served honorably in the military, but by the way, anywhere in D.C. there’s probably 50,000 people as or better qualified than Pete Hegseth to run the DOD.”
Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic and one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, shared similar thoughts on Gabbard — who previously criticized Trump as “corrupt” but has since joined the fold.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger named (from left) Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard as his biggest concerns among President-elect Donald Trump’s administration picks. Left: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images; Center: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press; Right: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
“I knew her,” Kinzinger told Colbert. “And I was friends with her up until the day she visited [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad who, thank God, is out of power now, and did his dirty work.”
Forces for the recently deposed president were accused of using sarin gas to kill 1,400 people in 2013. Gabbard — who shared “Russian talking points” in support of Assad, Kinzinger noted — previously urged Congress not to endorse potential U.S. regime change operations in the country, alleging the U.S. was covertly “supporting” as much.
Kinzinger had only one word to share about former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whom Trump had announced as his attorney general pick despite a federal investigation and a congressional ethics probe into allegations he had sexual relations with a minor. Gaetz immediately resigned from his congressional seat in anticipation of the role but later withdrew himself from consideration for the position when it appeared he would not have the support needed for confirmation.
When Colbert noted there was applause in the House chamber Friday as the acting House clerk announced Gaetz wouldn’t be taking his seat in the new Congress, Kinzinger said simply: “Fantastic.”
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