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Speaker Johnson Will Be Honored Tonight at Christian Nationalists’ Museum of the Bible Gala

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will give a keynote address and receive an award at a gala being held by the National Association of Christian Lawmakers at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. The Museum of the Bible has become a base camp for right-wing Christian organizing in the nation’s capital.

The National Association of Christian Lawmakers was founded a few years ago by Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator who has received a “mantle” from dominionist New Apostolic Reformation apostles Chuck Pierce and Dutch Sheets, who, like NACL leaders, want to “take authority” over government and bring American law and society in alignment with their “biblical worldview.” In June, NACL met at Liberty University, where Rapert got choked up at the idea of an NACL member one day becoming president of the United States.

The NACL has modeled itself after the American Legislative Exchange Council, which feeds its member legislators model right-wing legislation to introduce on behalf of ALEC’s corporate funders. Rapert has taken credit for anti-trans legislation signed into law by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in March. In a video celebrating that legislation, he said, “We are fighting against the people that are putting the queer books into your school libraries and trying to groom these children into homosexuality.” In November, Sanders appointed Rapert to serve on the state library board.

Among the other dominionists, Christian nationalists, and anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ extremists Johnson will be joining:

  • Andrew Wommack will be receiving a Lifetime Christian Leadership Award at the gala Johnson is addressing. Wommack has used his Charis Bible College and Truth & Liberty Coalition as platforms for promoting Christian nationalist ideology and political organizing to take over the local public schools in Woodland Park, Colorado and then broadening their power-building plans. Wommack is vehemently anti-LGBTQ; he has declared that gay people should be required to “put a label across their forehead” declaring that homosexuality “can be hazardous to your health.” He has said that supporting transgender rights is “demonic.”
  • Gene Bailey, who will emcee the gala, hosts the “FlashPoint” program on televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Network. FlashPoint is a major platform for spreading far-right conspiracy theories and pro-Trump propaganda to conservative Christian viewers. As Right Wing Watch noted in April, “’FlashPoint’ played a key role in spreading lies about the 2020 election and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with Bailey regularly welcoming right-wing “prophets” and evangelists like Lance Wallnau, Hank Kunneman, and Mario Murillo on to the program, where they steadfastly refuse to accept the election results.”
  • Janet Porter is an anti-abortion activist and promoter of abortion-banning “heartbeat” legislation. In the lead-in to Ohio’s recent vote on a pro-choice constitutional amendment, she and her allies promoted false claims that it would abolish all limitations on abortion and tried to mobilize an anti-trans panic against the amendment. But voters overwhelmingly approved the amendment to protect reproductive choice, after which Porter began arguing that the amendment had no authority over the state’s anti-abortion laws, and urged state lawmakers to ignore voters’ wishes and strip state courts of the power to enforce the constitutional amendment.
  • E. W. Jackson, a right-wing pastor and radio host who launched a farcical campaign for the presidency in June, has a long record of using his radio program to vent viciously anti-LGBTQ views.  At the Family Research Council’s 2021 activist conference, Jackson lumped homosexuality, “transgenderism,” Marxism, socialism, and abortion together as “works of the devil.” At his presidential campaign kickoff, Jackson demonstrated a Trumpish disdain for the rule of law, declaring, “I don’t care what the Supreme Court says, I don’t care what the legislature says, I am not bowing down to a law that violates the law of God.”
  • Frank Pavone, a longtime leader of anti-abortion Priests for Life, is a former advisory board member of Catholics for Trump who denied that Trump lost the 2020 election. Inaccurately described in NACL promotional materials as Father Frank Pavone, he was defrocked—dismissed from the priesthood—by Pope Francis last year for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience” of his bishop.
  • Glenn and Jenny Story are co-founders of Patriot Mobile, a cellphone company whose profits are used to fund Christian nationalist political activism, including the takeover of school boards by right-wing Christians. Earlier this year, Patriot Mobile organized an “Equip and Educate” event that featured David Barton and his son and heir apparent Tim to promote their bogus Christian nationalist pseudo-history. At the Moms for Liberty national summit this summer, the executive director of Patriot Mobile Action introduced herself this way: “My name is Leigh Wambsganss. And my pronouns are Bible believer, Jesus lover, Gun Carrier and mama bear.” Wambsganss declared, “This is a spiritual war, not a political war,” and she vowed, “we will take America back.”
  • Illinois state Rep. Mary Miller claimed this year that the Biden administration is “wholly against Christian Americans.” In February, she was at the Museum of the Bible for a “National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance,” at which politicians and religious-right activists prayed that God would remove “ungodly” people from positions of authority. During her turn at the microphone, Miller lamented that we as a nation “have lost our way because we have rejected you as Creator, Lord, and Savior. Now we are adrift and foolish, calling evil good and good evil. And we are bankrupt, morally and financially.”

 

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

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News

‘Crazy’: RFK Jr. Is a Top Global Public Health ‘Expert’ Claims Miller, Sparking Mockery

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9 hours ago

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August 29, 2025

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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an environmental lawyer, former leader of a children’s anti-vaccine organization, and a promoter of conspiracy theories — is being praised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as a “foremost” global health expert and a “crown jewel” of the Trump administration.

Kennedy has no medical degree or formal training, nor does he hold any degrees in public health.

Secretary Kennedy’s challenges this week include his attempt to fire the newly confirmed Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and announcing that most Americans will not be eligible to receive COVID vaccines without a doctor’s prescription and at least one underlying health condition. (Future CDC advisory panel regulations may alter that landscape.)

Kennedy was assailed by medical experts this week when he declared that, while walking through an airport, he could see the “mitochondrial” illness and inflammation of children, which he claimed he could detect “from their faces, from their body movements and from their lack of social connection.”

READ MORE: ‘Glass Jaws’: Democrats Cast Ernst Exit as Harbinger of Weakening GOP

Miller, who also holds no medical degree, told reporters on Friday (video below) that “the CDC’s credibility was shattered during the COVID era.”

“CDC used to be, of course, seen widely around the world as a premier health agency, and much of the world discovered in the last few years, that CDC was actually staffed by a lot of very partisan, and very political bureaucrats who weren’t at all concerned about public health and weren’t actually very knowledgeable about public health,” he baselessly alleged.

“And we are working hard, and more importantly, Secretary Kennedy — one of the world’s foremost voices, advocates, and experts on public health — is working hard to restore the credibility and the integrity of CDC as a scientific organization committed to the scientific method, and getting to the root causes of the public health epidemic in this country,” Miller continued.

READ MORE: Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Asked if there are any concerns about Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, and despite the resignations this week of top CDC scientists in response to the President’s firing of the CDC Director, Miller declared, “Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to improve public health for all Americans.”

Critics blasted Miller.

“Calling RFK Jr. ‘one of the world’s foremost experts on public health’ with a straight face is crazy,” wrote The Lincoln Project.

“I’m a an MD, PhD, physician toxicologist and drug developer. This is the biggest pile of horse-s– I have seen in months of horses–,” declared Peter H Proctor MD, PhD.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Glass Jaws’: Democrats Cast Ernst Exit as Harbinger of Weakening GOP

Published

11 hours ago

on

August 29, 2025

By

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), once seen as a possible Republican Secretary of Defense, or vice-presidential or presidential candidate in a more traditionally conservative environment, is expected to announce that she will not seek re-election next year. The news has sent shockwaves through the political system, with some Democrats — especially her challengers — rejoicing, and some critics and political operatives suggesting the move shows the GOP brand is weakening, especially given the number of other prominent Republicans who have already announced their retirement.

“Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has told confidantes she plans to reveal next week that she won’t seek reelection in 2026, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News,” the media outlet’s Jennifer Jacobs first reported. “Ernst’s announcement is scheduled for Thursday, the sources said. Ernst, 55, has served in the U.S. Senate since 2015.”

Some on the left already saw a weakening Republican brand, and now see Senator Ernst’s exit as further evidence of that volatility.

Ernst joins a slew of prominent Republican Senators bowing out of their re-election races, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who just won re-election in November, is mounting a run for governor.

READ MORE: Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Former Biden White House official Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, remarked, “GOP senators are cratering in their support. Glass jaws all the way down.”

Author and political commentator Sophia A. Nelson, a Republican turned independent, on Friday predicted embattled U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine will be the next to announce their retirements.

“Democrats need to get it together,” Nelson added. “They have a real shot at the US Senate and retaking it in 2026. As well as the House of Representatives.”

In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek note, podcaster Chuck Todd responded to the news, writing: “On Earth 2, where the establishment of the GOP in 2016 successfully stopped Trump’s hostile takeover of the party, Ernst is either serving as VP, on a GOP ticket in 2020 or 2024 or had run for top spot herself.”

Back in May, Ernst was highly criticized for remarks she made at a town hall, telling voters (video below) upset over President Donald Trump’s trillion-dollar gutting of Medicaid and Medicare, “Well, we are all going to die.”

Some pointed to that gaffe as the impetus for her expected retirement.

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

Responding to the news of Ernst’s exit, journalist Aaron Rupar snarked, “You’re saying that telling your constituents they don’t need healthcare because they’re gonna die anyway isn’t winning politics?”

Iowa Democratic state Senator Zach Wahls, who is running for Ernst’s seat, responded to the news: “Joni Ernst saw the writing on the wall. Iowans are fed up with rising costs and unchecked corruption. And next year, we’re going to flip this seat.”

Newsweek on Wednesday reported that Ernst was narrowly trailing Wahls in an in internal Wahls campaign poll, and only narrowly beating other opponents.

Iowa Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, also running for Ernst’s seat, weighed in, commenting, “Whether it’s Joni Ernst or someone else, they’ll have to answer for supporting cutting Iowans’ healthcare in favor of a tax break for billionaires. When I’m in the Senate, I’ll never forget about Iowa.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News, in its coverage of Ernst’s retirement, pointed to reasons for Democratic optimism.

“One thing the national GOP cannot afford to ignore: Recent generic congressional ballots are giving a consistent edge to Democrats. A CNBC poll showed a 5-point lead for Democrats in August that had only widened since spring, something CNN pollster Harry Enten called a ‘big uh-oh’ for Republicans. In the last three elections with a new president — 2022, 2018 and 2010 — the party out of power gained enough seats in the midterms to control the House.”

The news outlet also reported that “outside of his GOP base, Trump’s legislative agenda is proving widely unpopular on his key issues: tariffs, inflation, the economy and deportation.”

See the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Act of Revenge’: Trump Axes Kamala Harris’s Secret Service Protection

 

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Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Published

14 hours ago

on

August 29, 2025

By

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is criticizing prominent voices on the left who denounced Republicans for urging prayer but taking no action on gun violence in the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic school mass shooting that left two young children dead and 17 wounded.

The Louisiana lawmaker pinned the blame for gun violence on “mental health” and “the human heart,” while insisting that guns are not the problem.

The House has voted to cut mental health services, including Medicaid, which is the largest payer of behavioral health services. Additionally, President Donald Trump has slashed $1 billion in school mental health programs that Congress approved in response to the 2022 Uvalde, Texas mass school shooting.

READ MORE: ‘Act of Revenge’: Trump Axes Kamala Harris’s Secret Service Protection

“It’s incredible to me that Jen Psaki and Gavin Newsom and others would attack religion, diminish the faith of millions of Americans at a time of such great tragedy,” Speaker Johnson alleged (video below). “There are a lot of commonsense solutions, things that can be done to protect children at schools and in churches that do not involve taking away the constitutional rights of law-abiding American citizens.”

Wednesday morning, Psaki, the former White House press secretary turned MSNBC anchor, lamented, “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers [do] not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

Speaker Johnson continued, insisting that now is not the time to “politicize these issues.”

“And at the end of the day,” he continued, “the problem is not guns, okay, Jen Psaki? The problem is the human heart. It’s mental health.”

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

In late April, the Trump Department of Education announced that it would stop funding “roughly $1 billion in grants that were meant to boost the ranks and training of mental health professionals who work in schools, saying the grant awards made under the Biden administration now conflict with Trump administration priorities,” Education Week reported. “The funds were authorized by Congress in the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed after 19 students and two teachers lost their lives in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

The Trump Education Department alleged the $1 billion in funds might “undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help.”

Critics blasted Johnson’s remarks.

“The GOP refuses to expand Medicaid for psychiatric care, cuts funding for ‘mental health,’ LGBTQ+ hotlines, denies the value of community services, yet feigns interest in ‘underlying causes’ of gun violence,” charged award-winning TV writer and playwright Hal Corley.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Hard Questions’: VP Echoes False Claim About Antidepressants and Mass Shootings

 

Image via Reuters

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