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Speaker Johnson Will Be Honored Tonight at Christian Nationalists’ Museum of the Bible Gala
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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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
