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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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‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students

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May 10, 2024

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Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.

Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.

One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.

“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”

“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”

“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”

“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.

In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.

Listen to a short clip below or at this link.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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Ari Fleischer Offers Donald Trump Advice Attorney Says ‘Effectively’ Violates Gag Order

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15 hours ago

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May 10, 2024

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A Fox News panel discussing the Trump New York criminal trial debated whether or not the indicted ex-president could attack the judge’s daughter, with former Bush 43 press secretary Ari Fleischer insisting he should, and claiming doing so would not violate the terms of the gag order.

“President Trump needs to stop calling the judge ‘conflicted.’ He needs to explain why he’s conflicted,” Fleischer said Friday to a panel that included former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Every day of the trial he goes in there, he says, ‘the judge is conflicted, conflicted bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life.’ He doesn’t explain how or why. He needs to say that the judge’s daughter works for a Democratic political consulting firm that does anti-Trump business. He needs to explain it. Otherwise, it’s just an assertion with no proof. And the President if he’s going to say it, back it up. Explain.”

“I think that’s a violation of the gag order, is it not?” a Fox panelist replied.

“No, he can criticize the judge,” McEnany responded.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

“Not the judge but the family,” the panelist added.

“But when he says the judge is conflicted, you can still explain how and why, and I think comply with a gag,” Fleischer insisted.

The panelists then agreed Donald Trump has been “measured” in his remarks.

National security attorney Brad Moss weighed in on social media, posting the relevant portion of the gag order and writing that Fleischer “effectively recommends Trump violate the terms of the gag order.”

The gag order in part reads: “Defendant is directed to refrain from” … “Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”

Despite Trump’s repeated attacks, an ethics panel last year cleared Judge Juan Merchan of any issues surrounding his daughter’s work.

On Monday, Judge Merchan warned Trump he may throw him in jail if he violates the gag order again.

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

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Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

Published

17 hours ago

on

May 10, 2024

By

A federal appeals court panel of three judges has upheld the criminal contempt of Congress conviction of Steve Bannon, the far-right provocateur and former Trump chief strategist and senior White House advisor. Legal experts say he can appeal but ultimately he will he headed to prison.

Bannon had refused to comply with a subpoena lawfully-issued by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

“Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols after a jury convicted him of two counts of contempt of Congress,” Politico reports Friday. “But Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the decision, agreeing that the complex mix of laws that govern executive privilege and testimonial immunity for White House aides could be overturned by higher courts.”

The appeals court panel includes judges appointed by President Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, according to CNN’s Zachary Cohen.

In their ruling the judges wrote: “Public accounts indicated that Bannon had predicted on a January 5, 2021 podcast that ‘all hell [wa]s going to break loose’ the next day,” and noted, “In addition to the podcast prediction, Bannon had reportedly participated in discussions in late 2020 and early 2021 about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”

READ MORE: House Ethics Committee Extends Investigation Into ‘Ultra MAGA’ Congressman

Politico noted the “three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bannon’s argument, saying the former aide and prominent podcaster had no legal rationale for his blanket refusal to appeal before the Jan. 6 committee — and that long-standing case law.”

Bannon is a peddler of conspiracy theories whose podcast “was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts,” according to The New York Times, citing a Brookings study.

“Bannon is unlikely to have to report to prison immediately,” NBC News reports.

Legal experts weighed in on the question of prison for Bannon.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

“And now it’s time for Bannon to be given a date to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence,” remarked MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor.

“Bannon is effectively out of appeals,” observed professor of law and MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney. “He can delay a little bit longer, asking for the full court to review the decision en banc & asking SCOTUS to hear his case on cert, but neither one of those things will happen. Bannon is going to prison.”

Professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter remarked, “it’s slammer time.”

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