This story has been republished in light of its recognition by the Society of Professional Journalists.
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DAVIS: Familiar Faces Bring Education Crusade to Southwest Colorado
In the dusty, red-hued southwestern corner of Colorado, a rural school district finds itself mired in a saga of drama and controversy which, despite receiving coverage in the local paper, has not yet broken into Front Range news outlets. On the surface, it’s a local affair, but the ongoing story in the Montezuma-Cortez School District is noteworthy for its ties to attorneys, administrators, and activists associated with Colorado’s network of right-wing education reformers, and for the way their actions in the district are flipping the script which they and their allies have run in districts across the country.
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DAVIS: John Birch Never Dies
Right-wing activists have escalated their assault on the country’s public education system, birthing what The New York Times calls an “increasing tempo of radical right attacks on local government, libraries, school boards, [and] parent-teacher associations.”
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DAVIS: I Need Your Help
If you have read anything I have written over the last few years, you know that I believe that Christian nationalism is the most pressing threat to American democracy. I have been harping on this for years, since well before the Heritage Foundation crafted Project 2025, and well before Christian nationalism became the animating force behind Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Unfortunately, during the time I have been writing about the risks Christian nationalism poses to both democracy and Christianity, history has repeatedly proven my concerns to be justified. Now that Trump has returned to office and Project 2025 is well on its way to completion, there is not much utility in shouting from the rooftops that Christian nationalism is coming for us all. It has already arrived.
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DAVIS: The Constitution Won’t Save You
March 15, 2025 at approximately 11:10 PM. That’s when the United States entered a constitutional crisis which the separation of powers laid out by the nation’s founding fathers did not prevent and does not provide a pathway out of. It took just 54 days of the second Trump administration to reach this point.
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DAVIS: ‘Bleed it Dry, Then Get the Hell Out’ – The Fight for Tax Dollars in Woodland Park Schools
When the Woodland Park City Council convened for a special meeting on Monday morning, no one expected the vote to be unanimous. No one was even quite sure which way the vote would go. By the time the adjourning gavel fell two and a half hours later, though, all seven members of council had converged on the same page, determined to put an end to the latest crisis triggered by the town’s controversial school board.
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DAVIS: Looking for the Rubicon
A TikTok trend started circulating in September 2023 encouraging women to ask the men in their lives just how often they think about the Roman Empire. My partner did not even bother asking me, she saved some time and jumped straight to laughter. As the person who knows me best, she already knew that the answer was a lot. All I could say in my own defense was that I actually spend almost zero time thinking about the Roman Empire, because I’m far too busy thinking about the Roman Republic – the 400-year experiment in flawed quasi-democracy which collapsed into the Roman Empire. She did not consider this exculpatory. But, as a citizen of a 249-year experiment in flawed quasi-democracy which appears on the verge of collapse, I’m not sure how I could avoid thinking about it.
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DAVIS: Xenophobia, Sexism, and QAnon Stand Out in New Study of Christian Nationalist Beliefs
Researchers released a new dataset measuring the size, demographics, and beliefs of the Christian nationalist movement in America earlier this month, and the findings are grim. The Public Religion Research Institute’s 2025 “Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States” data found that support for Christian nationalist beliefs is strongly correlated with increased hostility towards migrants, adherence to sexist and patriarchal views, and an increased likelihood of belief in conspiracy theories and support for political violence.
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DAVIS: The Seven Mountains Mandate is the Biggest Story the Media is Missing
I do not envy the mainstream press at this moment. With multiple unthinkable things happening on a weekly basis, the task of triaging and prioritizing stories which could each dominate multiple news cycles in calmer times cannot be easy. Though I don’t envy them, I will criticize them. They play a vital role in society, keeping us apprised of events which could impact our lives – and they are currently missing a big one.
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DAVIS: A Conversation with Katherine Stewart about Her New Book, and the Movement to Destroy Democracy
Every now and then, I read a book which hits me with such a profound impact that, like Paul on the road to Damascus, I find my life divided into before and after, incapable of recovering from the revelation. More than a decade ago, legendary investigative journalist Katherine Stewart’s first book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, hit me with just such a haymaker. The Good News Club was not only revelatory, it was inspiring: ten years after I read it, the book was constantly on my mind as I investigated the happenings in the Woodland Park school district two years ago.