On New Year’s Day, a Tesla Cybertruck pulled up to the entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, where the driver triggered a device consisting of fuel canisters and fireworks, detonating the vehicle. He claimed no lives but his own, whether or not he intended to.
Politically conservative “pro-family” groups ended 2024 by calling to stamp out the “transgender cult,” opposing constitutional rights for Satanists, promoting Melania Trump’s parenting advice, warning against sympathy for immigrants, and celebrating Donald Trump’s second election as a source of spiritual revival.
I have never met a book I didn’t like. Although, I suppose that’s not quite true; I’ve thoroughly disliked most self-help books I have ever encountered, and I think the entire body of Victorian fiction is criminally overrated. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I have never encountered a book which didn’t impress me, which didn’t force me to think about the efforts involved in translating all of those thoughts into words, and putting all of those words onto the page. Even the worst novels – and I have read a few – leave me with the impression that the author has accomplished a Herculean task: externalizing what was once only internal.
Amid the unrelenting cavalcade of appalling Trump administration appointees announced in recent weeks, one pick slid past without nearly enough scrutiny: the selection of Mike Huckabee to serve as the United States’ ambassador to Israel. With no diplomatic experience whatsoever, Huckabee will take up the crucial posting in the middle of a war. But it’s not Huckabee’s lack of experience which makes the choice so eyebrow-raising, it’s his apocalyptic Christian Zionist notion of Israel.
The “least credible history book in print.” That’s the honor voters bestowed on David Barton’s 2012 book about Thomas Jefferson, which rewrote the third president as a modern God & Country evangelical and distanced him from that whole slavery mess. The book was ultimately withdrawn from publication by Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson, but neither the withdrawal nor the spate of scathing reviews slowed Barton down. If anything, his star has risen even further: today, Barton is constantly found onstage alongside the biggest names in the Christian nationalist movement.
By Steve Rabey of Baptist News Global
By Jennifer Shutt of Colorado Newsline
Despite being a holiday rooted in a stone-cold historical myth constructed to provide an alibi for early settler treatment of indigenous Americans, I have always enjoyed Thanksgiving. As a child, I enjoyed it more than Christmas – which was typically dreary and gray in my native Nashville – but my enjoyment of Thanksgiving has grown as an adult. Now that I am rarely required to participate in dubious reenactments of the holiday’s self-serving origin myth, I can enjoy it for what it is: America’s only proper feast day, and it even comes with football.
When Donald Trump announced Pete Hegseth as his pick for secretary of defense, the initial public reaction was, understandably, something along the lines of, “A Fox News host is going to run the Pentagon?” It was only in the following days that the media fleshed out the public’s understanding of Hegseth and shone a light on one of his most prominent and controversial facets: his deep involvement with the Christian nationalist movement. As I dug into Hegseth, something deeper struck me.
