Michael1942's Blog

Story by Nick Hilden

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3 min read

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media aboard Air Force One, en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., following a two-day visit to Ireland, September 13, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper© provided by AlterNet

On Monday, new reporting revealed that a prominent Christian leader has had it with the “blasphemy” of President Donald Trump. According to the Washington Post, John Whitehead – founder of the powerful Christian legal movement – believes that movement has “gone astray” in the era of MAGA.

As the Post reports, “The cause has become dangerously politicized and intertwined with right-wing politics, he says, wrongly staying quiet as Muslim rights are under attack and as President Donald Trump allows immigration enforcement officers into houses of worship. While religious-liberties-focused law firms have successfully argued in federal courts to greatly expand what it means to freely exercise one’s faith, Whitehead says the movement has wrongly elevated the rights of conservative Christians over those of religious minorities. He points to new laws in a handful of states mandating public schools to prominently hang the King James version of the Ten Commandments and threats last month by Texas officials against airports that offer foot-washing stations for Muslim travelers.”

“We started out trying to protect the little people,” Whitehead said. Now leaders in the movement are “sitting in the White House with Trump. They’re now part of the nationalist movement. Religious liberty is a constitutional principle, not a political program.” This position, said one former colleague, has made Whitehead a “persona non grata” within the movement.

“This is not faith. This is blasphemy baptized in nationalism,” Whitehead and his wife, Nisha Whitehead, wrote in March of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of religious language to promote the war in Iran. In October, after then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem prayed in public at an ICE facility in Portland, he wrote that her actions were “not Jesus’ Christianity — it is Christianity draped in the flag and wielding the weapons of war.”

Ironically, Whitehead once argued that the United States should be an explicitly Christian nation, and even wrote a book proposing the idea – a position embraced in recent years by Hegseth, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other Trump allies. And while Whitehead once argued that LGBTQ rights were a threat to Christianity, according to the Post, “by the mid-1990s, he was criticizing an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that barred communities from passing laws to prohibit discrimination against gay and transgender people.” He started moving away from Christian nationalism, which he says was the result of thinking differently about who Jesus really was. “We’re here to care for others,” he says now.

As the Post reports, “He says he finds value in some proposals of the Trump administration’s religious liberty commission, including efforts to create more ‘Know Your Rights’ materials in places like schools and hospitals. However, he said, the Christian legal movement is part of ‘a lot of overstepping.’ He pointed to the Ten Commandments laws and to a Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and was represented in court by religious liberties law firms. ‘If the government is acting as a Christian nationalist organization as opposed to one representing the Constitution and all Americans, there is a problem,’ Whitehead said.”

Over the course of Trump’s second term, Whitehead has argued in support offoreign nationals who lost their visas and were deported after protesting against Israel, as well as universities whose funding was suspended as part of the White House’s campaign against DEI, campus protests and antisemitism. One brief argued againstthe administration’s decisionto allow immigration enforcement inside houses of worship.

“Religious liberty is a constitutional principle, not a political program,” he said. “The moment religious freedom organizations begin aligning themselves with those in power, or framing their work in partisan or ideological terms, they risk weakening the very principle they are trying to defend.”

Trumpel has managed to upset the religious community. MA

David Rothkopf

President Donald Trump has “dug himself into the deepest hole of his life” by starting the Iran war, and knows he’s at a disadvantage, one top foreign policy analyst says.David Rothkopf told The Daily Beast Podcast that the president, after nearly six months of war and the expiration Monday of a truce deadline, faces several problems of his own creation, including weapons shortages, declining troop morale, and ego-fueled expenditures. Iran, meanwhile, has only become more emboldened.”He has dug himself into the deepest hole of his life,” Rothkopf, the Daily Beast’s chief global affairs columnist, told host Joanna Coles. “He was better off with his bankrupt casinos in Atlantic City than he is with this war in Iran.”

joseph Gedeon in Washington

Thu, June 18, 2026 at 10:36 AM CDT

3 min read

Donald Trump’s administration has quietly redirected $352m in federal funds designated for the Secret Service toward the president’s controversial White House ballroom project, despite repeated promises by Trump that the construction would be financed by private donations

The funds were drawn from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature tax legislation passed last summer on Republican-only votes. The law stipulates the money may only be spent on Secret Service personnel, training facilities, technology and related costs, not construction.

About $340.8m of the funding was placed into an account labeled “Procurement, Construction, and Improvements” on 12 June, according to the office of management and budget (OMB) database. Another account labeled “Operations and Support” was also approved the same day, adding another $10.75m to the budget.

Nicole Charky-Chami

April 29, 2026 3:02PM ET

‘Stop! Stop!’ Hegseth accused of ‘lying’ about Iran war in fiery hearing clash

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) delivered a stern comment to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid a fiery line of questioning on Thursday during the

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got in a fiery exchange during a congressional hearing on Wednesday with a lawmaker who accused him of lying about the number of military service members injured since the Iran war started.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, spoke to Hegseth at the House Armed Services Committee hearing about the wounded soldiers and what they described from the attack on March 1 at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait that left six Americans dead and more than 30 wounded.

“Before the war started, there was clear intelligence that was high on Iran’s target list,” Ryan said. “Internal analysis that said the site was indefensible from aerial attack and should not be used. Yet you sent our soldiers from 103rd sustainment command there anyway. Is that true or false? True or false? Straightforward question.”

Hegseth got defensive with Ryan over the question.

“Are you going to give me a chance to answer or just play ‘gotcha?'” Hegseth said.

Ryan continued and pressed Hegseth to respond to him.

“Let’s talk about what defenses they had prior to the attack,” Ryan said. “Officers on the ground knew our troops were vulnerable. In fact, they requested additional force protection. Did they receive it?”

Hegseth said the soldiers did have additional security resources — Ryan said they did not.

“In fact, when asked to describe the base’s defense, one survivor who’s come forward from the unit said, ‘I mean, I would put it in the none category from a drone defense capability. None,'” Ryan said.

“So let’s be clear. No counter-drone capabilities, no counter-rocket systems, no counter-mortar or counter-artillery, not even the basic overhead protection that you and I had 20 years ago in Iraq. And now six of our soldiers are dead,” Ryan said. “The next day, you downplayed the attack. You said it was a squirter that squeaked through fortified defenses. But since then, thankfully, brave survivors have come forward to set the record straight. One of our surviving soldiers told CBS, ‘painting a picture that one squeaked through is a falsehood.’ Another said the unit was, ‘unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position.’ Another survivor said the building’s protection was about as weak as one gets. Secretary Hegseth, that is obviously in direct contradiction to what you said from the Pentagon podium the next day. So are you saying that these soldiers, our soldiers who survived this horrific attack, are lying?”

Hegseth claimed the Pentagon had set a “maximum defensive posture,” and Ryan pushed back, interjecting.

“Can I speak or are you just going to monologue falsehoods all over the place?” Hegseth aid.

“It’s not a falsehood,” Ryan said.

The two got into a heated back-and-forth over the questions.

“I’m reclaiming my time,” Ryan said. “Stop! Stop! I’m reclaiming my time on the behalf of these survivors.”

“Just because you yelled doesn’t make you right,” Hegseth quipped.

Ryan demanded Hegseth to resign — just as he had said a year ago.

“I’m not playing games,” Ryan said. “I want to finish. With one more quote from a survivor of the attack and this on the record. Telling the truth is important and we’re not going to learn from these mistakes if we pretend these mistakes didn’t happen, Secretary Hegseth, those soldiers told the truth. Those soldiers are braver than you are. They are asking for accountability. They deserve accountability. And I’m asking for the same, starting with you.”