Beto’s Free Speech Comeback? After Loss In Texas Governor’s Race, O’Rourke Will Fight For The Right To Call A Pipeline Billionaire A Crook

Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff - Thursday

Texas energy billionaire Kelcy Warren sued O’Rourke for defamation in February in a case that pits a powerful energy billionaire against a high-profile politician.


Beto O'Rourke stumping at a 'Keeping the Lights On' rally in Houston on February 15, 2022, the one-year anniversary of the winter storm that crippled the state. 

Getty Images© Provided by Forbes

Former El Paso Congressman Robert “Beto” O’Rourke lost his 2018 bid for the U.S. Senate to Ted Cruz. His 2020 presidential bid didn’t gain traction. On this Election Day, he succumbed in a 55% to 44% wipeout to Texas’ incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

What’s next for O’Rourke? A court date as a defendant in a potentially high-profile lawsuit.

O’Rourke, 50, is fighting a defamation suit brought by oil and gas pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren, founder and executive chairman of Dallas-based Energy TransferET, in early 2022. O’Rourke said some pretty nasty things about Warren while on the campaign trail. The worst: accusing him of bribing Governor Abbott with $1 million as part of a conspiracy to sabotage the Texas power grid so Warren’s company could profit by gouging customers with high-priced emergency supplies of natural gas. As O’Rourke repeated the attacks on his February “Keep The Lights On” campaign tour across Texas, Warren repeatedly demanded O’Rourke retract his statements and not repeat them.

Warren filed suit in February. But O’Rourke refused to back down, and blasted him in a March press conference, saying Warren “not only is trying to influence the political process through the campaign donations he’s making, not only did he make illegal windfall profits off the suffering, misery, and death, of our fellow Texans, he’s now trying to shut us down in the courts through a frivolous lawsuit.”

The context: Energy Transfer made $2.4 billion in windfall profits during Texas’ February 2021 deep freeze, which knocked out power and heat to millions, leading to more than 200 deaths and at least $80 billion in damage. Electricity prices spiked from $30 per megawatt hour to hit the $9,000/mwh cap; natural gas jumped from $3 per million British thermal units to $500. During the freeze, many power plants went down, in some cases because they couldn’t get enough natural gas from pipeline systems that had frozen up or lost power. Energy Transfer’s operations were ready for the cold temperatures — enabling the company to charge escalated prices amid a shortage of natural gas. Their customers, mostly electric power utilities, have had to pass on record fuel prices to the very Texans hurt most by the freeze.

O’Rourke seized on the story of a billionaire pipeline magnate making money while Texans froze to death, after Abbott signed SB 3 in June 2021. The bill required energy companies to winterize their equipment to avoid future freeze offs. But it had a loophole: companies didn’t have to winterize if they declined to “self-identify as critical entities.” Energy Transfer didn’t. Soon after Abbott signed the bill, Warren wrote him a $1 million campaign check. Beto called quid pro quo.

O’Rourke wasn’t alone in casting aspersions. In August 2021, the Houston Chronicle published an editorial titled: “We froze and Abbott got paid — $1 million from the billionaire profiteer of Texas’ deadly storm.” A San Antonio paper questioned whether the governor really was taking bribes. Not a good look for the billionaire “profiteer from the greatest statewide disaster in recent memory,” as O’Rourke described Warren.

In December 2021, Abbott tweeted that Texas power plants had made upgrades and “they are good to go” for winter. O’Rourke responded that “we won’t be ‘good to go’” until pipeline operators were winterized — “but you let them off the hook b/c gas CEOs like Kelcy Warren donated millions to your reelection campaign…” O’Rourke tweeted that gas companies made $11 billion during the freeze because Abbott “put their profits over our lives” after “they bought him off,” and that they are “trying to do it again.”

O’Rourke likely figured there were political points to win in going after Warren and Energy Transfer. It’s one of the biggest pipeline companies in the United States, with 120,000 miles of pipes moving an estimated 30% of America’s oil and natural gas. The company became a left-wing pariah in 2017 when the path of construction for its Dakota Access Pipeline was blocked for months by hundreds of camped out anti-oil environmentalists. Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace and other groups in 2018 for conspiring against it; that case was dismissed in 2019, prompting Energy Transfer to file another complaint in North Dakota state court. Trial is scheduled for June 2023.

Related video: Greg Abbott defeats Beto O’Rourke in Texas governor’s race
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Billionaires tend to have thick skins — so why did Warren let O’Rourke get under his skin rather than let the attacks roll off his back? Because, according to his court filings, Warren is outraged at O’Rourke’s “relentless and malicious attack on [him] by accusing him of serious crimes including extortion, bribery, and corrupt influence.”. These are fightin’ words. Warren sued O’Rourke in San Saba County, where he has owned the 21,000-acre Los Valles Ranch in the town of Cherokee since 2003.


Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, September 2022. 

Beto doesn’t appear to be particularly worried about some High Noon showdown with Warren, even after the court denied his motion for an early dismissal of the case in July. In their appeal, filed a week after their motion to dismiss was denied, O'Rourke's attorneys note there are strong protections for the “First Amendment rights of a gubernatorial candidate to speak freely regarding matters of utmost importance to Texans” — like the “exorbitant fees charged” by gas suppliers. They insist that O’Rourke’s “sharp language” to describe payment of a $1 million campaign check and its effect on public policy is “core protected political speech.” It’s likewise legitimate to question Abbott’s failure to prohibit gas price gouging that enabled Warren’s company to generate massive profits. O’Rourke’s brief says that his use of the word “bribe” was in “its nondefamatory colloquial sense.”

Even in San Saba County, where Warren hosts an annual music festival open to the public on his ranch, O’Rourke could win his appeal to dismiss the case if he can convince the appellate judges that his words are shielded by the Texas Citizens Participation Act, an “anti-SLAPP” statute that “protects citizens from retaliatory lawsuits that seek to intimidate or silence them on matters of public concern.” However, this defense isn’t a sure thing - O’Rourke’s motion for an early dismissal on TCPA grounds alone failed in July.

O’Rourke will increase his chances of winning if he can convince a judge or jury that Warren is not a private citizen, but rather a public figure “who has drawn substantial public attention” due to fame or notoriety or wealth (which would make him harder to defame). Warren first appeared on The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 2009, was first featured in Forbes magazine in 2010, and this year rose to No. 227 on The Forbes 400, with a fortune estimated at $4.6 billion.

Because name-calling is generally not considered defamatory, O’Rourke can safely compare Abbott to Vladimir Putin and characterize Warren as one of his corrupt oligarchs. Warren, in his brief, responds that he “is a life-long Texan, not a Russian, and a self-made businessman.”

Warren contends that it is malicious, false and absurd for O’Rourke to allege that Abbott and Warren conspired to leave the Texas power grid vulnerable in order to make a few extra bucks. His original complaint says the allegation, “ignores the roles that [the Electric Reliability Commission of Texas], the [Public Utility Commission] and the Texas Legislature play in the management of Texas’ power grid and the oversight thereof.”

Warren’s attorneys, in briefs filed with the court, say O’Rourke has damaged their client’s reputation and wrongly dragged him into a public fight. And why him? Energy Transfer was far from the only winner in the deep freeze. Dallas Cowboys billionaire Jerry Jones crowed when the gas company he controls, Comstock Resources, made a billion dollars that week, as did another pipeline giant, Kinder MorganKMI (founded by Houston tycoon Richard Kinder). The Houston gas trading desk of Australian bank Macquarie scored $250 million. By singling out Warren when he hasn’t spoken publicly or sought publicity about any of this, O’Rourke “exposes him to public hatred, contempt, and ridicule […] impeaches Warren’s honesty, integrity, virtue and reputation,” Warren’s lawyers claim.

No evidence has surfaced indicating that Warren’s campaing donation was illegal. The only civil action Energy Transfer appears to be involved in related to the deep freeze is a case brought by San Antonio utility CPS Energy, which seeks to convince a Texas court to invalidate $257 million in charges owed to Energy Transfer for emergency gas on the grounds that high prices violated state price-gouging bans. Energy Transfer in its response says CPS should have had better risk management.

It’s significant too that, despite O’Rourke’s Chicken Little protestations, there were no problems with the Texas grid last winter. The state also managed to meet record high power demand during record-breaking summer heat without any reported blackouts. "Beto should stop cheering for the failure of Texas," an Abbott spokesman said in July.

Warren, like many other energy CEOs, has supported Abbott in nearly every race for more than a decade. His lawyers claim in their brief that O’Rourke knows full well that Warren’s donation to Abbott “was legal and does not constitute a ‘bribe’ or ‘corruption.’ Defendant knows that because he himself has actively solicited millions of dollars in donations (including by those in the energy industry), including a $1 million campaign contribution from billionaire George Soros.” It’s dangerous to condemn opponents’ campaign donors lest they look into yours. In addition to $1.5 million from Soros, O’Rouke received a $1 million check from now-humbled crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried.

Vicki Granado, a spokesperson for Energy Transfer, tells Forbes that O’Rourke’s central assertion — that Warren wants the Texas grid to fail so he can make more money — is just demonstrably false. “We have been designing and weatherizing our systems for years, so they are equipped to operate in all weather conditions. We have spent more than $30 million in Texas alone on this effort,” says Granado. Why would Warren bribe Abbott to avoid having to make investments they’d already made?

Oral arguments before a Texas appeals court panel on whether Warren vs. O’Rourke ought to be dismissed are set for December 27.

HOMOPHOBIC HETEROSEXISM

Transgender influencer Nikita Dragun placed in men’s jail after arrest: ‘Extremely disturbing and dangerous

Meredith Clark - Thursday


GettyImages-1193835544.jpg© Getty Images

Transgender beauty influencer Nikita Dragun was released from a Miami jail on Wednesday after she was temporarily held in a men’s unit.

Dragun, 26, was arrested at The Goodtime Hotel in Miami Beach on Monday after she was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and felony battery of a law enforcement officer, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by USA TODAY.

Hotel security staff were reportedly called to Dragun’s hotel room where loud music was playing. Police records show the transgender YouTuber was “causing a disturbance for a long period of time” and was walking around the hotel pool “unclothed”. After she was told to stop her behavior by police officers and hotel staff, Dragun allegedly threw a water bottle at a security guard and a police officer.

Following the arrest, Dragun was placed into police custody and transferred to a men’s unit of the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade County. She was released from custody without bail less than two days later.

“The situation with Nikita, who is legally female, being placed in a men’s unit of a Florida jail is extremely disturbing and dangerous,” said Jack Ketsoyan, a representative for Dragun, in a statement to NPR.

“This decision made by the Miami-Dade County corrections department directly violates their protocol, which mandates that transgender inmates are classified and housed based on safety needs and gender identity,” the statement read. “Nikita has been released and is now safe.”

Dragun reportedly asked a Miami-Dade judge during her hearing whether she had to remain in the men’s unit. In a video from the hearing, which has circulated on social media, the beauty influencer appears over video call and is seen asking the judge, “Do I have to stay here in the men’s unit still?”

The judge replied that she doesn’t “make the rules” and redirected the request to the correctional facility to provide a separate accommodation for Dragun.

Nikita Dragun has 3.54m subscribers on YouTube and 9m followers on Instagram, where she regularly posts about beauty and makeup. In 2015, Dragun came out as transgender in a YouTube video titled, “I Am TRANSGENDER”.

The Independent has contacted Nikita Dragun’s representatives for comment.

Dolphins Smash Into 'Monster' School of Salmon in Wild Footage

Two dolphins have been caught on camera slamming into a massive school of salmon, causing chaos as the fish desperately try to escape.
Duration 1:11   View on Watch

The video was captured on November 10 off Tura Beach in New South Wales, Australia, by professional fisherman and tour guide Jason Moyce, who goes by Trapman Bermagui online. He shared the video of the breathtaking sight to Facebook.

"Very lucky today to be filming a monster school of salmon, just as dolphins arrive and totally smash into them. I could hear the noise from 100m [about 330 feet] away. Incredible to watch in real life. hopefully the drone did it justice," he wrote in the caption of the Facebook post.

"I'm stoked with this footage. I didn't see the dolphins at all till they just turned up while filming," he wrote in a comment.

There are no species of true salmon off the coast of Australia, so what Bermagui refers to is likely the Australian salmon, Arripis trutta, which is technically a completely different type of fish. These fish gather in large schools as seen in the video, swimming near to the coast, feeding on smaller baitfish like pilchards and anchovies en masse.

Dolphins, as well as seals and sharks, are one of the main predators of Australian salmon. The two dolphins in the video can be seen lunging into the large school of fish, grabbing their prey. As highly intelligent and social animals, dolphins will often work in tandem with other members of their social groups to manipulate a fish school into being easier to catch.



One method that has been often observed in dolphins is herding, where a pod of dolphins herds the fish into a smaller and smaller group, called a bait ball. The dolphins then take turns to swim through the bait ball, picking off fish as they go.

Other techniques used by the dolphins include corralling, herding the fish into shallow waters, making it easier to catch them, hitting the fish with their tails to stun them, and even driving the prey onto the beach itself in a process known as strand feeding.

Some dolphins even use tools to capture their prey, with some protecting their mouths using sea sponges as they forage on the seafloor.

"Spongers really do stand out as being more solitary and less sociable," she says.

And when they do socialize, spongers tend to form cliques with other spongers, and most interesting of all, she says, is that sponging seems to be passed down from mothers to daughters.

"One of the females who was discovered in 1984 is still sponging," Janet Mann, a behavioral ecologist at Georgetown University, told National Geographic.

Dolphins in larger groups may vary the techniques used to reduce competition for their prey.

"One dolphin does this, another does that," Shannon Gowans, a behavioral ecologist who studies the animals at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, told National Geographic in 2019.

"This helps reduce competition between individuals, and gives the [fish-kickers] an advantage over those doing the same thing as everybody else."

Using these varied hunting techniques, dolphins manage to eat between four and 10 percent of their body weight each day.

The Deepest Part of the Ocean Is Practically an Alien Planet

Ashley Stimpson - Yesterday 

How deep is the ocean? At nearly seven miles, the deepest part is a mile longer than Mount Everest is tall.

Both manned and unmanned vessels have reached these depths, called Challenger Deep.
It was long thought nothing could live in the Mariana Trench, but robotic probes have revealed worms, shrimp, and microorganisms.

Almost three-quarters of our world is covered in saltwater, and, on average, the ocean is about 12,100 feet, or 2.3 miles deep. But in certain places, the sea floor plummets to truly astonishing depths.

In the Atlantic Ocean, the Puerto Rico Trench, which lies directly north of its namesake, plunges more than 27,000 feet below the surface. The Indian Ocean’s deepest point is the Java Trench, a 2,000-mile chasm off the coast of Sumatra with depths of around 24,000 feet.

But it’s the Pacific Ocean that boasts the deepest waters on Planet Earth.

How Deep Is the Deepest Part of the Ocean?

About 125 miles east of the Mariana Islands—a U.S. territory north of Guam—lies the deepest place known to man. The Mariana Trench, a crescent-shaped depression on the floor of the Western Pacific, stretches about 1,500 miles long and 43 miles wide.

The Mariana Trench is a subduction zone, the spot where one tectonic plate slides under the other. The Pacific Plate, which makes up half of the trench (the Philippine Plate comprises the other), is made up of some of the oldest seafloor in the world, around 180 million years old, so it has been settling lower and lower for quite some time. Two other factors contribute to the Mariana Trench’s enormous depth. First, its remote location means it’s far from any rivers that might fill it up with sediment. Second, fault lines cut the Pacific Plate into narrow grooves near the Trench, allowing it to fold at a steeper angle than in other subduction zones.

At the southern end of the Mariana Trench, there is a small, narrow valley known as the Challenger Deep. It is named for the 1951 expedition that first recorded its depth—an astounding 36,201 feet, or about 6.8 miles. If Mount Everest were placed into the trench at this point, its peak would still be underwater by more than 1.2 miles.

What’s It Like Down There?

At nearly seven miles underwater, the pressure is around 1,000 times greater than what we experience at sea level. Water temperatures hover around freezing, and everything is shrouded in absolute darkness.

It may be cold and quiet, but the deepest part of the ocean, we’re learning, is a noisy place. In 2015, a team made up of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and Oregon State University, dropped a hydrophone (a waterproof microphone) into the Challenger Deep. Within 23 days, the data capacity of the device was full. After analyzing the recordings, the researchers reported hearing natural phenomena like earthquakes, typhoons, and whale calls, as well as man-made noises like boat engines.

Have Humans Explored the Deepest Part of the Ocean?

In 1875, the HMS Challenger measured the depths of the Challenger Deep using a weighted rope. The discovery, made by a crew circumnavigating the globe on a marine research expedition, was a completely serendipitous one after unpredictable wind blew the ship off its planned course. More than 75 years later, Challenger II surveyed the spot using echo sounding, an easier and much more accurate way to map the ocean floor. This survey confirmed the Challenger Deep as the deepest spot in the world, at more than 36,000 feet below the surface.

Only three divers have ever explored the Challenger Deep. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh explored the Challenger Deep in a submersible called Trieste. The dive lasted only 20 minutes due to the extreme pressure, and it kicked up so much debris from the seafloor that the men were unable to take photos.

It took more than 50 years for the next adventurer to reach the Challenger Deep. Filmmaker James Cameron visited in 2012 in a submarine he designed himself. During the three-hour dive, immense pressure damaged Cameron’s equipment. Batteries and sonar equipment went dead, and the vessel’s thrusters malfunctioned.

Dozens of other unmanned research vessels have explored the Mariana Trench and the Challenger Deep, contributing to our growing, but still incomplete knowledge, about the deepest corner of our world.

What Lives Down There?


One of at least 15 species of dumbo octopus, found at depths of at least 13,000 feet, uses its ear-like fins to swim. Dwelling in the Midnight Zone, they are the deepest-living octopuses ever found.© NOAA Ocean Explorer

Pressure at the bottom of the Challenger Deep is so great that calcium cannot exist except in solution, meaning that bones would theoretically dissolve at such depths. Because of this, scientists are skeptical that any fish or other vertebrate could survive there. However, robotic probes that have sampled the water and seabed of the Challenger Deep have returned worms, shrimp, and microorganisms.

Paradoxically, there are only trace amounts of life on the floor of the Challenger Deep, yet scientists believe life on Earth may have gotten its start in these depths. Deep, hydrothermal vents that spew mineral-rich seawater—like the ones found in the Mariana Trench—may have provided the ideal conditions for the origin of life on our planet. The chemical reactions facilitated by these vents could be responsible for the increasingly complex organic compounds that eventually evolved into the lifeforms familiar to us today.

Terrifying Images Show Monstrous Deep-Sea Creature With Enormous Fangs

A fangtooth fish spotted at a depth of 800 meters (around 2,600 feet) below the surface. Relative to body size, the teeth of this species are larger than any other marine species. NOAA Ocean Exploration

Deep in the ocean lives a ghoulish fish with huge and menacing, fang-like teeth.
Duration 0:42
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The aptly named common fangtooth fish (Anoplogaster cornuta)—sometimes referred to by its nickname "ogrefish"—inhabits deep waters all around the world, occurring at depths between 650 and 6,500 feet, although the species has been observed as far down as 16,000 feet. This makes it one of the deepest-living fish.

While the fangtooth fish sometimes rise near to the surface at night to feed, they generally spend their time in waters deeper than 3,300 feet in the open ocean away from land, according to Tracey Sutton, a professor with the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Center at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

"The one species is truly a child of the Earth, occurring in all but the polar seas," Sutton told Newsweek.

The common fangtooth fish is rarely seen by humans—the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, for example, has spotted the creature fewer than 10 times in around 30 years of conducting deep-sea expeditions with remotely operated vehicles. However, this does not necessarily mean that the fish is truly rare.

"It occupies nearly all of the global deep ocean, so its total numbers could actually be staggeringly high—though it is a loner, not occurring in groups, and thus not abundant in any specific place," Sutton said.

While there is only one confirmed species in its family, a second was described from a juvenile specimen but never collected as an adult, according to Sutton. Fangtooth fish have no known close relatives.

Despite its small size—the common fangtooth fish reaches lengths of around 6 to 7 inches—the characteristic features of this species are the "huge" head and teeth relative to the rest of its body.

The mouth of this fish is full of long, pointed teeth—including two sets of large fangs on the lower and upper jaw—which enable it to catch and hang on to prey of many different sizes, a beneficial adaptation in the deep sea where food can be hard to come by.

Common fangtooths tend to be more active than many other deep-sea fishes and will seek out food by heading toward the surface at night—rather than lying around and waiting for prey like other ambush predators, who might using various luring techniques.

The diet of the common fangtooth includes other fish, crustaceans and cephalopods—the group of animals that contains octopuses, squid and cuttlefish.

When a fangtooth approaches prey animal, the fish opens its huge mouth and sucks the unfortunate victim inside.

"They are voracious—they seem to eat anything that will fit in their mouths," Sutton said.


A composite image showing two fangtooth fish. These animals grow to around seven inches in length.

 © 2022 DEEPEND-RESTORE/Danté Fenolio

The teeth of this species, relative to body size, are larger than any other marine species, according to the Smithsonian Institution. They are so big, in fact, that the fish has special pouches on the roof of its mouth to accommodate the fangs on the lower jaw when the mouth is closed.

This species has relatively poor eyesight but to compensate for this, as well as the low light conditions in the water where it lives, the fangtooth has an unusually prominent lateral line—a sensory system found in fish and aquatic amphibians—that helps it to sense movement and vibrations in the surrounding water.


A close-up on the face of a fangtooth fish. These animals live in deep sea waters around the world. 

"It has a complex arrangement of nerves on its head. In a manner of speaking, it 'listens' with its face," Sutton said.

This arrangement of nerves is the "front end" of the lateral line system, according to Sutton. It explains the heavy "sculpting" on the front of the fangtooth's face, which you can see in the image above.

The common fangtooth is dark brown to black in color, which helps the fish to camouflage itself in the deep ocean—helpful for catching prey or avoiding predators. Its body is also covered in prickly scales and spines.


A juvenile fangtooth fish displaying its typical coloration. While adult fangtooths tend to be uniformly black or dark brown in color and have enormous fangs, the juveniles are usually light gray and feature smaller teeth. 

© 2022 DEEPEND-RESTORE/Danté Fenolio

Because they live so far down, scientists know little about their life and reproduction habits, but the fangtooth fish reproduce via external fertilization—a process in which females lay a clutch of eggs as the males release sperm into the water to fertilize them.

The fish do not have many predators, but animals that do hunt them include tuna and marlin. While fangtooth fish live far away from human civilization, they still face several man-made threats.

For example, deep-sea mining activities and fossil fuel exploration can cause "catastrophic" damage to deepwater ecosystems—as occurred after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico—according to Sutton.

"Fisheries are also expanding into deep pelagic (being neither close to the bottom nor near the shore) waters as coastal fisheries are depleted," Sutton said. "Last, climate change is predicted to change ocean circulation, which is predicted to reduce the amount of pelagic life."

The fangtooth fish is one of millions of species thought to be living in the deep ocean, most of which have never been seen or described by humans. Among these weird and wonderful deep-ocean creatures are the vampire squid, dumbo octopuses and the bloody-belly comb jelly.

SOCIOBIOLOGY; STEP PARENTS ABUSE

California megachurch leader, grandparents charged with murder, torture in death of 11-year-old daughter

Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY - 

A California megachurch leader and her parents have been arrested on charges including murder and torture in the death of the woman's 11-year-old daughter.

Leticia McCormack, a leader at Rock Church in San Diego, founded and led by former NFL player Miles McPherson, was booked in jail on Nov. 7. 2022 on charges of murder and in connection to the death of Arabella McCormack, her 11-year-old daughter pictured here.© San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

Leticia McCormack, a leader at Rock Church in San Diego, founded and led by former NFL player Miles McPherson, was booked in jail Monday on a charge of murder, three counts of torture, and three counts of willful cruelty to a child in the death of Arabella McCormack, the San Diego County Sheriff's Office reported.

On Thursday, McCormack's leadership profile had been removed from the megachurch's website.

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Arabella was initially fostered before being adopted by Brian and Leticia McCormack, officials said.

The 49-year-old church elder's father, Stanley Tom, 75, was also charged with murder, three counts of torture, and three counts of willful cruelty to a child, according to a news release from the department. Arabella's grandmother Adella Tom, 70, was booked on three counts of torture and three counts of willful cruelty to a child.

'Severe levels of malnourishment'

On Aug. 30, deputies responded to a child-in-distress call at a home in Spring Valley, in the eastern part of the county, where they found Arabella, according to the news release.

The 11-year-old was rushed to a hospital, where her health declined and she died, officials reported, according to the release. Detectives said they suspected child abuse.

The girl was covered in bruises and had suffered "severe levels of malnourishment," a police spokesperson told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

During the investigation, deputies contacted the girl's father, Brian McCormack, near the family's home. According to the release, he died by suicide in their presence.

Arabella had two sisters, ages 6 and 7, the release says, who are now living with a foster family.

On Thursday afternoon, a Rock Church spokesperson told USA TODAY that Leticia McCormack began volunteering with the Rock Church in 2013 and has helped in various capacities, including administrative tasks and helping coordinate events and other ministry activities.

The spokesperson also said that her ordination at Rock Church was previously suspended and as of Thursday was in the process of being revoked.

The church also released the following statement to USA TODAY:

"We continue to grieve for Arabella and her sisters. We are so sorry that their family and friends are experiencing this unimaginable loss and pain. We send our deepest condolences to all that are grieving at this time. Our hearts go out to each of them.

The legal process will run its course and we hope justice for Arabella and her sisters will be served. We are praying that God’s love and grace will bring comfort and healing.

The Rock no longer has any official relationship with Leticia."

The sheriff's department could not immediately be reached by USA TODAY Thursday.

Are Stepchildren at Higher Risk for Abuse Than Biological Children?

April 9, 2013 • 

By A GoodTherapy.org News Summary

According to sociobiology, genetic preservation is at the core of human behavior. Because it is inherent in our genetic structure to ensure survival, individuals are predisposed to take measures to guarantee their genetic survival. In other words, they favor strategies and methods that will increase the likelihood of their family lineage being carried on. This is done through positive and negative methods. Positively, people have children so that their genetic tree can be extended to further generations. Negative methods of preserving genetic lineage also exist and include violence and aggression toward people who are not blood relatives. Based on these theories, it could be assumed that stepchildren are more likely to be abused by parents than biological children. In fact, some research has provided evidence of a 5-fold increase in risk of child abuse for step-children compared to biological children.

There is abundant evidence that children living in stepfamilies are more likely to experience sexual abuse. And children living with unmarried parents are also at risk for abuses including physical, sexual and emotional abuse. However, it has not been clearly established if stepchildren are injured as a result of their abuse more often than biological children. To get a better look at abuse rates among biological and stepchildren, Stewart J. D’Alessio of the Deaprtment of Criminal Justice at Florida International University recently examined data from more than 130 cities that was used as part of a larger study on abuse incident reporting. He looked at the biological status of the children, as well as the socioeconomic condition of their environment, as it has been suggested that disadvantaged communities have higher levels of stepchildren abuse.

D’Alessio found that children living in disadvantaged communities were more likely to experience abuse than those in socioeconomically advanced environments. He also found that the age of the perpetrator was influential of abuse. Younger parents were more likely to abuse children than older parents. However, there was no evidence suggesting that stepchildren were at increased risk for injury. “Contrary to expectations,” said D’Alessio, “Our results showed that the effect of a child’s genetic status on the likelihood of physical injury was in the opposite direction as predicted by sociobiology.” In fact, the stepchildren were less likely to be physically injured than the biological children. D’Alessio notes that these findings raise more questions for future research, and that that exploration should consider that many incidents of abuse are never reported. Methods to ascertain more reliable and valid abuse rates should be investigated in future work in this area.

Reference:
D’Alessio, Stewart J., PhD, and Lisa Stolzenberg. (2012). Stepchildren, community disadvantage, and physical injury in a child abuse incident: A preliminary investigation. Violence and Victims 27.6 (2012): 860-70. ProQuest. Web.

© Copyright 2013 GoodTherapy.org. All rights reserved.

Violence against children by stepparents PDF

• April 2020

• In book: The SAGE Handbook of Domestic Violence   
• Publisher: SAGE

Abstract

A wide range of child and caregiver characteristics, including parental psychopathology, parents’ childhood experiences of abuse, parenting stress, child age, parent age, child disabilities, socio-cultural background, and caregiver’s relationship to the child, have been reported to contribute to increased risk of violence directed against children. Although there is a dearth of research into violence against children in stepfamilies, some studies have indicated that stepparents are more likely to abuse children compared with genetic parents. Stepparents also have been found to pose a significantly greater risk of using excessive violence, which can subsequently lead to the death of a child. The risk of violence against stepchildren has also been found to be significantly elevated with the presence of stepparent’s genetic offspring. One possible explanation for increased violence in stepfamilies is that stepparents do not want to invest feelings and resources in children who do not carry copies of their genes. Sexual violence by stepparents, on the other hand, can be explained by the lack of exposure to a learning mechanism termed ‘incest aversion’, which refers to negative sexual imprinting during a critical period of early childhood to avoid inbreeding. Yet another possibility is that people who divorce are more likely to do so due to aggressive impulses which can play a part in relationship termination. When they remarry, those aggressive impulses can be directed against stepchildren. However, stepfamilies are also reported to experience more stressors associated with family violence, including alcohol abuse, child’s behavioral problems, adverse contextual backgrounds, and weaker social networks. This suggests that the stepfamily structure may not be a risk factor of violence against children per se. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a description of the problem of violence against children by stepparents, discuss the extent of the phenomenon and its possible theoretical explanations, critically review empirical research assessing violence against children by stepmothers and stepfathers, as well as suggest directions for future research.

Vatican to investigate French cardinal who abused 14-year-old girl

took place 35 years ago when he was a parish priest

By Philip Pullella - Yesterday 

French Cardinal Ricard arrives at a meeting at the Synod Hall in the Vatican© Thomson Reuters

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican will open an investigation into French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who earlier this week admitted to sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl decades ago.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Friday a preliminary investigation would start once the most suitable person with the "necessary autonomy, impartiality and experience" was found to carry it out.

He said the Vatican was taking into account that French judicial authorities had opened a file on the case.

The Vatican's investigation would not begin in earnest until French civil authorities inquiry had concluded, so that its finding could be used for information.

Earlier this week Ricard, 78, acknowledged the abuse, which he said took place 35 years ago when he was a parish priest.

Ricard, who was bishop in the southwest region of Bordeaux from 2001 to 2019 and was made a cardinal in 2006 by former Pope Benedict, asked for forgiveness and said he would withdraw from his functions and be available for civil and Church authorities.

Eleven bishops in France are being investigated for sexual abuse.

An independent investigation in France last year found that clergy had sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the previous 70 years.

After the Vatican investigation of Ricard, Pope Francis could discipline him either by sentencing him to a life of prayer and penitence in isolation or go as far as defrocking him.

Defrocking is an expulsion from the Roman Catholic priesthood.

The last cardinal to be defrocked was Theodore McCarrick of the United States in 2019 after an internal investigation found him guilty of sexual abuse of minors and adults and abuse of power.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Alex Richardson and Richard Chang)

MISOGYNIST POLISH SAUSAGE
Polish leader blames low birthrate on women using alcohol

IT'S MEN WHO GET DRUNK AND LIMP

Mon, November 7, 2022

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's ruling party leader has triggered anger in the country and an explosion of jokes by claiming that the country's low birthrate is partly caused by overconsumption of alcohol by young women.

Opposition politicians and many other critics accused Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a 73-year-old lifelong bachelor, of being out of touch. They also argue that Kaczynski, the most powerful politician in Poland since 2015, is himself partly responsible for the the low birthrate in the central European nation of 38 million people.

In particular, critics point to restrictions on abortion that have discouraged some women from seeking to get pregnant. Others note the difficulty young people have in raising families due to rising costs in a country where inflation is now nearly 18%.

Kaczynski, leader of the populist ruling party, Law and Justice, made his remark on the weekend as he travels around the country seeking to rally support for his party ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.

Kaczynski explained to his audience Saturday that he didn't favor “very early motherhood” because a woman must first mature to become a mother. But, he went on, if women abuse alcohol up to the age of 25, then “it's not a good prognosis in these matters."

The remark triggered some predictable jokes along the lines of alcohol actually being helpful to conception, but also a lot of serious criticism.

When one government representative argued on a TV talk show that alcohol's influence on fertility is actually a legitimate matter for debate, an opposition lawmaker, Kamila Gasiuk-Pihowicz, shot back: “This is not a debate, it is insulting Polish women.”

The traditionally Roman Catholic country already had one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws, with abortions allowed in very few cases, before 2020. Then, a new ruling said that women may no long terminate pregnancies in cases where the fetus has serious abnormalities and is not viable after birth.

That sparked the largest protests in Poland in decades. There have been cases since then of pregnant women dying even though a risk to the woman's life is a legal grounds for abortion under the current law. Women's rights advocates say such cases occur because doctors are afraid to terminate pregnancies even when the woman's life might be at risk, fearing legal consequences to themselves.

Another opposition lawmaker, Aleksandra Gajewska, pondered whether Kaczynski was speaking out of some political calculation, or not. “Is Jaroslaw Kaczynski a ruthless, mean cynic, or is he mentally ill?” she said.

Kaczynski defended himself, saying that “an honest politician, if he knows such a thing, must talk about it."

WEEP GOP WEEP

Cortez Masto wins Nevada — victory cements Senate control for the Dems

THE RED TINKLE

Bob Brigham
November 12, 2022

Catherine Cortez Masto / Shutterstock

Democrats have been projected winners of the United States Senate after Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was projected winner of the battleground U.S. Senate race in Nevada.

According to projections from NBC News and CBS News, Cortez Mastro triumphed over Republican Adam Laxalt, the state's former attorney general, who also lost his 2018 campaign for governor.

After Friday night's projection that Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly had also won, Democrats are projected to hold 50 seats to 49 for Republicans.

This will slightly decrease the stakes of Georgia's Dec. 6 runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP challenger Herschel Walker. If Democrats prevail in the runoff, they will have some wiggle room of being able to lose a vote and still have Vice President Kamala Harris cast a vote to put the legislation over the top. In his first two years, Democrats Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Machin (D-WV) were able to single-handedly hold up legislation.

But Republicans also have a lot to gain, as keeping an evenly slip Senate is what allows either Sinema or Manchin to hold up the White House's agenda.

Jon Ralston, the dean of the Nevada political press corps, wrote "candidates and campaigns matter."

"Adam Laxalt is an abysmal candidate who has lived on his last name for credibility and fundraising since he moved here a decade ago," Ralston explained. "Anyone with an R after his or her name would be competitive this cycle, and his automaton-like performance, where he can disgorge puerile talking points to thrill the faithful and avoid any serious questioning (a candidate for governor and Senate who never debated!) has been something to behold. Laxalt’s campaign has been desultory and depressing. Cortez Masto is not exactly Rita Moreno on the campaign trail, but she has been disciplined and on message, and her media has been sharp and memorable."

Donald Trump has been spreading conspiracy theories about voter fraud in Nevada.

In a Thursday conference call hosted by National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (R-FL), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed without evidence that it was impossible for Laxalt to lose, Politico reported.

“There is no mathematical way Laxalt loses,” Graham falsely claimed. “If he does, then it’s a lie.”

Laxalt, who has been described as the "Nevada version of Rudy Giuliani," reportedly began preparing "voter fraud" legal challenges 220 days before the midterm election.

Democratic wins in Washington state buoy party hopes

SEATTLE (AP) — Democrats won a second key House race in Washington state Saturday — an open seat in a conservative region that long evaded the party.



Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto-shop owner who describes herself as an independent-minded Democrat, pulled off a victory against Joe Kent, a far-right “America First” ex-Green Beret who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, in southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.

Combined with Rep. Kim Schrier’s reelection to what Democrats feared was a vulnerable seat, Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory helped buoy party hopes of keeping a majority in the House.

“I am humbled and honored by the vote of confidence the people of Southwest Washington have put in me and my campaign," Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement.

The 3rd District, which narrowly voted for Trump in 2020, had been represented for more than a decade by Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. But she failed to make it through the state’s top -two primary after angering conservatives with her vote to impeach Trump following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Schrier survived a challenge from Republican Matt Larkin to win a third term in the 8th District, which stretches from Seattle’s wealthy eastern ex-urbs across the Cascade Mountains to the orchard country of central Washington. Schrier, a pediatrician, in 2018 became the first Democrat to win the seat since its creation in the early 1980s.

“I don’t know which party will control Congress, but it’s races like mine — the ones that are sitting on a razor’s edge — that flip one way or another,” Schrier told The Associated Press. “If more of them flip in this direction, that may mean we have the majority and set the agenda.”

By flipping the 3rd District, which Democrats had not held since former Rep. Brian Baird retired in 2010, the party will now have eight of Washington’s 10 congressional seats. Herrera Beutler won 22% of the vote in the primary, and how her voters split between Gluesenkamp Perez and Kent may have been the deciding factor in the race.

Gluesenkamp Perez — who co-owns an auto shop with her husband just across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon — said that as a small business owner who lives in a rural part of the district, she was more in line with voters than Kent, who repeatedly had to explain his connections to right-wing extremists.

Gluesenkamp Perez supports abortion access and policies to counter climate change, but also described herself as a gun owner who opposes an assault rifle ban, though she does support raising the age of purchase for such guns to 21. She wouldn’t be a “typical Democrat” in Congress, she said.

Kent, a former Green Beret who is a regular on conservative cable and podcasts, has called for the impeachment of President Joe Biden and an investigation into the 2020 election. He’s also railed against COVID-19 shutdowns and vaccine mandates and has called to defund the FBI after the search on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.

In the 8th District, Schrier stressed results she’s achieved, including helping to secure money for road projects, rural broadband access and police body cameras. She also emphasized that as the only female doctor in Congress who supports abortion rights, she’s a bulwark against any GOP efforts to restrict abortion nationally following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

She called Larkin’s opposition to abortion rights disqualifying.

Larkin is a lawyer and former Washington attorney general candidate who works for his family’s company, which makes parts for water pipes. Unlike more extreme Republican candidates, Larkin says Biden was legitimately elected, though he also notes that many people disagree and are frustrated about it. He hammered Schrier on inflation, gas prices and crime, saying Democrats’ policies have aggravated all three.

____

Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections

Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

Revealed: Four US Supreme Court justices attended right-wing gala — risking the credibility of the court

Bob Brigham - Yesterday - RawStory

Four U.S. Supreme Court justices attended the black-tie dinner gala at the first Federal Society convention since the court overturned Roe vs. Wade in its controversial Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health decision.

Associated Press correspondent Mark Sherman reported Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh were in attendance at the group's 40th-anniversary celebration

Sherman noted it is four-fifths of the majority of the court that overturned Roe. Controversial Justice Clarence Thomas was the fifth.

Three of the four justices in attendance were nominated by Donald Trump.

"Leonard Leo, [Federalist Society] co-chair, helped Trump vet judicial nominees. Group says it’s independent of partisan politics," Sherman reported. "But there is close alignment with GOP priorities."

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wondered if the justices at the dinner had forgotten their job.

"As with so many of our institutions, the judiciary can only do its work when the public has confidence in it," Vance noted. "Some of our judges seem to have forgotten that and that they have life tenure to serve the American people, not the political agenda of the people who put them in place."

Tucker Carlson's far-right candidates all went down in flames — with one notable exception
Bob Brigham
November 12, 2022

Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump / Shutterstock

Far-right Fox News personality Tucker Carlson suffered a dramatic rebuke from voters in the 2022 midterms.

Nikki McCann Ramirez described Carlson as having a "type" in a new report for Rolling Stone magazine.

"He likes hardline nationalists who can cosplay anti-elitism while pretending they didn’t go to an Ivy, or have an heiress mother, or have the richest people in the country funding their campaign," Ramirez reported. "He likes the kind of candidate who blends hateful nativism and a fear of the impending collapse of Western Civilization™, with mockery of blue-haired, cat-owning coastal liberals. Turns out Tucker’s type may not be super electable."

With Republicans pointing fingers at each other over disappointing results, Carlson may be second only to Donald Trump in creating the dynamics that resulted in Republicans doing far worse than expected.

"Carlson enjoys a position as a kingmaker and agenda setter for GOP politics," Ramirez wrote. "Look no further than how he almost single-handedly converted the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory from a white nationalist talking point to a major policy concern for conservatives. If there’s a man besides Donald Trump with the power to catapult local political hopefuls into national political figures — and who wielded that power with unbridled enthusiasm in the lead-up to the election — is it not the man with the most-watched cable news show in the country?"

The report noted that J.D. Vance, who successfully held a GOP-controlled Senate seat in Ohio, was on the candidate Carlson pushed hard who won.

"Blake Masters lost to Mark Kelly in Arizona, where gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is already resorting to claims of election rigging to explain her deficit to Democrat Katie Hobbs. In Washington state, the extremist-affiliated House candidate Joe Kent is on the verge of an unexpected defeat at the hands of Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez," Ramirez reported. "Vance, Kent, and Masters, were among Carlson’s most frequent guests on his flagship Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight. According to weekday cable segment data from watchdog group Media Matters, Vance, Kent, and Masters appeared on Carlson’s show 17, 14, and 10 times respectively in the year before the election (11/1/21-11/10/22). Vance and Kent were among the 20 most frequent guests on the show in that time period.

Read the full report.

Damning supercut compiles Fox News’ red wave predictions after Hannity said he 'can’t say for sure where rumors' started

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
November 11, 2022

Sean Hannity / Gage Skidmore

The 2022 midterms may be remembered as the worst humiliation that Fox News has suffered since 2012, when pundits at the right-wing cable news channel spent weeks insisting that then-President Barack Obama would be voted out of office — only for Obama to win a decisive reelection victory. GOP strategist Karl Rove, during an Election Night 2012 appearance on Fox News, was described by critics as looking like a deer caught in the headlights when then-Fox host Megyn Kelly informed him that Obama had won Ohio and been reelected — and now, Fox News is being mocked unmercifully for getting the 2022 midterms so wrong.

A video released after the midterms shows one Fox News pundit after another predicting that 2022 would bring a massive “red wave,” but that red wave didn’t materialize. Although control of Congress was still up in the air as of Friday morning, November 11, Democrats performed much better than expected — flipping a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and winning gubernatorial races not only in Pennsylvania, but also, in Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland and many other states.

The video shows everyone at Fox News from Laura Ingraham to Greg Gutfeld to Maria Bartiromo to Sean Hannity stridently predicting that a major “red wave” would strike on November 8. Especially embarrassing for Fox News is a clip of Marc Thiessen saying, “It is going to be a red wave? Is it going to be red tsunami? I think it’s going to be a red hurricane” — the same Marc Thiessen who, after a lot of election results came in, acknowledged how badly the GOP had underperformed and called for serious “introspection” for his party. Thiessen even called the election results an “absolute disaster” for the GOP.

There was also talk of a “red wave” on MSNBC and CNN before November 8, but they were much more cautious, nuanced and analytical — noting how close many of the polls were and stressing that turnout would be key. MSNBC and CNN offered a lot of detailed analysis; Fox News and Fox Business offered a lot of Republican National Committee (RNC) talking points and cheer-leading for the GOP.

 

Talk of ‘Christian nationalism’ is getting a lot louder – but what does the term really mean?

Eric McDaniel, 
The Conversation
November 12, 2022

Reading the Bible (Shutterstock)

According to a May 2022 poll from the University of Maryland, 61% of Republicans favor declaring the United States a Christian nation – even though 57% recognized that it would be unconstitutional. Meanwhile, 31% of all Americans and 49% of Republicans believe “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that would be an example for the rest of the world,” a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found.

Those statistics underscore the influence of a set of ideas called “Christian nationalism,” which has been in the spotlight leading up to November 2022 midterm elections. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has openly identified as a Christian nationalist and called for the Republican Party to do the same. Others, like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, have not claimed that label but have embraced its tenets, such as dismissing the separation of church and state.

Few Americans use the term “Christian nationalist” to describe themselves, but many more have embraced some aspects of this worldview. There is widespread confusion over what the label really means, making it important to clearly explain. My work on how race and religion shape Americans’ attitudes toward government led me to study Christian nationalism, and to co-write a book detailing how it shapes Americans’ views of themselves, their government and their place in the world.

Christian nationalism is more than religiosity and patriotism. It is a worldview that guides how people believe the nation should be structured and who belongs there.

Mission from God

The phenomenon of white Christian nationalism has been studied by historians, sociologists, political scientists scholars of religion and many others. While their definitions may differ, they share certain elements.

Christian nationalism is a religious and political belief system that argues the United States was founded by God to be a Christian nation and to complete God’s vision of the world. In this view, America can be governed only by Christians, and the country’s mission is directed by a divine hand.

In my recent book “The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics,” written with fellow political scientists Irfan Nooruddin and Allyson Shortle, we demonstrate that this worldview has existed since the Colonies and played a central role in developing American identity. During the American Revolution, political and religious leaders linked independence from the British as part of God’s plan to set the world right.


‘Apotheosis of Washington,’ by John James Barralet, 

imagining the first president rising from his tomb.

Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

From then on, many Americans’ belief that God favors their nation has guided their view of pivotal events – such as supporting Manifest Destiny, the idea that the U.S. was destined to expand west across North America; or framing the “war on terror” as a conflict between Christians and non-Christians in the 21st century.

Today, only about 4 in 10 people in the U.S. are white Christians. The thought of no longer being the majority has prompted some of them to see Christian nationalism as the only way to get the nation back on the right track. Christian nationalism typically restricts adherents’ view of who can be considered a “true” American, limiting it to people who are white, Christian and U.S.-born, and whose families have European roots.

Dissidents, disciples and laity

The majority of Americans do not embrace Christian nationalism. Even so, its echoes appear everywhere from American flags in church pulpits, to the Pledge of Allegiance, to “In God We Trust” on money, license plates and government vehicles.

My book co-authors and I argue that Christian nationalist ideas exist along a spectrum. For our book project, we developed a measure we refer to as “American Religious Exceptionalism” and used it to analyze nationally representative and state surveys from 2008 to 2020. Based on that data, we categorized U.S. citizens into three groups: dissidents, laity and disciples.

“Dissidents” reject the idea of the U.S. having a divine founding and plan, and express a more open understanding of what it means to be an American. Among the nationally representative samples, the proportion of dissidents ranges from 37% to 49% of the population.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the “disciples” strongly believe in the divine founding and guidance of the U.S. and express more restrictive ideas about who can be a “real” American and who should be allowed to enter the country. Disciples, who represent between 10% and 14% of the population, are more likely to see immigrants as a threat to American culture, and to express concern about the decreasing percentage of Americans who are white and Christian.

Those in the “laity” in the middle represent between 37% and 52% of the population. They demonstrate support for many of the same views the disciples do, such as anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-Muslim attitudes, but less intensely.

Master salesman

Politicians can be thought about as entrepreneurs constantly looking for new consumers. Some of them have found a devoted audience among the disciples, who tend to be politically engaged and eager to vote for a candidate who will advance their view of the nation.

Former President Donald Trump has been particularly successful at attracting voters who are sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas, by portraying himself as a defender of Christians “under siege.” In June 2020, in the midst of upheaval over police killings of unarmed Black Americans, tear gas was used to disperse protesters to allow then-President Trump to have his picture taken holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. His open animus toward Muslims has also helped bring Christian nationalists from the fringes into the mainstream.


Supporters of then-President Donald Trump pray outside the 

U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. 

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Images linking Christianity with the nation and with Trump, as part of a larger divine mission, were on full display during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In the most extreme Christian nationalist views, the government must be brought into alignment with this ideology – even if force is necessary.

Our research found that 68% of disciples agree that force may be necessary to maintain the traditional American way of life. Most disciples express strong support for representative democracy; however, 48% of disciples support the idea of military rule, compared with 6% of dissidents.

Heading to the polls

Christian nationalism’s movement toward the mainstream is evident in the 2022 midterms, as several candidates have announced their support for Christian nationalism or made statements highly in line with it. Not only does such rhetoric mobilize disciples, but it has the potential to persuade the laity that these candidates will best represent their interests. An atmosphere of increasing partisan polarization, where political debates are sometimes portrayed as between angels and demons destroying the country, provides a fertile environment.

What this means for American democracy is unclear. But as some white and Christian Americans fear a loss of status, I believe Christian nationalism is coming back – attempting to reclaim its “holy land.”

Eric McDaniel, Associate Professor of Political Science, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.