One Racist Batshit Christo-Fascist Homeland Under God

Trump personally arresting aliens.
Image from Truth Social

Abby Zimet
May 21, 2026

COMMON DREAMS

Further

In retrospect, Sunday’s taxpayer-funded blasphemy fest to “rededicate” America as a Christian nation though it’s not and never was looks ever more obscene amidst an unholy regime’s mounting crimes and abuses. Its sectarian circus - ICE milled, vendors urged “WIVES SUBMIT,” zealots screeched “We welcome Jesus!”, speakers attested God is eager for the ballroom - just queasily re-shaped a 250-year-old America into the kind of country it once sought freedom from.

“Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” a “constitutional abomination wrapped in layers of blasphemy and demagoguery,” sought to proclaim America “One Nation Under God,” but only a white male evangelical God; Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, commies, Jews, atheists, agnostics, black, brown, queer, Native people and even mainline Protestants need not apply. As such, it attacked what Jefferson deemed an unalienable right of conscience “which lies solely between Man & his God,” defied the core constitutional tenet of separation of church and state, and “torpedoe(d) the best of American traditions - inclusivity and diversity“ with, essentially, ”a Jubilee of Christian Nationalism.“

Its state-sponsored, right-wing fever dream marked the successful MAGA hijacking of Congress’ bipartisan, 2016 America250 commission, meant to honor the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its core values of equality and agency before the law. Instead, Trump concocted his own Christo-fascist Freedom 250 to celebrate a racist, corporate, jingoistic narrative of America, rewriting history to create an imaginary, monolithic, jingoistic, white, male, Christian national identity that celebrates “God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history,” and what is this inequality or oppression of which you speak?

Freedom 250 swiftly collected most of the $150 million appropriated by Congress, along with support from patriotic sponsors like ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Palantir, Amazon, Coinbase. Year-long festivities have included a weekly America Prays initiative; a series of Interior Department events celebrating “the triumph of the American spirit” plastered with flags, logos, Trump National Park passes; a fleet of nationwide “Freedom Trucks,” mobile museums offering right-wing takes on US history created with PragerU; a national Freedom 250 Patriot Games - Hunger Games anyone? - competition for high school athletes; a revamped Great American Farmers Market in DC with a “MAHA Monday.”

On social media, meanwhile, DHS has begun declaring itself “One Homeland Under God,” complete with image of church and cross and highlighted Bible verse; for April 19, it urged, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” The Washington Monument was transformed into “the world’s tallest birthday candle,” with projections celebrating historic achievements by white men like Christopher Columbus and Henry Ford, with no black, Native, female people in sight. To re-enforce the white-centric narrative, organizers have also promised a Summer Surge of thousands more ICE and DHS thugs to make the nation still whiter.

Sunday’s Jubilee continued the rebrand of a newly pristine, godly history, with 14 of 15 speakers Christian, arched stained-glass windows and a looming white cross all “glorifying the name of Jesus over our nation’s capital.” “Our nation more than any other was shaped by the idea that faith brought freedom,” said Marco Rubio in a prerecorded speech. “This is who we are.” Virginia pastor Gary Hamrick concurred, but added the imaginary threat of a “spiritual war,” perhaps best personified by the scary scattered signs of protesters urging, “Celebrate Democracy, Not Theocracy.” “This is a battle in our day between good and evil,” he said. “Our hope is built on Jesus’ blood.”

Also, Jesus merch. As the faithful braved three-hour lines in the heat and prayed, arms lifted to the sky, vendors handed out “Jesus Saves” bracelets and buttons that said, “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” There were “Thank you Jesus!” signs, a huge “Jesus Make America Godly Again” banner, $47 Freedom 250 baseball caps, t-shirts that read, “God Guns Family Freedom” and “Forever In Our Hearts, Charlie Kirk.” “We welcome Jesus into this place!” declared one speaker. Another noted, “It’s hard to believe it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom to stand where it needs to stand.” (Jesus.)

Pete Hegseth,on video, was typically unshy about praising Jesus. He dubiously zeroed in on The Prayer at Valley Forge, a 1975 painting by Arnold Friberg of George Washington praying in the snow widely deemed a romanticized legend, not fact. Historians argue Washington was a deist and freemason who rarely mentioned God or Jesus, whose favorite Biblical quote - “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid” - symbolizes peace, safety, religious freedom, and who always prayed standing. Still, Hegseth ran with it: Washington “did not lose faith,” and “let us pray as he did...without ceasing...on bended knee, for our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

Trump took an even more sketchy approach: He went golfing and sent in a slurry, pre-taped Bible reading recycled from the last fake Christian event three weeks ago. Then, moments after it aired, the self-described peace president went on a frenzied, genocidal social media spree, posting on his crappy app over 30 times in two hours. He threatened Iran: “The Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.” He posted bizarre, AI, warmongering images: Manning a spacecraft, firing away with massive explosions and mushroom clouds, personally arresting an alien, a real one. Say what? Praise Jesus.

Still, spineless, smarmy, unholy Mike Johnson was the worst. Having already whined about “naysayers” who view Christian Nationalism as “a derogatory term,” he gave a long hollow prayer about his task to “bring us straight to the Lord, whose mighty hand has been upon our (freest and most benevolent) nation since the very beginning.” But now “sinister ideologies sow confusion among our people,” attacking our history as “one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure.” So “grant us the moral clarity to rise above partisan differences,” says the guy who keeps shutting down Congress to block Dem policies. Finally, unconscionably, he prayed for “mercy upon our land.”

Mercy. He seeks mercy.

Mercy for the hundreds of people in the Congo and elsewhere dying of an Ebola outbreak after Trump gutted USAID and its dedicated outbreak response team because it helped people who aren’t white, thus triggering what could be over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030?

Mercy for those killed at San Diego’s biggest mosque amidst a Trump-fuelled rising tide of Islamophobia? Mercy for those ripped off or otherwise betrayed in a rabid mob by a $1.8 billion slush fund, or “pardon on steroids,” in the “most brazen act of presidential corruption this century.”

Mercy for the estimated 145,000 U.S. citizen brown children who had a parent detained by ICE and are now scattered across the country, or the 22,000 who lost both parents? Mercy for the woman, a domestic violence victim, detained and deported whom ICE is now blaming for the murder of her own child by her ex-partner?

Mercy for the 21-year-old Honduran with no criminal record just arrested and detained by ICE outside a New York immigration court less than 24 hours after a federal judge’s ruling such arrests are illegal, because, as one ICE thug responded when shown the ruling, “We don’t care”?

Mercy for 18-year-old, Chicago-born, Mexico-raised Kevin González, being treated in Chicago for metastatic stage-four colon cancer when his health began failing? His parents in Mexico sought emergency visas to travel to the US to say their final goodbyes; when DHS denied them, citing “previous unlawful entries into the US,” in desperation they tried to cross the border without permission and were detained by ICE in Arizona. Kevin pleaded in vain for their release; ultimately, he checked himself out of the hospital and flew to his grandmother’s home in Mexico to be with family at the end. Finally, in Kevin’s last hours, a judge in Arizona ordered their release. They arrived at his bedside on the afternoon of May 9. His sobbing mom called him, “Chiquito,” “little one”; his father knelt by his son’s bed, asking for forgiveness if he ever let him down. Kevin died the next day.

Mercy? Does Mike Johnson want mercy for Kevin and his parents?

Fuck Mike Johnson and all his fucking odious cohort. Fuck their prayers, and their Jesus, and their cruelty, and their fucking despicable hypocrisy, which knows no bounds. What would Jesus do? Not this, any of it.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Abby Zimet
Abby Zimet has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. Email: azimet18@gmail.com
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How Fascism Works Now: A Note about Trump as the Healing Christ

Stephen F. Eisenman

 April 24, 2026

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Artist unknown (AI generated), Untitled (Trump as Healing Christ). TruthSocial.com@realdonaldtrump, April 12, 2026.

Hidden in plain sight

The image of a youthful Donald Trump, laying his hand on the forehead of a sick or dying man has by now been interred in the meme graveyard. By the time you read this, another will have taken its place, and then another, and so on. That’s one purpose of the AI barrage:  misdirection. By attending to obvious outrages – the supposed blasphemy of an image of Trump as Healing Christ — the public is more likely to overlook bigger, but less promoted ones, like weakened pollution standards, cuts to disease research, and of course, war. But there’s another, equally important communication strategy at work, and it’s hiding in plain sight: insipidness or kitsch. That’s the language of fascism now.

Iconography

For all the controversy it generated, the meme is barely coherent. Trump wears a loose-fitting white toga beneath a red poncho, though the latter equally resembles a kimono (it has sleeves) and a golf sweater casually draped over the shoulders. Rays of light emanate from the head of the recumbent man, suggesting he’s the holy figure, and Trump only a nurse or nurse’s aide checking the patient’s temperature. The president holds a ball of light in his left hand, like Disney’s “Never-fairies” who catch and hold sunbeams.

Surrounding the sick or dying man are four other figures. Clockwise from upper left, a middle-aged man with baseball cap and neatly trimmed white beard and moustache – in queer parlance a “wolf” or “daddy”; a youthful, clean-shaven marine; a young nurse –miniscule compared to the gargantuan Trump; and another young woman of no evident occupation, with auburn hair parted in the middle.  Middle-aged or older women were not invited to this party — unsurprising given the host. Craggy, right-hands at lower left and right suggest two other men apparently kneeling, their heads below the level of the hospital bed. Are they orderlies cleaning the floor with their other hands?

Finally, there are the soldiers floating in the sky, like Napoleon’s troops entering Valhalla in the famous painting from 1801 by Girodet-Trioson. The one in the middle appears to be in retreat and in drag, wearing a crown like the Statue of Liberty and carrying two standards. Also in the busy sky are a pair of bald eagles and three jet fighters risking mid-air collision or bird-strike. Beneath are the Statue of Liberty, Lincoln Memorial and another classical-looking building in the left background – possibly an AI scrambled U.S. Capital.

The reason the image was controversial is because it was understood by some Christians to be blasphemous. According to the four canonical gospel books, Christ regularly healed the sick: “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people” (Mathew: 4:23). His patients suffered from dropsy (edema), paralysis, blindness, and leprosy. Jesus also raised the dead.  To represent a politician – even a president – as Christ is not kosher. The first of the Ten Commandments reads: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”  A president who glows and heals by touch is godly.

The association of Jesus with a doctor or healer is fundamental to Christian pictorial iconography. Among the earliest depictions of Jesus, preceding even scenes of crucifixion, is as a healer. The Catacombs of Peter and Marcellinus in Rome (4^th C. CE) contain a fresco

Artist unknown, The healing of a bleeding woman, Rome, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter. 4th C. CE.

illustrating an episode from the book of Mark (the earliest gospel book): “And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years. And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.” (Mark 5: 25-26). After kneeling and touching the hem of Christ’s toga, she was cured.

More than a thousand years after the Catacombs painting, the subject was still securely embedded in Christian iconography.  There are innumerable examples, including El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind (c. 1570) at the Met, illustrating passages from John (9:1-41) and Mark (8:22-26).  It shares with the Trump meme the motif of hand touching forehead with classical architecture and sky in the background – but no Airforce jets.

El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, c. 1570. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Given Trump’s frequent promises to devise a health insurance plan better than Obamacare, it’s understandable he would claim that the controversial meme concerns his medical, not spiritual prowess. He told an interviewer: “It’s supposed to be [me] as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.” According to the president, the image shows him miraculously healing the American “people” – the body politic – not just a single, recumbent person.

Artist unknown (AI generated), Untitled Trump and Jesus). TruthSocial.com@realdonaldtrump, April 15, 2026.

A few days later, Trump undercut his own protestations against the charge of blasphemy by posting another meme. This time, he himself was not Jesus, just a man chosen and touched by Jesus. It’s a bust-length, double portrait of a white-berobed Jesus with left arm extended around the president’s shoulder and right hand on his chest. Like Christ, Trump’s eyes are closed or downcast, as if in prayer or asleep. (The photo-source must have been a cabinet meeting.) The gauziness of the image is purposeful — either Trump dreams of Christ, or Christ dreams of Trump.

In composition, the second image resembles Friedrich Overbeck’s Italia und Germania (1828), a painting that celebrates the supposed closeness of two cultures. During the 1930s, the work became an emblem of the German/Italian, Nordic/Mediterranean/ Nazi/Fascist alliance.  It was also taken as an example of healthy, German art in contrast to the “entartete” (“degenerate”) art of modernists like Picasso, Chagall, and Modigliani.

Freidrich Overbeck, Germania und Italia, 1811-28. Munich: Neue Pinakothek.

Nazi prototype for the healer and savior

Though many national leaders and dictators have used the language of medicine and salvation as political metaphors, few did so as frequently or consequentially as Adolf Hitler. He was specifically described as “arzt der Deutschen volk” (doctor of the German people) and liked to be photographed laying hands upon the sick or injured, caressing the hands or heads of small children, and in at least one case, taking a child’s pulse. In his autobiography and manifesto, Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler wrote about “social disease,” “moral disease,” “political disease,” and “hereditary disease.” It was the task of the true leader —Hitler himself — to “recognize the nature of the disease…and seriously try to cure it.”

Photographer unknown, Adolf Hitler in hospital at Reinsdorf. From: Otto Dietrich, Adolf Hitler. Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers (Hamburg: Cigaretten/Bilderdienst Hamburg/Bahrenfeld, 1936). 

Hitler and his followers turned these metaphors into reality. They believed Jews, Bolsheviks, queers, Roma, the mentally ill and physically disabled were a pox on the national body and had to be excised – by genocide, so-called euthanasia (the cruel murder of people with disabilities or heritable diseases) and forced sterilization. And just as Hitler saw himself as a physician, he also understood himself as savior of the German people and nation. “We are admittedly small in number”, he wrote in 1919, soon after leaving military service: “But once another man stood up in Galilee, and today his teaching rules the whole world.” Later, he prophesied that after his death, he’d be described as: “A man who never capitulated, who never gave up, who never made compromises, who knew only one goal and the way toward it, who had a great faith named ‘Germany’.”  What Christ began, this imagined, future biographer would write, “Hitler, would accomplish.”

Trump’s association with Hitler – indeed his cribbing of the Fuhrer’s speeches – is well documented. In  2024, at a  Veterans Day rally in New Hampshire, Trump vowed to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country.”  Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “[The Jew] remains the eternal parasite, a sponger who, like a terrible bacillus, spreads out more and more as soon as a favorable medium invites him to do so.”  Two decades later, near the end of World War II, Hitler looked back over the previous years and summarized his aims: “To exterminate the vermin throughout Europe.”

Insipidness or kitsch as form and meaning

The president’s 2024 speech about “vermin” and others like it – and the current Trump/Jesus memes — are provocations, what child therapists call “attention-seeking behaviors.” For Trump and his regime, they are also a shell game, as suggested earlier, misdirection that hides from view some of the most vicious programs and policies the nation has ever known. But the social media and other Trump imagery should also be understood as part of a larger representational apparatus encompassing presidential portraits, banners, rallies, posters, stamps, coins, White House gilt decoration, the planned ballroom, triumphal arch, and NFTs. The last of these include corny and absurd depictions of the rotund, near-octogenarian president as cowboy, king, mobster, boxer, motorcyclist and action hero.

A recent Department of Labor social media campaign is equally corny and contemptable. It features images – suitable for printing as posters – of mostly white, male and blond workers and families. Recalling Norman Rockwell paintings, Nazi posters and Soviet socialist realism, they suggest that the future will soon resemble an imagined American past of unquestioned patriarchy, patriotism, Christian faith, white supremacy, and conjugal (nuclear) families.  Like the Trump/Christ memes, they have attracted considerable, negative publicity.

Artist unknown (AI generated), Posters/memes for U.S. Department of Labor, 2025-6.

All these images celebrate stereotype and cliché, in a word, kitsch — and everyone knows it. They thus invite audiences to believe they have been made privy to a media strategy – as indeed they have. They are insiders let in on a joke told at the expense of others: Democrats or political progressives, Black people, Latinos, immigrants, queers, or women.  The stigmatizing is obvious to all.

Trump’s offensive and insipid meme crusade therefore – like his kitschy White House gilding, gigantic ballroom, triumphal arch and all the rest — does its ideological work not by asking its audience to admire or accept the offensive messaging, but by inviting them to understand the game being played, the better to gratify their individual powers of aesthetic and political discernment. In short, they are asked to become absorbed in the works, and to naturalize them. That’s how fascism enters the house of capitalist democracy – through the front door.

What Trump and his enablers discourage is any criticism of the president’s policies or the man himself, except perhaps sniffing at his mischief. And that’s why the Trump as Healing Christ meme was quickly withdrawn from view — it failed to be entirely insipid. Whereas kitsch offers seamlessness (false resolution of contradiction), this image, as suggested earlier, was awkward and jarring, patched together like bricolage.  Its personages were hard to peg; its clichés threatened to collide – like the bald eagles and jet fighters. Its religious meaning was worse than offensive – it was unclear. The fascist image must be whole and complete; this one was cracked. So, the regime itself, bogged down in a foreign war, freighted by elevated prices, reduced health care, and rising insurance rates, risks the wrath or worse, disengagement of its faithful.

Stephen F. Eisenman is emeritus professor at Northwestern University and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of a dozen books, the latest of which (with Sue Coe), is titled “The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism,” (OR Books, 2014). He is also co-founder of Anthropocene Alliance. Stephen welcomes comments and replies at s-eisenman@northwestern.edu

The Pope Is Right – The US-Israeli War With Iran Violates Just-War Theory

by Jordan Liz | Apr 24, 2026 | 

On April 10th, Pope Leo XIV posted on Twitter/X, “God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.”

The Pope’s condemnation of war drew the ire of the self-proclaimed “Peace President” and his allies. On TruthSocial, President Trump described the Pope as “Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.” At a Turning Point USA event, Vice President J.D. Vance remarked, “When the pope says that God is never on the side of people who wield the sword, there is more than a 1,000-year tradition of just war theory.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was likewise “taken a little bit aback.” He told reporters, “It’s a very well-settled matter of Christian theology. There’s something called the just war doctrine.”

Yet just war is precisely the Pope’s point. As Bishop James Massa, the chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, said in a statement:

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war. A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2308). That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’

Ultimately, this appeal to Just War Theory by Vance and Johnson is a desperate retort from a historically sinful administration. To date, Trump has authorized military strikes in 10 countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iran. Currently, the Pentagon is reportedly preparing for military action against Cuba – a nation that Trump has repeatedly threatened to “take.” This invasion would come months after the Trump administration imposed a total oil blockade that is causing widespread suffering and starvation there. No interpretation of Just War Theory would ever justify such rampant and senseless violence.

Just War Theory

Modern versions of Just War Theory are split into three components: first, jus ad bellum, or the conditions under which a nation may justifiably wage war. This includes: (i) a just cause (e.g., self-defense, protecting the innocent), (ii) war must be a last resort, (iii) right intention (i.e., the war must be conducted for the sake of justice – not self-interest or personal gain), and (iv) declared by a proper authority.

The second component is: jus in bello, or how a just war is waged. This includes: (i) distinguishing between civilians and combatants and (ii) proportionality (i.e., deploying the minimum amount of violence necessary to achieve one’s goal – no matter how righteous the cause, excessive destruction is unjust).

Finally, the third component is: jus post bellum, or how nations ought to act once the fighting has stopped, including during a ceasefire. This includes: (i) not punishing civilians, (ii) respecting the rights and traditions of the defeated, (iii) not exploiting the defeated nation, and (iv) rehabilitating the aggressor to avoid future violence.

Trump’s wars consistently fail these criteria. Consider the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Jus Ad Bellum

Trump alleges that this war was necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. However, he had previously alleged that Operation Midnight Hammer had “significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program.” There is no evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, had ambitions to develop nuclear arms, or that they posed an immediate threat to the US. There is no just cause here.

This war was also not a last resort. Not only was Iran negotiating with the US, but they also made major concessions to the Trump administration regarding their nuclear program. Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, who was mediating these talks, said, “I have seen a lot of flexibility on both sides, and I believe it’s really a matter of just keeping at it, keeping negotiating to get that to that finishing line.” Trump, however, unilaterally decided to stop these productive talks based on a “feeling” – not necessity.

The Trump administration has provided several, often conflicting, reasons for this war. Notably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed that he has “longed” for this war “for 40 years.” President Trump has repeatedly insisted that, “If it were up to me, I’d take the oil, I’d keep the oil, it would bring plenty of money.” This is, after all, what he did in Venezuela after kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro. As Trump put it, after (rightfully) not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of Peace.” His actions in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere reflect this. They are not guided by the pursuit of justice or peace, but rather personal and financial gain.

As for proper authority, the Constitution is clear: Congress alone has the power “to declare War.” No congressional approval means no just war.

Jus In Bello 

On the very first day of the war, the US struck a girl’s elementary school killing more than 175 people. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reports that at least 1,900 people have been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran since the start of US-Israeli attacks. On March 9th, Iranian Deputy Health Minister Ali Jafarian reported that 52 health centers, 18 emergency service locations and 15 ambulances had been damaged or destroyed. US-Israeli strikes also “completely destroyed” a synagogue in Tehran and at least 30 universities have been impacted. Trump has even gone as far as to threaten that, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Clearly, no distinction between civilians and combatants is being observed.

In clear violation of international law, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth pledges “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” On March 2nd, he remarked, “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.” There will be “no apologies, no hesitation” for “we are not defenders anymore. We are warriors, trained to kill the enemy and break their will.” By his own admission, Trump is likewise “not at all concerned about war crimes.” The point here is clear: excessive violence is this administration’s first resort.

Jus Post Bellum 

At the time of this writing, the US and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire. After the first round of talks, Vance, who was heading the US delegation, said Iran chose “not to accept our terms.” He remarks, “The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America.” Vance’s wording makes clear that the US is not negotiating with Iran as equals. This is unsurprising. Throughout this conflict, Trump has repeatedly referred to Iran’s leaders as “lunatics” and “crazy bastards.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described them as “lunatics,” “insane” and “religious zealots.” This lack of respect for the Iranian people will only serve to further tensions and make a lasting peace less possible.

Indeed, the US initially sought to escalate hostilities during this ceasefire by imposing its own blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. The purpose here was clear: by blocking their oil exports, the US was hoping to coerce Iran into submission. Because of sanctions, the Iranian economy is already fragile – a blockade could have major financial and humanitarian consequences. Even during a ceasefire, the Trump administration’s first instinct is to cause collective suffering.

Amid the Lebanon ceasefire, Iran has agreed to open the Strait; however, Trump has declared that the American blockade on Iranian ships and ports “will remain in full force.”

Ultimately, this is not a war of self-defense. It is not a preemptive war against a legitimate threat. It is a war of glory and conquest. It is a war of sin.

The violence and suffering that the US and Israel have caused can never be undone. Yet, we can and must hold the responsible parties accountable. Trump, Netanyahu and everyone in their administrations who enabled this war must be brought to justice. They have shown themselves time and time again to lack the moral character necessary to lead a nation. Justice likewise demands that reparations be made. While no compensation can ever make up for the loss of innocent life, Iran must be provided with the tools and resources necessary to rebuild their nation.

On April 16th, Pope Leo XIV remarked, “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.” Once again, the Pope is right – we must never stop striving towards building a more peaceful and just world. A world where people are elevated, not buried under rubble; a world where children grow up safe and sound without fear of “Epstein’s Fury”; a world where love, compassion and respect for others trumps war, death and destruction.

Originally published at Common Dreams.

Jordan Liz is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at San José State University. He specializes in issues of race, immigration and the politics of belonging.

Trump tried to bully the Pope — and failed spectacularly: NYT analysis

Pope Leo XIV gestures after delivering the traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2025. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

Sarah K. Burris

April 24, 2026

ALTERNET

One thing that the ongoing spat between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV did was expose the hollow core of the Christian nationalism in his administration, one columnist argued on Thursday.

The New York Times' David French wrote that the spat between Trump and Pope Leo "may be the most important theological debate of my lifetime" for revealing how the administration's faith serves as a political prop but crumbles when confronted with actual Christian doctrine on war and morality.

Writing as the Pope finished up his packed 10-day trip across Africa, French explained that the one thing the new pontiff has exposed is that there is no real Christianity in Christian Nationalism.


His back and forth with Trump made it clear where he stands on war and peace, and his speeches across Africa on "global moral responsibility," aid for the poor, mentally ill, prisoners and others hammered the message home. He urged unity among all people, not just Catholics, calling on Christians in Algeria to strengthen ties with Muslims.

The result of Trump treating the pope "the way he would a freshman Republican congressman — trying to bully and bluster him into silence—" was outright failure, French said.


Trump brought the pope to the center of a national conversation about the war. A trip across Africa wouldn't normally have garnered much attention outside of religious publications and those who already follow it. But thanks to Trump, every word the pope said on the trip was reported, broke into the mainstream, and laid bare the "profound contrast between the two men."

"In this contest between a pope and a president, the president looks weak and erratic. He looks small. Between Trump and Pope Leo, there is only one man who is demonstrating strength and moral consistency on the world stage," French said.

The debate also made it clear that, despite its memes and public prayers, when the Christian part of "Christian nationalism" comes into conflict with the nationalist part, the latter prevails.


French cited Jesus’ words in Matthew 15: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Further, the columnist said, Pope Leo raised the level of debate about war beyond Catholics, with a public debate about philosophy and religion regarding the nuances of "just war theory."

French pointed to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, making the theory clear: “The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy.”


He then compared it to the Department of Defense's Law of War Manual, which describes the "just war doctrine" as part of a “philosophical foundation” of the law of war.

“The just war tradition remains relevant for decisions to employ U.S. military forces and in warfighting," the manual says.

French cited Edward Feser, a Catholic philosophy professor, who penned a piece not long after the war began, to explain how Trump's decision failed the just war test. Even if there was a "just" reason for the war as a preemptive strike to protect future people, the administration hasn't made that case.

"If you’re going to argue that you intend to liberate the Iranian people, you have to show how your intervention — no matter how well intentioned — won’t actually increase their suffering," said French.


While it might focus on Iran now, it goes beyond just war doctrine and international law because it can bind nations in a moral alliance if they agree to follow only that doctrine.

"It helps bind together alliances. It enhances the effectiveness of the armed forces. American history demonstrates that national unity in a conflict is almost directionally proportionate to the justice of the cause. Contrast, for example, the unambiguous virtue of defending ourselves from Imperial Japanese and Nazi aggression with the far hazier justifications for our extended war in Vietnam," wrote French.

He noted that if a just war can bring allies together, then an unjust war can certainly tear them apart. A good example is NATO's response to Trump's Iran war compared to NATO's willingness to help the U.S. after Sept. 11, 2001.

All of this draws a clear line between the rhetoric that the Trump administration uses about Christianity to justify "corrupt and lawless actions" and the realities of Christian theology.


"The administration wants all the benefits of religion and none of the burdens. It wants to be seen as godly while acting godlessly," French closed.

Trump admin just exposed their contempt for Christians: analysis

Thomas Kika

April 22, 2026

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump and his administration talk a big game about their devotion to and support for religion, but in practice, their "high-octane condescension" exposes their "contempt toward Christianity," according to a new analysis from The Bulwark.

Mona Charen is a veteran writer and journalist who previously worked as a staffer for former President Ronald Reagan and as a speechwriter for First Lady Nancy Reagan. She is now an outspoken critic of Trump and his political agenda, writing for The Bulwark on Wednesday about the ways in which he has "revealed MAGA's anti-Christian nature."

"The past few days have featured the vice president of the United States lecturing the pope on morality and church doctrine; Sean Hannity making it official that he worships at the Church of Trump; Pete Hegseth quoting made-up verses from Pulp Fiction as if they were actual scripture; and Trump styling himself as Jesus Christ," Charen wrote. "A few years ago, one might have wondered how these acts of contempt toward Christianity would go down with the religious right, but after 10 years of cultishness, it would be foolish to expect many defections."


Speaking from her own background in the conservative movement, Charen called it "dizzying" to see "people who used to venerate religious leaders of all stripes" morph under Trump's influence into people who now "smack-talk the pope and commit what some have characterized as blasphemy." She took particular exception to Vance's "swipes at the vicar of Christ," in which he urged Pope Leo XIV "to stick to matters of morality," and "let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy," a set of assertions especially galling considering Vance's much publicized late-in-life conversion to Catholicism.

"You do Mass and baptisms and such and let us handle war and peace. That’s some high-octane condescension, but if he had stopped there, it would only have registered as normal MAGA insolence," Charen continued. "But no, Vance wasn’t finished. Speaking the next day at a Turning Point USA event, Vance rebuked the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Christians (including himself: Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019) for his theology!"


While she herself is Jewish, Charen explained that she had always had an admiration for "serious Christians" and their commitment to doing good. In the face of Trump's contamination of right-wing religiosity, she called it "One of the sad revelations of our time" how MAGA has exposed "the shallowness of many Christians’ professed faith," becoming another in a long line of historical examples of faith being "perverted to enable cruelty and even atrocities."

"But the particular sacrilege that late stage Trumpism has adopted must be tearing at some hearts," Charen concluded. "From Trump’s declaration that unlike Erika Kirk, he doesn’t forgive his enemies, to his crude attacks on the pope as 'weak on crime,' to his insane AI rendering of himself as Jesus, he seems to be deliberately testing Christians’ forbearance. Above all, his threat to commit war crimes by deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran (bridges, power plants) and culminating in the maniacal vow to destroy Iranian civilization in one night ought to have produced a recoil in any nation with a conscience. Time to consider that he might be a false prophet—if people can distinguish truth from falsehood anymore."