'They gave us their plan': Stunning Dem victory in Pa Senate used tactics shared from Iowa

Peter Hall, 

Pennsylvania Capital-Star
March 27, 2025 

Pennsylvania Sen.-elect James Malone with his co-campaign managers Stella Sexton (left) and Joyce Smith. (contributed photo/Stella Sexton)

If Gov. Josh Shapiro was able to win in deep-red Lancaster County, Democratic state Sen.-elect James Malone could too, his campaign co-manager Stella Sexton said.

Shapiro won the 36th Senate District in 2022 with a 0.2% margin over his Republican opponent, Trump-aligned Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin).

“If we could get to Shapiro-Mastriano numbers, I knew we could take this,” Stella Sexton, told the Capital-Star about the campaign’s approach to flipping the long-time Republican Senate district.

Malone did better with a stunning upset in the 36th District special election Tuesday. He beat Republican County Commissioner Joshua Parsons by 0.89%, according to unofficial results, and became the first Democrat to represent Lancaster County in the Pennsylvania Senate since 1879.

Parsons conceded Wednesday afternoon, saying in a post on the social media platform X that a review of the remaining ballots showed there were not enough uncounted votes to change the outcome.
Having reviewed the numbers from last night, including the fact that there are not enough provisional or other outstanding ballots to change the overall result, I have called Mayor Malone to congratulate him and wish him the best.
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— Josh Parsons (@Josh__Parsons) March 26, 2025

The Democratic victory drew national attention as the latest in a string of special election wins across the country. Although it did not change control of the Senate, it reduced Republicans’ majority in the Senate to 27-23.

Ryan Aument, who ran unopposed for the seat in 2022, resigned last year to work for U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick.

Democrats attribute the win, in part, to voters who feel betrayed by what they describe as President Donald Trump’s draconian and tumultuous first months in office.

“Folks are not happy with the chaos that we’re seeing in Washington and are not happy with Parsons,” Malone said, recounting what he heard from voters as he knocked on doors across the district, which President Donald Trump won by more than 15%.


Parsons campaigned on his reputation as a conservative firebrand who defied the state-ordered lockdown during the COVID-19 emergency, an abortion opponent and Trump ally.

But he also drew national attention for his harassment of a reporter at Lancaster Online/LNP and stoking anger over a drag queen story hour at Lancaster Public Library. The library ultimately canceled the event when a bomb threat and suspicious package shut down downtown Lancaster in March 2024.

“A lot of what we heard was they didn’t like his negativity and they didn’t like that he was voting against them,” Malone said.


Efforts to reach Parsons on Wednesday through his campaign’s website, Facebook page and campaign officials were unsuccessful.

A Republican official blamed Parsons’ defeat on a loss of focus after the 2024 election.

“This is a wake up call. We can’t rest on the laurels of last November’s great victories,” Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Greg Rothman said in a post. “We can’t be complacent and we must be unified. We need to keep the intensity of 2024 and fight together for every vote.”


Franklin & Marshall College pollster Berwood Yost said the outcome was both surprising and followed a trend so far in 2025.

“When you have a Republican who loses the district with a 23 point registration advantage, that qualifies as a surprise,” Yost said.

At the same time, Democrats have won five special elections across the country this year, Yost noted. That has a lot to do with the electorate in special elections, when turnout is typically low. In Lancaster county, 29% or about 54,000 registered voters participated.


The emphasis for national Democrats on Tuesday was the special election for the 35th House District in Allegheny County, where the party focused efforts to defend the one-seat majority it won in November. The seat was left empty in January when Rep. Matthew Gergely died after suffering a medical emergency.

Democrat Dan Goughnour won the election with 63.4% of the vote, according to unofficial results.

Special election voters tend to be more tuned-in and have more education, which favors Democrats, Yost said. It also tracks trends following presidential elections, when there is typically a swing toward the party not in the White House or in the majority in Washington.


“When you look back to Trump’s first term, there was a big swing toward Democrats in special elections at that time,” Yost said.

State Rep. Nikki Rivera (D-Lancaster) said Malone was a perfect foil to Parsons, who espoused many positions of the MAGA movement.

As the mayor of East Petersburg, a borough of about 4,500 people a short distance from Lancaster, Malone earned a reputation as a person who leads by example and shows genuine concern and compassion for people.

“He’s known for being personable and connecting with people on all sides of a topic,” Rivera said. “He is truly able to cross party lines to understand and be understood.”


But outside his small community, Malone had “almost no name recognition,” Sexton said. That called for a grassroots effort to introduce him to voters in more than two dozen municipalities.

Sexton said she found inspiration in Iowa Democrat Mike Zimmer’s victory, flipping a state Senate seat in January.

“I reached out to them and said we have to know how you did it,” Sexton said. “They gave us their whole plan.”


Lancaster Democrats enlisted phone banking help from county committees across Pennsylvania and launched a ground game that included “obsessively” tracking mail ballots and dispatching volunteers to retirement communities to follow up with voters, Sexton said.

She said Malone worked hard, meeting voters and attending a League of Women Voters forum that Parsons skipped. Libertarian Zachary Moore of Mount Joy was there too, and won 480 votes, almost exactly the margin by which Parsons lost, Sexton noted.

Sexton said Malone’s campaign spent about $215,000, an amount she estimates is tied with or slightly greater than Parsons’ spending. Campaign finance reports show money continued to flow to the candidates in the final 24 hours of the race.


Parsons’s campaign was supported by GOP activist Scott Presler, who helped turn out Amish voters in the 2024 general election. Presler, who has drawn criticism for his anti-Muslim language, rung early alarm bells about a possible Democratic victory, drawing the attention of billionaire megadonor Elon Musk, Lancaster Online reported this week.

Sexton said Musk’s post came too late to help Parsons’ fundraising. But it reinforced Malone’s message.

“Parsons was really being supported by billionaires and ours was a grassroots campaign and that was really a contrast that resonated with people,” Sexton said.

When Pressler posted on X late Tuesday night lamenting Parsons’ apparent loss, Musk replied with a one-word post: “Damn.”

POSTMODERN KNOW NOTHINGS

A new era of anti-intellectualism — and what all senior Trump officials have in common

REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gestures, as President Donald Trump delivers a speech, during the Laken Riley Act signing event, at the White House, in Washington, U.S., January 29, 2025.

The Conversation

January 30, 2025

The many controversial people appointed to the Trump administration, from Elon Musk to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have at least one thing in common: They dislike and distrust experts.

While anti-intellectualism and populism are nothing new in American life, there has hardly been an administration as seemingly committed to these worldviews.

Take President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Kennedy, a well-known vaccine skeptic, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, whose Senate confirmation hearing is Jan. 29, 2025, epitomizes the new American political ethos of populism and anti-intellectualism, or the idea that people hold negative feelings toward not just scientific research but those who produce it.

Anti-intellectual attacks on the scientific community have been increasing, and have become more partisan, in recent years.

For instance, Trump denigrated scientific experts on the campaign trail and in his first term in office. He called climate science a “hoax” and public health officials in his administration “idiots.”

Skepticism, false assertions

This rhetoric filtered into public discussion, as seen in viral social media posts mocking and attacking scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, or anti-mask protesters confronting health officials at public meetings and elsewhere.

Trump and Kennedy have cast doubt on vaccine safety and the medical scientific establishment. As far back as the Republican primary debates in 2016, Trump falsely asserted that childhood vaccines cause autism, in defiance of scientific consensus on the issue.

Kennedy’s long-term vaccine skepticism has also been well documented, though he himself denies it. More recently, he has been presenting himself as “pro-vaccine safety,” as one Republican senator put it, on the eve of Kennedy’s confirmation hearing.

A researcher works in the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, National Institutes of Health


Kennedy has mirrored Trump’s anti-intellectual rhetoric by referring to government health agency culture as “corrupt” and the agencies themselves as “sock puppets.”

If confirmed, Kennedy has vowed to turn this anti-intellectual rhetoric into action. He wants to replace over 600 employees in the National Institutes of Health with his own hires. He has also suggested cutting entire departments.

During one interview, Kennedy said, “In some categories, there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA, that are – that have to go.”
Populism across political spectrum

In lockstep with this anti-intellectual movement is a version of populism that people like RFK Jr. and Trump both espouse.

Populism is a worldview that pits average citizens against “the elites.” Who the elites are varies depending on the context, but in the contemporary political climate in the U.S., establishment politicians, scientists and organizations like pharmaceutical companies or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are frequently portrayed as such.

For instance, right-wing populists often portray government health agencies as colluding with multinational pharmaceutical companies to impose excessive regulations, mandate medical interventions and restrict personal freedoms.

Left-wing populists expose how Big Pharma manipulates the health care system, using their immense wealth and political influence to put profits over people, deliberately keeping lifesaving medications overpriced and out of reach – all of which has been said by politicians like Bernie Sanders.

The goal of a populist is to portray these elites as the enemy of the people and to root out the perceived “corruption” of the elites.

This worldview doesn’t just appeal to the far right. Historically in the United States, populism has been more of a force on the political left. To this day, it is present on the left through Sanders and similar politicians who rail against wealth inequality and the interests of the “millionaire class.”

In short, the Trump administration’s populist and anti-intellectual worldview does not map cleanly onto the liberal-conservative ideological divide in the U.S. That is why Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat and nephew of a Democratic president, might become a Cabinet member for a Republican president.

The cross-ideological appeal of populism and anti-intellectualism also partly explains why praise for Trump’s selection of Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services came from all corners of society. Republican senators Ron Johnson and Josh Hawley lauded the move, as did basketball star Rudy Gobert and Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis.

Even former President Barack Obama once considered Kennedy for a Cabinet post in 2008.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is greeted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on stage during a campaign event on Aug. 23, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images


Anger at elites

Why, then, is disdain for scientific experts appealing to so many Americans?

Much of the public supports this worldview because of perceived ineffectiveness and moral wrongs made by the elites. Factors such as the opioid crisis encouraged by predatory pharmaceutical companies, public confusion and dissatisfaction with changing health guidance in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the frequently prohibitive cost of health care and medicine have given some Americans reason to question their trust in science and medicine.

Populists have embraced popular and science-backed policies that align with an anti-elite stance. Kennedy, for example, supports decreasing the amount of ultra-processed foods in public school lunches and reducing toxic chemicals in the food supply and natural environment. These stances are backed by scientific evidence about how to improve public health. At the same time, they point to the harmful actions of a perceived corrupt elite – the profit-driven food industry.

It is, of course, reasonable to want to hold accountable both public officials for their policy decisions and scientists and pharmaceutical companies who engage in unethical behavior. Scientists should by no means be immune from scrutiny.

Examining, for example, what public health experts got wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic would be tremendously helpful from the standpoint of preparing for future public health crises, but also from the standpoint of rebuilding public trust in science, experts and institutions.

However, the Trump administration does not appear to be interested in pursuing good faith assessments. And Trump’s victory means he gets to implement his vision and appoint people he wants to carry it out. But words have consequences, and we have seen the impact of anti-vaccine rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, where “red” counties and states had significantly lower vaccine intent and uptake compared with the “blue” counterparts.

Therefore, despite sounding appealing, Kennedy’s signature slogan, “Make America Healthy Again,” could – in discouraging policies and behaviors that have been proven effective against diseases and their crippling or deadly outcomes – bring about a true public health crisis.

Dominik Stecuła, Assistant Professor of Communication and Political Science, The Ohio State University; Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina, and Matt Motta, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boston University

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

Conservatives embrace raw milk even as regulators say it's dangerous

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Stephanie Armour,

 KFF Health News

January 30, 2025


In summertime, cows wait under a canopy to be milked at Mark McAfee’s farm in Fresno, California. From his Cessna 210 Centurion propeller plane, the 63-year-old can view grazing lands of the dairy company he runs that produces products such as unpasteurized milk and cheese for almost 2,000 stores.

Federal regulators say it’s risky business. Samples of raw milk can contain bird flu virus and other pathogens linked to kidney disease, miscarriages, and death.

McAfee, founder and CEO of the Raw Farm, who also leads the Raw Milk Institute, says he plans to soon be in a position to change that message.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist President Donald Trump has tapped to run the Department of Health and Human Services, recruited McAfee to apply for a job as the FDA’s raw milk standards and policy adviser, McAfee said. McAfee has already written draft proposals for possible federal certification of raw dairy farms, he said.

Virologists are alarmed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends against unpasteurized dairy that hasn’t been heated to kill pathogens such as bird flu. Interstate raw milk sales for human consumption are banned by the FDA. A Trump administration that weakens the ban or extols raw milk, the scientists say, could lead to more foodborne illness. It could also, they say, raise the risk of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus evolving to spread more efficiently, including between people, possibly fueling a pandemic.

“If the FDA says raw milk is now legal and the CDC comes through and says it advises drinking raw milk, that’s a recipe for mass infection,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and co-editor-in-chief of the medical journal Vaccine and an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University in New York.

The raw milk controversy reflects the broader tensions President Donald Trump will confront when pursuing his second-administration agenda of rolling back regulations and injecting more consumer choice into health care.

Many policies Kennedy has said he wants to revisit — from the fluoridation of tap water to nutrition guidance to childhood vaccine requirements — are backed by scientific research and were established to protect public health. Some physician groups and Democrats are gearing up to fight initiatives they say would put people at risk.

Raw milk has gained a following among anti-regulatory conservatives who are part of a burgeoning health freedom movement.

“The health freedom movement was adopted by the tea party, and conspiracy websites gave it momentum,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has studied the history of the anti-vaccine movement.

Once-fringe ideas are edging into the mainstream. Vaccine hesitancy is growing.

Arkansas, Utah, and Kentucky are weighing legislation that would relax or end requirements for fluoride in public water. And 30 states now allow for the sale of raw milk in some form within their borders.

While only an estimated 3% of the U.S. population consumes raw milk or cheese, efforts to try to restrict its sales have riled Republicans and provided grist for conservative podcasts.

Many conservatives denounced last year’s execution of a search warrant when Pennsylvania agriculture officials and state troopers arrived at an organic farm tucked off a two-lane road on Jan. 4, 2024. State inspectors were investigating cases of two children sickened by E. coli bacteria and sales of raw dairy from the operation owned by Amish farmer Amos Miller, according to a complaint filed by the state’s agricultural department.

Bundled in flannel shirts and winter jackets, the inspectors put orange stickers on products detaining them from sale, and they left toting product samples in large blue-and-white coolers, online videos show. The 2024 complaint against Miller alleged that he and his wife sold dairy products in violation of state law.


The farm was well known to regulators. They say in the complaint that a Florida consumer died after being sickened in 2014 with listeria bacteria found in raw dairy from Miller’s farm. The FDA said a raw milk sample from the farm indicates it was the “likely source” of the infection, based on the complaint.

Neither Miller’s farm nor his lawyer returned calls seeking comment.

The Millers’ attorney filed a preliminary objection that said “shutting down Defendants would cause inequitable harm, exceed the authority of the agency, constitute an excessive fine as well as disparate, discriminatory punishment, and contravene every essential Constitutional protection and powers reserved to the people of Pennsylvania.”

Regulators in Pennsylvania said in a press release they must protect the public, and especially children, from harm. “We cannot ignore the illnesses and further potential harm posed by distribution of these unregulated products,” the Pennsylvania agricultural department and attorney general said in a joint statement.


Unpasteurized dairy products are responsible for almost all the estimated 761 illnesses and 22 hospitalizations in the U.S. that occur annually because of dairy-related illness, according to a study published in the June 2017 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

But conservatives say raiding an Amish farm is government overreach. They’re “harassing him and trying to make an example of him. Our government is really out of control,” Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Doug Mastriano said in a video he posted to Facebook.

Videos show protesters at a February 2024 hearing on Miller’s case included Amish men dressed in black with straw hats and locals waving homemade signs with slogans such as “FDA Go Away.” A court in March issued a preliminary injunction that barred Miller from marketing and selling raw dairy products within the commonwealth pending appeal, but the order did not preclude sales of raw milk to customers out of state. The case is ongoing.

With Kennedy, the raw milk debate is poised to go national. Kennedy wrote on X in October that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end.” In the post, he pointed to the agency’s “aggressive suppression” of raw milk, as one example.


McAfee is ready. He wants to see a national raw milk ordinance, similar to one that exists for pasteurized milk, that would set minimal national standards. Farmers could attain certification through training, continuing education, and on-site pathogen testing, with one standard for farms that sell to consumers and another for retail sales.

The Trump administration didn’t return emails seeking comment.

McAfee has detailed the system he developed to ensure his raw dairy products are safe. He confirmed the process for KFF Health News: cows with yellow-tagged ears graze on grass pastures and are cleansed in washing pens before milking. The raw dairy is held back from consumer sale until it’s been tested and found clear of pathogens.

His raw dairy products, such as cheese and milk, are sold by a variety of stores, including health, organic, and natural grocery chains, according to the company website, as well as raw dairy pet products, which are not for human consumption.

He said he doesn’t believe the raw milk he sells could contain or transmit viable bird flu virus. He also said he doesn’t believe regulators’ warnings about raw milk and the virus.

“The pharmaceutical industry is trying to create a new pandemic from bird flu to get their stock back up,” said McAfee, who says he counts Kennedy as a customer. His view is not shared by leading virologists.

In December, the state of California secured a voluntary recall of all his company’s raw milk and cream products due to possible bird flu contamination.

Five indoor cats in the same household died or were euthanized in December after drinking raw milk from McAfee’s farm, and tests on four of the animals found they were infected with bird flu, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Health.

In an unrelated case, Joseph Journell, 56, said three of his four indoor cats drank McAfee’s raw milk. Two fell sick and died, he said. His third cat, a large tabby rescue named Big Boy, temporarily lost the use of his hind legs and had to use a specialized wheelchair device, he said. Urine samples from Big Boy were positive for bird flu, according to a copy of the results from Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

McAfee dismissed connections between the cats’ illnesses and his products, saying any potential bird flu virus would no longer be viable by the time his raw milk gets to stores. He also said he believes that any sick cats got bird flu from recalled pet food.

Journell said he has hired a lawyer to try to recover his veterinary costs but remains a staunch proponent of raw milk.

“Raw milk is good for you, just not if it has bird flu in it,” he said. “I do believe in its healing powers.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license

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

Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash

School lunch, Christian Nationalism and Jesus

The Conversation

September 30, 2024

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

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

Trump, Christian Fundamentalism and Lemmings

Lawrence Davidson

December 17, 2024
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Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Lemmings are small rodents who live in underground tunnels in far northern climes. They are pretty successful from an evolutionary standpoint. They spend the snowy winters breeding and this sometimes leads to food shortages in the Spring. Food shortages, in turn, can lead to migration to new territories. It is the migration behavior that has led the Lemmings to become part of a human “urban legend.”  

In 1958 the Disney Company released a documentary entitled White Wilderness which featured a concocted view of the migrating little critters jumping off cliffs (the Disney folks were forcing them to do so, and sometimes just throwing them over) into a body of water and drowning. It was totally contrived but the Lemmings died anyway and their survivors got stuck with a specious reputation for a collective suicidal impulse. 

The American Lemming Phenomena

And what does this have to do with today’s United States? Well, through the auspices of Christian fundamentalism/nationalism, a growing number of Americans have become like those enthusiastic mythical Lemmings, blissfully heading for a cliff—let’s call it cultural and/or constitutional suicide. The Public Religion Research Institute found that in 2023, 10% of Americans identified as “adherents” of Christian nationalism, while 20% identified as “sympathizers”. In the red states aligned with the Republican Party, these numbers rose to 14% and 24% respectively, while among Trump supporters they further rose to 21% “adherents” and 34% “sympathizers”. 

Others, perhaps a majority of Americans, are just blissfully ignorant of this threat. This has to do with the inherently local focus of communities. Most people, while paying attention to what is going on around them, learn of outside events only through a distorting mass media. These folks might learn about the danger of Christian nationalism through the potential struggle to come. 

And, then there is that group of Americans who are standing dumbstruck (as would real Lemmings if they had seen and understood Disney’s libelous White Wilderness) at the Christian fundamentalist/nationalist forfeiture of rationality. 

It is important to ask who is standing in for the manipulative Disney production crew, as this all plays out?  

The Production Crew And the Trump Connection

Let’s take up this last question. Who are the production crew stand-ins? Answer: they are America’s messianic Christian leadership such as “the Ziklag Group, a tax-exempt charity that works to instill Christianity as the guiding principle in every sector of American society.” They have plenty of money and so have funded a growing number of political allies such as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. The often hysterical Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is also an ally. In an interview (July 2022), she said that, “We [Republicans] need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.” Fellow member of Congress Lauren Boebert (R-Col.) has also expressed support for Christian nationalism. At the state level, many politicians such as Doug Mastriano (R-PA. Senate) are prominent figures in the Christian fundamentalist/nationalist movement. Mastriano has called the separation of church and state a myth.

This army of “true believers” has tied itself to the coattails of our next president, Donald Trump—a man who is a true believer only in himself. In truth, he is little more than an opportunist with an insatiable ego. What makes this alliance possible is the strange fact that the Christian fundamentalists/nationalists have expressed a belief that this narcissist is an agent of God. In other words, Trump has found a place for himself in today’s Christian fundamentalist mythology. 

Briefly, here is the slight of hand analysis that allows the Christian sectarians to make the Trump connection. First of all, it should be said that for these pro-Trump Christians, “a savior does not have to be a good person but just needs to fulfill his divinely appointed role.” So Trump, the consummate sinner, is not disqualified. In fact, the Bible is said to be full of nasty characters that, allegedly, were recruited as agents of God. Thus, “the prosecutions underway against Trump have been easily interpretable as signs of persecution, which can then connect to the suffering Jesus theme in Christianity.”

Trump has encouraged this bizarre connection. His campaign has posted a video entitled “God Made Trump” which he has screened at campaign rallies.” The message here is that Trump has been given a divine mission to “save America from certain cultural collapse.” He often shows photos of “evangelicals laying hands on him in the Oval Office, which is something that Christians do when they ordain pastors or commission missionaries.” One particular result of all this is that at the 6 January insurrection you got rioters carrying large crosses and praying as they attacked the Capitol. In addition, “people at his rallies were carrying signs that said, ‘Thank you, Lord Jesus, for President Trump.”

All of this has been a great asset to Trump the politician and there is every reason to believe that he will reward the faithful. He says that [like the Disney Production crew] he will aid and abet in pushing the country down the Christian nationalist road and thus over the cliff that represents Constitutional suicide. How does he suggest that he will do this? (1) By continuing the process of stacking the federal judiciary with rightwing ideologues. (2) By sanctifying states’ rights which, one suspects, he will support whatever the courts say.

Christian Nationalism And Its Proper Analogy

This latter process of working along the lines of states’ rights has already begun. On 19 November 2024, the Texas Tribune reported that “a majority of the Texas State Board of Education gave final approval Friday to a state-authored curriculum under intense scrutiny in recent months for its heavy inclusion of biblical teachings.” The deciding vote was cast by a recent appointee of the rightwing GOP governor, Greg Abbott. The report goes on, “although the curriculum isn’t required, the state will offer an incentive of $60 per student to districts that adopt the lessons, which could appeal to some as schools struggle financially after several years without a significant raise in state funding.” This led to the charge from critics that the Christian Nationalists are essentially buying state education policy. There are approximately 6 million students enrolled in Texas public schools. Another critic observed that “This move has ultimately violated parents’ rights to guide their children’s faith. In short, this is a push coming from ideologues, rather than anyone with expertise in educational best practices.” 

That hit the nail on the head. Ideologically driven authoritarian regimes—and that is what the Christian Nationalists aim for— want to be the sole guide for their citizens

in all things. That is they want to turn the citizenry into mythical mindless Lemmings. Thus, it should come as no surprise that these Texas ideologues do not stop with textbooks. They also want to control all books in school libraries, downplay the role of minorities and erase the notion of climate change. 

The link to Trump can best be seen in the state of Oklahoma. Here, the Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has decided that a particular version of the Christian Bible—“a pricey one peddled by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump”—should be put in every public school room in the state. He believes he can do this because (1) Trump “wants prayer back in school” and (2) Trump was elected with a “mandate” to get what he wants. By the way, what does Walters want to evict from the state’s present classroom? The answer is  “radical leftism.” Walters fully expects to achieve his goal despite expected court ordered delays. He is counting on Trump’s stated desire to eventually do away with federal oversight of education altogether. According to Walters, and Trump as well, only the states can make kids “patriotic and get parents back in charge with school choice.” Don’t be misled by the last part of this quote. If the parent isn’t a Christian Fundamentalist he or she won’t be in charge of anything.

What would the school children of Texas and Oklahoma (among other states) look like after several generations of this sort of ideological determined education? The best analogy to be found is probably children in the People’s Republic of China.

The “intergenerational transmission” of the ideological beliefs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a major stated aim of China’s educational system. Superintendent Walters would no doubt approve of the fact that, in 1991, the CCP began an ongoing “Patriotic Education Campaign,” the intention of which is to (1) “reduce narratives of class struggle. And (2) “emphasize the party’s role” in establishing China’s great power status. Translated into Christian Fundamentalist/Nationalist ideological terms, this would be the equivalent of (1) deemphasizing minority historical roles to teaching U.S. history and (2) emphasizing the white Christian basis of the country’s alleged moral superiority and greatness. 

If you want a comparison with the Texas move to take control of curriculum and library resources as a form of censorship, it is the staunchly atheist CCP’s educational dictates in the Uyghur communities (northwestern China). The Uyghur’s of Muslims, and that is just the reason “Islamic education for children has been prohibited and teaching the Quran to children has resulted in criminal prosecution.” Let the Christianizing efforts in Texas take the form of state law and punishments for doing your own thing are bound to follow. 

Conclusion

It is going to be a struggle for the American Christian fundamentalists/nationalists to match Chinese accomplishments in terms of ideological dominance. After all, to do this they will have to dismantle the U.S. Constitution. However, as noted above, they have a firm base from which to build particularly in the American south and midWest. They now have an ally in the White House and more allies in Congress. And, they are certainly not deterred by reason or common sense. 

The rank and file Christian fundamentalists are the movement’s core, manipulated version of Lemmings, willing to remake the U.S. by committing constitutional suicide. And, just as is the case of the CCP, they are quite ready to support a coercive environment which demands that we all go along with a canonical playing out of their Christian nationalist fantasies. A logical first step is to take over public education because children’s ideas about the world are easily manipulated.

To be sure, education of any kind is always at least in part propaganda. The job of public schools is to turn out employable and loyal citizens. The question is loyal to what? Loyal to the Constitution that, at least potentially, can encourage a tolerant, equalitarian, multiethnic society? Or loyalty to an emphatically Christian capitalist, neoliberal society? What does the United States want to be when it grows up?

It used to be that American aspirations were thought of in terms of humanism. Using the definition of the American Humanist Association, “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.” There are literally thousands of humanists in American history who have strived to make this country an ever more livable place. Many of their names are readily identifiable. And none of them sought to make people into the ideologically driven Lemmings. So, almost inevitably, the Christian fundamentalist/nationalist movement finds humanistic aspirations an anathema. Thus, according to the prolific Christian fundamentalist writer and critic, Robert L. Waggoner, “Humanism is THE major modern philosophical enemy of Christianity.” 

I would say that it is time for Americans to make a choice— but, of course, they just have. And enough Americans have chosen Donald Trump to put this ally of Christian fundamentalism into power. Perhaps it is time to declare the simple and obvious truth: open-minded reason is more trustworthy than some inscrutable deity. Under Trump’s “blessed” hand, many of us are likely to end up like Job.

Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester, PA.