‘They Painted a Narrative of This Coach Looking for a Quiet Corner to Pray’

CounterSpin interview with Dave Zirin on football prayer ruling

JANINE JACKSON  JULY 9, 2022

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Janine Jackson interviewed Dave Zirin about the Supreme Court’s football prayer ruling for the July 1, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Coach Kennedy’s “private, personal prayer” (photo: Sotomayor dissent)

Janine Jackson: While we still reel from the theft of bodily autonomy from half the population, the right wing–dominated Supreme Court has delivered other blows to principles that many believed were assured.

In Kennedy v. Bremerton, a 6–3 ruling determined that Washington state high school assistant football coach Joseph Kennedy had a right to pray in the locker room and on the field. And why should a person be denied their right to what the Court described as a “short,” “personal,” “private” exercise of their religious beliefs?

As our guest and others want us to understand, the court’s ruling relies on a storyline that just doesn’t match the reality, and is much less about freedom than about coercion.

Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation and host of the Edge of Sports podcast. He’s also author of numerous books about sports and their intersection with history, politics and social justice, including What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, and, most recently, The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World, which is out now from New Press.

He joins us now by phone from Takoma Park. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dave Zirin.

Dave Zirin: Oh, it’s great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

The Nation (6/27/22)

JJ: I can feel the heat coming off your piece on this. And I think it’s because of the boldly false premise of this ruling, about the role of coach prayer generally, but in particular about Kennedy. You say that this ruling is wrong from the opening statement. So maybe let’s start there.

DZ: Here’s the issue; it’s a cliche, but it’s true: You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. And in the decision that was written by Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch, he relied on his own facts. Let’s put it more simply: He lied in describing what took place in the case.

And here’s the thing: Coach Kennedy was not off, as Gorsuch writes, praying on his own. He was not off quietly doing this, and he was not fired for doing it. So they painted a narrative of this coach looking for a quiet corner to pray and then this school board, with pitchforks and torches in hand, forcing Kennedy out of his job.

None of this happened. What Kennedy did in praying in the locker room, and then particularly his prayers after the game on the field, was draw in players to surround him in prayer, asking players to do testimonials about God. All of this thing creates this kind of maelstrom of pressure on the players, that if you are down with your coach, you will pray with your coach. And if you’re not down with that, then, hey, you’re free not to pray with the coach, but anybody who’s ever played high school sports knows that if you don’t do what the coach says, particularly in an autocratic sport like football, you’re going to pay a price for that.

You’re going to pay a price for it, whether it’s in terms of playing time or, maybe even worse for the high school level, you’re going to pay a price for it in terms of being outcast, in terms of being seen as a locker room distraction, or even worse in the parlance of sports, a locker room cancer.

And that is what the Supreme Court basically said could now take place, is a process of bullying in high school sports to make players feel coerced into praying with their coach, and that’s unconscionable. It’s absolutely unconscionable. And I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from folks, including tons of stories about what it was like to play high school sports at private or religious institutions, and the degree of religious peer pressure that would take place, and how it would alienate, ostracize and all the rest of it.

And I should probably add that we would be completely, completely naive if we didn’t just see this as an issue of prayer, but this is about Christian prayer. Like if the coach was Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, whatever you want, Shinto, or wanted to do a prayer of atheism beforehand, there would be a very different response from this Court than Christianity, because this Court has shown itself to be proudly in a relationship with a kind of Christofascism which is quickly overcoming the ruling structures of the United States, if not the people themselves.

Seattle Times (6/29/22)

JJ: And just to underscore the idea of the false narrative, Danny Westneat in the Seattle Times, very close to the issue, wrote a story in which he was saying, as you have said, that Kennedy explained himself. He said he was inspired to start these midfield prayers after he saw an evangelical Christian movie called Facing the Giants, in which a losing team finds God, Christian God, and then goes on to win the state championship.

So the very idea that he was trying to find a personal private space to pray in private, and that he was being denied that, it’s just wholly not true.

DZ: And can I say something else? The school district—and I say this as somebody who made phone calls, spoke to people, I’m not just saying this for the purposes of my own narrative—they made every effort to try to accommodate Coach Kennedy. They made every effort to create spaces for him to pray.

And they did not fire him when he repeatedly and repeatedly ignored what they had to say, thumbed his nose at what they had to say. Look, my wife is a teacher, and if she thumbed her nose at the rules of the district to the degree that Coach Kennedy was doing, she would’ve found herself out of work.

Now, Coach Kennedy, again and again thumbing his nose at what they’re saying to him, and in the end, you know what they did, they didn’t fire him. They suspended him with pay, with the opportunity to reapply back for his job, and partly because I think they realized how hot button this was.

Dave Zirin: “There is a political movement in this country that’s playing for keeps. They don’t care how nice you’re going to be about it.”

They made every effort to try to look like partners in trying to figure this out. And they wanted to look like we want to collaborate with you to find a solution that actually helps and makes everybody feel validated.

And I think what they learned, which I think a lot of us need to learn, is that there is a political movement in this country that’s playing for keeps. They don’t care how nice you’re going to be about it. They don’t care if you’re willing to meet them halfway. They’re not trying for a bigger piece of the pie. They’re trying to take over the bakery right now.

And I think the sooner we realize that the better, because a lot of people in the ruling corridors of the Democratic Party really seem to have not gotten the memo.

JJ: It’s important that it integrates with sports and with athletics here, which I think makes it slot into a different place in some people’s brains. This ruling, it galls, of course, for many reasons, but part of it is the ability for people who have a public platform to express political or social concerns, whether they’re athletes or musicians or artists, it’s framed so differently depending on who they are and what they’re saying.

DZ: Exactly.

JJ: It’s related, but if I can just transition you, you’ve written about Muhammad Ali, about Colin Kaepernick. It’s always been true that there’s been a kind of policing of what people can say, if it’s decided that they’re outside of their purview.

DZ: Yeah. If I could say something about that, I wrote this book The Kaepernick Effect. I interviewed dozens of young people, a lot of them in high school, who took a knee, and they were invariably subject to all kinds of ostracization, pushed off the team, made to feel outcast from the team, oftentimes at the behest of the coach.

And I think one of the things that we need to come to grips with is that this kind of aggressive Supreme Court–led Christian posturing is political. Because people say, well, that’s just religious, what the coach is doing. Taking a knee during the anthem, that’s a political act, and politics have no place in sports.

Do you honestly think it’s not political that this coach is defying the school district time and again, is drawing in students into the prayer circle time and again, is thumbing his nose at the concerns of parents time and again, and now, and I wish I could bet money on this, is going to be on the right-wing gravy train probably for the next decade, doing speeches time and again, and maybe there’ll even be one of those Hollywood movies that only a small segment of the population sees, starring, I don’t know, Gina Carano and Kevin Sorbo, whatever, the actors who occupy that space.

And I think we need to realize that these onward Christian soldiers, like, that’s not just a song to them. This is a movement that they’re trying to build, and trying to collaborate and figure out common solutions I think is going to be a very, very difficult task, because their eye is not on reconciliation.

New York Times (6/30/22)

JJ: Right, right. Thank you for that. And I’m going to let you go, but while I have you, I can’t resist. Today’s New York Times:

More than four months after she was first detained, the WNBA star Brittney Griner is expected to appear in a Russian courtroom on Friday for the start of a trial on drug charges that legal experts said was all but certain to end in a conviction, despite the clamor in the United States for her release.

I know I’m asking a lot in a short amount of time, but I know that for a lot of listeners who follow media closely, they’re going to say, “Wait, there was a clamor in the United States for Brittney Griner’s release? Wait, who’s Brittney Griner?” Thoughts on that?

DZ: We need a much bigger clamor, is my first thought. Brittney Griner is a WNBA superstar. If her name was Tom Brady or Steph Curry, there would be a national day of action to try to get them freed from a Russian prison.

I mean, Brittney Griner is a political prisoner, make no mistake about it.

JJ: In Russia, in Russia—we care about Russia, right?

DZ: Yeah. Facing 10 years behind bars, five years at labor behind bars. I mean, this has nothing to do with drugs. I have serious doubts in the charges in the first place. This is about Ukraine. This is about political posturing. This is about this new cold war that we’re dealing with with Putin.

And this is about them trying to extract political prisoners out of the United States, who are Russian, in an exchange, and I think we need to apply pressure to our own State Department that bringing Brittney Griner home should be an immediate priority.

What’s disturbing is the concern that Brittney Griner, because she’s a woman athlete, because she’s from the LGBTQ community, because she presents in a certain way, that she’s just not getting the coverage or the attention that she otherwise would get.

And I think that’s one of the things also we need to fight against. It’s not just about injustice in Russia; it’s about standing up to injustice and prejudice here at home.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Dave Zirin. He’s sports editor at The Nation, and you can follow his work at EdgeOfSports.com. Dave Zirin, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DZ: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

‘It Would Force the Government to Actually Prove Espionage, not Whistleblowing’

CounterSpin interview with Chip Gibbons on why Assange matters 

JANINE JACKSON  JULY 13, 2022

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Janine Jackson interviewed Chip Gibbons about the latest updates in the Julian Assange case for the July 8, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Julian Assange (cc photo: Espen Moe)

Janine Jackson: If you’ve been following the case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whose revelations about US wars and war crimes outlets like the New York Times published to great acclaim, you know that you haven’t been following it in, for example, The New York Times.

Major US outlets’ interest in Assange’s prosecution is hard to detect, as if they had no stake in a case which is not, at bottom, only about whether individuals can leak classified information, but whether journalists can publish that information at all. And it’s as if their readers had no stake in that decision either. 

Joining us now with the latest is researcher and journalist Chip Gibbons. He’s policy director of the group Defending Rights and Dissent. He joins us by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Chip Gibbons.

Chip Gibbons: It’s always a privilege to be on your program. It is one of the most informative programs we have, and unfortunately, the number of quality hard-hitting journalistic programs that cover these issues dwindles sort of more and more every year. So you are a lifesaver for our republic.  

JJ: Thank you. Thank you very much. And this really is a case where it’s shocking, not just the way that media are not giving it the attention that it might deserve, but in particular the way that journalists who are themselves implicated; it affects them, you know? 

So the lack of interest or the kind of evident desire to sort of box off Julian Assange as not our kind is deeply disturbing. But I’ve asked you here to give us kind of the latest on the case. What’s going on?

CG: I’ll just note that for some of the appellate hearings in the UK, I was the credentialed correspondent for Jacobin. So I was there covering it. I joined kind of late.

But [UK Home Secretary] Priti Patel has agreed to sign an extradition request for Julian Assange. You had a district level trial of sorts—hearing, whatever you wanna call it in the UK—where the British Crown Prosecution Service, at cost to the UK taxpayer, represented the US Department of Justice on their extradition request. And then Assange, not paid for by the British taxpayer, not backed by the Department of Justice, obviously, put up his own defense as to why he should not have been extradited.

And they raised all of the obvious issues: Press freedoms, the political questions exception to extradition, and they had big experts come in like Daniel Ellsberg, Carey Shenkman, perhaps the biggest expert on the Espionage Act in the country, and the judge rejected all of those press freedom claims, but decided that if Julian Assange was extradited to the US, it would be oppressive given his mental health. 

And then the US came in and offered all of these assurances. Particular prison policies loomed very heavily in the decision. So the US gave assurances that had so many holes in them you could drive your car through and not just a car, a big truck. You could drive a big truck through these holes. 

But on top of that, even in the best case scenario assurances they were offering, they were talking about Julian Assange won’t be in solitary confinement, he’ll just be in administrative segregation, held for I think 22 hours a day at Alexandria Detention Center, a jail we’re very familiar with because Chelsea Manning has been in there. Jeffrey Sterling has been in there. Daniel Hale has been in there. 

And the description they gave under the United Nations Minimum Standards for Treatment of Prisoners, the Mandela Rules, Nelson Mandela Rules, constituted cruel degrading treatment and possibly torture. 

So even the best case assurance, you know, they were reassuring the UK they were going to torture him and a higher court vacated the lower court’s decision because they found the US so persuasive. The Supreme Court refused to hear it and then it was entered in this process where it went to Priti Patel, who’s the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom. 

It’s all political, right? But it was more openly political as opposed to this sort of legal cloak of a political persecution. And, you know, we could make these kinds of political arguments again. 

And Defending Rights, in a sense, has a very narrow mission. We’re a US-based group focused on the Bill of Rights in the US, but because of the implications of this, you know, we did something extraordinary for us. We submitted a letter to the Home Secretary outlining the case against extradition based on our twelve years of monitoring this case. 

We talked about how the NSA had put him in the manhunting database and encouraged countries to bring criminal charges against him. We talked about how the CIA had WikiLeaks declared a “non-state hostile intelligence agency,” a phrase they invented just to persecute WikiLeaks. And, you know, we outlined all of that. 

So now she’s ruled he can be extradited. The UK government has said they would like to get him to the US in six months. That’s very unlikely to happen because now the Assange legal team can appeal on the issues around press freedom the original judge ruled against. So you’re sort of restarting the appeals process if the courts agree to hear them. 

And then even after that, you have a final court of last resort in the European Court of Human Rights, which is not part of the EU. I’m sure everyone’s thinking Brexit, how can that happen? It’s actually part of the Council of Europe. There’s apparently a lot of European supergovernmental organizations, more than I, as an American ever, ever knew of. And it’s interesting because obviously it’s independent, but the Council of Europe has a commissioner of human rights who wrote Priti Patel asking them not to extradite Assange because of the press freedom claims.

Nils Melzer (Medium, 6/26/19): “Once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course.”

Which is, you know, United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, every international human rights group, every US civil liberties and press freedom group, they’ve all made this case.

So it’s not surprising that the Council of Europe behaves more like the UN than it does the US Department of Justice and the sort of British security establishment.

One interesting thing that’s happening in Congress right now that you and I want to discuss is that Representative Rashida Tlaib has introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, Amendment 617, which would seriously amend the Espionage Act in a really comprehensive manner we’ve not seen before from other proposals, because it would so limit the scope of the Espionage Act so that it couldn’t apply to members of the general public with some specific exceptions, which would preclude prosecuting a publisher or journalist. 

And also, and this is a thing that gets really controversial and really riles people up, but is what I’ve wrote the most on, it also would give some due process protections to the Edward Snowdens, to the Chelsea Mannings and the Daniel Ellsbergs of the world by forcing the government to have to prove specific intent to harm national security. 

Right now, the language is “specific intent” or “reason to believe,” and that sounds like a high burden, but what they say, they say, “Oh, this was classified, and you know, you signed a statement that said if you ever released classified information, the sky will fall. And then you released it. You had reason to believe.” And then you’re barred from talking about what you released and why you released it. 

So to force them to prove that specific intent, it would also give someone indicted under the Espionage Act sections that apply here the right to testify about the purpose of their disclosures. 

Daniel Ellsburg famously was asked why did he release the Pentagon papers, and the judge shut him down and did not allow him to answer. And more recently with cases like drone whistleblower Daniel Hale, before the trial even begins, the prosecutor files a pretrial motion asking that Daniel Hale be blocked from mentioning, his words, not mine, his “good motives,” and the judge granted it. So Daniel Hale, if he had gone to trial, could not have mentioned his good motives. 

So this is a really, I mean, it’s a very wonky editing of US criminal procedure in one particular criminal statute. And I think people’s eyes rightfully glaze over with that…

JJ: But I think people can see the purpose of that. I think you’ve made clear what the difference would be if that information were allowed to be included. 

CG: Yeah, it’s a game changer, right? Because the government actually has to prove the whistleblower not just released the information, but did so intending to harm the US. I would remind people that Chelsea Manning, in her court martial, was charged with both Espionage Act violations and aiding the enemy, and military court marshals are not known for being very respectful of due process. 

The military judge found her not guilty of aiding the enemy because there was a higher intent provision and the government had to prove so much more. So the government would both have to prove actual espionage, this person wants to harm the country, and also they’d have to let them testify about why they did it. 

It’s not a perfect solution to prevent these prosecutions, but it would remove the immense procedural hurdles that rob a whistleblower of any basic constitutional due process rights when charged with the Espionage Act, and force the government to actually prove espionage, not whistleblowing.

JJ: All right then, we’re going to end it there, but just for now. We’ve been speaking with Chip Gibbons. He’s policy director of the group Defending Rights and Dissent, and you can follow their work online at rightsanddissent.org.  Chip Gibbons, thank you so much as ever for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

The Democratic left is frustrated with Biden. How much could it matter?

By DAN BALZ
THE WASHINGTON POST • July 9, 2022

President Biden grows visibly angry while relating the story of a 10-year-old girl forced to travel to another state for an abortion after being impregnated by a rapist, in his remarks before signing an executive order on protecting access to reproductive health-care services. (Bill O’Leary/Washington Post)


WASHINGTON - Two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden stood in the Roosevelt Room in the White House on Friday to announce an executive order aimed at preserving, where possible, the right to an abortion. The moment illustrated the tension between the president and a portion of his party's base frustrated by his leadership.

The Democratic left sees their rights being rolled back, whether by the Supreme Court or Republican-held state legislatures, from abortion to guns to voting laws. They see a Republican Party poised to take control of the House and possibly the Senate in the November elections. They want both reaction and action - stronger and more forceful rhetoric from the president and more aggressive steps to counter the right. In their eyes, Biden, who in temperament and instinct is still as much a creature of the Senate as of the executive branch, has not risen to the challenge.

From the White House, there is a somewhat different perspective, that the complaints from progressives are both expected and acceptable, that this is normal buffeting of a president by an activist base in an effort to keep pushing him to do more. But in this formulation, Biden presides over a broader Democratic coalition that includes everyone from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the left to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on the right and must never forget the importance of that.

Whatever frustrations are being expressed about Biden's leadership, the view from the White House is that where it has counted most, in Congress, Biden has delivered major pieces of legislation with hopes for something more this summer, and that the president has held together a congressional coalition with fewer defections than either of his two Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. In a 50-50 Senate and a House where the Democratic majority is slender, even a few defections can be deadly, and that is part of the discontent - and disconnect - between the president and his Democratic critics.

The criticisms from the left fall into several categories. One is that Biden has lacked a consistent tone of anger and outrage over what is at risk and what is at stake at an unprecedented moment in American politics. At times he has risen to the occasion. At times, in the eyes of his detractors, he has not.

On the night of the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, Biden's anger was palpable, and his language reflected it: "Why are we willing to live with this carnage?" he exclaimed. That rhetoric may have contributed to the passage of the first major gun-safety legislation in decades.

But when a gunman killed seven people at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Ill., his initial words seemed unexpectedly tepid, at least in comparison to those of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), who gave voice to the fury of many Americans at the epidemic of gun violence.

On Friday, speaking about abortion, Biden attacked the high court's ruling in strong language, calling it "terrible, extreme and, I think, so totally wrongheaded." But while pointed and emotional in his criticism of the justices, the executive order Biden issued fell short of what some advocates had hoped for. Many of these advocates were also frustrated by the fact that the White House wasn't ready with a response on the day of the decision, given that a leaked draft of the majority opinion had been in circulation since May.

That goes to the second area of criticism of the president, which is that he has been unnecessarily restrained in what he has pushed for. That could reflect the real-world politics in which he lives: the knowledge that he and the Democrats have quite limited power to get their way on issues in the Senate and also that some of what he is proposing on abortion won't stand up to the expected legal challenges.

To his critics on the left, he should be more willing to take on the big fights, even losing ones, to put down markers, to show where he is trying to lead, to rally and mobilize voters, to show more explicitly that he understands the feelings and frustrations of many in his coalition. As Faiz Shakir, senior adviser to Sanders, put it: "Show me you're willing to be a disrupter, just as we've seen the right do. Give me politics that animate the fights I care about . . . and give me things I can touch, feel and see. . . . There is a desire to see bold fights and friction."

Ironically, at the beginning of his administration, Biden was being described by some supporters as the boldest Democratic president since Lyndon B. Johnson, perhaps since Franklin D. Roosevelt. He signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which put money in people's pockets, and later won bipartisan support for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package.

He also pushed for the multibillion dollar Build Back Better bill, with money for social programs and funding to combat climate change. It was with that bill, which stalled after months of negotiations, that the momentum was broken, and with that came a rising sense of frustration on the left.

Biden and the Democrats had no path on that bill or voting rights or immigration or much else on the progressive agenda, given opposition from Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. But one complaint from the left is that as the legislative process broke down, the president lost the thread of his message, that he was unable to sustain the idea that he has a progressive agenda and goals that match the aspirations of many of the critics in his party.

From the administration's perspective, some of this criticism feels like a repeat of what happened during the 2020 Democratic primaries: that the same people who were critical of him then as not rhetorically strong and not in tune with where his party was, are the ones who are most critical today. In the primaries, Biden fought it out - principally with Sanders - and prevailed; center-left trumping the left. His advisers believe that should suggest that the president's political instincts were sound then and are sound today, that he knows how to calibrate his words and actions, that he deals in political reality.

The counter to that is that the world has changed since those primaries. The pandemic happened. The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, happened. New voting laws have been enacted in some states. Threats to future elections have arisen. Rulings by the Supreme Court's new conservative majority happened. Mass shootings have continued. People are exhausted and on edge. They ask: Where is the passion, day in and day out, that reflects those changed circumstances and the new threats?

Biden has some obvious goals over the next weeks as the Democrats head toward the November elections. One is to win passage of a package that could lower the price of prescription drugs and possibly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Negotiations continue on Capitol Hill, though administration officials are not in the room in part because of strained relations with Manchin. Friday's strong jobs report gives Biden another talking point, though the combination of inflation and fears of a recession make it difficult to get a hearing on jobs alone.

The second is to use the abortion issue to mobilize voters to turn out in what is usually a low-turnout election. That was Biden's main message on Friday. Though he outlined the elements of the abortion executive order he was signing, his rhetoric focused principally on November - the importance of everyone voting and the consequences of not doing so. He called on women to lead that charge.

Changing laws, he said, requires more election victories, and that in turn demands a big turnout in November. No one can say with any certainty whether the decision to overturn Roe will dramatically change the trajectory of an election in which inflation remains the voters' principal concern and Biden's low approval ratings act as a drag on many Democratic candidates. For some activists that ignores the obvious problem: November is months away; the threats are immediate.

Biden and his liberal critics may never be on the same page. He is who he is and not likely to change. They have an agenda about which they feel passionate and have expectations for what they want in their president. Biden will need as much enthusiasm from his base as possible to boost Democrats' hopes of avoiding big losses in November, which also means as much enthusiasm for him personally as possible. He will be under pressure to lead, and lead forcefully. That's the challenge he asked for when he sought the office.

United by a hashtag: Inside the Christian nationalist organizers who mobilized Trump supporters for Jan. 6

Jordan Green, Staff Reporter
July 08, 2022

Capitol Insurrectionists (Shutterstock)

Six months before the 2020 election, Tomi Collins, a Christian right organizer from North Dakota, issued a demand on Twitter for the execution of political enemies in the federal government bureaucracy — citing an array of imagined offenses, including the QAnon hoax that progressive elites are harvesting children’s blood.

“#WeThe people demand incitements [sic] for #SpyGate #PizzaGate #UraniumOne #Adrenochrome,” she wrote. “#DeepState will be exposed and hung for treason. Even if we have to do it ourselves! #CoordinationMatters.”

Collins closed her digital call to arms with two more hashtags: #PatriotsMobilize and #1LoudVoice.

READ: Watch: Trump official who pushed the 'Big Lie' nabbed by cops in his underwear

Collins serves as executive director of a little-known Christian right outfit called America Restored. Collins has described America Restored, which is organized as a private corporation, as a vehicle for providing strategic consulting and funding to grassroots organizers.

As early as January 2018, less than a year into the Trump administration, Collins was warning followers on Facebook Live about “voter machine fraud,” and foreign election interference, while specifically referencing Dominion Voting Systems. Her description of a plan “to cheat” in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections uncannily anticipated public claims by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell that have prompted a defamation lawsuit against the two attorneys who litigated President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Collins’ role as a key, if overlooked, organizer in the sprawling network of operatives and influencers highlights the role of Christian nationalism in a movement that remains committed to overturning the 2020 election and vanquishing political opposition. Many of the tenets of a hyper-partisan version of Christianity — entwined with syncretic strains of the QAnon cult — were voiced by the far-right organizers who galvanized defiance of the 2020 election results, including some who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The mission statement for America Restored, prominently displayed on its website’s landing page, clearly describes the work of the organization led by Collins: “America Restored is ‘We The People’ building a powerful, action-driven infrastructure by organizing and mobilizing existing, effective patriot groups and freedom-loving Americans in all major areas of influence: Education, Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment and Media.”

The mission statement ends with a pledge that inaccurately conflates the organization’s vision of a Christian theocracy with an originalist view of the country: “We The People will see America restored to our founders’ original intent.”

America Restored’s mission statement explicitly references Seven Mountains dominionism, a far-right Christian ideology that emerged in the mid-1970s. It holds that Christians are called on by God to dominate all realms of civil society, including government.

Katherine Stewart, author of the 2020 book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, described Seven Mountains dominionism in an email to Raw Story as “the conviction that Christians of a certain hyper-conservative variety are called by God to dominate the main peaks of modern civilization in the United States and, ultimately, the world.”

C. Peter Wagner, one of the ideology’s key proponents, preached that Christians’ responsibility for taking over “whatever molder of culture or subdivision God has placed them in” is a matter of “taking dominion back from Satan,” according to Stewart.

America Restored’s grafting of Seven Mountains dominionism ideology onto a claim of restoring the original republic represents a fundamental misreading of the founders’ intent, Stewart told Raw Story. Stewart cited appeals to reason and deistic or atheistic philosophy as underpinning the thinking of founders such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. But even more important than what the founders thought, she said, is the question of what kind of government they established.

“Was it a government that derives its legitimacy from its appeal to Christian revelation, or from its endorsement by Christian ecclesiastical authorities?” Stewart wrote. “The answer to that is no. America’s founders established the world’s first large-scale modern secular republic.”

READ: Trump fake elector was visited by FBI — but still may be ousted for not election denying enough: report

Four days after the 2020 election, Collins spoke at a “Stand With Trump Rally” at the North Dakota state capitol in Bismarck. Collins told the crowd she had been contacted by the Trump campaign’s legal team and had attended “meetings with intelligence folks.” Raw Story has not been able to verify these claims independently.

“It’s an amazing day when you get to stand and go from a conspiracy theorist to getting called up by the campaign and attorneys all over the country saying, ‘What about those voting machines? What’s going on in them?’” Collins said. “Hey, let’s go. We’ve got some lawsuits to do.”

Collins went on to describe a plan to “mobilize all 50 states” for rallies that would augment the lawsuits with continuous public pressure to overturn the election results.

“We worked in conjunction with Stop the Steal to get folks at capitols in every single state in the union so we the people could be heard,” Collins later recalled in an interview for a far-right podcast, referencing the coalition led by Ali Alexander.

Felisa Blazek, a New Hampshire-based event planner, described a markedly similar effort.

“I had started the 50-state rallies with — actually ahead of Ali,” Blazek told an interviewer the following summer. “And Ali, having all of his width and breadth of followers — although he’s gone into hiding — God used him in that way, right? God used Cain and God used Abel. He sends out someone who has a much bigger presence on social media than myself. God’s calling for me was to be a base cheerleader, not a main player. So, we’re doing these 50-state rallies at all the capitols every Saturday after the steal of the November election.”

It is unclear whether Collins and Blazek worked together on the effort to mobilize Trump supporters for the rallies, and neither woman responded to repeated requests for interviews. But language used by the two women in interviews to promote their projects and on websites for their respective organizations — including the #1LoudVoice hashtag and Seven Mountains dominionism ideology — bear striking similarities.

The #1LoudVoice hashtag was used in Collins’ social media beginning in May 2020 and has also been prominently displayed on the America Restored website. Meanwhile, a tab on the website ThePatriotParty.rocks, which promotes events organized by Blazek, includes the heading “Our Mission: #1LoudVoice.” The mission statement includes a “call to action,” declaring it is “time to rise up in unity, go into the harvest and take our country back.” The statement continues: “We are assembling to organizing and mobilizing [sic] existing Patriots groups [sic] in all major areas of influence by a national digital communication platform and network influencing all seven (7) spheres of influence: Education, Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment, Media.”

The page includes a link to a separate site listing “coalition members,” including Virginia Freedom Keepers and Latinos for Trump, two of the groups that hosted a MAGA Freedom Rally one block from the US Capitol on Jan. 6; and 1st Amendment Praetorian, a security group associated with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn that provided personal security details for speakers at several rallies and assisted attorney Sidney Powell with research on purported election fraud.

And although it is unclear what role, if any, Blazek had in organizing the Dec. 12, 2020 Jericho March that helped build momentum for Jan. 6, a photo gallery is displayed under the “Events” tab on the ThePatriotParty.rocks website, with images of Flynn, InfoWars host Alex Jones, and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

Using Seven Mountains dominionism language in an interview to promote a two-day Patriot Party event at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Arizona two weeks before the 2020 election, Blazek avoided any mention of Christianity while highlighting defiance of mask mandates during the COVID pandemic.

“The seven spheres of influence to me and what I am trying to rally around are organizing people in education, family, faith, business, government, entertainment and media,” she said. “Underneath all of those are health and medical because health and medical touch each one of those. It doesn’t get its own sphere; it’s that magical bridge.”


Blazek had hoped to secure a special appearance by Flynn and his family, whom she described as “the tip of the spear in our movement,” for the gathering, but had to settle for his sister, Barbara Redgate. Other guests included Cowboys for Trump, led by Otero County, NM County Commissioner Couy Griffin.

Folded into the Patriot Party, the Q Con Live! gathering organized by Chris Jacobson commandeered a conference room at the Arizona resort.

Blazek described her radicalization during a joint appearance with Jacobson on a QAnon podcast in June 2020. She said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon provided an initial jolt, but in early 2020 she said a friend prodded her to look into a conspiracy theory associated with the Sovereign Citizen movement that posits that the British crown holds the originals of American birth certificates. That led her to research the Federal Reserve, she said, prompting a weekslong quest to sources that predate Christ, until, Blazek said, she “worked my way back up to the heart of the issue, and landed with the corruption of the Deep State and how everything’s really been a lie.”

While promoting QAnon, Jacobson expressed a more conventional view of religious nationalism in response to a question about the role of religious leaders in the United States’ civic life.

“And we need to get back to being one nation under God, so that He will continue to bless us,” Jacobson said. “Our founding fathers all, whether they were Christian or not, they understood and said that if we don’t have a higher power — in other words, God — that this whole experiment, this United States of America, would fail.”

Blazek, in turn, affirmed a “spiritual, but not religious” outlook, and expressed a QAnon slogan as a central tenet of her faith.

“I really feel like our statement, ‘Where we go one, we go all,’ represents the true God,” she said. “The true and one God — our God.”

During the Q Con Live! conference, Alan Hostetter, an anti-lockdown activist from southern California, told attendees: “We are at war right now…. Nobody wants violence. We are conditioned from the time we are children to always think violence is a horrible, horrible thing, until we go back and reflect on the Revolutionary War. They picked up guns at some point, and said, ‘Enough!’”

Hostetter would later recall in a court filing that when he sat down after his speech, he noticed a man dressed in headgear and horns carrying a sign that read “Q sent me” enter the back of the conference room and stand in the back. It was Jacob Chansley, who would later gain infamy as the “QAnon Shaman” when he stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Hostetter faces charges of his own, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, due to his role in the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Griffin was found guilty of entering restricted grounds and sentenced to time served.

Griffin told Raw Story that he met Chansley “at the event in Scottsdale,” and that after their arrests the two men were housed in adjacent jail cells.

Reflecting on the awkward commingling of Christianity and QAnon, Griffin told an interviewer last fall: “I spent all my time witnessing to [Chansley] about Christ and about how he needs to put his faith in Jesus because he’s, in my opinion, and by scripture, he’s lost in that account.”

Griffin told Raw Story that he first met Blazek at the Patriot Party event in Scottsdale, and that since then he has come to know her “as a great patriot.”

“Felisa’s a good person; she’s an organizer,” Griffin said. “To make it look like she’s organizing a violent uprising — that’s what the American people are sick of. People are getting tired of the fake news.”

Many of Trump’s supporters involved in the effort to overturn the election — both before and after Nov. 3, 2020 — used language of “good” and “evil,” and even “war,” as a call to action.

“It’s not left and right, it’s not red and blue,” said David Sumrall, an organizer with the pro-Trump group Stop Hate during an interview with Redgate to promote her appearance at the October 2020 event in Scottsdale. “It’s good and evil…. It’s just real deal. And I’ve told people this a hundred times if I’ve said it once: Until we put the cross next to the flag again, this is a holy war we can’t win.”

A week before the election, Stop Hate posted a video of Daniel Goodwyn speaking at a rally in San Francisco on the group’s Instagram page.

“They’re Satanists and pedophiles,” said Goodwyn. “They’re disgusting. And we have God on our side. And Trump’s gonna win. The only thing standing in our way is the corruption, because they’re gonna try to steal the election via fraud.” Goodwyn, who shared a social media post promoting the Proud Boys and President Trump’s instruction to “stand back, stand by,” live-streamed his participation in the storming of the Capitol, and faces charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct, among other offenses.

A month after the election, white supremacist Nick Fuentes addressed Trump supporters at a “Stop the Steal” rally outside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Phoenix.

“This is not simply a political struggle, as I’m sure all of you know,” Fuentes said. “The real struggle is not between Republicans and Democrats. The real struggle is between good and evil. This is a spiritual war. It is a spiritual war between the devil and the children of Jesus Christ.” Video of Fuentes’ speech was amplified on social media by Goodwyn and Stop Hate.

Stewart, the author of the Power Worshipers, said extremism that rejects the idea that people can disagree without dehumanizing their opponents isn’t compatible with democracy.

“A large-scale political movement that believes that any deviation is illegitimate, and that political opponents are literally controlled by demons puts democracy in peril,” she said.

As Jan. 6, 2021 approached, #1LoudVoice became a mobilizing call for Trump supporters to pressure Congress to block the certification of Joe Biden as the next president.

Felisa Blazek hosted a conference call on Dec. 30, 2020. The guest, a social media strategist named Jason Sullivan who had worked with Trump confidant Roger Stone during the 2016 election, urged listeners to “descend on the Capitol.”

During the call, one of the listeners asked Sullivan what group he was with.

“I am not with a group,” Sullivan said. Blazek interjected and Sullivan amended his statement.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Thank you for correcting me. I just joined with #1LoudVoice. Yes, Felisa’s fantastic and I greatly admire her.”

Jordan Green covers extremism for Raw Story. A Kentucky native, he now lives in North Carolina, where he spent 16 years writing for alt-weeklies and freelancing for the Washington Post and other publications.

Pete Buttigieg buries Fox News host for whining about Kavanaugh protests

David Edwards

RAW STORY
July 10, 2022

Fox News/screen grab

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg faced down a Fox News host who complained about peaceful protests against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over abortion rights.

During an interview on Fox News, host Mike Emmanuel asked Buttigieg if it was "appropriate" for demonstrators to protest outside a restaurant where Kavanaugh was dining.

Buttigieg acknowledged that public officials "should always be free from violence."

"You're never going to be free from criticism or peaceful protests, people exercising their First Amendment rights," the Transporation secretary pointed out


Buttigieg talked over Emmanuel as he tried to interrupt.

"That's what happened in this case," he explained. "Remember, the justice never even came into contact with these protesters, reportedly didn't see or hear them. And these protesters are upset because a right, an important right that the majority of Americans support was taken away."

Emmanuel tried to interrupt again but the secretary ignored him.

"Not only the right to choose by the way," Buttigieg continued, "but this justice was part of the process of stripping away the right to privacy. Since I've been alive, settled case law in the United States has been that the Constitution protected the right to privacy and that has now been thrown out the window by justices, including Justice Kavanaugh, who as I recall, swore up and down in front of God and everyone including the United States Congress that they were going to leave settled case law alone. So yes, people are upset. They're going to exercise their First Amendment rights."

"Compare that, for example, to the reality that as a country right now we are reckoning with the fact that a mob summoned by the former president..." he added before Emmanuel spoke up.

"Let me follow up," the Fox News host said while the Biden official ignored him.

"...to the United States Capitol for the purpose of overthrowing the election and very nearly succeeded in preventing the peaceful transfer of power," he argued. "I think common sense can tell the difference."

Emmanuel made the mistake of asking a follow-up question.

"But as a high-profile public figure, sir, are you comfortable with protesters protesting when you and your husband go to dinner at a restaurant?" the Fox News host wondered.

"Protesting peacefully outside in a public space? Sure," he responded. "Look, I can't even tell you the number of spaces, venues and scenarios where I've been protested. And the bottom line is this. Any public figure should always -- always -- be free from violence, intimidation and harassment. But should never be free from criticism or people exercising their First Amendment rights."