The Feuding Little Christian Fiefdoms of the Trump Administration

Posted on by Sarah Posner

In Church, Merch, and State, Sarah Posner writes about the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

From AI blasphemies to attacks on the papacy to prayers from the filmography of Quentin Tarantino, the Trump administration has managed to pack what feels like a year’s worth of breaking religion news into the past week. Since Sunday, when Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as a healing Jesus Christ and then bizarrely attacked Pope Leo XIV as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” matters have escalated, or rather descended, into greater depths of what many Catholics and Christians would consider rank heresy. Reacting to the Pope’s criticisms of the Iran War, Vice President JD Vance, speaking at a sparsely attended Turning Point USA event in Georgia on Tuesday, lectured that “it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” and questioned the Augustinian pope’s understanding of, well, St. Augustine. On Wednesday, at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offered a prayer for “great vengeance and furious anger” that was derived from a fictitious elaboration on Ezekiel 25:17 by Jules Winnfield, the character played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. 

It is easy to get distracted by  the bonkers content creation, but we should not lose sight of the fact that the First Amendment proscribes government establishment of religion, even if the founders could not imagine AI or dark Hollywood crime comedies, much less their misappropriation to wage an illegal war. The Trump regime has a preferred religion — a bellicose, nationalist Christianity — but its expression, as we saw this week, can be very erratic and often theologically incomprehensible. But one thing is clear from all the chaos. The Trumpist establishment of religion is made up of various fiefdoms within the federal government, all aimed at protecting, and even justifying, the regime’s impunity.

Continue reading “The Feuding Little Christian Fiefdoms of the Trump Administration” →

Understanding What ‘Inflation’ Really Means in Electoral Terms

Posted on by Josh Marshall

In the middle years of the Biden administration there was an idea that right-wing dominance of the media ecosystem, or simply social media breaking people’s brains, had blinded people to the fact that inflation was actually coming down fast. Indeed, by the time the 2024 election came around, inflation had come down dramatically and was close to what economists consider optimal — between 2% and 4%. (For all the ribbing economists took about predicting the COVID inflation would be “transitory” by any historical metric, it was.) Yet most people refused to believe that inflation had, in fact, been subdued. And “affordability” continues to be the political buzzword of the day going into the 2026 midterm elections. But this always struck me as a basic failure of analysis, imagining that the public at large and economists mean the same thing by inflation. They don’t. That should be obvious. And it probably is obvious to most of us. But a lot of us, including myself for at least part of the time, failed to draw out the proper conclusions.

Continue reading “Understanding What ‘Inflation’ Really Means in Electoral Terms” →

Trump, Grassley Publicly Speculate About Alito Replacements

Posted on by Kate Riga

‘I Hope He Doesn’t Retire … But If He Does …’

As the end of the Supreme Court term inches closer, Republicans’ nudging of Justice Samuel Alito toward the exits has become more public.

President Trump broached the topic for the first time Wednesday on Fox News.

Continue reading “Trump, Grassley Publicly Speculate About Alito Replacements” →

‘He Just Lied to America’: Russ Vought Denies Violating Impoundment Laws, Prompting Sharp Response

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Despite his central role in the Trump administration, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought had not appeared before Congress to answer questions since last June. That changed this week. And members of Congress had a lot of them.

Continue reading “‘He Just Lied to America’: Russ Vought Denies Violating Impoundment Laws, Prompting Sharp Response” →

Mike Lindell Won’t Let a Pesky Contempt of Court Finding Get Him Down

Posted on by Khaya Himmelman

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!

There’s a lot to discuss this week, but first a little check-in with our favorite pillow maven-turned-election conspiracy theorist, and now also a Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate (ugh, yes, this is still happening), Mike Lindell. 

Lindell was held in contempt of court late last month by a Trump-appointed federal judge for not paying over $50,000 in sanctions to Smartmatic related to Lindell’s “frivolous” lawsuit against the voting machine company. The court has ordered Lindell to pay Smartmatic additional fees if he fails to comply.  

I asked Lindell about this and how the order might impact his gubernatorial run. He had a lot to say, mostly focused on his ongoing fight against voting machines and the supposedly stolen 2020 election. 

“I will not back down at all,” he told me. “We’re still going all the way to court. These will end up in trial years from now. It’s still not to trial. I’m taking it all the way to jury trial because we have to save our country.”

We really must give the man credit for his undying devotion to the Big Lie.

If the election system is so unsafe, how do you expect to run for governor and trust the results of the election, I asked him. I never got a solid answer to this one, unfortunately.

Here’s what he did say, though. 

“The people know that I’ve been out there, that I’m fighting to save our country … and like I say, I’ve had more problems with Republicans blocking me than Democrats, for sure. All the people want secure elections.” 

“The fraud’s really a blessing in Minnesota because now we can get stuff opened up and, and show the…Minnesota’s kind of the tip of the spear with all the fraud in our welfare programs,” he concluded, incoherently nodding at a current right-wing fixation with social services fraud in Minnesota that is being investigated but also used as a justification for President Trump’s lethal immigration enforcement and suspension of federal funding there. 

Anyway, that’s all from Lindell for now… 

There’s a lot more to unpack. Let’s dive in. 

An Election Denier is Trying to Run the Show in Arizona

GOP Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, who is an election denier running for attorney general, is asking the Justice Department to investigate the person whose job he wants, Attorney General Kris Mayes, as well as Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats. He claims they should be investigated for obstruction of justice and witness tampering related to the DOJ’s investigation into 2020 election records.

Let’s back up a little bit first. 

In March, the Trump administration expanded its supposed 2020 election probe to Maricopa County, Arizona, which has been a hotbed for election conspiracy theories for years now due to the size of the county and the fact that it is purple. 

Following the 2020 election, Arizona state Senate Republicans initiated a very obviously partisan “audit” of the 2.1 million ballots cast and the 400 voting machines used in Maricopa County. The “audit” was very much not an audit, but a partisan election review that election deniers insisted on, even though the state had conducted several official audits that found no evidence of fraud.

The administration is now looking into records from this “audit” — as all of Trump’s cronies in his administration look for ways to examine his delusion that the 2020 election was stolen from him. 

Petersen had no issue complying with the subpoena last month. 

After the state Senate received the subpoena, Mayes and Fontes sprinted to send out letters,  warning county recorders to not hand over sensitive data to the DOJ as part of this 2020 election probe.  

Mayes also sent a letter to Petersen at the time, asking him if he had handed over voter registration information to the DOJ that is “not generally available for public inspection,” according to the Arizona Mirror. 

Petersen, of course, had an issue with all of this, and is now asking for federal prosecutors to investigate Mayes and Fontes for not complying with the federal grand jury subpoena. It’s absurd on its face because Petersen is trying to unseat Mayes for attorney general, so there are clearly some other motives involved here!

“The threats of the Attorney General and Secretary of State are incompatible with the United States Constitution, which enshrines the grand jury in our constitutional order, and only serve to hinder voters’ confidence in our elections. Instead of fighting over these issues, we should all be working together to ensure the election integrity necessary to realize our country’s democratic promise,” Petersen wrote in an April 7 letter. “The Attorney General and Secretary’s phobia of fair and secure elections is impossible to explain absent nefarious motives.”

Mayes, in response to Petersen, issued a statement of her own that same day, railing against the years-old “audit”  and pointing out that Petersen is simply caving to Trump’s will. 

“After wasting taxpayer dollars on the laughable Cyber Ninja’s audit, Petersen again wasted Arizona’s taxpayer dollar on a legal opinion that painstakingly tries to justify his failure to uphold Arizona’s constitutional right to protect its voters’ privacy,” she wrote. “This is yet another example of Petersen desperately seeking favor from a president who cannot accept that he lost his re-election in 2020 fair and square. Arizonans will not be fooled.”

Another Update in the DOGE Voter Data Agreement Saga

We have some updates in the ongoing DOGE Social Security Administration voter data pact saga.

For a quick refresher: in January the DOJ admitted that in a March 2025 court filing that two members of the DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration signed a pact with an “advocacy group” to use Social Security data as a way to find voter fraud to overturn election results in specific states.

The legal nonprofit organization Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration last month to get the agency to turn over records related to this apparent pact for sensitive voter data. 

Last week, a federal appeals court called the details of the case “alarming” and said there are “even more alarming” developments in the case that a lower court must examine.

“The government’s recent acknowledgments are alarming and raise serious questions about its earlier conduct before the district court,” the appeals court order read. 

Only days later on Tuesday, per Democracy Docket, a federal judge ordered discovery in the case, meaning that the SSA and DOGE could be mandated to turn over records and we might actually get some more clarity on what happened here. 

So, stay tuned for more. 

Around the States: The Latest in State-Level Proof of Citizenship Bills

While the SAVE America Act languishes in the Senate and Republicans in both chambers try to figure out they might potentially stuff provisions of the SAVE Act into an unrelated potential reconciliation package (they likely won’t be able to get away with this), red states around the country are attempting to pass their own versions of disenfranchising proof of citizenship bills. Here’s the latest: 

Florida

Earlier this month, GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Florida SAVE Act into law. The bill requires voters to provide proof of citizenship as part of the basic registration process.

Kansas

Last week, the Republican-controlled Kansas state legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of The SAVE Kansas Act, which is also modeled after the SAVE America Act.  

Kelly has said that the bill would “suppress civic engagement and make it harder for Kansans to vote.”

Mississippi

Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed The Mississippi SHIELD Act into law earlier this month. The law, also modeled after the SAVE America Act, mandates that election officials check citizenship status of voters using the federal SAVE system run out of the Department of Homeland Security.

In Other Election News

Washington Post: A GOP-aligned group is using Klan imagery to target Black voters

ProPublica: Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections 

AP: Gov. Wes Moore falls short in push to redraw Maryland’s congressional map to boost Democrats

Politico: ‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend Alaska’s crucial Senate race

Hegseth to Reporters: Whose Side Are You On?

Posted on by David Kurtz

Compares Press to the Pharisees

A thin-skinned and prickly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went off on journalists in his press conference this morning, resorting to the classic “attack the messenger” defense to a unpopular war going poorly.

It’s not the first time Hegseth has succumbed to blaming a lack of patriotism among reporters for unfavorable headlines and critical reporting on a Middle East conflict ignited by the Trump administration. But today’s screed was striking for how it mixed the old worn-out reflexive questioning of the loyalty of reporters with biblical references that reflect Hegseth’s personal Christian nationalism:

Hegseth: "To the American media, I just can't help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling…Sometimes it's hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on. It's incredibly unpatriotic."

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-04-16T12:39:31.859Z

“Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” Hegseth said. “It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”

In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon had haltingly moved away from the defensive crouch it often took in the face of criticism toward a more transparent and self-reflective public response to bad news. It was not always consistent and the backsliding was dramatic during periods of sustained setbacks, like in Iraq during the aughts, but the general trajectory was away from the kind of knee-jerk circle-the-wagons approach that Hegseth rolled out this morning.

Questioning the loyalty of journalists — or any regime critics — harkens to earlier dark eras of America history and to authoritarian regimes worldwide. But Hegseth’s diatribe came with a strong Christian twist, as he compared journalists to the Pharisees who rejected Jesus in the Bible:

“The Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to record, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter,” Hegseth said.

“They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him,” he continued.

“I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he added.

Hegseth — callow, reactive, driven by a warped theology of nationalism, and poorly grounded in history — personally represents a dramatic break from decades of training, education, and refining of a professional officers corps. In 15 months in office, Hegseth has done more to politicize the military than any secretary of defense in at least the last half century.

Third Boat Strike in Three Days

The accelerated pace of unlawful strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats continued in the eastern Pacific, with the third such strike in the last three days. Three people were killed in the 51st strike of the U.S. campaign, bringing the death toll to at least 177 people.

What Trump Foreign Policy Looks Like

  • USA Today: Pentagon ramps up planning for possible military ops in Cuba
  • WSJ: Pentagon Approaches Automakers, Manufacturers to Boost Weapons Production
  • WaPo: Trump administration pushes nations to sign ‘trade over aid’ declaration

SCOTUS Watch

  • Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized privately to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and followed up with a public apology released by the Supreme Court for remarks last week that, without naming him, attributed his defense of what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops” to his posh upbringing.
  • In a public appearance at Yale Law School, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the Roberts Court’s handling of its emergency docket.
  • In unusually pointed remarks carried live by CSPAN, Justice Clarence Thomas launched a broadside at progressivism.

Jan. 6 Never Ends

  • Trump lawyer and coup plotter John Eastman was officially disbarred in California after the state Supreme Court declined to take up his appeal.
  • Trump I White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is seeking reimbursement from the Trump DOJ of his legal fees incurred as a witness in both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations.

Must Read

Heather Cox Richardson draws a straight line from Lincoln’s assassination to Jan. 6 and the events of this week.

Do as We Say Not as We Do

NBC News: “Anti-abortion advocates met with Justice Department officials Wednesday, just hours after the Trump administration fired prosecutors it accused of coordinating too closely with abortion-rights advocacy groups during the Biden administration.”

Election-Year Islamophobia

When all else fails and their election prospects look dire, Republicans fall back on various forms of racist appeals to solidify their base and wrong-foot Democrats. This year, top Texas Republicans have landed on Islamophobia as the racist appeal of choice. TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on the ground from Grapevine, Texas, where he talks to right-wing activists who are back again to warning about Sharia law and portraying Muslims as an external threat to “real” Americans.

Too often, gullible national media outlets treat these racist effusions like an organic upwelling of nativism, rather than a calculated election year strategy. TPM, I’m proud to say, has never been suckered in.

Thread of the Day

The Corruption: Bitcoin Jesus Edition

ProPublica offers a casebook study in the erosion of white-collar crime prosecutions under Trump II that includes the intervention of DOJ political appointees and the retention of a former Trump criminal defense attorney to outright kill one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases.

Creepy Text of the Day

“Hearing u/r in town. Wishing you would let me know. I could have made some excuses to get out and show u around. Please keep this private.”—Richard Chavez, father of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, in a text to a young female staff member working for his daughter

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

Flailing Republicans Pivot to a Throwback Rallying Cry: ‘Sharia Law’

Posted on by John Light

There is a lot that has Republicans divided right now. Is it actually good to demand the pope stay in his lane? JD Vance thinks so. Catholics aren’t so sure. Is it actually good for the president to post a picture of himself as the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Evangelicals aren’t so sure. Is there some irony in a president who campaigned on opposition to forever wars launching attacks that kill the leadership of a powerful country of 93 million? There may be. Are young Republicans and right-wing influencers too antisemitic, or, in fact, not antisemitic enough? Opinions among the increasingly Groyperfied class of up-and-coming GOP staffers vary.

It’s against this backdrop that we have Josh Kovensky’s piece this morning, which finds Republicans in Texas doing a hard pivot to Bush II-type freakouts about “Sharia law” as a way to get the base energized and juice turnout in Texas’ Republican primaries and runoffs — and, they hope, ultimately in the midterms. With so much dividing Republicans, Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott, activists throughout the state and beyond have found it prudent to take their bigotry back to the basics and focus on ginned up claims of a fake Islamic threat. Texas’ Muslim residents are the collateral damage.

This piece follows another, related Josh K. dispatch from Texas, looking at conservative influencers’ attempts to stoke panic around a growing Dallas-area Indian community. (To support more of this on-the-ground journalism, become a member!)

Inside Texas Republicans’ Effort to Make the Midterms About Islamophobia

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

GRAPEVINE, TX – On a cold spring morning in this tony Dallas suburb, dozens of activists had heard the call. They had read the posts; they understood the stakes: America was in crisis, facing a threat from within. It was time for action, and time to take a 5 a.m. bus to the state capital to protest Sharia law. 

Continue reading “Inside Texas Republicans’ Effort to Make the Midterms About Islamophobia” →

Vought Still Thinks Trump Admin Doesn’t Have to Listen to How Congress Allocates Money

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has been undermining Congress and its constitutional power of the purse since President Donald Trump came back to office last year. 

While congressional Republicans have done a lot to help erode Congress’ power as a check on the executive branch during Trump II, Vought has made their authority-ceding easy. 

Continue reading “Vought Still Thinks Trump Admin Doesn’t Have to Listen to How Congress Allocates Money” →