Donald Trump

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The Focus on the Family founder released his endorsement on July 21, hours before Trump was set to take the stage to accept his party’s nomination on the last night of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
The Republican National Convention kicked off its final event Thursday in Cleveland, Ohio. Who attends conventions, and what are their priorities for the party in the 2016 elections and beyond? Sojourners Web and Multimedia Associate JP Keenan takes us behind the scenes and through the crowds on the last day of the convention.
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Pence's unusual faith mix has shaped him as a politician.

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Donald Trump takes pride in rattling the GOP establishment, but he faces a major roadblock on the way to the White House.
Catholic voters, who have been key to picking the winning ticket in almost every modern election, reject Trump decisively. In 2012, President Obama won the overall Catholic vote 50 percent to 48 percent. Hillary Clinton now leads 56 percent to 39 percent, a sizable gap unlikely to close much by November.

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In a section titled “Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary,” Republicans say they “condemn” the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage the law of the land. Religious conservatives from several denominations also have opposed this ruling as the work of “activist judges,” a charge and a term echoed in the platform.

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CIA Director John Brennan said that if the next president ordered the CIA to resume waterboarding, he would resign, reports The Week.
Waterboarding was banned by President Obama in a 2009 executive order, but the order could theoretically be reversed.

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Donald Trump can’t let it go.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has faced days of pointed criticism for a Twitter attack on Hillary Clinton that used an image that looked like the Star of David and appeared to deploy anti-Semitic stereotypes.

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Although the FBI found no clear evidence that she intended to violate the law, FBI Director James Comey said Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" in their handling of classified information.
Donald Trump’s flagging presidential bid is enjoying a boost of that old-time religion after conservative Christian leaders gave the candidate high praise and standing ovations at a critical closed-door meeting that one observer described as a “campaign rally.”

Donald Trump addresses supporters at the Peabody Opera House in Downtown St. Louis in March. Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.com
Mr. Trump, you had a meeting today and invited almost 1,000 Christians to it. From the reports so far, the people you asked to come were overwhelmingly white, old, evangelical, conservative men. There were lots of other evangelicals that you didn’t invite — even some old, white, evangelical men like me — who have raised questions that you have yet to answer. In my opinion, you should have invited more black, brown, young evangelical women and men, from a broader spectrum of political perspectives; I imagine you would have been asked some better questions.

Michelle Bachmann. Photo via Flickr / Gage Skidmore
This is it — these are the people who will serve as Donald Trump's evangelical advisers for the next 140 days leading up to election day, and perhaps even longer.

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Heading into Donald Trump’s meeting with hundreds of conservative Christian leaders, mostly evangelicals, in New York on June 21, it was clear not all Christians have lined up behind him.
Not even all traditionally conservative evangelicals.

Donald Trump salutes supporters at the Peabody Opera House in Downtown St. Louis in March.Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.com
While evangelicals have traditionally been an important part of the Republican base, Trump’s candidacy has exposed some fissures. The combination of questionable investments, vulgar and hateful rhetoric, widely-publicized affairs, and Biblical illiteracy has caused some evangelical leaders to denounce Trump, even as others have voiced their support.

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Donald Trump, who has proposed a moratorium on Muslim immigration into the United States and possible surveillance of mosques, is now talking about “profiling” Muslims as a response to terrorism.
“I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country,” Trump said on CBS’ Face The Nation.

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A group of Republicans in the House of Representatives is working on legislation to ban all refugees from settling in the United States, reports Foreign Policy.
While the proposed legislation sounds similar to Donald Trump’s proposal to block immigration from all “areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism,” the refugee ban makes no distinctions based on country of origin.

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White evangelical Christians, a crucial bloc of Republican voters, are backing likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump by a wide margin over Hillary Clinton but their support is significantly lower than for previous Republican candidates.
That relatively tepid faith-based endorsement could wind up undermining Trump’s chances for victory in November.

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When presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump meets behind closed doors next week with conservative Christians from across the country, no one expects a coronation.
But neither will there be an inquisition, according to organizers.
Even considering his infamous call to shut down Muslim immigration after the San Bernardino shooting, and the time he called Mexican immigrants rapists, Trump may have just delivered the most xenophobic speech of his campaign.
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Email: mmershon@sojo.net
While many Republicans — even those who support Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee — are going on the record condemning Trump's recent attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, saying the federal judge cannot be impartial in the Trump University civil fraud lawsuits because of his "Mexican heritage." House Speaker Paul Ryan, who just last week announced his support, said Trump's comments were "out of left field," and that he "completely disagree[s] with the thinking behind that."