trump
The walls are covered in shiplap paneling. Over by the spare toilet paper, an essential oil diffuser hums quietly as it emits Young Living’s “Purification” into the air. Two wide-eyed Precious Moments figurines watch you from the windowsill. A framed Bible verse declares, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” but you already knew you were in the bathroom of a white Christian woman; the signs and wonders were all around you. In Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, Kristin Kobes Du Mez dissects those signs—and their political implications.
Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University, landed on The New York Times’ bestseller list for Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, her scorching dissection of white evangelical masculinity. With Live Laugh Love, Du Mez turns her eye to white Christian femininity. Because, “demographically speaking, women are the center of American Christianity,” writes Du Mez, “we should look beyond denominational seminaries and theological treatises and read Christian romance novels instead.”
Amazon Prime’s The Boys wrapped up its fifth and final season last week, and its overarching theme was: faith. After becoming the de facto CEO of Vought and president of the United States, antagonist Homelander—a narcissistic Superman foil, wrapped in the American flag and played to perfection by Antony Starr—still isn’t satisfied.
Craving what he’s craved since lab birth—unconditional love and devotion with no expectation of anything in return—he declares himself a god and uses Vought’s media machinery to convince the American public of his divinity. Guided by visions of his former boss, Madelyn Stillwell—a Mary-esque mother-figure who, before he murdered her in Season One, used to breastfeed him—he ultimately decides to kill (“cleanse”) anyone who doesn’t “in their heart of hearts” believe in his divinity.
DONALD TRUMP’S APPROVAL ratings are hitting all-time lows, even among white evangelicals. One month into his second term, 55% of evangelicals were “extremely or very confident Trump acts ethically in office.” One year later, that has dropped to 40%.
At long last, could evangelical Christians be coming around to the idea that the 34-count felon president might not be the Christ conduit they hoped? If you are one of those disillusioned Christians, welcome to the other side! It’s not any more fun over here (ICE watches and doomscrolling really eat into hobby time), but at least the food and music are more flavorful.
President Donald Trump is one of many high-profile conservatives taking part in a marathon Bible reading this week, with Trump’s reading of 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 airing on Tuesday night.
“America Reads the Bible,” organized by the nonprofit Christians Engaged, began on April 18 and runs through April 25. Trump recorded his reading of the 2 Chronicles passage last week, reading directly into the camera from his seat in the Oval Office. His reading will be livestreamed and aired at the Museum of the Bible.
Incidentally, his recording was made shortly after Trump’s first Truth Social post attacking Pope Leo XIV and his AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. Trump, who later deleted the post, claimed he thought it depicted him as a doctor. The post was controversial enough to raise the ire of even stalwart supporters like conservative Christian activists Candance Owens and Sean Feucht.
Police on Thursday were investigating a bomb threat made to the Chicago-area home of Pope Leo’s brother John Prevost after a search found no explosives or hazardous materials.
A bomb threat was reported Wednesday evening at the home of John Prevost in New Lenox, Illinois, according to media outlets that cited police. Prevost lives on the same street cited as the location of the attack by police. New Lenox police did not return a call for comment on the report.
The Justice Department accused the Biden administration of unfairly prosecuting anti-abortion activists the day after it fired at least four attorneys who were involved in prosecuting those cases.
The accusations come in the first report from the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group,” which has been tasked with going after law enforcement officials who have investigated President Donald Trump, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former special counsel Jack Smith.
The report defends Trump’s mass pardoning of 23 people who were convicted under the Biden administration for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act. The law prohibits obstructing people from entering medical centers and was passed in 1994 after a spate of violence against abortion providers, including the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn.
On Monday, Pope Leo XIV responded to ranting criticisms from President Donald Trump, saying in part that he had no interest in being perceived as a politician.
“The message of the church, my message, the message of the gospel: Blessed are the peacemakers,” Leo told journalists as he arrived in Algeria. “I do not look at my role as being political, a politician.”
Trump attacked Leo late Sunday night as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” at the beginning of a lengthy post on Truth Social.
“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States,” he wrote. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” The president also posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, though he later deleted the post and claimed he thought it was him as a “doctor … a Red Cross worker.”
At the beginning of 2026, President Donald Trump said that his New Year’s resolution was to accomplish “peace on earth.” As he asserted last year with his aggressive campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, and the White House dubbing him “THE PEACE PRESIDENT” on X, Trump was convinced that he would be the one to fulfill it with “no new wars.” But just two days after issuing this resolution, Trump had Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro kidnapped.
It is a pattern that has continued deep into 2026—promises of “peace” followed by bloodshed and violence. In January, Trump announced the Board of Peace, an international effort to “stop generations of hatred and bloodshed.” A month later, a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike hit an Iranian all-girls elementary school as a result of outdated intel, killing at least 168 people, most of whom were children.
On April 7, Trump threatened the people of Iran if the government refused to reopen the contested Strait of Hormuz, a trade route through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump threatened on his social media platform.
Iran showed no sign of accepting Donald Trump’s ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz by the end of Tuesday, while the U.S. president threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” unless Tehran reached a last-minute deal.
Trump has given Iran until 8 p.m. in Washington—3:30 a.m. in Tehran—to end its blockade of Gulf oil, or he will destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran. Iran says it would retaliate against U.S. allies in the Gulf, whose desert cities would be uninhabitable without power or water.
It’s 2026, the world is on fire, and against all odds, the Muppets are back on television.
In the first week of February, Disney released a special episode of The Muppet Show, serving as a backdoor pilot to a potential revival, with Sabrina Carpenter as a special guest and the Muppets back to their old antics. It’s been 45 years since The Muppet Show was officially on television, but despite all the time that has passed, something about it feels just as resonant today as it did decades ago. And part of that resonance, I think, comes from the Muppets’ affectionate relationship with chaos.
Chaos fills the streets as families are separated by force, and mothers cry out as their children are taken from them. To exert control and maintain power, a ruler orders agents to detain people off the street. Those the ruler labels as “subversive” are treated as a threat to his reign. The violence is indiscriminate and unrelenting. It does not matter who gets hurt, as long as the ruler stays on the throne.
If your mind went directly to President Donald Trump or the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting and killing two Minnesota residents—mom and poet Renee Nicole Macklin Good, and intensive care nurse Alex Pretti—you are not alone. But in this case, I am talking about Herod and his order to kill the children in Bethlehem and its surrounding region (Matthew 2:16). While the parallels are not identical, the shared logic of unrestrained state power is unmistakable.
Faith-based refugee resettlement organizations are raising alarms that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is detaining lawfully resettled refugees in Minnesota, in an operation one resettlement official called “shameful and unpatriotic.”
“This is a five-alarm fire,” Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief, said in a press release. “These are not the ‘worst of the worst;’ these are innocent children and families who fled the worst wars and persecution imaginable, who were invited by the American people to become Americans under the terms of American law.
In late November, a child care worker at The PLACE, a refugee center in Amarillo, Texas, reported to work with a worried look on her face. She asked Brady Clark, whose community development nonprofit helps run The PLACE, if the latest announcement from the Trump administration would affect her family. She was referring to a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announcing it would re-interview all refugees admitted under President Joe Biden and beyond—an estimated 233,000 people.
The USCIS memo, dated Nov. 21, said the agency will terminate the refugee status of people already in the U.S. if they are found not to meet refugee criteria. The memo claims the Biden administration potentially prioritized expediency, quantity, and admissions over quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.
Shortly after Hamilton was first released a decade ago, I found myself singing along to it rather loudly while building a new IKEA bed frame in a group house I had just founded.
As I belted out the words to one of the more familiar songs from Act 1, “My Shot,” my new housemate poked her head around the corner and added her own voice to the mix. “I’m just like my country / I’m young, scrappy and hungry,” we sang in unison, creating a moment of joy and connection between a Catholic and a Protestant that provided the foundation for a lasting friendship and community-building work.
I don’t know that I have what I could exactly call a “favorite artist,” but if I did, it’d probably be Bruce Springsteen, and I’m glad he’s speaking out about the importance of things like attacks on free speech and the exploitation of kids. What I don’t love is how quickly this stand is flattening him into just another liberal mascot. A fake photo of Springsteen in a “Keep America Trumpless” T-shirt has gone viral.
Sara arrived in the United States as a 7-year-old refugee when her family fled religious persecution in Bangladesh. Eleven years later, Sara now calls Montgomery County, Md., home. But if the Trump administration has its way, she would be immediately deported because of her undocumented status.
Camins Bretts, who is 61 and lives in Seattle, has crossed the Canada-United States border many times for work, family and romantic partners. But because he’s a transgender man, at least half a dozen of those trips ended in him being detained by U.S. border officials.
Steve Hoyt didn’t go to the Amecet children’s home in Soroti, Uganda, looking for a child to adopt. The missionary, engineer, and father of two went to the home for orphaned and abandoned children run by the Christian organization Youth With A Mission, to check on a child as a favor for an employee. While he was there, he noticed a baby — he guessed she was about 18 months old — languishing despite the care of the nurses.
Faith leaders, historians, and advocates are speaking out after the National Park Service removed its webpage dedicated to Rev. Pauli Murray, a pivotal figure in civil rights history who broke barriers as both a legal scholar and the first perceived Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order setting up a task force to counter “anti-Christian bias.” Trump claims that the task force is necessary to fight discrimination against Christians. But in practice it seems designed to enforce a very narrow version of conservative Christianity. The task force will counter efforts to prosecute demonstrators who block access to abortion care and to allow for discrimination against LGBTQ+ people on campus. It will encourage the federal government to elevate right wing Christianity as a national ideology.
Imposing Christian morality on the U.S. seems out of step with the separation of church and state. But it’s not exactly out of line with American tradition. For example, at the height of the postwar Red Scare in March 1953, leftist poet and activist Langston Hughes was hauled before Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. PSI was looking to root out communist influence. But in that regard, many of the questions centered on religion — and on a poem which the subcommittee believed showed that Hughes was anti-religious and therefore pro-communist.
The poem in question was “Goodbye, Christ,” which Hughes wrote on a trip to Soviet Russia in 1932.