Brad and Dan are back together. They begin by discussing the validity and significance of Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony at the J6 hearing this week. Brad implores us not to get distracted by claims that her account of certain episodes is being disputed by off-the-record sources who won't testify under oath in front of the nation.
They then turn to SCOTUS. Dan breaks down the religious freedom case in which the Court ruled that praying after football games is part of the free exercise of religion. He and Brad discuss why this is coercive, damaging to religious minorities, and just plain incoherent.
In the final segment, Brad previews Moore v. Harper, a case SCOTUS will hear next term. This case could give state legislatures full control over the electors they send to the Electoral College. What does that mean? It means votes - and democracy - could be nullified when state legislatures decide that election results are invalid and they are sending alternative sets of electors with no oversight from state courts or the governor.
Pre-Order Brad's new book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
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Axis Mundy Axis Mundy You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB.
And I'm here today, back together again.
It feels so good with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller.
I am, wait for it, Professor of Religion and Social Thought.
I got a promotion.
With my promotion, I now wear reading glasses, both because it made me look more scholarly and because I am old.
But no, I'm glad to be back.
Brad, thanks for holding down the fort.
We'll be doing some of this juggling this summer as we both have, you know, Other things to do besides the podcast.
So, thanks for holding it down.
And I was delighted to see that nothing noteworthy happened while I was gone.
No big Supreme Court decisions, no church-state issues, no Christian nationalism.
So, yeah.
And unfortunately, obviously, I'm being facetious.
First of all, congratulations on your promotion, friends.
If you're not into the academic you know, wizard titles.
Full professor is basically the apex.
You can, you can get to like, you know, distinguished professor or professor named titles, blah, blah, blah, but full professor is basically pretty close to the mountaintop.
So that's amazing, Dan.
You did get some reading glasses and that's, that's great.
And Anything else?
I mean, did, did George Soros send you any money?
Did you, you know, what are you going to do with the $8 million bonus you got for getting that title?
I mean, big plans or?
Not, not, not so much for the title other than getting to update the website, but I was also my, my 10th year at Landmark and I received, I received a $30 gift card.
So that was, that was pretty exciting.
So.
Yeah.
This is Dan Miller Summer, right?
Some people talk about Hot Girl Summer or what.
This is Dan Miller Summer.
You got glasses, you got a promotion, you got a gift card.
And while I'm on a tear, man, the book is rocking in the triple digits.
It's, you know, so it's living the academic high life, the two of us, I think.
I got an envelope from Columbia University Press yesterday that my wife thought was my royalty check, and I was hoping that it was going to be enough to cover The burrito I had for lunch.
So, and reader, I'm not going to tell you if it was.
You'll just have to wonder.
So here we go.
All right.
We got some announcements we need to make before we get started.
Number one.
Dan Miller got a promotion.
Congrats, Dan.
That's awesome.
Number two, the Orange Wave is available.
I've gotten some emails.
Where can I get that?
How do I do it?
Look in our show notes.
There's a link, and you can click on that and pay to get access to the Orange Wave.
If you'd like to support us and listen to the Orange Wave, become a patron at $5 or $10 or more, and you'll get automatic access to the Orange Wave that way.
So that is number one.
Number two is a correction slash sort of apology.
On Monday, I did an episode with Ryan Stoller on the SBC and we talked about Vaati Bakkam and we talked about how Vaati Bakkam was nominated for SBC president, etc.
So there's some confusion there.
And if you're listening and you didn't listen to this episode or you don't care, just go ahead and click off for 15 seconds.
Backham was asked to run for SBC president actually decided not to and ended up being in the running for the head of the pastor's conference which is separate and different in the sort of polity of the SBC.
Ryan and I were just not very clear about all this as we kind of went through our analysis and our explanation so if you're listening and you're confused by that or you felt like we got that wrong I hear you.
I apologize for the lack of clarity.
And both Ryan and I talked about this on Twitter.
So if you're a Twitter person, you can kind of see what we said there in terms to clarify and apologize for this, but want to say that there.
Last thing, you'll see this in the show notes too, but pre-orders for my book, Preparing for War, are out and I'm super excited about it.
I'm pumped.
I would love it if you would pre-order.
You might say, well, what's the point?
It's not going to be out until the new year.
Why would I do that now?
One thing that is kind of a secret of the publishing industry is that pre-orders really help.
What they do is it makes publishers and journalists and bookstores all perk up and go, oh, wow, people are ordering that book.
I guess maybe we should, you know, highlight that book or feature that book at our bookstore or, you know, have it in a story we're running at this newspaper or this magazine or whatever.
It does matter.
And you might say, Hey, I've already ordered it, Brad.
I did my duty.
What else could I do?
I'm not going to order more than one copy of your book.
I love you, but that's not going to happen.
You could ask your library to order it.
Your local library, or if you're part of a university, ask your librarian at your university to order it.
That would be a big help as well.
So those are things you could do.
For those of you who've already pre-ordered and let me know, I just appreciate you so much.
I'm in the beginning stages of planning a book tour where I'll be touring around the country, flying Southwest, sleeping on couches, and, you know, trying to see all of you who are out there and listening are awesome.
So.
Anyway, those are my announcements.
Dan, did I miss anything?
Do you want to, you have anything else?
I mean, any more gift cards or, you know, yeah.
No more gift cards.
I do want to just say though that the It's In The Code series is still going and still going strong, I think.
And as I always do, thanking everybody who keeps the ideas coming.
I respond to a lot of emails and I know I don't respond to all of them.
I'm kind of blown away in a good way by the insights that people have and sometimes I'll get like four emails of all about one theme and I'm like, oh my god, yeah, like that's a perfect idea and just something I overlooked.
So I want to thank everybody for that.
And keep those coming, and I'm getting ready to record this Wednesday's episode as we speak.
Awesome.
All right, let's do it.
Let's jump in.
We got past all the business and all the announcements and all the stuff.
So today we're going to talk some takeaways from J6 hearings and Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony.
Then want to talk about a couple of court cases from SCOTUS.
We actually cannot talk about all of them.
There's a bunch.
And I think in order to kind of hone in on some details, we're going to focus on two.
One is the case involving the praying football coach and religious liberty.
Dan's going to jump into that.
And at the end, I want to talk about a case that the court will take up next term that directly links to the attempts to overturn the election and the Council for National Policy and Christian Nationalists and their desire to end the republic as we know it.
So, light stuff as usual, Dan.
This week, Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Chief of Staff, White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, testified as part of the J6 Select Committee.
This was a surprise hearing.
This was a kind of bombshell witness.
And we know now, and CNN is reporting this today, Dan, that one of the reasons they did this so quickly is they were concerned that Cassidy Hutchinson was getting veiled threats and were concerned about her safety.
And so Liz Cheney hinted at this at the end of the hearing, but basically we know that Cassidy Hutchinson has been receiving communication, we'll call it, from people in Trump world asking, quote-unquote, her not to testify in this way, and so they did this quickly, all right?
Now, I'm sure many of you listening already know the bare outlines of what she said, talked about things that Trump said and did in regard to what was happening at the Ellipse on January 6th.
Talked about how Meadows was unresponsive when she said there's violence at the Capitol.
The president needs to do something and Meadows was just staring at his phone.
Talked about Trump lunging at his social security guard.
That's what I was going to say, Dan.
Do you feel like you and I are getting old?
You're a full professor now.
You wear glasses.
I'm just thinking about social security.
So anyway, do you hope that someday, Dan, we're just next door to each other in a senior living facility doing this podcast?
Is that your dream for retirement?
So first, not only do I have reading glasses, but it's on top of the contacts I already have to wear.
So it's nothing but the best.
But I just have visions of us sitting basically side by side and yelling at kids to get off our lawn is basically my hope.
And by kids, I mean 53 year old people.
That's what I'll be yelling at.
All right.
So Trump was lunging at his Secret Service agent trying to get him to drive Trump to the Capitol as the siege was taking place.
We had testimony about Trump throwing dishes and ketchup And I said ketchup, not catsup.
I don't know what y'all are doing out there saying catsup and whatever.
So he was throwing ketchup against the wall and dishes and all kinds of things in the dining room of the White House and so on.
Dan, I just I want to do a couple things quickly because Hutchinson's testimony has, of course, been called into question by the right.
And so Trump world has pushed back and Trump himself was like, I don't even know her.
It's like the most Cliche at this point, an expected response ever.
I don't even know her.
She's crazy.
She's not.
She wanted a job for me.
Now she's mad.
So she's testifying.
This is the kind of stuff Trump said.
There's also things coming out of Trump world from from Ornato, somebody who is involved in the security detail and others hiding behind anonymous sources and people in the press saying Hutchinson is incorrect there and all this kind of stuff.
My guess, Dan, is that if you go to a barbecue this week and you see Uncle Ron, then he's going to say, well, who can even trust that girl?
And she's 25.
And, you know, I think we all know that what she said isn't true.
I mean, you've been hearing it.
Trump said it's not true.
Ornato said it's not true and these people said it's not true and you know blah blah blah.
So I have a thread here that I want to go through from Bradley Moss who's a lawyer and a national security lawyer and I think Moss does a good job of sort of reminding us of what we know.
OK, so what we know is that somebody on the record named Cassidy Hutchins on the record in front of the nation, not on background, not from behind a reporter's desk anonymously, not on truth social, somebody under oath in front of the nation.
Told us that people going through the mags, the metal detectors that detect things like weapons, were armed and the weapons were confiscated at the rally on January 6th at the Ellipse where Trump and Giuliani and everyone else gave a speech.
Other people with more serious weapons were staying outside the bubble.
Trump told His people, let them through.
They're not here to hurt me.
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