Weekly Roundup: Trump's Abortion Strategy Emerges and the NAR Converts Gen Z
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We kick things off with a humorous reflection on Dan's eclipse-chasing escapade in Vermont, drawing parallels to the comical misanthropy of Larry David. We then segue into a critical discussion on Donald Trump's latest strategic remarks on abortion and the perplexing enforcement of a Civil War-era law in Arizona, contemplating the broader ramifications these developments hold for political dynamics and individual rights.
We then spotlight a movement to convert Gen Z in through anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and a focus on spiritual warfare. Called, "California Will Be Saved," it represents the powerful undercurrents of Christian nationalism sweeping through movements in California, and the assertive presence of spiritual warfare in Southern California's public spaces. The conversation spotlights the diverse leaders who are redefining conservative Christianity and the challenges they present, from their confrontational worship rallies to the influential Seven Mountains Mandate. We hover on the complexity of this movement's multiethnic and multiracial fabric, and its unsettling reach into the lives of Gen Z and the LGBTQ community.
To cap off thE episode, we analyze the amicus brief on presidential immunity written by American historians and submitted in Trump immunity case at SCOTUS.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, joined today by my eclipse-chasing co-host.
My name is Dan Miller.
I'm professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, and I did go chasing the eclipse, though it was not that hard because it was in northern Vermont.
But northern, as people have probably read or heard, or maybe ended up changing travel plans for northern New England, ended up being one of the best places in the country to see the eclipse.
So here's what I want to say though, Dan, is like, Curb Your Enthusiasm is ending like it ended.
The finale happened, okay?
And you went and chased an eclipse the same week, which is the last thing Larry Dave would ever do.
Because on the way home, how many hours did it take you to get home and how many hours should have it taken you to get home?
It took like eight and a half hours for a three and a half hour.
And that that was like ahead of the curve like that's my my partner's driving and I've got like she's got whatever navigation we've got and I'm like on Google Maps like scrolling around trying to look for other ways and so yeah and me and like a thousand other people so like all these back roads in Vermont like work on our way south But there were people that didn't, we got home at like 11, there were people that didn't get home until like 2 or 3 in the morning and stuff, but it was amazing.
You were telling me you went to like try to get food and they were sold out and people were waiting in line.
They were sold out of food, they weren't ready for it, they like, I think Vermont has like half a million people in the whole state and the estimates are that there were like an extra 200,000 people there, but you know, we're going to come back to this later actually, but.
A person behind me in line was like, yeah, we were flying to Dallas and then we changed our tickets and flew to Boston and drove to Burlington instead.
And like, you know, people from all over the country who were like, yeah, let's go check out Burlington, Vermont.
And Burlington, Vermont's a really cool, cool little town.
It's like, I think it's like the second biggest town in Vermont.
It's like tiny because nobody lives in Vermont, but yeah.
Well, I just want to say that I, I, I am not Larry David-esque, but there is a lot of Larry David in my ethos, and part of why I do not like doing things like chasing eclipses is because I'm just like, well, it's a whole thing.
You got to get in the car, and the kids, and eight hours home, and we got to get a flat tire, and somebody threw up.
So when I was getting ready for the GRE, because I'm a geek, and I had been a biblical languages person, which meant that I could memorize words, I did this thing where, this is in the olden times when they had the prep books.
So they had a list and people will remember like the this is to this as this is to this and so I had they had this list of like the 3,000 most commonly missed words on the GRE and I memorized all the words that I didn't know but but one that Still sticks with me is I did not know what misanthrope meant until then.
Yes, and I am highly misanthropic so Yeah, we have a rule.
It's a long-standing rule in our marriage.
It goes all the way back to when we first got married in Seattle that when my partner is driving, and she's usually driving because she gets car sick, I am not allowed to not only comment on her driving, I am not allowed to comment or get loud about the driving of others.
The fact that that's a rule that has to be in place just demonstrates my misanthropy, I guess, if that's a word.
Well, misanthropy.
Misanthropy.
Yeah, that's maybe like a hot topic competitor.
Misanthropy?
I don't know.
All right.
Everyone is like, please stop.
Please, guys.
Guys, stop.
Stop.
We did not come here for this.
All right.
Here we go.
I've got the t-shirt, though.
There it is.
There it is.
We talk about my aesthetic.
We talk about my fashion sense.
I'm the buys either a t-shirt or a hat every time.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
I've got the shirt.
All right.
We're going to talk about Donald Trump.
Comments on abortion this week, which are really bizarre and strategic.
I mean, he's not always strategic, Dan.
This time he is, and he's clearly trying to game the system.
It's some George W. Bush strategery.
And this coincides with a ruling in Arizona that is going to enforce a Civil War era law.
We'll then talk about a movement in Southern California to reach Gen Z and to save California, an article by Kate Burns, who I've interviewed on this show, or who's actually interviewed me, excuse me, for a piece she did.
And it talks all about Sean Foyt acolytes trying to take over Southern California with surprising success.
And it goes all the way to the new Apostolic Reformation leaders Che Ahn and Lou Engel.
So we'll get to that.
Then we want to talk about the amicus, the amicae, I should say, probably, Dan, if we're doing our languages, the amicus briefs that are or have been put forth in the Trump immunity cases.
And there's an amicus brief from a group of American historians from Harvard and Princeton and Fordham that we'll get into and one by military or ex-military leaders and security folks.
So we'll talk about their arguments against immunity, and they are really telling, I have to say.
When you read them, you're like, wow, there's a lot at stake here.
So I think, please stick around for that last segment, because I think it's going to be really good.
All right, Dan, let me throw it to you.
Tell us a little bit about Trump's comments on abortion and states, and then we'll get to one of the states that made headlines this week.
Yeah.
Trump is under pressure from anti-abortion activists to support a national abortion ban.
And everybody sort of knows the background of this, that abortion is like the gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats.
The Republicans know this, and yet they've got the hardcore anti-abortion activists who want them to take a firmer stance on things like IVF and all of this.
So Trump finally was sort of forced to answer this.
He's been spending—so everybody also knows he spent like the last two years trying to avoid Saying anything substantive about abortion, like answering the question of sort of where he's at with that.
But he said he would not sign a national abortion ban.
But it also came with his typical sort of logic word salad kind of thing.
So in the same context, same discussion, he also lauded SCOTUS for overturning Roe v. Wade.
So he's like, I won't support an abortion ban, but yay me, I appointed the conservative Justices on the court who overturned Roe v. Wade.
And as you indicated, he did what Republicans have done in the past and used to do and have kind of not been sure what to do about now.
He emphasized state rights, states' rights at the same time.
And the reason, I think one of the reasons that Republicans have moved away from that language is, number one, a lot of them support a national ban.
They were only for states' rights, as long as they didn't have the power to, like, put in a national ban.
But I think they've also run into Alabama, and Florida, and Arizona, and states with, like, super restrictive laws.
So Trump affirms states' rights, and what he says was, said was, now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want.
It's the will of the people.
But then, cue the logic words salad, he then goes on to say, so Florida's probably going to change.
Arizona is going to definitely change.
Everybody wants that to happen.
And you're getting the will of the people.
It's been pretty incredible when you think about it.
So what's he talking about?
Florida had these sort of two Supreme Court rulings in their state about a very, very tight ban going into effect, but also allowing a ballot initiative to go forward that would enshrine abortion rights.
Arizona we'll get into in a minute.
But he's trying to have it both ways, right?
Yay, states rights!
Accept the states that went too far, but they'll fix it.
Promise.
That's what's going to happen.
The Biden administration and Planned Parenthood, of course, called BS on this.
Excuse me.
Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moosa said, Donald Trump is a lying liar.
He endorsed a national abortion ban when he was president in 2018.
His allies are talking about how they can ban abortion with or without Congress.
Give me a break.
And Jody Hicks, president of Planned Parenthood California, said, quote, we know Trump will say anything to get elected.
He's on record for saying he does support a ban.
He's on record for saying that he would criminalize women trying to seek abortion.
So out of the gate, I think we should believe actions and not words.
We have a history with this ex-president who's not a truth teller, so I don't believe what he says.
And I think that they're right.
I think that that's correct.
I think Trump, he knows it's a political loser for him.
He went after Lindsey Graham for saying that he was hurting Republicans by advancing this 15-week ban.
Kellyanne Conway has seen this as a model.
As you know, as we've talked about, some Republicans position a 15-week ban as some sort of moderate sort of compromise position.
The majority of Americans don't see that.
But I think absolutely.
If he was elected, Trump would, you know, happily put in or propose an abortion ban.
And then finally, excuse me, and then I'll throw it over to you.
Not surprisingly, Democrats, lots of stories about this, they want to tie Trump to this from now until November, right?
They want to do everything they can to associate everybody in the Republican Party with this, to try to win ballots, or sorry, to try to win votes up and down the ballot.
To drive out voter participation, which is what has happened, especially in 2022, in the midterms, as we know.
So that's Trump, as I say, the logic word salad, trying to have it all different directions, trying to please everybody.
I should also note, he said earlier this week that, you know, he would make a deal.
He'd be able to make a deal that would make everybody happy.
As if that exists, right?
If it was that easy, it would have happened a long time ago.
So, that's Trump.
Logic, word salad, all of that fun stuff.
You know, after three and a half years of him not being president, and don't get me wrong, he's in the news a lot, he still makes a lot of statements, but When he was president, there was this cadence, Dan, for me of hearing him almost every day at a press briefing or giving some speech.
And just the word salad, like sentence structure, it just reminds you of what it's like when this man is the leader of the country.
It reminds you of just how incoherent and garbled his, like, ability to express anything is.
We could talk about George W. Bush and truthiness and strategery, but it's worse than that.
This is just absolute empty windbag words.
It's words that are bubbles with nothing inside and they mean nothing.
To the point of saying anything, you can tell the times when he's like, somebody's like, here's the talking point.
Here's the word to use.
And he'll say, it wasn't in this quote, but he says, he's like, so it's, it's states' rights.
Now we have states' rights.
So it states, and like, somebody told you to say states' rights.
And so like, he literally just stands up and says, it's states' rights.
It's, it's, it's, we have states' rights.
It's states' rights.
Like, okay, you said the word six times, but like, you don't know what that means and you can't pretend to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In terms of analysis, we've been talking for, you know, for over a year now since Roe v. Wade was overturned that the Republicans don't have a coherent strategy as what to do next.
There are the true believers, there are the hardliners, the abortion abolitionists, the Mike Johnsons, the Mike Pences, the Family Research Council types, who would love there to be a national abortion ban.
Mike Pence criticized Trump as soon as Trump made these statements, and others did too.
There's a recognition on the part of Trump that this is not a winning issue.
It has never been a winning issue since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
It has been a losing issue, whether it's Supreme Court seats in Wisconsin, whether it is elections in Kansas, whatever may be, this has been a loser for them.
So, Trump is not a true believer and he's trying to kind of walk the line.
And so, states' rights.
Sure.
Okay.
That's the way to do it.
A couple of things on that.
States' rights comes into play in a very clear way this week because Arizona just had a decision come down from their Supreme Court that basically an over 100 year law- I think it's 1864, right?
Like literally Civil War era.
It is a Civil War era law.
1864 is the year.
And that law can be enforced in Arizona to indeed affect a near or total abortion ban.
So leaving it to states' rights in some way is a strategy because it's a way for Trump to say, I don't want an abortion ban.
People can use that to say, look, it's OK.
You don't need to fear that if Trump's president, you're going to get a total abortion ban.
On the other hand, he and his team and administration and everyone else behind him is thinking, well, Places like Arizona, places like Florida, etc.
will continue to appease abortion hardliners by trying to get these laws in place or have them triggered.
I want to say though that he's not alone.
So if we segue to Arizona, Carrie Lake, who is running for Senate in that state, She came out and basically said that she thinks this law that is triggered and is going to be in effect in Arizona goes too far and it's too much.
Claire McCaskill had a great tweet about this.
She said, Carrie Lake, she thinks the voters of Arizona are dumb and don't see what she's trying to do.
She said in the New York Times, and these are Kerry Lake's words, I'm incredibly thrilled that we're going to have a great law that's already on the books.
I believe it's ARS 13-3603.
And she's basically saying, can't wait for this law in Arizona to be triggered into place so that you can't get an abortion there.
So what's Carrie Lake doing, Dan?
She's following her mentor Trump, her hero Trump, trying to walk the line because she sees the headwinds.
You can't win on an abortion ban nationwide or in most states, including a place like Arizona.
We've seen it in Kansas.
We've seen it in Wisconsin.
We've seen it up and down, left and right of the country.
There's a ballot initiative push in Arizona to put it, you know, on the ballot.
So as you say, just real quick.
I think it's important for folks to recognize when we say it's like it's not a winning issue, something not being a winning issue doesn't automatically make it a losing issue, right?
There are things that, you know, we're wasting a lot of political capital or money or time or airwaves or whatever talking about something that just doesn't really move the needle much.
We need to focus.
This is like not just that, this is they actively lose.
On this.
And I think that's part of the problem for the GOP is, you know, you keep getting like the Kellyanne Conway's or like, we need to be clearer on our messaging.
I'm like, folks, it's not the message, the messaging, it's the message.
It's that there are a huge portion of your people who believe that there should not be exceptions for abortion under any circumstances.
The IVF is wrong.
And so there cannot be a coherent GOP message or messaging because there's no coherent message.
Well, and that includes the Speaker of the House, the leader of the party in the lower house.
Some of you out there have not dug into the details of the Arizona law, so let's just do that quickly before we move on.
This is from Adam Edelman and Alex Tabit at NBC News, April 9th.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban still on the books in the state is enforceable.
A bombshell decision that adds the state to the growing list of places where abortion care is effectively banned.
The ruling allows an 1864 law in Arizona to stand that made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one.
The law, which was codified in 1901 and again in 1913, outlaws abortion from the moment of conception but includes an exception to save the woman's life.
That Civil War era law, enacted a half a century before Arizona even gained statehood, was never repealed and an appellate court ruled last year that it could remain on the books as long as it was harmonized with the 2022 law, leading to substantial confusion.
And there is confusion.
Just as there was confusion in Alabama at IVF clinics, there's confusion now in Arizona at many reproductive health centers that are not sure what is and is not legal and how they should proceed.
So, Dan, I think politically, We're trying.
We're now seeing the strategy of the GOP on abortion.
We're going to get more of this.
They're going to try to dance and they're going to try to speak out of one side of the mouth and then the other.
They're going to say state's rights.
They're going to say, try not to get in a place where you can soundbite them on an abortion ban clip.
Someone like Trump, someone like Carrie Lake.
People who are in tight races, people who are in districts where they might lose, people who are facing a surprising challenger.
I think we're going to see more of this rhetoric for sure, but I want to just real quick back up and just provide a little bit of a theoretical reflection on this because you actually spoke to Beatrice Marovitch this week on your series and you did talk about abortion and reproductive health and reproductive justice and one of the things that you talked about was the ways that
The anti-abortion movement envisions birth as purely a phenomenon of positivity, a moment of affirmation every time, always.
And that doesn't mean that birth is not the most wondrous, most awe-inspiring phenomenon that many or most people will experience.
It does mean, however, a recognition, as you and Beatrice talked about on Wednesday, that birth is often a time of great pain, a great vulnerability, a great threat.
It's a process in which many newly born children have died because it's difficult and hard.
Many mothers have had their lives threatened and have also died if we look at the long view of human history and so on.
But I just keep coming back to the idea that if you can say abortion is wrong at conception, you can just clearly see yourself as the good guy.
I don't want to be a broken record.
I know I said this a couple weeks ago, but I'll say it again.
We all have moments where we're like, am I a bad person?
Like, am I not a good?
Wait a minute.
Maybe I'm not a good, maybe I'm not a nice person.
Like we talked about Larry David, Dan.
Like I have these moments when I'm like trying to be cool at the preschool, like play date that they're doing like on the weekend.
And there's all the parents there.
And I'm like, I'm like, oh man, I don't want to do, I don't want to be here.
I, this is, this is not good.
How do I get, and I feel like Larry David.
And then I'm like, am I a bad person?
Am I a mean person?
Maybe I am.
I don't, what's my point?
If you think abortion is wrong at conception, always and forever, and you don't want to hear any other argument, you know what you can convince?
I'm a good person.
I'm good.
You're bad.
You hate children.
You hate mothers.
You hate life.
You hate God.
You should be punished.
You should be the one dying.
You can just get there so easy.
That's point number one.
Point number two is, this is literally a law in Arizona that was enacted Like four decades before women could vote.
Like literally women could not vote about this thing that is now about a phenomenon and an area of health and everything else that affects women unduly.
There are people who can become pregnant who are not women and I recognize that, but I am saying These laws, this one in specific in Arizona, affects women in such undue, asymmetric, overwhelming manners, and you're telling them, hey, you need to abide by a law that was enacted before we recognized you were a person who could vote in the country.
That's crazy.
Yeah, so just real quick.
Embryos are persons.
Life begins at conception, but legally speaking, women aren't.
They don't have full personhood at the time that this has passed.
Like, literally and explicitly, that's the logic.
So, we're going to live by a law that was enacted when women were not recognized as humans, that now recognizes a clump of cells, right, as a full-grown living human person in the way that everyone else is.
I mean, we've been over this with IVF, we've been over this with Alabama.
It is insane when you think about it the way you just put it.
All right, we should go on, but final thoughts, and then we'll take a break.
Just a final thought is that, you know, advocates of this will say, no, it's not you people make it sound like we don't care.
It says that you can perform abortion to save a woman's life.
We've seen how that played out in Texas, right?
Nobody knows what that means.
Because if you ask a doctor, would she have died if you didn't do it?
They can't say yes.
They don't know for sure.
It's percentages.
It's risks.
What counts as quote-unquote life-saving?
Are we talking about quality of life?
Are we talking about I don't know.
Being able to have children in the future?
Are we talking about literally dying if you don't do this?
So, we've already seen this in Texas where, de facto, there is no limitation on this because nobody can answer those kinds of questions.
So, it is every bit as draconian or more draconian than anything we've seen anywhere else in the country.
Yeah.
And just like with IVF, if you're a doctor, Are you really going to do that and then be threatened with years in jail with, you know, attempted murder, manslaughter, whatever they're going to charge you?
Anyway, there's a whole... I just interviewed Kaylee Peterson, who's running for Congress in Idaho, and she talked about how many doctors and healthcare professionals have left Idaho because of these kinds of things.
And once again, that all comes into play here too.
So let's take a break.
We'll come back and talk about...
A movement called California Will Be Saved, led by two Sean Foyt disciples.
Be right back.
Okay, Dan.
Great piece by Kate Burns.
Well done, Kate Burns, in Left Coast Right Watch, which is an outlet that really does a wonderful job just keeping an eye on a lot of right-wing figures.
And Kate talks about two disciples or acolytes of the touring troubadour of Christian nationalism Sean Foyt.
If Charlie Kirk is America's youth pastor for Christian nationalism, Sean Foyt is the worship leader.
Well, he's discipled two folks.
Ross Johnson is one of them.
And Joel Mott is the other.
And they have started a movement called California Will Be Saved.
I want to talk to you about this and I want to frame it using a phrase by Matt Taylor who obviously created Charismatic Revival Fury and just has so many great insights on these movements.
He calls it the charismatization of conservative American Christianity and the far right.
The ways that charismatic Christianity has now become almost a brand name.
in American conservative Christianity, which was not the case, Dan, when you and I were going up through the ranks in the 90s and the early 2000s.
Let me tell you about a dream.
I'm gonna tell you about a dream and then I'll get to why I'm telling you about it.
In a dream, somebody walked into a room that represented the LGBTQ agendas.
So I don't know why, I don't know how.
I don't know if there was rainbow flag.
I don't know what was going on in there.
I don't know.
I don't know what, how you get to the LGBTQ agenda, but there it is.
While holding an infant baby.
Okay, so I'm walking into a room.
I have an infant baby.
Speaking of babies.
And the room represents the LGBTQ agenda.
Again, I don't need... I don't... Whatever.
What is the LGBTQ agenda?
I mean, good lord.
The room was filled with, quote, the most defiling and degrading sexual acts taking place.
That's all LGBTQ people do, Dan.
I just want to say, like, in the non— like, the anti-queer circles, all queer folk have the hottest sex lives, like, ever, because that's all they do.
They just have deviant sex, and it's like they do that just all the time.
That's all it is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No taking the car in to get, you know, an oil change.
Running out in the middle of the night, you know, early morning because you don't have milk for the kids cereal.
None of that stuff.
No doing the taxes.
Nah.
No.
Who needs?
Nah.
Vacuuming?
Nah.
Just going into rooms, doing the most defiling and degrading sex acts anyone can think of.
In the dream, when the LGBTQ people, quote unquote, recognized she wouldn't, quote, go along with what they were doing, the group started to attack the baby in her arms.
I shouldn't laugh, right?
Like, it's a terrible image, but so ridiculous.
So this was a dream reportedly had by Lou Engel's daughter.
Lou Engel is somebody I'll get to in a minute, but Lou Engel is a sort of elder statesman in the New Apostolic Reformation.
An elder statesman in the anti-abortion movement, an elder statesman in the kind of Christianity that wants to dominate and colonize America for God.
Well, this is a story that Ross Johnston, one of the progenitors of California Will Be Saved, tells.
Now, Ross Johnston's an interesting figure, Dan.
He was raised by two mothers.
The pregnancy that led to his birth and his life was one of artificial insemination.
So he has what the Kids and Youth Group would call a pretty dynamite testimony, because he grew up with two moms, and now he is born again, and he sees lust as America's biggest danger.
He uses the dream I just told you about to explain why lust and this queer, deviant sexuality that he imagines is the greatest threat to the country.
It's funny, right?
Just to be clear, he uses a fanciful depiction of something that never happened.
As the representation of the real threat that queer people supposedly pose for the world.
There's no explanation as to why the LGBTQ folks are attacking the baby?
There's not?
I mean, there's nothing.
Okay.
But as laughable and embarrassing as this is, it shows you the ways that Johnston and his His comrade, Joe Mott, are trying to galvanize a movement of Gen Z. So if you look these folks up, Dan, these are young guys.
They're in their 20s.
They look like kids that we might see on our college campuses.
They're a little older than that, but still, they are not you and I. They're not crusty middle-aged dudes.
These are young, you know, fresh-faced people, and they want to save Gen Z. They want to save California with and for Gen Z.
They see anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and organizing as the way to do it.
And I think that's really something that we should take note of.
So, they have started California Will Be Saved, and they are both acolytes of Sean Foyt.
They've learned from Sean Foyt.
They've been inspired by him.
Ross Johnson is often seen with Foyt.
They are at events together.
Joel Motz grew up with parents who were part of New Apostolic Reformation churches.
They are currently on staff at Ekbalo in Pasadena.
Both of these folks, friends, are people in the New Apostolic Reformation who have audiences each week of millions and millions of people.
If you do not believe me, as soon as you stop listening to this episode, go listen to Charismatic Revival Theory, an eight-hour series on the New Apostolic Reformation produced by me, made by Matt Taylor, it's on its own podcast feed.
You can go to, you can just search your podcast player and find it right now.
We have whole episodes on Che On and in that episode there's lengthy discussions of Lou Engel.
These guys started The Call.
Do you remember The Call, Dan?
It's been 20 years old and they would go to D.C.
and they would go there on anti-abortion crusades and they would claim that they had these huge crowds in the millions.
And they wanted to, at one point in the 90s, they wanted to get rid of Bill Clinton, right?
After the impeachment failed, they were like, we got to do something about this.
They have been leading these like massive prayer rallies and organizing events for over two decades.
Che On is somebody who is the head of like a network of churches that is about, according to Matt Taylor's research, 25,000.
So, when he speaks on a weekly basis, we're talking like tens of millions of people might hear his words.
Lou Engel is his right-hand man.
They have been together for a long, long time, and they both helped shepherd Sean Foyt into the place he is now.
Sean Foyt, of course, came up through Bethel, which is in Redding, California, but it's all the same universe, and it's all the same New Apostolic Reformation ethos.
Why is that important, Dan?
It's important for a couple of reasons.
I'll try to be brief, and I'll try to outline all this in a very succinct manner.
Joel Mott and Johnston, Ross Johnston, are doing this California Will Be Saved idea.
They're the new 20-somethings who are going to save the world for Jesus.
We've seen this play out, Dan, before.
You and I have talked about it.
In the 90s, come on, there was a lot of young people who are going to save the world for Jesus.
You and I lived that.
We tried to be that.
It happened in the 2005s and the 2010s.
Charlie Kirk at one point was eight years younger than he is now.
He was doing that.
And here we have these guys.
So there's one way of looking at it, like, who cares?
This has been done eight times.
Guys with a backward baseball hat and a clean-shaven 23-year-old face wearing cool clothes, using the slang of the young generation.
And doing so in order to save Jesus.
But Dan, this is the New Apostolic Reformation version.
That means heavy emphasis on spiritual warfare.
Their approach to young people getting saved is about exercising demons.
It's about speaking in tongues.
It's about hours and hours and long prayer meetings where they're hoping the Holy Spirit will anoint them.
This is about, and this is something I'll zero in on right now, it's about taking over places and neighborhoods and cities that are considered quote-unquote dark.
So when you and I were coming up in the ranked stand, the young 20-somethings that wanted to save America for Jesus, what would they have done?
They might have done a huge evangelizing tour.
They might have done a stadium rally where you're hoping people will get saved.
In my neighborhood, in Southern California, it was Harvest Crusade.
Greg Laurie, Calvary Chapel, Chuck Smith sometimes came, and we had a baseball stadium full of what, 30,000 people.
And at the end of the night, after Carmen and whoever else sang, if you want to be saved, come on down.
You know hundreds and if not thousands of like teenagers are going down to Angel Stadium like home plate and they're praying to accept Jesus into their heart and the rest of us are crying and we're holding hands and we're swaying to the music and praising God.
I don't have any nostalgia for that.
You know what this group does?
They go to places like Portland.
They go to places that they consider quote-unquote dark.
That could be West Hollywood where there's a large gay population.
That could be San Bernardino.
That could be places they think are quote-unquote sinful.
And they take over the block.
Like they occupy the block.
They stop traffic.
They have these huge Noisy, ruckus, sort of like prayer rally, worship rally events that are moving and mobile and they'll take over a mall.
So you'll be walking in the mall and there's hundreds and hundreds of young people behind you singing and you're like, "I just wanted to get an Auntie Anne's pretzel and think about the choices I made in life over an Auntie Anne's pretzel." You ever do that, Dan?
Kind of get existential with it. - I wear the T-shirt of some place I've been most recently and my cargo shorts and I eat an Auntie Anne's pretzel. - Come on, man.
Come on, man.
I'm just thinking, Dan's out here, the kids are with your partner, you got two hours to yourself, you're like, "What should I do?" I'm going to the mall, I'm getting the Auntie Anne's pretzel, and I'm going to sit down, I'm going to read a little Camus, and I'm going to think about the choices I made and which ones I want to- I'm also going to think about the fact that the mall no longer has B. Dalton booksellers, and like that's- Well, there's no more, yeah.
That borders is closed, what's going on?
I get spiritual warfare taking place all around me and aimed at me.
Literally, like, people with guitars and horns, and they're all shouting, and they're all, like, quote-unquote, taking over the mall for Jesus.
Okay?
And their driving force, one of the driving issues, is what?
LGBTQ folks.
Gen Z, right?
The generation that has come out of the closet in the most forceful way we've seen in American history, right?
Folks who have not been scared to say, yes, I'm bisexual, yes, I'm non-binary, yes, I'm trans, yes, I'm gay.
And here is the antithesis of that in this group of folks who are saying, not only do we think you're sinful and wrong, and that's the issue that will unite us, but we're going to take over your neighborhood.
I just want everyone to see the difference.
It's not, hey, Dan, you're in the Auntie Anne's pretzel chairs there.
Do you know Jesus?
Can I pray with you?
This is our space.
We're taking it over.
We're dominating it.
We're claiming it for Jesus.
We're driving out demons.
This is not the, hey, would you want to come to an event with me tonight?
There's going to be like singing and dinner and stuff.
And yeah, we'll probably talk about God and his love for us.
This is our space, not yours.
Our country, not yours.
Our mall, not yours.
The model that we would have had, like, that it makes me think of is, you know, it's the seeker-sensitive, that was the language, right, of the kind of corporate consumer church that doesn't really look like a church, but trying to basically market spirituality in a way that will draw in, at the time, that, you know, the kind of, for us, it was the Gen X-y, yuppie types and, you know, that sort of thing, right?
And one of the early episodes I did on It's in the Code is the Cool Kid Church, and that's what that was, right?
It was that model, and that's still there.
That's still a thing.
This is, as you say, the occupation model.
This is our space, and we deserve it, and we have it, and we're going to occupy it.
And if you want to be here, you need to conform to us, right?
We are not Modeling ourselves on your culture, we are going to force your culture into our ... I think that's the difference that stands out for me, is this very adversarial, confrontational model, as opposed to the consumer-oriented, like I say, seeker-sensitive model that was all the rage in the 90s, early aughts.
As I say, it's still out there, but this is a very rival kind of model.
If you listen to Charismatic Rival Fury, Sean Foyt is, you'll hear him on the tape, making fun of the Seeker Sensitive Church.
Now, I'm not here longing for the Seeker Sensitive Church either.
It's not like I'm like, oh, the good old days.
But what I'm saying is Sean Foyt's line about the Seeker Sensitive Church and the Cool Kid Church is like, you know, Yeah, let's be here and be so cool and get a lot of people at our church and we'll have thousands of people for Jesus here.
Wouldn't that be so cool?
Like, he's totally making fun of everything you just said.
And he's like, you know what we really need?
We need mayors and PTA leaders and school board members and county supervisors and senators who will take over the world for God.
Why can't we be the ones who are in charge?
That's what he said.
He's like, I don't want a cool kid church.
I want a church that's in control of everything.
So when these disciples of his go out into, uh, into the world in Southern California, that's their, that's their mindset.
And so I just want to make two more points as we close.
I'll throw it to you on this point.
We can move on is once again, Southern California is a breeding ground for innovation in conservative white Christianity.
So that's there.
The leaders here, you know, I think exemplify that.
If you read my book, you listen to the Orange Wave series I did, I try to make that point.
Some of you don't expect that, you don't think it, but I could talk to you about everything from Biola University to James Dobson, on down the road, you know, Up and down Southern California, the influence it has had, whether it's megachurches, whether it's Robert Shuler, whether it's Calvary Chapel, this is one more iteration of that.
These guys are in Orange County, these guys are in San Diego County, and they are doing their thing.
The other thing, Dan, that is something we really should point out here is that The spiritual grandfathers of this movement are Chaon and Luangle.
Chaon is a Korean-American.
His dad was held by communists in Korea, and he is a Korean-American.
And Matt Taylor in Charismatic Revival Theory makes this point really clearly, and I want to make it now.
These are Christian nationalists who are at the rightward edge of Christian nationalism.
They are about the Seven Mountains Mandate, colonizing Earth for God.
But it's a pretty multi-racial and multi-ethnic group, at least in the people I'm talking about.
Cheyenne, Lou Engel, Sean Foyt, Ross Johnston is a mixed race person, or excuse me, not Ross Johnston, Joel Mott is a mixed race person, one of the leaders of the California Will Be Saved Gen Z initiative.
His father is white, his mother is Asian American.
California is a place where that multi-ethnic, multi-racial approach to Christian nationalism is taking root.
It has been taking root for a couple decades now.
It's a place where you will see Asian Americans, Latino folks, and others joining together in churches.
And what is the galvanizing force, Dan?
Is it like white supremacy?
Yeah, latently, sure.
But it's not white supremacy in the ways you might hear in other parts of the country, right?
You know what the galvanizing force is?
Anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion.
Because you might be Latino.
You might be Korean.
But the gander is we could all unite in the same church because we all know that all LGBTQ people are people who hate God and that abortion is just the murder of innocent children.
So we can all get behind that and you see that in this movement when it comes to Johnston and Mott and California will be saved.
So I think it's worth noticing.
I appreciate Kate Burns reporting on this and I think it shows you not only and Matt Taylor has been great on this on Twitter recently.
Not only the charismatization of conservative Christianity, but the militancy of it.
There is a lot of spiritual warfare rhetoric, there's a lot of violent rhetoric, and it's no coincidence that the New Apostolic Reformation and this space in American Christianity was at what he calls The tip of the spear of Christian Trumpism leading to January 6th.
And if you don't believe me, just listen to Charismatic Revival Theory.
All right, final thoughts on this, Dan, and we'll jump to the Amake brief that we want to talk about.
Just one, and I don't have, like, strong data for this, but it's something I've talked about in classes and things, that if you talk about, like, millennials and then Gen Z and all the things you highlighted, right?
In many ways, the most queer-affirming generation, in many ways, the queerest generation, right?
The most people who are queer identified.
And so some folks look at this like, what a weird issue.
Like, why that issue?
Why anti-LGBTQ?
But I think there are two pieces.
One is the sort of emphasis on being countercultural.
And that is a piece that I think sticks with this that is still very much a part of, you know, kind of an older tradition of The most traditional view is the counterculture, right?
That kind of thing.
But here's another one.
I think there is a segment, maybe a sizable segment, of millennials and Gen Z and, you know, whatever we'll call the next generation, that precisely because they are so familiar with the LGBTQ community, they've also not ever had to sort of think deeply about affirming LGBTQ identity.
And I think that that opens a risk that sometimes when somebody comes along and says, hey, have you ever really thought about this?
Have you thought about why this is wrong or how it's not natural or this or that?
Arguments that were very old school and sort of thrown around all the time when we, as you say, were coming up in those ranks and so forth.
I think there is a segment of Gen Z that can be receptive to that because it has been such just a part of the sort of standard accepted way that society is for them.
That I think that there's a risk of some of those sort of going over to that.
I don't know if that makes sense or not.
It's not well articulated.
It's something that I think about that I want to try to formulate more.
But I think that that's a piece there that precisely because it has just been kind of the way things are, it hasn't been questioned.
It hasn't been pushed.
And so I think when people come along, Posing these questions, quote-unquote questions, right?
Or making these claims, I think there will be people that it resonates with that might surprise other people around them.
Gen Alpha, right?
That's the generation after Gen Alpha.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, there certainly are, I think, parts of the country where that might be true, where there is a kind of such a normalization of, a rightful normalization of queer life that perhaps the 17-year-old, the 19-year-old has never really heard articulated the hardcore anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that most of us just took for granted in terms of being part of our aura when we were growing up.
It's worth testing.
You know, and there's going to be a lot of folks out there listening, especially queer folks that are like, yeah, show me where queer life is so normalized that, you know, there's no, there's no oppression, no, no prejudice and so on.
So yeah, definitely worth thinking about.
Last point on this is Sean Foyt has in DC, right near Capitol Hill, a place he calls Camp Ella, which is like a row house where he holds these rallies and these like prayer meetings.
He's trying to reach young staffers on Capitol Hill, 20-somethings.
Matt Taylor had a great thread about this and Foyt's latest episode on his podcast.
They gather there, they speak in tongues, they exercise demons.
And they're really trying to get folks to experience God.
And I want to just give you the quote that is used in that podcast episode with Sean Foyt by one of these young staffers who's converted.
He says, I'm no longer at the mercy of a man with an argument.
And that goes back a while.
That's not his own quote.
The original quote is, a man with experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
And Matt says this, and he's so right on.
He says, a Hill staffer is affirming that because of his ecstatic experiences at a Sean Foyt concert, he is no longer susceptible to rational debate.
And this is a Hill staffer, Dan.
This is somebody who's working for a congressperson.
So I think that shows you the, the goals of this movement and how they are trying to radicalize people.
Let's take a break.
Come right back.
All right.
So, Trump is arguing, as we've covered on this show, that he is immune, that all presidents are immune because they need immunity.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to do anything.
And if they're not immune, then Barack Obama and George W. Bush and Bill Clinton would all be in jail.
Now, Jack Smith is arguing this right now.
It's obviously that the Supreme Court decided to hear the case.
It's delaying the case.
So, this is actually a loss no matter what happens and what the Supreme Court decides.
Oral arguments at the end of April, I think.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
It means the clock is going to run out and we're not going to hear, Trump's not going to have the trial before the election and so on.
Nonetheless, Dan, there's been some really great work done by historians and by ex-military leaders to talk about why the argument for immunity is such a bad argument and is such a dangerous argument.
So, I'll throw it to you to lead us off.
I know we both have stuff to say here.
A group of American historians put together a document for the court, and I think they did a pretty forceful job explaining why immunity is something the court should not allow.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, so we'll start with them.
The number of these historians, right?
And they describe—so for those who don't like the—an amicus brief is when some group, you know, sort of puts together a document that they submit to a court that sort of takes a side in whatever's before the court and sort of states their position.
And so all of these are, in this case, historians who are opposing Trump's claims about immunity.
And just for those who don't know, from the other amicus brief, they had a nice summary of what it is that Trump is claiming, and it said, quote, Trump asks this court to embrace a theory of presidential authority according to which no prosecutor or court can hold a former president accountable for either private or official capacity crimes committed while he's in office, And he claims this blanket immunity should endure permanently, including after a president has left office.
That's the quote from the other amicus brief that really, I think, nicely summarizes the scope of these claims, right?
So, the historians, I think it's 15 historians, and I think it's really interesting that their published writings cover the origins of the American Revolution, the adoption of state and federal constitution during the revolutionary era, The development that gave the American constitutional tradition its distinctive character and so forth.
So these are historians who focus on the founding period, the quote-unquote thought of the founders, etc., the period when the Constitution was written to make this, to counter this claim that Trump says that it's implicit in the Constitution that presidents cannot be prosecuted and so forth.
And his, the Trump argument is That the original, hold on to that idea, word, that word, original, right?
That the original meaning of the Constitution demands this expansive interpretation of presidential immunity.
And they respond, and you could go to the amicus brief, just read the nice summary position where they sort of summarize it, and then all the support comes later.
They say, quote, that there is no plausible historical case that supports his claim.
They go on to say, while the founders had a range of ideas about the scope of executive power, none of those ideas included conferring immunity on the president in the circumstances at issue here.
Petitioner's argument, that's Trump's argument, to the contrary, is not historically credible.
It violates common understandings of executive power in the new republic and contradicts basic values that have defined American democracy.
One thing I want to throw out here, why is all this significant other than, you know, yeah, historians arguing against Trump?
This is going and aiming right at the so-called originalists.
When Trump and his people say the original meaning of the Constitution was this, they are aiming at those conservative justices who claim to be originalists, who claim that the constitutional interpretation should be on what its original meaning was, all of that sort of stuff.
So here are a bunch of experts, as you say, from really top-notch academic institutions, Using their expertise in the origins of the American Republic and American jurisprudence to argue that this doesn't stand up.
So that was the first of the two that we were looking at this week, amicus brief opposed to Trump's interpretation.
So I want to quote another part of the brief.
brief this is page uh seven the founding generation was committed to the concept that in america no one was above the law as thomas paine stated in america the law is king for as an absolute government the king is law so in free countries the law ought to be king and there ought to be no other we we hear so much dan about what is america and what is not We hear so much about what this country was built on, what it was founded on, all that business.
I love this tiny little paragraph in this amicus brief, because it's a really good reminder that the country was supposed to be one where we do not have royalty or a king.
We do not have somebody who is above everyone else.
We do not have everyone who's in a different class.
Now, all of you are jaded out there driving to work, and I know you are.
You're like, well, you know, tell that to the rich folks and the Elon Musks and the Donald Trumps who get away with everything.
And I agree.
Don't get me wrong.
But in theory, in the way that we are ideally supposed to work, you're not supposed to have a king who is the law.
You're supposed to have a law who is the king, meaning it dictates everything for everyone regardless of who you are.
And that comes right from Thomas Paine.
I recognize there's so much wrong with our laws.
I recognize that law can be enforced in a way that is unequal, that is inhumane, that is just out of bounds.
I'm with you.
But this is a great reminder.
Dan, we've been talking offline about Project 2025 and how we want to cover it further on this show.
Project 2025 for me is the expansion of the executive branch to the point where it's the closest thing to a monarchical vision for our country than we've ever had.
Now, people might disagree with me or whatever, but it tries to expand executive power to the point where the person is control of the DOJ, control of every federal employee at will, and, according to the argument Trump's making, can never be persecuted for crimes.
What is that called?
Is it a king?
A dictator?
I don't know.
Whatever you want to call it, it is not the idea that the law is king.
So I got one more and then I'll throw back to you.
The other one I loved was the fact that Trump and his team keep calling back to common law.
At the time of the framers of the Constitution and saying, well, when they drafted the Constitution, common law said that the criminal immunity for the executive branch was deeply rooted.
That it was just, everybody knew that.
If you're executive, common law.
And they say, look, in fact, post-revolution common law departed from British assumptions of monarchical immunity.
I could read more.
Let's just do that sentence.
Everybody, slow down.
You ready?
In fact, post-revolution, now which revolution are we talking about?
Oh yeah, the American Revolution.
Fought against the British Royalty and Empire.
Post-Revolution Common Law.
American law.
American common law.
Not English common law.
American.
Departed from British assumptions of monarchical immunity.
Donald Trump.
What happened to American exceptionalism, my guy?
You all always talking about how this country's so great, so different.
Not Europe.
What the?
I mean, are you serious?
If you want to be Europe so bad and you want a king, go back there.
But if you don't, if you want to know what the framers of the Constitution envisioned, these historians are pretty clear.
In fact, post-revolution common law, American law, after the revolution in which our Constitution made us a democracy, a republic, says there is no immunity.
The assumptions of monarchical immunity are no longer valid.
You want to be an American exceptionalist?
Be an American exceptionalist for once, Don, okay?
And everyone listening in Europe, I know most of you don't live under the guises of royalty.
You have wonderful, wonderful is the wrong word, but you have functioning democracies and republics, and in many ways far more advanced than the one we have, so please don't email me.
I recognize that.
I've lived in some of those countries.
I have dear friends there, and I'm just trying to make a point about Donald Trump.
I want to connect it to the other amicus brief.
So this one cuts to the let's hit the originalists where they live kind of argument.
The other amicus brief I think was interesting because, as you say, it was by 15, I think they described themselves as national security and military experts.
And this, what struck me about these two briefs was the way that they aim right at things that matter to the GOP, right?
So, do people remember Trump talking about his generals?
Like there were little toy things when he was lotting his generals, and he liked surrounding them with them, and he wanted to have his big military parade.
And you have this history of the GOP sort of lotting all things military and the valorization of the military and so forth.
So what do you have?
You have the other amicus brief aimed at, I think, another piece of this.
I didn't know a lot of these names of these people before I read this, but it's like a That's a pretty accomplished list.
You've got the former Deputy Judge Advocate General of the Army.
You've got the former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
You have the former Judge Advocate General of the Navy.
I mean, it's just where military and law come together in the JAG Corps, the Judge Advocate General's Office, and all of that.
You have this coming together, and once again, they are unwavering in what they say are the risks of this, right?
They say that the petitioner's broad view of immunity, that Trump's view of immunity, would imperil U.S.
national security, that it would weaken the authority of the president.
and throw confusion into the chain of command of the armed forces, which the president commands, they said it would be a threat to civilian authority.
That if you have a president who's immune to anything, he can order the military to do anything, and that it functionally removes the military from civilian control and puts it under the rule of a single person.
I'm sort of extrapolating here, but what I hear in that are echoes of, you know, the Roman Empire when armies were loyal to their general, right?
They were not loyal to Rome, they were loyal to their general.
So, just transitioning from one to the other, the commonality I see in these are very strategic and pointed efforts From constituencies that matter to the GOP, they matter to conservatives, they are positions that matter, that I think matter to some of these Supreme Court justices, to say there's just no basis for this.
Not in the military, that there's a threat to U.S.
security, not historically, and so forth.
So it's just something that really strikes me about these and looking at these, sort of this two-pronged attack that it mounts against things that matter to the GOP.
On page four of this amicus brief, they say, put otherwise, the principle that no person is above the law serves as the ultimate protector of U.S.
democracy.
That is exactly what the historian said when they cited Thomas Paine.
Funny how that works, right?
We shouldn't have a king who's the law.
We should have law that's king.
And what do they say?
The principle that no person is above the law serves as the ultimate protector of U.S.
democracy.
Dan, it's almost the same exact sentiment in different language coming from a cadre of national security military types and then a cadre of overwhelmingly accomplished U.S.
historians.
They're saying the exact same thing.
I think it's notable and worth noting that you have these very accomplished... They're all like high ranking.
They're all admirals and generals.
Arguing not that the military protects national security through militarism, but arguing that it is because you have a military that serves a democratic state with civilian authority, oversight, that is what preserves democracy, that's what preserves American national interests.
Exactly not what Donald Trump and the kind of proto-fascist, that's the name I'll stick on it I guess, model of absolute immunity and executive authority puts forward.
Yeah, well said.
Let's go to Reasons for Hope.
What is your reason for hope this week?
So, all kidding aside, and it was this experience, as dumb as it may sound, a lot of people have written about this sort of eclipse as this weird unifying cultural moment in a time when we don't experience that.
But I actually felt like for, you know, this few hours, couple days, like, there are people from all over the country there, and like, there's no culture war stuff.
Everybody's just there, and it was just this kind of Pleasant reminder that I don't think I've had in a while that, you know what, we could actually all, you know, get along and communicate with each other and unify around valuable, beautiful things if people were willing to do that.
So it was a sort of hopeful experience that I had this week.
My reason for hope is I interviewed Kaylee Peterson for Monday's episode, and Kaylee's running for Congress.
Kaylee's a woman in her early 30s who's gone back to school and is a mom, is somebody who's living as she described it, paycheck to paycheck with her husband, trying to make life work like a lot of folks in the country, and decided to run for Congress in a state, Idaho, that has gone deeply red, and just to be very honest, where she has very little chance of winning.
And what she talked about in that interview is that since she started running, she has seen so many other candidates come forth to run in races that were unopposed in previous cycles, where in Idaho you had 50 or 60% of races that were like unopposed.
And that's a reason for hope.
We all may not agree.
I'm sure if Kaylee and I sat down for a couple hours, there'd be policy positions and things we did not agree on.
I'm sure that some of you listening are like, well, I'm not sure I buy what Kaylee's selling on that issue or this one.
That's fine.
I think though that the idea that you would run as a normal person who's not been brought up in the kind of chain of command or the pipeline to be a politician, and you would stand up to well-funded, coordinated movements that are trying to turn your state deep, deep red and go far to the right, that's inspiring.
And I hope when people listen to that interview, they felt a little bit of that because it was a reason for hope for me.
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We'll be back next week with a great interview.
It's in the Code and the Weekly Roundup.
For now, we'll say thanks for being here.
Have a good day.
Thanks, Brad.
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