Weekly Roundup: Christian Fascism at the State of the Union
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This episode of Straight White American Jesus focuses on the removal and censure of Representative Al Green during the State of the Union, highlighting the symbolic image of Green confronting Donald Trump, with JD Vance and Mike Johnson standing behind Trump. Hosts Brad Onishi and Dan Miller delve into Christian nationalism, discussing how different Christian denominations unite under Trump’s illiberal movement. Also covered are current legislative actions, such as Trump’s threat to close the Department of Education, and a high-profile response to DEI threats in Georgetown Law, showcasing the administration’s attempts to reshape American education and federal policies. The show also touches on hopeful signs of legal resistance against the administration’s overreach and outcomes of state-level political efforts.
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Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order.
Remove this gentleman from the chamber.
The final part of the team is to be able to get the full-time job.
This is a clip of Representative Al Green being removed from the chamber during the State of the Union.
He became the first congressperson to be removed during a presidential address and was then censured.
Today we talk about the image of Green waving his cane at Donald Trump with J.D. Vance and Mike Johnson standing behind him.
By isolating that snapshot, we get a window into our current moment.
A moment in which a reactionary Catholic and a Southern Baptist New Apostolic Reformation adjacent set of leaders stands behind a president rapidly taking the country into illiberalism and perhaps fascism.
It's a moment when two white Christian men stand behind a twice-impeached felon supporting his presidency at every turn and admonishing the Black Baptist calling for the saving of Medicaid and the care of the most vulnerable people in the United States.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is the Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
Great to be with you on this Friday.
Joined today after a long week, a week in which we did a bonus episode and all kinds of other things, by my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Nice to see you again.
Like, I rarely get to see the Brad Onishi multiple times in a week, so that's pretty exciting for me.
So, really, Brad, this is the high point.
Right now, looking at you.
Well, does that mean you did not play dodgeball last night?
I did play dodgeball.
I jammed my thumb.
I feel like I'm now officially a dodgeball warrior of some sort because I've sustained an injury.
It means I have to suffer through things like trying to pull my shoes on and stuff, but I'm tough.
I can make it.
I can survive.
So I just want to say quickly, if you're a subscriber, we had a bonus episode this week.
A bunch of that episode is available to everybody, but there's a section of it that's just Dan telling a funny story.
And somehow, Dan, in the weird wonders of editing, the first three minutes of your story got cut, and it just went to me saying, I have questions.
So people in the Discord were just like, what happened?
This is like a juicy story.
So if you are a subscriber, I put in the Discord yesterday a link to the missing three minutes and 50 seconds.
And I'll put that in a post today on Supercast, but just everyone, if you were missing something on the bonus, you're not crazy.
And Dan's very juicy church story where he was, shall we say, approached with an indecent proposal is in there now.
So just be ready for it.
I actually heard from somebody that heard the other one and like said a kind of a memorable line from your response.
And they're like, what was that about?
And I was like...
Oh, yeah.
It's intriguing, I guess.
So if you missed it, if you feel like you missed out, check Discord or I'll send out a link today.
All right, y'all.
Talk about the State of the Union.
And as you heard at the top, Representative Al Green was removed from the chamber during the speech and subsequently censured by the House.
We'll talk about that.
And then really want to just tie that in, I guess, to what I take to be...
A Christian fascist image from the State of the Union.
There is a picture, and I hope that you've seen it.
If you have not seen it, Google it.
Look it up.
Val Green, from behind of him, waving his cane at the podium.
And there's Trump.
And behind him are Mike Johnson and J.D. Vance.
And to me...
Sometimes an image is just worth a 25-minute analysis because of what it shows you about where you're at in history, and I think this is one of those images.
We'll talk more about the Department of Education and Republicans needing to ask Elon Musk if they can hold a vote in Congress.
A couple of other stories, but we're going to start with the State of the Union.
All right, Dan, so...
Here's where I landed with the State of the Union.
We could talk about what Trump said and what he did not say.
We could break down whether or not it was a good speech or a bad speech.
I will say, I'm looking at a post by AtFactPostNews.
Zero mentions of healthcare affordability.
Zero mentions of housing affordability.
Zero mentions of veterans.
Zero mentions of prescription drug costs.
Two mentions of the Gulf of America.
Three mentions of annexing Greenland.
Three mentions of Elon Musk.
Five mentions of tax handouts for the ultra-wealthy and megacorporations.
Six mentions of the Panama Canal.
Thirteen mentions of Joe Biden.
So that gives you an indication of the priorities and mindset of Donald Trump as he gave this speech.
But I want to focus on something that really is the heart of our show, and that is the Christian nationalism, the religious right, and where we are as a country.
Dan, I think that if we go back to 2016, and I'm happy for you to actually jump in here and tell me what you think.
We had this famous statistic of 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.
And I think from 2016 to 2020, there was a focus on white evangelicals as the kind of, the group who represented Christian nationalism.
And you and I did a lot of that analysis, you know, so many of our colleagues, whether it's Sarah Posner.
Catherine Stewart, Ann Nelson, Phil Gorski, Sam Perry, Andrew Whitehead, Anthea Butler, Kyate Joshi, you know, so many folks have really had great comments on that.
I think, though, that there's a realization now in 2025 that if you're going to talk about the Christian supremacy that has spread all over this country, you really can't just stay with the white evangelical category, that you really need bigger lenses and more nuanced understandings of the categories that you really need bigger lenses and more nuanced understandings of the categories of Christians in order to I'm driving at that because of the two men who were sitting behind Donald Trump as he gave the State of the Union, but reactions to that kind of setup.
I think it's true.
I think it's both true and somewhat, maybe misleading is not the right word, so let me explain what I mean by that, is that the category evangelical, right, has always been this kind of amorphous, squishy, So it's never referred to a particular denomination.
It has never referred to a particular doctrinal stance.
And so even like the National Association of Evangelicals, if you go to their website, they still have the standard Bebbington, like here are the four marks of an evangelical and it's biblicism and it's crucicentrism and, you know, whatever.
But those are really, really broad categories that cover an awful lot of Christians.
So there's always been this sense in which evangelicalism...
Names something distinctive, but also something with really blurry boundaries.
And so as you get groups that traditionally were not part of it or weren't considered part of it, or certainly weren't considered part of the denominations that were within it, so like different kind of charismatic and Pentecostal groups, certainly Catholics and others, there's also that sense in which that term, I think the boundaries were porous enough that you could identify Catholics who...
We're functionally, let's say, evangelicals, or you could identify individual churches or people within particular traditions that, you know, the tradition as a whole might be liberal Protestant or something, but they fit into that.
You always had, even within like Southern Baptist circles, you know, you'd have the dude who kind of quietly in the back was like, well, actually, I believe in speaking in tongues or, you know, other like sort of Pentecostal or charismatic things.
So you've had these areas of overlap.
So there's...
Two parts.
One is, I think you're right.
Like, it does.
When we have talked about white evangelicals, we, big we, people, like analysts, scholars, whomever, we're typically not talking about some of the, what used to be fringe positions, like the dominionist Christian stuff.
We typically haven't been talking about Pentecostal charismatic Christians as much as we have like other things like, say, Southern Baptists or Missouri Synod Lutherans or, you know, whatever it is.
But I also think that you could sort of flip it a little bit and say that what's coming into view is that that...
That category of evangelical, which has always been rather amorphous, continues to sort of shape and evolve, and it's like an umbrella that sort of stretches out, and sometimes it covers more, sometimes it covers less.
And I think that we're seeing that.
So I think you can look at it both ways, but I think it does highlight that we need to be aware, and lots of the people you named have been making us aware of things like, you know, Latinos who fit into this, that not everybody is white, and that even when we talk about white evangelicalism, it never meant that everybody in the congregation is literally white.
And people like Miguel de la Torre, who said that whiteness is actually not about skin color.
It's a kind of ideology.
And somebody can adhere to whiteness and not be, you know, by terms of skin tone, somebody who would pass as white or whatever.
And that there have always been these dynamics and these nuances.
And I think that one of the things that, the last point related to this, historians of American religion would say that since, I don't know, the post-war period, but really like 60s, 70s, 80s, You've had a loss of denominational identity in the U.S. and more focus on kind of trans-denominational identities like evangelicalism.
It says it's not tied to a particular Christian group.
And I think there's another sense in which this that we're seeing is that.
It's just that continuing to happen.
So I could see it developing either way, where we say it's not just evangelicals, it's these other groups are also recognizing that that term...
Is covering groups that maybe once upon a time, people under that umbrella would not have wanted to include.
But as the grounds of inclusion, the basis of inclusion has become Christian nationalism.
Do you support this vision of Christian nationalism?
Do you support the MAGA movement?
Do you support these things?
If you do, then you're one of us.
And whatever label we want to stick on the us, whether it's evangelical or whatever, it fits.
So I don't know if that makes sense or if I've just talked people into a circle, but it's to say that I think we do need that nuance and to recognize those streams that feed it.
I think that that element is more important than like, okay, do we call this all evangelicalism?
Do we just call it Christian nationalism and specify it?
But I think to recognize these different currents that feed it is really important.
Well, this brings up a point that you've made over and over on this show, which is that so much of the Christian identity for evangelicals is based on your political views, not on your...
denominational belonging or even some of your doctrine.
And so the idea that you would be considered a real evangelical if you vote Republican, if you're vehemently anti-abortion, if you're anti-trans, if you are anti-immigrant, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Here's the reason I bring that up, Dan, is let's just stop and hover on this picture.
And if you're not in front of the computer, you're driving, you're doing dishes, just try to imagine it.
You have Donald Trump giving the State of the Union.
And behind him, to our left as the audience is J.D. Vance, and then to our right as the audience is Mike Johnson.
And then here's Al Green standing up with his cane, arm extended, clearly admonishing Trump and those who stand behind him, a la Vance, Johnson, and the rest.
The reason I bring up the nuance and needing to go beyond the white evangelical category is because White evangelical, I think, for a lot of folks in ways that I think you just unpacked, Dan, traditionally meant this conception of, oh, Christian nationalists.
You mean like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.
You mean Ralph Reed.
You mean James Dobson.
You mean those kind of classic stalwarts of mainstream evangelicalism.
And in the Trump era, 2016 to now, that group is still there.
Still present and still very important and powerful.
But to see the two men behind Trump at this State of the Union, to me, was really something to take in in terms of the Christian supremacist forces leading the MAGA movement and what it says about American Christianity and the state of it in 2025. So let's break down every character of the image.
Donald Trump is a twice impeached president.
He is somebody who is convicted of fraud.
Like, he had to pay $25 million because of Trump University.
His charity and organization was disbanded.
Adjudicated sexual assault.
A known adulterer.
And, I mean, we could go on down the line, Dan, about all the things.
He just allowed 1,500 convicted insurrectionists to be pardoned.
He also just brought Andrew Tate, like a known global, you know, We could go on and on about Donald Trump.
Had Ye and Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.
Fine people on both sides.
We talked all last week about the blow-up with Zelensky.
He is instituting a takeover of the executive branch.
It feels as if we are sliding into authoritarianism where Congress no longer has the power of the purse.
He is daring judges to rule against him and getting very close to saying, what are you going to do about it?
All right, that's Donald Trump.
Dan, Donald Trump fits the model of a global authoritarian.
Whether or not he has seized that is sort of barely up for debate at the moment, but you and I outlined it on Wednesday.
In the bonus episode and the material that's available to everybody publicly.
Orban, Putin, Modi, Erdogan.
These are the folks he was showing off for in that Zelensky Oval Office meeting.
Now, let's move away from Trump.
Look to Mike Johnson.
Mike Johnson is the Speaker of the House.
He's perhaps the most classically religious right and Christian right.
Speaker of the House that has been there in a long, long time.
Way more than Kevin McCarthy.
Way more than the, like, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor set.
Remember the Young Guns, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor?
Yep.
Long gone.
What's Eric Cantor doing right now?
Who knows?
Selling cars, probably.
All right.
So, he's from that kind of Southern Baptist world.
He's from a kind of classically evangelical pipeline.
But, Dan, I have written...
About this, with Matt Taylor, others have too.
He flies an appeal to heaven flag outside of his office.
He is aligned with New Apostolic Reformation leaders and apostles.
He had one of them come to Washington, D.C. when he was elected to Congress.
He praises Jim Garlow, who is a Gnar adjacent person, and talks about the ways that Jim Garlow is somebody who has inspired him.
He's a big fan of David Barton, the faux historian.
Mike Johnson is also somebody who has done everything possible to overturn the 2020 election.
Dan, this is perhaps the congressman who did the most to make sure that the 2020 election got overturned for Donald Trump.
This is NPR. Johnson's effort to help overturn the election is well documented.
A constitutional lawyer by trade, Johnson wrote the supporting brief on behalf of House Republicans asking the Supreme Court to block the Electoral College certification in certain key states Joe Biden won.
The court rejected the case.
Johnson also voted against certifying the 2020 election in the House.
So Al Green stands up and he starts yelling and he starts admonishing and he starts interrupting.
And here's Mike Johnson standing behind Trump, hitting the gavel.
The man who wanted to overturn the 2020 election.
The man who does not think the J6 rioters deserve what they got.
The man who's aligned with the New Apostolic Reformation.
And you're like, Brad, why is that important?
And if you have forgotten, go back and watch or listen to Charismatic Revival of Fury, the series I made with Matthew Taylor, because in that series you will learn...
The New Apostolic Reformation was, as Matt Taylor says, the tip of the spear of Christian Trumpism to overturn 2020, including to foment insurrection.
The New Apostolic Reformation was the leading Christian movement for the insurrection.
It is documented in that series.
You can go listen to it.
You can read Matt's book.
That is who Johnson is.
Okay?
He's also the guy that when Sean Hannity asked him when he was elected speaker, so what should people know about you?
He said, the Bible's my worldview.
If you want to know my worldview, go read the Bible.
Okay, that's Johnson, a man who did everything he could to overturn the election, a man who has said in the past that he is not sure that separation of church and state is a real thing.
Somebody who thinks that the Establishment Clause doesn't mean you can't have Taxpayer money going to religious schools and places that practice discrimination, that don't recognize trans people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
What am I forgetting about that?
You want to jump in here?
Because I'm going to go to Vance.
You know how it is.
If I get on a roll, it's going to go.
The roll's going to happen.
All I'm going to say is that I think that what you're describing about Johnson highlights that shifting nature of identities.
As you said, he was like sort of...
The classical religious right figure.
He's been a part of that world for a long time.
And so those old school names, kind of that old guard, traditional religious right, but also new apostolic reformation pieces and all of this.
And I think in a way he is like the microcosm of exactly the phenomenon we're describing, right?
Where, you know, I've had people ask me like, where's the traditional quote-unquote religious right with the Christian nationalism stuff?
I'm like, it's still there.
It's still like one of the pieces, right?
And that this is, I think people...
When we talk about Christian identity and the Christian identity of these figures who are the Christian nationalists, those identities change.
It's like all of our identities change.
They merge and they're fluid and they adapt.
And I think that Johnson just illustrates exactly the complexities we were talking about, about, you know, is this evangelicalism?
Is it Pentecostalism?
Is it this?
Is it that?
Is it charismatic?
You know, what is it?
You're like, the answer is yes.
It is.
Those currents coming together and taking, you know, sort of adding nuance and new shape, and I feel like Mike Johnson literally embodies that.
It's also why I think people that, you know, you and I are academics, and we like typically logic and rationality, and we like things to fit together, and I think people think about religion that way, and they think about it in terms of belief, and they're like, I don't understand how all their beliefs hold together.
You're like, they don't.
They don't.
It's this Frankenstein monster, theologically speaking, but that's not the point.
The point for them is...
Christian America, and the theology will follow along behind.
And so I really feel like he embodies that, which is why when people try to poke at contradictions and, you know, what about these groups that don't believe in a rapture and traditional evangelicals do and so forth?
That's not going to keep Mike Johnson awake at night.
It's just not going to stop the movement or something, if you point out theological nuance.
And I just think he embodies that.
Like, when you look at him and you run down the kind of bio features that you are, it's like, this is what Christian nationalism is in America right now, which is why we label it Christian nationalism, and don't just call it evangelicalism, or don't just call it something else, because it really is all of those currents, and I think he embodies that.
All right, let's take a break, come back, and we'll get to Vance.
Be right back.
I'm Leah Payne.
I'm a historian who studies Pentecostal and charismatic movements in the United States What I've learned is that what happens in churches shapes the American political and social landscape.
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Okay, let's think about J.D. Vance.
You all know that I've been on a J.D. Vance kick since the summertime, if you've been listening.
J.D. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019. I'm not going to go through every aspect of his religious identity, but when he converted, he immediately started hanging out with contrarian reactionary Catholics, Catholics who, in many cases, quarrel openly with the Pope.
He has been part of the Napa Institute, which is a Christian nationalist community.
And gathering of bishops, of billionaires, and of lay Catholics and priests who in many ways see what the Pope is doing along the lines of mercy and poverty and environmentalism as the exact opposite of their kind of Catholicism.
There are folks who advocate for an integration of the government with a religious institution, namely the Catholic Church, such that the government is a subsidiary of J.D. Vance is the guy who has been pro-natalist in the past, who says that people should be punished for any form of abortion.
He wants childless cat ladies to contribute to society.
He thinks people who have kids should get more of a vote.
He thinks America is based on an ethnicity.
He talks all about how my people are buried over there in Kentucky.
America's not an idea.
It's not an experiment.
America's about a people, okay?
And that starts to get scary because you're like, wait a minute, you mean like a Volk?
And this is a homeland?
And JD's like, yeah, that's what I mean.
You know how I know that, Dan?
So this is all going to get a little weird here, but you all ready for story time?
Let's do it.
Daily Dot, Steven Monicelli.
There is a Twitter account, X account, called Captive Dreamer 7. And this is the world we live in, Dan.
I'm a 44-year-old man.
I have to talk about cat turd and the Bronze Age pervert and at Captive Dreamer 7. I don't know why this is what is happening.
But yeah, we've really evolved as a species that that's what we're doing right now.
Anyway, here's what Monicelli writes.
Days after the 2024 election...
VP J.D. Vance followed at CaptiveDreamer7, an ex-user, who boasted that his viral tweets, CaptiveDreamer7's viral tweets, about Haitians allegedly eating cats in September, put it on Vance's radar, sparking a week-long panic, which you and I talked about at length on this show.
Captive Dreamer is not just somebody who is randomly followed by J.D. Vance.
Prominent members of the Second Trebin administration, including Elno Musk, Nope, read that wrong.
Elon Musk and Ed Martin, attorney for Washington, D.C., the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., are also fans.
Actually, Musk has replied to Captive Dreamer 7. He has, quote, tweeted the post and so on.
Okay.
Why is this relevant today?
Well...
Captive Dreamer seems to have the attention of Musk and Vance and other Trump administration people.
Let's dig into the account, shall we, Dan?
What did we find when we looked?
The account once featured a pinned post that used a quote by Adolf Hitler from Mein Kampf to praise President Donald Trump, calling his survival of an assassination attempt proof of his indomitable will to live.
Its handle, Captive Dreamer, is a reference to a memoir written by a French soldier Nope, I'm reading this wrong again.
Wait a minute.
A French soldier who joined the Nazis on the verge of Allied victory.
The book's author in a review is described as having an emotional and ideological commitment to National Socialism.
Captive Dreamer has bragged about reading Mein Kampf several times and made posts that downplay the significance of the Holocaust.
J.D. Vance Is somebody who has also, as I've mentioned on the show many times, praised Curtis Yarvin, the Silicon Valley monarchist.
In Vanity Fair, James Pogue wrote a while back about Vance.
He said, look, Vance has a kind of late Republican view of our Republic.
Okay?
So here's him quoting Vance in interviews with Vance.
James Pogue talking to J.D. Vance.
Here's Vance.
I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left.
We need a de-bathification program, a de-wokification program.
I think Trump is going to run again in 2024. I think what he should do is fire every single mid-level bureaucrat and replace them with our people.
And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, the chief justice has made his ruling.
Now let him enforce it.
James Pogue rightfully...
Points this out in the very next sentence.
This is a description of a coup.
That is what J.D. Vance was advocating in 2022. We are in a late Republican period, Vance said later.
If we're going to push back against it, we're going to have to get pretty wild and pretty far out there and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.
I can go on and on about J.D. Vance, Dan.
I'll spare you.
To me, he is the representation of a Christian monarchical movement that is anticipating the collapse of our republic, what a post-constitutional America will look like.
And he envisions himself as standing right in the best place to be its leader.
Now, I could go on and on about these guys.
If you've listened to this show, you know I've talked about them at length.
What's the point for today?
Dan?
If you were...
Writing a history book about the State of the Union in 2025, you would say that an authoritarian president who is trying to institute an illiberal order in the United States, bordering on fascism, was supported symbolically by Protestants and Catholics.
Who stood behind Trump, Dan, at the State of the Union?
When Al Green was interrupting, who was standing up, acting like faux tough guys, fugazis?
J.D. Vance, the Catholic convert, and Mike Johnson, the Southern Baptist, New Apostolic Reformation-aligned Speaker of the House.
Dan, when you look back at Nazi Germany, the Protestants and the Catholics, they were down.
They were down for Nazism.
They were down for National Socialism.
When you look at this picture, we have Al Green.
Waving his hand at them.
The fascist president, the Catholic convert, the Protestant leader.
That is where we are in America.
I got one more thing.
I want to get to Al Green, but I'll let you jump in.
Sorry to rant here for a while.
No, I think it is, as you say, it's an image that I think symbolizes an awful lot.
And again, for people who are like, wait, Protestant, Catholic, this has been this big divide.
I keep coming to this notion of these identities that transcend traditional doctrinal distinctions, and for people who think that that's strange, I'll just remind them of an issue that you've brought up a lot, and a friend of the show Randall Balmer writes about, and the issue of abortion.
And we've talked about this, that, you know, you go back pre-Roe v.
Wade, even immediately after Roe v.
Wade, and most conservative Christians in America were not opposed to abortion, or it was not the kind of issue it is now.
They weren't writing about how the Bible says abortion is evil and so on and so forth.
Brad, one of the reasons was it was a Catholic position.
Anti-abortion was a position Catholics held, and Catholics had always held it.
So conservative Protestants, who were staunchly anti-Catholic, did not.
They opposed opposition to abortion, partly because it was a Catholic issue.
Enter people like Paul Weyrich and so forth, stories that you've told, stories that other people tell about how that religious right identity was formed, how it took shape and kind of masked the fact that it was about desegregation and made it about abortion.
And what happened?
You had a uniting of conservative Protestants and Catholics around the social issue of abortion.
Why do I say that?
I only say that because this isn't new.
This is just another articulation of this kind of thing that has always gone on.
Catholics and Protestants and conservative Protestants have been visibly different groups, but there have been these points at which they overlap, these points at which they have been willing to come together, whether it's about LGBTQ plus opposition, whether it's about abortion rights or prohibiting abortion rights and so forth.
So I think that this is showing that as well.
So when people look at this, it's not, again, that's why we call it Christian nationalism and not just...
Just evangelicalism or whatever.
It's not a Protestant movement.
It's not a Catholic movement.
There are lots of Catholics who aren't Christian nationalists.
There are Protestants who aren't as well.
But within that circle, on the Venn diagram, you draw the Christian nationalists, you have Catholics like the J.D. Vances of the world, and you have Protestants like Johnson, who mixes together a whole bunch of different currents of Protestantism, and they fit together into this one concept of, you know, Christian nationalism, the MAGA movement, as you say, throwing its weight behind Trump.
Last point that I'll just throw out there for people who don't catch it.
When somebody like Vance talks about the late Republican period, it's another one of those appeals to Rome.
It's always the Roman Empire.
They're always looking at the Roman Empire for the model.
That's Caesar.
Yeah.
Caesar had to take power because the Republic was failing.
And so Caesar turns Rome into an authoritarian dictatorship because he's actually doing a favor.
The Republic was failing.
He comes in to rescue it.
And bring about the true glory of Rome and so forth.
That's the illusion and the appeal that's being made, is that the MAGA movement is here to save us from ourselves, to save us from our democratic excesses, from our inefficiencies, all of those kinds of things.
And this is the movement that you see unifying these different currents of American Christianity with this kind of fascist fever dream wrapped up together in a vision of the glories of Rome.
All of that coming together in figures, like you say, in this one image that captures or embodies a lot of those key ideological and religious components.
After the State of the Union, Mike Johnson talked about decorum.
He talked about decorum as he hit the gavel and reprimanded Al Green during the whole event.
And the movement for censure, Al Green has been censured.
Was introduced by Dan Newhouse, who is a Republican from Washington.
I'm going to read you Newhouse's statement, Dan, and the irony is thick with this one.
So just try to keep it together.
I don't know if you're going to laugh.
I don't know if you're going to cry.
I don't know if you're going to try to punch me through the screen.
We cannot ignore the willful disruption intended to stop a proceeding.
Without decorum.
Without respect, what do we got?
What do we have, truly?
You know, you want to do another two hours on this?
We can.
Willful disruption, January 6, 2021. Intended to stop a proceeding.
Presidential election, 2020. Without decorum, people taking a dump in the Capitol building.
Without respect, people trampling all over the dice and destroying people's offices.
What do we got?
Oh, I remember now.
Donald Trump pardoned all those people.
He pardoned all of them.
What do we got if we don't have decorum?
Decorum, decorum, decorum, when it's you.
Be civil when it's you.
And when it's us, it's rightful insurrection.
Now, let's get to Al Green.
Some of you know who Al Green is, some of you don't.
Congressperson from Texas.
Al Green is 78 years old, Dan, so this was not a young person doing this.
Says somebody who's older than my dad.
Al Green came up through the NAACP. Al Green is a Baptist.
Dan, this is a black man, a Christian black man, standing up to interrupt a wannabe authoritarian fascist president with a Catholic and a Protestant behind him who are Christian supremacists.
And in one case, a monarchist, and in another, somebody who believes Donald Trump is a fulfillment of prophecy for the country to save it.
It's a black man standing up to say, this cannot be allowed.
And what was his stated reason?
Medicaid.
Some of you hear Medicaid and you don't know what it is.
Medicaid is a federal and state program designed to help vulnerable groups get access to health care.
That means low-income people.
That means pregnant women.
That means children.
That means certain folks who have certain conditions and disabilities.
People who can't work.
People who might have mental health issues and so on.
He's saying you cannot cut Medicaid to give a tax to the rich.
Dan, this is a black Baptist man from the South saying you cannot abandon the poor to the president.
Who the Christian right thinks is the embodiment of Christian values and who they think is a savior for the country.
And the Catholic vice president and the Baptist slash New Apostolic Reformation Speaker of the House saying to them, you cannot abandon the poor.
And he was thrown out.
Dan, we might be 1930s Germany at the moment.
We might resemble 1990s Russia.
We might be copying Orban's Hungary.
But when you watch a Black Baptist from the NAACP be censured for standing up to a white supremacist president, a Nazi-sympathizing VP, and a spinely speaker who uses piety as a weapon against the vulnerable, I'm going to tell you something.
Unfortunately, this is the most American thing I can think of.
This is an us problem.
This is the America of the 1870s, the 1950s, and the 1980s.
We are the America that inspired Hitler with our one-drop rule and Jim Crow laws.
We are the America in which millions joined the KKK and sympathized with the Kaiser, the Fuhrer, and Franco.
This is an us problem.
This is who we are.
And Al Green standing up to be the one that got censured?
It's a huge reminder of all of that.
The Democrats, let me just say one more thing, I'll throw it to you and we can move on.
Ten voted, Dan, to censure Green.
Ten.
For decorum, I guess.
I don't know.
I guess there was just a need for decorum.
Or a need for order.
A need for politeness.
Not sure.
Hakeem Jeffries this week brought in the young representatives, some of whom walked out.
Maxwell Frost.
Jasmine Crockett, others, and admonish them for dissenting and disrupting, for walking out, for holding signs, and so on.
For her credit, AOC did not even attend.
And I might give you the worst news from the Democrats this week, which is hard to top.
Gavin Newsom started a podcast, Dan.
Came out and said he wasn't sure about trans athletes in sports.
And who was his first guest?
Kamala Harris, his old comrade from California who might succeed him as governor of California?
Nah.
Some of the other governors standing up to Trump?
Nah.
Could have done that.
You know, Dan, I don't really like listening to Gavin Newsom, but if Homeboy had brought on the governor of Washington and the governor of Oregon and said, hey, let's talk about resisting Trump, I might have queued it up.
I might have.
I might have put it on.
You know?
Why not?
If he would have brought in...
Senator Merkley and Wyden from Oregon have been like, hey, what are y'all doing to stop Doge?
I might listen.
I might.
This dude brought in Charlie Kirk, a man who says that Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad guy.
Gavin Newsom, Dan, is going to turn.
You know, there's always a question in my mind.
Who's going to go Nazi?
And I don't know about Gavin Newsom.
I kind of think two years from now, Gavin Newsom might be, like, way, way, way, way on the other side.
And y'all can prove me wrong when I'm wrong.
But that's kind of what I see.
Dan, I'm done.
I gotta stop.
I got three more hours in me, but I can tell you, like, Brad, it's over.
So tell me what you think, and then we'll go to a different thing.
I'll just say I saw the thing about Newsom, and I imagine Brad's head just spinning around.
Like, it was...
It was a lot of things, but as somebody who is a Californian, it's the kind of thing that hits you hard.
In Massachusetts, we had a Republican governor, Charlie Baker, for a long time, and he was super popular or whatever, and he's now the head of the NCAA that did what?
That announced banning trans women from competitive sports.
So yeah, we see these things going around.
I want to return to one point that you made early on, citing what Trump talked about in the speech and what he didn't talk about.
And I want to tie that to Medicaid, because that was the issue here.
I just want to point out, Trump talked a big game and ran a lot on lowering costs, lowering costs on day one, and grocery prices would go down, and inflation would go down, and everything would go down, and so forth.
And of course, we know that hasn't happened.
We don't talk about tariffs much on this show, but Trump keeps saying he's going to cause tariffs and then bringing them back because it's hurting the economy, all of this kind of stuff.
He hasn't brought prices down.
Things are spiking.
Unemployments or firings are getting higher, partly because they're firing everybody in the government and so forth.
All that to say what?
Trump ran on this notion of lowering costs and making things more affordable and so forth.
Not only hasn't done it, but says nothing about it in his speech.
Not even the typical Trump stuff of like, you know, I've done more than any president in America to lower your food bills or something.
Something completely false, but claiming it.
And I think Medicaid is part of that.
Medicaid is part of making healthcare affordable.
It is part of providing healthcare for people who can't have that.
And as you said at the beginning, and just to circle back around to it as we conclude this, it shows what matters to this administration and, more importantly, what doesn't.
And so we have millions of Americans, not the hardcore MAGA people.
But all those other people that are the ones that actually got Trump into office, the people who, you know, I think believed him when he said that he was going to, you know, bring down inflation, that he was going to bring down prices, that promised he wasn't going to take away things like Medicare and Medicaid and so forth.
And now that these things are being attacked, he just quietly fails to mention them in the State of the Union.
And what happens when somebody does, as you say, and when somebody does as part of a tradition of a kind of...
Prophetic Christian critique of government.
If we want to sort of situate it that way, we can.
He's literally silenced, silenced and removed.
And again, I think the symbolism of that is really telling.
I think the Democratic Party going along with that is really telling.
I think that all of this shows the falling into line of even the so-called opposition to Trump.
And I think all of that, to bring it back, was on full display, not just in what Trump said, but in the reaction to Green, which I think is symbolic of a lot of stuff, as well as, as you say, Ten Democrats voting to censure him.
I think so as to just avoid criticism coming from the right in Congress.
So I think it shows a lot of things, and I think it moves in the directions that you've been highlighting for some time.
It's a tale of two Greens, though, at the State of the Union.
You had one Green who stood up and just yelled her head off, along with Kid Rock's girlfriend, Lauren Boebert, and none of this happened.
Another Green stands up.
And he's removed.
Turns out one of the greens was white.
And one of the greens was black.
Sometimes that's how it works.
Sometimes all shades of green are not treated the same.
We'll be right back.
All right, Dan.
Got a couple of other things we're going to get to here.
Thank you for indulging my story time there and my rant.
Tell us about the Department of Education and some other happenings around the country.
Yeah, so, you know, the big thing with the Department of Education, we know that Trump has discussed and threatened to close the Department of Education for years.
This has been a dream of the right ever since the Department of Education was formed in 1979. But news came out this week that his team is apparently drafting an executive order aimed at closing the department.
He didn't sign anything this week.
There were some rumors that he would sign it yesterday, Thursday, as we record, but he didn't.
But the draft order directs the Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, to, quote, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department, end quote.
While also, again, for folks to just have a takeaway, there'll be the typical confusions, the typical contradictions, everything that comes with Trump when we talk about these kinds of things.
But also told the department to operate, quote, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.
So you're like, okay, whatever those two things mean together.
The draft order echoes some of his comments from his congressional speech that we talked about.
He said, quote, The experiment of controlling American education through federal programs and dollars and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support has failed our children, our teachers, and our families, end quote.
He had a statement in the same State of the Union we've been talking about where he decried unelected bureaucrats and people laughed out loud.
A number of Democrats laughed out loud.
People on social media are having any of this because like, um, hey, have you heard of Elon Musk?
Have you heard of an unelected, excuse me, unelected bureaucrat doing huge things in Washington and yet Trump can turn around and talk about the evils of unaccountable bureaucrats and so forth?
This is what he said.
Like a lot of his policies, it's hard to distinguish what's bluster and what's policy reality here.
How much of this is intended to have teeth and how much isn't.
Trump can't just close the Department of Education through executive action because it was created through legislation.
That is, Congress created the Department of Education by law.
It can't be closed by the president because he can't just overturn laws, despite what Trump happens to think.
He's kind of acknowledged this.
He has said that he'll push Congress to act, but he actually hasn't really done that yet.
Like, he hasn't challenged the law in court to try to overthrow it.
He hasn't made a big, heavy push against Congress.
There's currently no sign that Congress is prepared to do anything with the department, even GOP members.
And this could bring us into other discussion if we have time about the GOP getting nervous about Musk and about Doge and beginning to sort of desire some form of accountability from the president.
But we also know at the same time that a lot of the other things Trump has already been doing will affect the Department of Education, the firing of government officials.
They can fire people working at the government, excuse me, the Department of Education.
Reinterpretations of Title IX, the banning of trans women from sports, all of those kinds of things.
The rolling back of enforcement of anti-LGBTQ discrimination policies and so forth.
Terminating education research grants.
All of these things that he's done that will impact education.
It's also unclear because the Trump administration doesn't do policy.
They do proclamation.
They just proclaim what they're going to do.
It's unclear to anybody what is going to happen if the Department of Education is closed.
Again, it was formed in 1979, and what it basically did was consolidate responsibilities and programs that were at that time spread across different federal agencies and kind of consolidated them into the Department of Education.
So it's not clear what would happen now.
It's not clear if those programs persist, if they get reallocated to other agencies, which ones would just disappear, and all of those kinds of things.
So this was big news this week.
Not surprising.
We've been kind of waiting for Trump to do it.
But I think the takeaway is it's Trump promising to deliver on a right-wing dream, a dream for a number of years, certainly hurting vulnerable students, lots of concerns about policies and programs that help, you know, poor students, that help students with special needs, that help students with cognitive difficulties, students of different kinds.
And also the fact that there just is no clear plan here from any side of what this will actually be, what it will actually look like.
But this is something that I think everybody's been waiting for.
A lot of people have been fearing.
So rumblings about it this week and we'll continue to watch it and see where it goes.
But I'm interested in your reflections on any of that, the policy, the lack of clarity, any of the things that come from this.
Well, we have a really good example of of some of this at work this week because there were publications of a couple of letters that had been sent this week between Georgetown Law and the U.S. Attorney's Office.
So Ed Martin, the man who I mentioned 20 minutes ago, I think in the context, Dan, of, oh yeah, let me remember, interacting with a Nazi on social media.
So that Ed Martin, who is the U.S. Attorney in D.C., wrote a letter to the Dean of Georgetown Law.
And he said, it's come to my attention that Georgetown Law continues to teach and promote DEI. I have questions.
Have you eliminated all DEI from your curriculum?
Second, if DEI is found in your courses or teaching in any way, will you move swiftly to remove it?
He goes on to say, Dan, that no applicant for a fellows program, summer internship, or employment in the U.S. Attorney's Office who is affiliated with a law school that teaches DEI will be considered.
It's basically a threat, Dan.
Unless you get rid of DEI, you're out of luck.
In ways that the Democratic Party could learn from, Ed Martin, the dean of Georgetown Law, wrote back, and he said, Your letter challenges Georgetown's ability to define our mission as an educational institution.
It inquires about Georgetown's curriculum and classroom teaching, asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of the curriculum, and asserts that your office will not hire individuals from schools where you find the curriculum, quote, unacceptable.
The First Amendment, however, guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it.
He then goes on to say, and this is right on what you're talking about, This is a great example of what the Department of Ed does, is it protects against These kinds of incursions.
And it also protects local and state powers from discriminating against those who don't fit their criteria.
So, you know, if you don't have the Department of Ed, you run into places where there are certain people who are not deemed worth educating.
Could be they have the wrong skin color.
Could be they have a disability.
It could be any number of things.
So, to me, this exchange between Ed Martin And the leader of Georgetown Law School, William Traynor, was a really good example of why the Department of Education is actually something Trump and the right would like to get rid of.
Yeah.
I just also want to point out the risks of, like, picking a fight with the dean of a law school.
Like, with that letter, it's like, it's the kind of thing where, like, you know, you pick the fight and try to intimidate somebody.
And it's like, I think you picked the wrong person if you're going to, like...
Try to pick a fight about constitutional law and public policy and so forth.
But I think you're right that it was a great reminder of both of those things, of why they want to do away with this.
And Democrats, if there are any of you listening about how to actually respond to this, please take notes.
Yeah.
Yes.
I think that's right.
And I think that one of the things that I've said over and over, and I'll just say it again, does this feel like small government to y'all?
Does this feel like government get out of my life?
Or does this feel like the government's saying to institutions, which happened, Dan?
I don't know.
Dan, Dan, I'm forgetting a lot of things today.
Do you remember?
Is Georgetown a religious school?
Do you know?
Is it Muslim or Buddhist?
Can you help me out?
Christian, I think.
Is it Christian?
I think it might be.
I think it might be a Christian institution.
It's weird.
It's weird that the Christian president's administration...
The guy that had a Catholic and a Protestant standing behind him the other day is riding to threaten a Christian institution.
It just seems like you have to be the right kind of Christian for this government to kind of, like, leave you alone or be on your side.
It kind of, I don't know, highlights the whole problem with Christian nationalism and religion and government.
Like, if the government promotes one Christianity and not the other, you might just have the wrong Christianity, and guess what, Georgetown?
You might be Catholic as hell, which you are.
I've been there.
You're great.
Okay, Georgetown, love you.
And you're not the right kind of Christian.
So too bad.
And it's just a lesson for everyone out there.
You might be the right kind of Christian today, maybe not tomorrow.
And the government will come for you.
Not even just the right kind of Christian, the right kind of Catholic.
We just spent all this time talking about J.D. Vance, Catholic vice president, and Catholics within the MAGA movement, but this is not the right kind of Catholicism embodied in a place like Georgetown.
So they're fair game, a target for Christian nationalism.
J.D. is willing to criticize the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops.
He's willing to say, yeah, they're getting it wrong.
J.D. Vance has been Catholic for like 16 or 17 minutes.
So you think they're not going to come for Georgetown and for Villanova and whoever else gets out of line as a Catholic?
They're already going for the Catholic charities that help people apply for asylum.
They're already saying to those Catholics, you're doing it wrong.
What do you think Christian nationalism is?
What do you think Christian fascism is?
If not, I don't care if you're a Christian.
You're not the right kind.
I'm on a roll, Dan.
I'm going to say one more thing.
We should go to Reason for Hope.
But I got to say, this is on my mind, too.
I looked up the stats for Ukraine.
Seems like a lot of Christians in Ukraine.
Just seems like a lot.
And their president was at our president's, like, you know, residence the other day.
And nothing got brought up.
About, like, protecting Christians or Christian identity or Christian values or a Christian country.
There's a long and deep and wide, like, conversation to have about Christianity in Ukraine.
But it does not matter to them.
If you're not the right kind of Christian, they will come for you.
The same as the Nazis did, the same as every regime there is.
They don't care.
And I just think that, to me, if you go from A to Z today, whether it's Johnson and Vance behind Trump, Al Green the Baptist, Georgetown Law, and everything in between, it's a pretty good illustration of what Christian fascism means in 2025. All right, Dan, give us some reason for hope.
Our reason for hope is, again, in the courts, and I realize that this is a fraught thing, but I was reading an article.
I don't remember where I read the article, but it was talking about the Trump administration beginning to really run into friction, as they described it, with...
This kind of shock and awe sort of policy that they've been putting forward.
Congress trying to get involved, that slows things down.
But really, the beating that the Trump administration continues to take in court.
And so a district court granted an injunction against the Trump administration for freezing funds allocated to states by Congress and cited, among other things, the Impoundment Control Act, which, you know, if you don't happen to be familiar with the Impoundment Control Act, I was not.
It's an act that requires the president to disperse money allocated by Congress.
It's a law that says if Congress has allocated money, the executive is required to execute that and to disperse those funds.
Also cited numerous other laws.
The really hopeful part, I thought, that named this is the judge writing the order wrote that, quote, the executive put itself above Congress, end quote, in this piece.
Again, I recognize the limits of the courts.
You just cited J.D. Vance in earlier things saying, well, let's watch the courts try to enforce it if they want to say that we're breaking the law, and we'll see where that goes.
But I continue to find hope in the fact that there is a lot of legal blockage coming up for the Trump administration.
There's always that lag between what you can do in an executive order or what you can proclaim in the courts and other things catching up.
But I think we're beginning to see that.
And I don't know where that goes, but I do take hope in it.
Mine comes from Montana.
Aaron in the morning, Aaron Reid, who's just a great reporter and trans advocate, talks about how a bunch of Republicans in Montana voted against a bill that would remove trans kids from their parents.
29 Republicans flipped on this bill.
It did not even come close to passing.
And there's just a lot of, like...
Local lessons to be learned in Montana about how to proceed with these kinds of things.
And small bit of news, but it's good news.
And I think we've got to hold on to those as well.
All right, y'all.
If you caught our bonus episode this week, again, if you're a subscriber, go find The Missing 345 because you really do want to hear what happened to Dana Church in Oklahoma.
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