gop climate change denial

A top official for President Donald Trump has found himself embroiled in an embarrassing new scandal about their abuse of tax-funded privileges, with the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America exposing how the situation is the perfect example of "how to lose a presidential election."

Last week, MS NOW reported that Secret Service members were becoming "fed up" with the trips demanded of them by Vice President JD Vance, which some agents considered "inappropriate" and an "unprecedented use of government resources." This growing issue was typified by a recent request to use Marine Two, the vice president's military helicopter, as a means to take his son to a golf lesson in Washington, D.C.

"But the Secret Service staff’s complaints about a planned chopper ride for an elementary school student reflects a building morale problem inside the team of agents assigned to shield Vance and his young family, according to the two people and another person familiar with the agents’ frustration," the report detailed, later adding, "The agents pulled in to protect Vance and his family have also become 'fed up' with the last-minute travel demands that Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, frequently place on the security team, according to the two people and an additional source with knowledge of their travel who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals."

Reacting to this news in their latest episode, the former Obama administration officials at Pod Save America lambasted Vance for his flagrant abuse of his taxpayer-funded perks, suggesting that such wasteful indulgences could spell trouble for his 2028 prospects. Co-host Dan Pfeiffer, the former senior strategy and communications adviser for Barack Obama, said that the situation reminded him of another screw-up he heard about earlier in his career, which a colleague summed up as an "A-plus answer to the policy 101 question of how to lose a presidential election."

"This is that," Pfeiffer said.

He also added: "You were getting taxpayer-funded helicopter rides for your son's golf lessons? Not even, like, baseball game, boy scouts, charity work, it's f——king golf lessons?"

"Boy, are we a long way away from Hillbilly Elegy," co-host Jon Favreau responded.

President Donald Trump's big primetime speech last week was littered with mental "glitches" and "challenges" for him, according to one forensic psychologist, with the relatively short speech showing signs of "legitimate neurological changes" even compared to a year ago, suggesting that he could be showing signs of "sundowning."

On Thursday evening, Trump gave a primetime speech largely dedicated to his long-debunked claims about widespread voter fraud, featuring new claims about recently uncovered documents that he argued would prove that his loss in the 2020 election was illegitimate. Instead, efforts to dissect the actual materials showed no real proof of anything he claimed, while his meager energy and incoherence during the speech reignited the concerns about his fading mental and physical health.

Dr. John Pail Garrison is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist who also moonlights as a content creator, often sharing professional medical insights into Trump's signs of decline and struggle in public appearances and speeches. In a video digging into the Thursday speech, Garrison said that it was evident from his verbal difficulties and lack of energy that Trump had undergone considerable changes, suggesting that it was unlikely that he would have struggled in this way even just one year ago.

Early on in the video, Garrison already noted that Trump showed signs of agitation and frustration, including his frequent habit of bearing or gritting his teeth while speaking. He also noted that the president appeared much less energized and animated than usual, with a lack of his typical hand gestures and a slumped-over posture.

He singled out an instance where Trump jerked his elbow up while saying the word "evidence," suggesting that it "looked involuntary" and arguing that he has been showing more and more involuntary movements lately when experiencing strong emotions. Later on, he appeared to tense his shoulders during certain remarks, showing a level of anxiety that is uncommon for him, a development Garrison called "concerning."

Trump appeared to struggle to find the words he wanted to say, Garrison added, noting his atypical use of filler words such as "like" while going off of his prepared remarks, as he is known to do. This would suggest that he is starting to struggle with the improvisational aspects of his public speaking habits.

As the speech wore on later into the evening, Trump also appeared to have difficulty with pronouncing certain words, even some relatively simple ones like "alarm" and "disclose."

"It's not just one word here and there," Garrison said. "He's doing this a lot."

He added later: "So, what is it that we are possibly seeing? Now, there is always the possibility that we are seeing something like sundowning... For people with neurological conditions like dementia, late afternoon, early evening into the night, people with these issues can become more confused, more agitated. They can be more anxious, there's more emotional distress. Speaking becomes more difficult, there are more word-finding issues... What we're seeing [from Trump] is so dramatically different than just exhaustion that I don't think that adequately explains all the behaviors we're seeing."

The bizarre recent announcement from President Donald Trump's defense chief is actually part of a long-term scheme, with his one-time biographer revealing the 2028 ambitions behind it.

Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prompted confusion and mockery when he announced that, going forward, all military officers over the age of 30 would be subject to mandatory tests for testosterone deficiency and given hormone replacement therapy if their results are lacking. The move comes amid the Pentagon chief's longstanding insistence that the armed forces are suffering from a lack of masculine energy.

That might not be all there is behind the announcement, however. Michael Wolff — a veteran reporter and author best known for his insider coverage of Trump's political machine — claimed in the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," that Hegseth is using this announcement to lay the foundation for his own 2028 presidential run.

"I think, actually, the Heggers is running for president,” Wolff said. “There’s sort of a fundamental political strategy or view in the MAGAsphere, or in the Trump... world, which is that culture is politics. And it is always better to hit the cultural note rather than the political or the policy note."

He added: "So he is speaking with this directly to the ‘Trump bro’ base, because if he wants to run for president, that’s where he has to begin. He has to... appeal in some kind of identity, charismatic fashion to those kinds of people."

Wolff explained further that, in order to reach voters within the so-called "manosphere," one has to abandon "traditional politics" and begin viewing public statements and legislative pushes as "cultural markers." This, he argued, is precisely what Hegseth's latest move is all about.

“I mean, how are people gonna respond? I mean... certainly... he is the bottom of the pack of the obvious list that you might make at this point,” Wolff said. “But if this begins to catch on, then... he’s got himself a race.”

Wolff has asserted in the past that Hegseth is among those in Trump's orbit positioning themselves as potential 2028 successors, even though he has not generated significant media coverage for his ambitions, like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In a podcast from April, he suggested that the defense chief's chances largely hinge on those two names flaming out of the 2028 race.

"Is Pete Hegseth somehow, because he’s a performer, because he seems shameless, because he’s pro-military in some comical way, does this make him someone who can be a number two or three, and then number one and two fall, and he rises?" Wolff said. "Unlikely, but not impossible."

One of President Donald Trump's MAGA allies in Congress now finds herself embroiled in a betting market corruption scandal, with a new Wall Street Journal report alleging that she leaked insider information to a top influencer looking to bet on prediction markets.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, was among the names included in a new report from the Journal, detailing how prediction market betting has emerged as "the new Washington temptation." Trump's White House, in particular, has come under intense fire for allegations that administration members have been using undisclosed information about impending Trump decisions or speeches to make winning bets on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. Most recently, Trump's top teleprompter operator was suspended for placing bets on things that Trump would say in speeches, something he had both direct access to and control over.

Luna, meanwhile, was accused by the outlet's sources of bragging about tipping off a prominent MAGA influencer about Trump's running mate pick during the 2024 presidential campaign.

"Over lunch at the Stovall House, a popular members-only social club in Tampa, U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida told associates in the summer of 2024 that she knew Trump would choose Vance to be his vice president, according to a person familiar with the conversation. She said she had tipped off Rogan O’Handley, a popular MAGA influencer known as 'DC Draino,' about Trump’s pending decision so that he could use the information to place a winning bet on Polymarket, the person said. The congresswoman teased O’Handley, the person said, for not placing a bigger wager."

The report added: "O’Handley separately told associates that he was behind a long-shot attempt, mostly via social media, to get Trump to consider Luna as his running mate, according to a second person who heard O’Handley discuss the matter. When the congresswoman told O’Handley that Vance would get the nod instead, he placed a winning bet on Polymarket, the person said."

When asked about the allegation, Luna dismissed it and insisted that she would "continue to champion the fight against insider trading."

"I am honored the WSJ thinks I am telepathic but unfortunately I am not," Luna told the Journal in a statement.

O'Handley also forcefully denied the allegations, telling the outlet, "Any suggestion that I traded on confidential information or discussed doing so is inaccurate."

President Donald Trump's latest big endorsement has raised more than a few eyebrows, and now the situation has worsened after the candidate was caught making an embarrassing oversight, per The Daily Beast.

Last week, Trump officially endorsed Mike Lindell in the Minnesota gubernatorial race, potentially clearing the way for him to secure the GOP's nomination. Best known as the founder of the MyPillow company, Lindell has emerged as one of Trump's closest and most outspoken political allies over the last several years, particularly for his relentless championing of his debunked election fraud conspiracies. This commitment has made him the subject of mockery for his repeated claims about finding proof of fraud in the 2020 election.

The ridicule that follows him made him an alarming candidate for the GOP to deal with in the 2026 midterms in terms of viability. If he successfully wins the nomination, current polling indicates that he will most likely face Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar in November.

For the time being, however, it remains an open question whether or not Lindell will even be able to vote for himself, with The Minnesota Star Tribune confirming a glaring oversight in his personal voter registration. Despite being a native of the state, Lindell is not currently registered to vote there, with his only active registration being in Texas.

"Before he can vote for himself in next month’s primary, Mike Lindell needs to register to vote in the state he wants to lead as governor," the Tribune reported. "The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office said Lindell, President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate, 'does not have an active record,' said Cassondra Knudson, spokesperson for the Minnesota Secretary of State, when asked if Lindell is a registered voter."

It added: "A Minnesota Star Tribune review of voter records shows Lindell has an active voter registration in Texas. Lindell acknowledged last year he had been living in Texas and that he’d have to re-establish residency in Minnesota to run for governor, something he says he has now done. But Lindell has not signed up to cast a ballot for himself since his return to Minnesota, and Texas lists an active voter registration record for the MyPillow CEO."

In its own report, The Daily Beast noted that Lindell referred to himself as a "Texas citizen" in a lawsuit as recently as last year. In order to support himself in the GOP primary, he would need to get his registration sorted out by Aug. 11.

The Tribune report called this oversight a notable gaffe for someone like Lindell, "who has called for strict scrutiny of voter rolls and made election integrity the central pillar of his campaign and political life."

President Donald Trump has continued to perpetuate debunked claims about U.S. elections, and now, experts are sounding the alarm to Politico, warning that the president's rhetoric is the real danger, injecting poison into the electoral process.

In a piece published Saturday, Politico cited conversations with various experts about American elections, in which they warned that Trump's rhetoric about voting machines being unsafe was doing real damage by potentially sowing distrust in the minds of the public. While noting that there are issues with the systems that ought to be talked about and fixed, they stressed that none of these issues have ever come close to being enough to flip an election, as Trump has claimed for the better part of a decade now.

"Flaws in electronic voting machines have been well-documented for more than a decade by researchers, and states have poured money into bolstering security," Politico explained. "Still, none have ever been exploited by malicious actors to successfully change the outcome of an election. Now officials are worried that Trump’s latest comments — when he claimed that 'Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including the security of electronic voting machines' — could undermine the electorate’s fundamental faith in voting. Without confidence in the system, the entire process could be called into question, as voters choose not to cast ballots or refuse to accept election results."

“There’s nothing wrong with pointing out vulnerabilities and therefore doing audits or therefore upgrading to a more modern system that uses a paper record,” Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections and Government Program, told the outlet. “What’s wrong is trying to use those vulnerabilities to spread distrust in elections.”

"I’m not aware of an incident in which a vote has been changed through a hack,” Scott Algeier, executive director of the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also added. “There’s lots of opportunity for that to happen because we have lots of elections, and I think the fact that it hasn’t happened is an indication of how secure the overall election process is.”

Despite the claims of Trump and his MAGA backers, Politico noted that there has been "no evidence" over the years that any malicious actors, foreign or domestic, have been able to hack into electronic systems and change votes. The latest files released by Trump only revealed that "Russian hackers successfully accessed the voter registration databases of a few U.S. states ahead of the 2016 elections," though they did not alter any votes. China was also able to access certain registration databases, though reports have noted that many states make such records available to the public.

Vulnerabilities in electronic systems have been known about within the industry for years, with efforts underway to spread the word about them and implement fixes. Concerns about Russian interference in 2016 led many states to move away from entirely electronic systems and "towards either using paper ballots or electronic machines with paper trails."

"As a result, only around 4 percent of registered voters currently live in regions where only direct recording electronic systems are used for voting, ensuring that there is a paper trail documenting how the vast majority of Americans voted," Politico noted.

"These are machines that very few Americans actually vote on anymore, where they would pick their selections on a touchscreen, and then the computer would record the selection in its internal system and not actually provide any kind of paper record," Ramachandran added.

Conservative columnist Bret Stephens says he dreads the bind that President Donald Trump has put the GOP in as Republicans stagger off into their uncertain future.

Stephens was speaking with the New York Times "Opinions” politics round table on Saturday when the panel landed on the self-dealing involved in Trump’s derailed slush fund settlement and the gobs of cash the Trump family raked in as a result of their occupation of the White House — within the span of little more than a year.

“Talking to Republicans or Republican-leaning figures who occasionally speak to the president himself — not politicians, but well-off people. The two things that have really hurt Trump in their eyes are the slush fund and the reporting by The Times that Trump or his family enriched themselves by $2.2 billion last year. That sits very ill, even among people who are his voters, and in some ways, his peers, because it reeks of a form of corruption.”

“Kleptocracy,” offered retired broadcast host Robert Siegel.

“And that reminds me a little bit of my youth in Mexico, when José López Portillo was president, and the corruption was so very much nakedly on display,” said Stephens … Because the rule of law [was] something that even most Republicans value. And I don’t think that they objected so much during election years, when they could tell themselves the alternative is that much worse. But what you have with Trump is really putting into the shade whatever might have been said against Hunter Biden and his own dealings — which, remember, were Topic A of discussion on some of the Fox News shows just three years ago … but this is something else.

Political pundit and author Molly Jong-Fast pointed out that the slush deal was particularly egregious with interim AG (And Trump’s former personal attorney) Todd Blanche scheming to give the Trump family immunity from audits. Still, she said this is the corruption that now defines the new Republican Party, and Stephens said party members now have no choice but to embrace the dirt or walk into the horizon. He used former South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former GOP US Rep. Liz Cheney as examples.

“When Graham flipped [to Trump] … I took it really bitterly. Maybe because I sort of set my teeth, as a conservative, against Trump, and that he had betrayed everything that I thought were his principles to curry favor with power,” Stephens told the panel. “After he died, it actually hit me harder than I thought it would. And in part because — say what you will about Graham’s choices — in the last week of his life, he accomplished consequential things — like a sanctions bill on Russia that the president is willing to sign … and probably saving NATO from Trump’s de facto destruction of the organization. And I remember asking myself, after he died: Well, if that’s what he was able to do by sucking up to the president as nakedly as he did, maybe I shouldn’t scorn him or hold him in such contempt, as I had for years, after he had, as I thought, gone over to the dark side.”

“I mean, I know everyone says ‘well, it was a devil’s bargain.’ But some devil’s bargains, you might say, are worth the price,” Stephens insisted. “Would Ukraine be safer today if Lindsey had gone up against Trump, gotten himself primaried six years ago and were blabbing from a seat on a CNN panel today? I’m not sure that’d be the case.”

Lindsey, he argued, didn’t do what Liz Cheney did — which is essentially get himself evicted from the party.

“I have great respect for Liz Cheney, but she’s not an influential person anymore,” said Stephens. “She’s a person who sacrificed herself on an altar of truth. And that’s great, but the world, sadly, moves on.”

A Republican panelist’s attempt to square President Donald Trump’s crusade for “election integrity” flopped hard against Trump’s own attempts to undermine it during a CNN Saturday morning discussion.

Seattle Red Radio host and author Jason Rantz’ found himself siding with Trump’s Thursday night indictment of mail-in voting — despite Trump himself voting by mail on numerous occasions.

“Republicans have been more concerned about voting because they believe that elections are stolen. And I come from a state, Washington state, where it's 100 percent mail in voting. And I hear from people who say they're not going to vote because they don't trust the system. That kills me,” said Rantz. “… [Trump is] going to make sure that if people are registered illegally, they're not actually voting.”

“I think that that's a good thing,” added Rantz. “That should actually give [everyone] a little bit more trust in the system. What gives people a lack of trust is that you had a couple hundred thousand that we know of, potentially who have been registered to vote, and they're ineligible to vote. That should not happen. And it should be apolitical to look at that and simply say, ‘we should come up with some bipartisan solutions to ensure it's working.”

But Vox host and editorial director Astead Herndon could not hide his laughter.

“It’s Just wild to pretend that this isn't the same president who got on the phone with Brad Raffensperger and said ‘find people to help me win.’ Like, it's literally the same guy. It's too wild to see those things, because that’s two totally disconnected events. And that’s not going to be something I take seriously because of that.”

“Is it fair, though?” insisted Rantz. “I don't care about that. But my point is, do you not see that there's a problem if someone is getting registered to vote illegally? You don't think that's a problem?”

“I'm going to just watch you because I'm not going to play that game because I’m talking about Donald Trump’s actions from the White House, which were not an equivalent action,” said Herndon, staring at him.

“Because you don't think that's a problem. I know you don't want to talk about that because you don't want to talk about the actual issue. And it is a fair question that you don't take seriously,” said Rantz.

“I think Democrats would come to the table and work with Donald Trump if he had credibility when it came to voting, but he doesn't,” said former DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinjosa. “The problem is that he only cares about the elections that he loses or his party loses, and one of those is coming up. And all of a sudden, just a few months before the election, he wants to implement rules that would end up decreasing the number of people that can vote.”

“… If Donald Trump had never tried to stop the certification of elections and committed crimes — as a grand jury believe that he did — if that stuff had have never happened and he was about election security and wanted to work with Democrats with it, I think they would be willing to do that,” Hinjosa said.

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President Donald Trump might need to ask his Pentagon about their new testosterone treatments, according to a new column from The New York Times, as his endless parade of political obsessions has left him in a "pathetic" state, typified by his flop primetime address last week.

Trump's second term in the White House has become overwhelmingly defined by Trump's fixations, which he has lavished with attention to the detriment of other things that might help his party win over midterm voters. Chief among these fixations has been his long-debunked claims about voter fraud, which have led him to push for the doomed SAVE America Act over anything else. He also claimed in his Thursday night address to have declassified newly uncovered documents that would prove his claims about fraud in the 2020 election, but closer inspection by the media found that they were largely a bust.

Writing for the Times on Saturday, columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that Trump "has reduced the grandeur of obsession to something pathetic."

"When you commandeer prime time, or try to, you’d better have something prime to say. Trump didn’t," Dowd wrote. "His speech on Thursday was a dud — a batty stew of whiny complaints stemming from an election that he claims was stolen that wasn’t, during a period when he was running the country. If something was wrong, dude, why didn’t you fix it? He still has no proof, and he muddied matters by releasing documents containing information already known and warning about 'vulnerabilities' his administration has made worse."

She added later: "There was barely a peep from Republicans on Capitol Hill about the speech. No organized effort to polish his tirade. You could almost hear the fervent wish of Republican lawmakers watching the president: Please, Donald, move on! But he can’t. His father’s admonition that there are only 'killers' and 'losers' plays in a loop in his head, reducing him to jelly."

Dowd noted further that Trump has typically been able to "whip up some Poseidon-level winds of conspiracy" in order to push his claims forward and leave critics befuddled, but this time, "he seemed impotent, raving about nonsense," and "struggled to wield his superpower: creating a fake alternate universe for his supporters."

"If Trump wants to continue to be 'the world’s most famous sore loser,' as Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia calls him, he’s going to need to be more high-T," Dowd concluded. "But can that hormone be prescribed to babies?"

The Washington Post reports undemocratic Republican gerrymandering efforts have indeed put a whack on Democrats’ fight this year. According to analysts, Democrats now need to win by three to four percentage points overall to gain a majority in the House due to partisan redistricting favoring Republicans.

But that doesn’t appear to matter this year. This year, Republicans are cooked — and it all comes down to passion.

“Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans in the congressional midterm elections by only a slim margin, but Democratic supporters are far more motivated to vote,” reports the Post, citing a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. “The blue advantage grows to eight points among those ‘absolutely certain to vote,’ with 53 percent of highly motivated voters supporting Democrats and 45 percent supporting Republicans.”

Republicans are not losing by a wide margin among the broader electorate despite President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity and broad concerns about the economy, the war with Iran and immigration issues, according to the Post’s surveys. But their supporters just aren’t as energized to turn up at the polls, the Post-Ipsos poll suggests.

The Post claims if Trump is able to mitigate some top concerns by Election Day, by bringing down the price of gasoline he caused by starting his unilateral war with Iran, his mid-decade gerrymandering scheme might actually pay off and he could potentially retain a House majority.

But Democrats are riding high a more enthusiastic base, which is evident in the poll and in the party’s strong turnout in recent primaries and special elections. The enthusiasm gap between the two parties is greater now than in 2018, when Democrats gained 40 House seats in a blue wave.

“Democrats are 10 points more likely to be certain to vote this year than Republicans, larger than their two-point edge in 2018. And more than 7 in 10 Democrats say it is “more important” to vote in 2026 than in previous midterm elections, compared with just over half of Republicans,” reports the Post.

Meanwhile, Americans are struggling. And they’re more worried about their finances than they were eight years ago, the Post added. This year, 40 percent of registered voters say they’re “not as well off” as when Trump took office, compared with 13 percent who said the same in November 2018.

Additionally, the Post survey revealed voters give Trump “clearly negative” marks for their three top midterm issues, with more than 6 in 10 disapproving of his handling of the economy and Iran and 56 percent disapproving of his handling of immigration.

“Republicans who love Trump and Democrats who loathe him are the most likely to vote, but the latter group is much bigger,” reports the Post.

Salon guest writer Andrew Daugherty says President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission aims to turn churches into political action committee moneybags.

“The most efficient campaign finance vehicle in American history is tax-exempt, requires no donor disclosure and is available in virtually every zip code in the country. For 70 years, it has operated under one rule: It cannot endorse a political candidate,” said Daugherty. “The Religious Liberty Commission, which delivered its report to President Donald Trump on June 26, would like to remove that rule. They’re calling it religious freedom.”

But Daugherty, a Christian minister of an American Baptist congregation for more than 20 years, says he knows the difference between protecting a church and conscripting one: “A government that wants to free the church, to borrow Trump’s language, is usually trying to use it.”

The 1954 Johnson Amendment restricts churches, religious organizations and other tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates or funneling tax-deductible donations into partisan campaigns. Church leaders can preach hard and heavy on moral and social issue, but the tax-exempt status line stops at candidate endorsements.

“In other words, the amendment is the last structural barrier between the American church and full absorption into the machinery of partisan politics,” said Daugherty. “The claim that this constitutes religious suppression is the oldest con in the game. Every American pastor has the same First Amendment rights as any other citizen. What the Johnson Amendment restricts is tax-exempt dollars in partisan politics. Churches pay no federal taxes. In exchange, they stay out of the candidate-endorsement business. Void it, and that deal ends — and every church in America becomes a PAC with better branding and transparency requirements and endorsed by a divine mandate.”

Imagine a donor writing a federal tax-deductible check to their congregation. Then the church endorses the candidate of their choice, bundles those contributions and runs voter registration drives for one party. Plus, it does it all without a political action committees’ disclosure requirement.

“This is tax-exempt political spending, passed through the offering plate and invisible to the public record,” said Daugherty, and this is a mistake that could further destroy the American church.

“Church attendance has collapsed at a pace that would have seemed impossible just a generation ago,” he argued. “According to a 2024 Pew Research study, the fastest-growing religious identity in America is ‘none.’ The research on why people leave does not point to boredom or busyness. It points to disgust at what organized religion has become. The Christian right has spent five decades getting closer to power and losing the one thing it cannot buy back: The credibility to speak to anyone outside its own coalition.”

But Trump’s commission doesn’t appear discouraged by this information. And Daugherty said their plans go beyond just ending the Johnson Amendment. They propose putting an end to the separation of church and state.

“The separation has existed because both institutions require protection from each other. When such safeguards are removed, the bridge comes with a toll booth, and the commission is waving one side through,” said Daughtry. “This is state power reinforcing evangelical Christianity, and evangelical Christianity legitimizing state power. The commission calls it ‘partnership.’ History calls it a state church.”