- The January 6th rioters feel entitled to reparations by the US government for the inconvenience they’ve experienced from having broken the law and been arrested;
- Contrasting views of Christianity in Texas;
- How the GOP fires people who value principles over loyalty to Trump;
- Free Inquiry’s Ronald A. Lindsay about how the US is a product of the Enlightenment, not Christian principles;
- Examples from American history: Do contemporary Christians realize that Christianity has always been against the expansion of human rights, to slaves, interracial marriage, women’s suffrage, civil rights, LGBTQ rights?
They feel entitled??
Slate, Lionel Augustine and Matteson Epstein, today: “I Think I’ve Earned My Peace”, subtitled “There have been many negative reactions to the $1.8 billion slush fund, but perhaps the most illuminating one is from the people hoping to access it.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, Larry Rendall Brock Jr. marched on the Capitol and became one of the riot’s most indelible figures. Many remember him as one of the “zip-tie guys”—he was photographed crossing the Senate floor in tactical gear, white flex cuffs dangling from his fingertips. Before actually showing up in Washington, the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel had discussed, over Facebook, seizing members of Congress. He also floated applying the same interrogation techniques he once used against al-Qaida to “gain evidence on the coup” he thought the members were perpetrating.
But he did pick them up, and obviously had intent.
So when Brock heard about the Justice Department’s new “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—a $1.776 billion program to compensate purported victims of a “weaponized” justice system, including prosecuted Capitol rioters—he felt something like relief. “I’m very thankful to President Trump for actually doing something about it,” he said, calling the fund “long overdue.”
Other Jan. 6 defendants we spoke with shared in Brock’s gratitude, maintaining that, far from being criminals, they are in fact the victims of overzealous prosecutions tied to the Capitol riot. …
So holding them accountable for their actions is somehow a “weaponization” of the Justice Department? Is that where we are now? We’ve already observed repeatedly how conservatives and especially MAGA don’t care about principles (either Constitutional or Christian), but only about tribal solidarity.
Much of the country feels differently. Since its announcement last week, the fund has faced mounting skepticism over its legal standing. Just last Wednesday, two police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 filed a federal lawsuit against the fund on the basis that it violates several federal statutes and even the 14th Amendment, which prohibits the use of public funds in aid of insurrection. A coalition of nonprofits and individuals, including a fired Jan. 6 prosecutor, followed suit—filing a similar complaint against the fund in the Eastern District of Virginia. Republicans in Congress, too, have departed from the president on the “slush fund,” with members like Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell calling it “stupid” and “morally wrong.”
Lots more.
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Should I try to figure this out? Religious principles seem to be whatever the religious folks want them to be.
Vox, Christian Paz, yesterday: The Texas Senate candidates have two radically different visions of Christianity, subtitled “A religious fight is brewing in the Lone Star state.”
One subheading in the article cites the conflict as “Christian authoritarianism versus a Christianity of radical love.” I’ll quote from earlier in the article:
In a closely watched and competitive race, Paxton will be facing off against James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and the Democratic nominee. The race is now set to be a battle between two very different worldviews about the role of Christianity.
That Democrats are even able to hold up their end of such a debate is unusual in a political moment when “Christian” has come to be synonymous with “right-wing.” Talarico has been trying to change that narrative — now he gets to face off against a flawed Republican with a more typical evangelical message.
Talarico earned significant media attention in his primary for the progressive tilt of his Christian faith — one of forgiveness, love, and righteous anger against the wealthy and powerful. Yet he’s also been ridiculed by the religious right as a false prophet: a Christian in name only who launders left-wing social views through faith, supports abortion, and once argued that God is nonbinary.
Meanwhile, Paxton’s nomination sets up an interesting foil: He’s a formerly impeached and indicted politician in the middle of a divorce his wife sought “on biblical grounds.” And he has championed a right-wing brand of Christian politics, embracing the “Christian nationalist” movement’s efforts to break down the walls between church and state, while fending off bipartisan attacks on his personal morals.
Perhaps I misunderstand Christianity, but I thought Jesus’s teachings were what would be considered “left-wing social views” by today’s Christians, who are in fact right-wing, in that they seem to defy all of those teachings, and pivot instead to Old Testament tribal priorities. Ten Commandments. Anyway, “nonbinary” just means neither male nor female. Presumably conservatives assume God must be male.
That’s all the time I’m going to give this.
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And one more, which is also about how MAGA and the GOP are all about loyalty, not principles. (And when Trump goes away, what then?)
LA Times, Matt K. Lewis, 22 May 2026: The GOP is collapsing under Trump’s loyalty tests
Americans always say they want politicians with backbone — men and women of principle who will stand up for what they believe in, even when it’s unpopular.
And every so often, the American people prove their commitment to this noble aspiration by firing anybody who actually tries it.
Take Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who just lost a reelection bid by double digits after President Trump’s affiliated committees dumped enough money into Kentucky to purchase, well, Kentucky.
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Two items from the latest, June/July 2026, issue of Free Inquiry, the magazine.
Free Inquiry, Ronald A. Lindsay, posted yesterday: The United States: Whither?
I’ll use the quote used here.
It is no exaggeration to say that the United States is, in large part, a product of the Enlightenment. Contrary to many on the MAGA Right, it was decidedly not founded on Christian principles. In the eighteenth century, religion provided the justification for monarchs, not democracies. […]
The two greatest moral revolutions in the history of humanity were the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women. Neither would have happened absent the Enlightenment, and they happened in the United States because of the influence that Enlightenment values had on the American republic.
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This synch’s with this item seen on Facebook today. I think most people follow a religion by rote, via their family or their community. And have no understanding of this kind of history.
Facebook, today: The Reasoned Reality Project’s Post (from Nashville TN)
Pick any major human rights movement in American history. White institutional Christianity showed up with a Bible to stop it. Here are 5 examples.
Slavery, interracial marriage, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, LGBTQ rights.
The pattern is the same every single time. The Bible is used to oppose the movement. The movement wins anyway. The church quietly drops the argument and moves on. Nobody apologizes until decades later. And the same institution that was on the wrong side of history picks up the Bible and finds a new movement to oppose.
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This was precisely the message of Stephen Prothero’s 2016 book WHY LIBERALS WIN THE CULTURE WARS… (reviewed here).
