A new message from your friends at People For the American Way.
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Friend,

Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” email series that serves to remind
us of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered
during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA
movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we
fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.

This week’s "Trumptastrophe" highlights how former President Trump sought
the backing of the religious right to secure his 2016 win, granting them
unprecedented access to push their agenda during his administration. Now,
they're pouring millions into Trump’s reelection bid, hoping to continue
imposing their oppressive agenda and stripping away even more of our
rights and freedoms.

On October 13, 2017, Trump became the [ [link removed] ]first sitting U.S. president to
attend [ [link removed] ]the Values Voter Summit, the Family Research Council’s annual
conference for religious-right political activists. Trump had also spoken
in 2015 and 2016 as a candidate.

Trump’s appearance as president was a chance for him to thank conservative
evangelicals who voted in overwhelming numbers to put him in power—and
[ [link removed] ]take credit for finally making it safe for Americans to say “Merry
Christmas.” 

And it was a chance for FRC to thank Trump for making 2017 what Right Wing
Watch called “[ [link removed] ]the year the religious right moved into the White House”:

Once he was elected—with [ [link removed] ]80 percent of the white evangelical
vote—Trump kept his evangelical advisory board intact and promised to
give it [ [link removed] ]unprecedented access to the White House. He stacked his
Cabinet with [ [link removed] ]friends of the religious right, including Tom Price at
Health and Human Services, Betsy DeVos at Education and Ben Carson at
Housing and Urban Development. Far-right pastor [ [link removed] ]Ralph
Drollinger worked with Trump’s transition team to set up weekly [ [link removed] ]Bible
studies for Trump’s Cabinet members. The conservative Heritage
Foundation and Federalist Society [ [link removed] ]vetted potential judicial
nominees.

Religious-right leaders gushed at the “unprecedented access” they had in
the Trump administration—and a level of influence that turned the
executive branch into a virtual policy-making arm of the religious-right
movement, undermining progress toward LGBTQ equality, restricting access
to reproductive information and health care here and around the world, and
more.

That access and influence continued throughout Trump’s term, and
unfortunately continues today through the three Trump Supreme Court
justices and hundreds of lifetime federal judges. Some of those
judges—like [ [link removed] ]the now-notorious Matthew Kacsmaryk--came directly from
religious-right legal groups, and thanks to Trump they are wielding their
judicial power to further dismantle church-state separation and undermine
Americans’ freedoms.

Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance recently [ [link removed] ]joined a stop of the
“[ [link removed] ]Courage Tour”—a traveling religious and political road show led by
Seven Mountains Dominionists Lance Wallnau and Mario Murillo
[ [link removed] ]designed to break “demonic strongholds” in battleground counties and
states and deliver the election to Trump, who they believe has been
anointed by God to lead America a second time—a sentiment recently
[ [link removed] ]echoed by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

The policy-making ability Trump gave religious-right activists—and the
unprecedented influence he gave dominionist Pentecostal leaders—seems to
have whetted the movement’s appetite for power and control. The MAGA
movement’s takeover of the Republican Party has been accompanied by an
increasingly overt and aggressive Christian nationalism, which is a
serious threat to freedom and core democratic values like religious
pluralism.

Scholars and pollsters have documented that conservative white
evangelicals who hold Christian nationalist views are more likely than
other Americans to support authoritarianism and political violence, along
with nurturing racial resentment and hostility toward immigrants. Those
reactionary attitudes infuse the Project 2025 policy agenda drawn up by
the Heritage Foundation and dozens of former Trump administration
staffers.

In recent months, Trump has [ [link removed] ]disillusioned some religious-right
activists by publicly abandoning their long-held goal of banning abortion
nationwide—a calculated political shift he made when it became clear how
unpopular Republican abortion bans really are, and how the issue could
hurt his bid for reelection.

But the frustration that some anti-abortion leaders are feeling hasn’t
changed the fact that religious-right political groups are spending tens
of millions of dollars to turn out Trump voters. After all, they still
want federal agencies being run by anti-abortion, anti-equality activists.
And they want more Trump Supreme Court justices and hundreds more
MAGA-minded federal judges to force America into alignment with their
anti-freedom right-wing “biblical worldview.”

We may be just 23 days away from Election Day but it’s not too late to
help get out the vote. Every single vote is going to be crucial in helping
to defeat Donald Trump and prevent the religious right from furthering
their antiquated and out-of-touch agenda. [ [link removed] ]Sign up today to volunteer
with a campaign near you or [ [link removed] ]rush a donation that People For can put to
work now to support our GOTV efforts. >>

These are just some of the reasons we need YOU in this
fight. So, find your
favorite way to unwind after reading through this week’s recap, and then
make a plan for how you will fight back this week, this month, this
election cycle.

For members who are interested in sharing the weekly Trumptastrophe
series, [ [link removed] ]you can find all previous editions on our website! This post
will be published by Thursday so you can share with your friends and
family and remind them of the importance of ensuring that Trump is
defeated again this November.

[ [link removed] ]If you’d like to opt-out of this series but still continue receiving
our other email content, you can do so here >>

Thanks for all that you do to defeat MAGA Republicans.

– People For the American Way

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Thanks for your support.

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