| Feb 13, 2025, 10:42 PM (11 hours ago) |  | ||
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Four years ago today, on February 13, 2021, Senate Republicans acquitted former president Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial. Although 57 senators, including 7 Republicans, voted to convict Trump for launching the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, that vote did not reach the threshold of 67 votes—two thirds of the Senate—necessary to convict a president in an impeachment trial. After the trial, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained his refusal to convict by saying he did not believe the Senate could convict an ex-president, although McConnell had been instrumental in delaying the impeachment trial until Trump was out of office, perhaps out of concern about dividing the Republican Party between pro-Trump MAGAs and his own establishment wing. McConnell acquitted Trump but, after the vote, blamed Trump alone for the events of January 6, calling his behavior "unconscionable" but adding: "We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one." Four years later, Trump is back in the White House, and today McConnell provided the only Republican vote against confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become the secretary of health and human services, just as yesterday he provided the only Republican vote against the confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Of Kennedy's confirmation, Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) said to his colleagues: "It's truly astounding that the Senate stands on the brink of confirming Mr. Kennedy to lead America's public health agencies. And if the Senate weren't gripped in this soon-to-be infamous period of total capitulation, I don't think this nominee would have made it as far as a hearing…. If I'd told you a couple of years ago, 'There's a guy who's been nominated to run public health nationwide. His job will be to protect American families from death and disease. He's going to run the whole public health system: Medicare, Medicaid, the C[enters] for D[isease] C[ontrol and Prevention], the N[ational] I[nstitutes of] H[ealth]—all of it. He'll decide how we protect the country from infectious disease, he'll set the rules for every hospital in the country, he'll decide what healthcare and medicines get covered by Medicare, he'll manage our response in the event of a pandemic.' And then I told you,… 'Well,... there are a few concerns about this nominee. First of all, zero relevant experience. He's a trial lawyer, a politician from a famous family. No medical or scientific background, he's never run a hospital or a health system or anything like that. Second of all… he's said some pretty wild stuff about public health, over and over and over again, like: he proposed that Covid-19 might be 'ethnically targeted' to spare Jews. Ethnically targeted to spare Jews. He said Lyme disease was a military bioweapon. For years he's been persuading American families against routine childhood immunizations. He's compared the work of the CDC to 'Nazi death camps.'... If a couple of years ago I told you all that, and I told you that the Senate was about to put America's health in this man's hands, you'd probably tell me the Senate has lost its mind." All the Senate Republicans but McConnell voted to confirm Kennedy. But while Senate Republicans are enabling the Trump administration, a significant revolt against it took place today in New York City and Washington, D.C., when at least six prosecutors resigned in protest after Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general of the Department of Justice, ordered them to dismiss corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams. In September 2024, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York indicted Adams on five counts of wire fraud, campaign finance offenses, and bribery. According to then–U.S. attorney Damian Williams, "Adams abused his position as this City's highest elected official…to take bribes and solicit illegal campaign contributions. By allegedly taking improper and illegal benefits from foreign nationals—including to allow a Manhattan skyscraper to open without a fire inspection—Adams put the interests of his benefactors, including a foreign official, above those of his constituents." But on February 10, 2025, Bove directed acting interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon, who was elevated by the Trump administration just last month, to dismiss the charges against Adams. That same day, Adams told top New York City officials to stay out of the way of immigration enforcement and to refrain from criticizing President Trump. Yesterday, February 12, Sassoon wrote an 8-page letter of protest to Attorney General Pam Bondi about the order to drop charges against Adams, but to keep open the possibility of future prosecution. She noted that "the evidence against Adams…proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed federal crimes" and suggested that Bove and the Trump administration proposed "dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws." "[T]he rule of law depends upon the evenhanded administration of justice," Sassoon wrote, and the "legal judgments of the Department of Justice must be impartial and insulated from political influence." "But Adams has argued in substance—and Mr. Bove appears prepared to concede—that Adams should receive leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position and can use that position to assist in the Administration's policy priorities." Sassoon called Adams's offer of help to the Trump administration "an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for the dismissal of his case." She recounted a meeting on January 31 with Bove, Adams's lawyers, and members of her office, in which Adams's lawyers repeatedly offered an exchange, "indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed." Bove ordered the confiscation of notes of the meeting taken by a member of Sassoon's team. "Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged," Sassoon wrote, "I cannot agree to seek a dismissal." She continued: "I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams's counsel…." But if Attorney General Bondi was unwilling to meet or reconsider the dismissal, Sassoon wrote, she was "prepared to offer my resignation." Today, in a defensive 8-page letter, Bove attacked Sassoon and accepted her resignation, claiming she was "pursuing a politically motivated prosecution," and dismissed her suggestion "that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the politics of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General." Bove transferred the Adams case to the Public Integrity Section (PIN) in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Rather than dismiss the case, the chief of the Public Integrity Section and the senior career official in the Criminal Division, as well as three of the deputy chiefs at PIN, also resigned. A fourth was giving birth, but Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News reported that she was expected to resign when she was able. Today, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro sued the Trump administration to guarantee the release of more than $3 billion allocated to Pennsylvania's state agencies. Shapiro noted that multiple federal judges have ordered administration officials to release the funding they have impounded, but that funding has not been restored. The lawsuit details the programs funded with federal money, including repairing abandoned mining lands and contaminated waterways, plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, upgrading energy efficiency for up to 28,000 low-income households to lower utility bills, and so on. The lawsuit reiterates that "unilaterally suspending funds…violates the U.S. Constitution," which gives Congress alone the power to write the laws that appropriate funding. Also today, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ordered the Trump administration to disburse the foreign aid it has impounded. As Lindsay Whitehurst and Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press note, the judge rejected the administration's argument that it impounded funds to review each program. He said officials "have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing programs." — |
Army of God
American Christians are embracing
a charismatic movement known as
THE NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION
which seeks to destroy the secular
state. Now their war begins
PART FIVE
By Stephanie McCrumment
the Atlantic
Walking across the bleak, hot parking lot to my rental car afterward, I could understand how people were drawn into their realm. After that, I started seeing the futuristic world of the NAR all over the place. Sprawling megachurches outside Atlanta, Phoenix, and Harrisburg with Broadway-level production values; lower-budget operations in strip malls and the husks of defunct traditional churches. Lots of screens, lots of flags. Conferences with names like Open the Heavens. A training course called Vanquish Academy where people could learn "advanced prophetic weaponry" and "dream intelligence." Schools such as Kingdom University, in Tennessee, where students can learn their "Kingdom Assignment." In a way, the movement was a world with its own language. People spoke of convergence and alignment and demon portals and whether certain businesses were Kingdom or not.
In 2023, I met a woman who believed that her Kingdom assignment was to buy an entire mountain for God, and did. It is in northwestern Pennsylvania, and she lives on top of it with her husband. They are always finding what she called "God signs," such as feathers on the porch. Like many in the movement, she didn't attend church very often. But every day, she followed online prophets and apostles such as Dutch Sheets, an acolyte of Wagner's who has hundreds of thousands of followers and is known for interpreting dreams.
In 2016, Sheets began embracing prophecies that God was using Trump, telling fellow prophets and apostles that his victory would bring "new levels of demonic desperation." In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Sheets began releasing daily prophetic updates called Give Him 15, casting Trump's attempt to steal the election as a great spiritual battle against the forces of darkness. In the days before the insurrection, Sheets described a dream in which he was charging on horseback to the U.S. Capitol to stand for the Kingdom. Although he was not in Washington, D.C., on January 6, many of his followers were, some carrying the Appeal to Heaven ag he'd popularized. Others from Wagner's old inner circle were there too. Wallnau streamed live from near the U.S. Capitol that day and, that night, from the Trump International Hotel. Cindy Jacobs conducted spiritual warfare just outside the Capitol as rioters were smashing their way inside, telling her followers that the Lord had given her a vision "that they would break through and go all the way to the top." In his most recent book, e Violent Take It by Force, the scholar Matthew Taylor details the role that major NAR leaders played that day, calling them "the principal theological architects" of the insurrection
At the Pennsylvania statehouse, I met an apostle named Abby Abildness, whom I came to understand as a kind of Kingdom diplomat. It was the spring of 2023, and she had recently returned from Iraqi Kurdistan, where she had met with Kurdish leaders she believed to be descended from King Solomon, and who she said wanted "holy governance to go forth."
I watched YouTube videos of prophets broadcasting from their basements. I watched a streaming show called FlashPoint, where apostles and prophets deliver news from God; guests have included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, because another dimension of the NAR is that the movement is a prominent advocate of Christian Zionism.
I came to understand how the movement amounts to a sprawling political machine. The apostles and prophets, speaking for God, decide which candidates and policies advance the Kingdom. The movement's prayer networks and newsletters amount to voter lists and voter guides. A growing ecosystem of podcasts and streaming shows such as FlashPoint amounts to a Kingdom media empire. And the overall vision of the movement means that people are not engaged just during election years but, like the people at Gateway House of Prayer, 24/7.
As November's election neared, I watched the whole juggernaut crank into action to return Trump to the White House. Wallnau, in partnership with the Trumpaligned America First Policy Institute, promoted an effort called Project 19, targeting voters in 19 swing counties. He also launched something called the Courage Tour, which similarly targeted swing states, and I attended one event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It looked like an old-fashioned tent revival, except that it was also an aggressive pro-Trump mobilization effort. Wallnau dabbed frankincense oil onto foreheads, anointing voters into God's army. Another speaker said that Kamala Harris would be a "devil in the White House." Others cast Democrats as agents of Lucifer, and human history as a struggle between the godless forces of secular humanism and God's will for humankind.
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