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      Trump’s Bible Misunderstands Christianity

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      The presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, who weeks ago started selling shoes, is now peddling Bibles. During Holy Week.What’s special about this Bible? So many things. For example, according to a promotional website, it’s the only Bible endorsed by Donald Trump. It’s also the only one endorsed by the country singer Lee Greenwood. Admittedly, the translation isn’t distinctive — it’s your standard King James Version — but the features are unique. This Bible includes the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and part of the lyrics of Mr. Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” Perhaps most striking, the cover of the Bible does not include a cross or any symbol of the Christian tradition; instead, it is emblazoned with the American flag.While part of me wants to laugh at the absurdity of it — and marvel at the sheer audacity — I find the messaging unsettling and deeply wrong. This God Bless the USA Bible, as it’s officially named, focuses on God’s blessing of one particular people. That is both its danger and, no doubt for some, its appeal.Whether this Bible is an example of Christian nationalism I will leave to others. It is at least an example of Christian syncretism, a linking of certain myths about American exceptionalism and the Christian faith. This is the American church’s consistent folly: thinking that we are the protagonists in a story that began long before us and whose main character is in fact the Almighty.Holy Week is the most sacred portion of the Christian calendar, a time when the church recounts the central events of our faith’s narrative, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus. That story, unlike the parochial God Bless the USA Bible, does not belong to any culture.Holy Week is celebrated on every continent and in too many languages to number. Some of the immigrants Mr. Trump declared were “poisoning the blood” of America will probably shout “Christ is risen!” this Easter. Many of them come from the largely Christian regions of Latin America and the Caribbean. They may have entered the country with Bibles in their native tongues nestled securely among their other belongings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump and the ‘Dune’ Messiah Have Some Things in Common

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      It is fitting that the biggest movie in the world this year is the story of a messiah gone wrong.I’m speaking, of course, about Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” sequel, the story of a savior who broke bad in a specific way: He manipulated prophecy to unleash the religious fervor of an entire people against a hated foe.The “Dune” movies present a beautifully shot, marvelously acted, fantastical tale set in a distant future, but they’re very much grounded in the dark reality of human nature here and now. When people are angry and afraid, they will look for a savior. When that anger and fear is latched to faith and prophecy, they will yearn for a religious crusade.There’s a version of this same story playing out in the United States, but because the anger and fear are so overwrought, the prophecies so silly, and the savior so patently absurd, we may be missing the religious and cultural significance of the moment. A significant part of American Christianity is spiraling out of control.The signs are everywhere. First, there’s the behavior of the savior himself, Donald Trump. On Monday of Holy Week, he compared himself to Jesus Christ, posting on Truth Social that he received a “beautiful” note from a supporter saying that it was “ironic” that “Christ walked through his greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you.”On Tuesday, he took to Truth Social to sell a $60 “God Bless the USA Bible” (the “only Bible endorsed by President Trump”), an edition of the King James Bible that also includes America’s founding documents. “Christians are under siege,” he said. The Judeo-Christian foundation of America is “under attack,” Trump claimed, before declaring a new variant on an old theme: “We must make America pray again.”Two weeks ago, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, told a Christian gathering that Democrats “want full and complete destruction of the United States of America.” Kirk is a powerful Trump ally. He has millions of followers on social media and is hoping to raise more than $100 million in 2024 to help mobilize voters for Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Is Financially Ruining the Republican Party

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      Donald Trump is someone you should think carefully about hitching your financial fortunes to. The guy is a gifted carnival barker, no doubt. But when it comes to serious business, he is a bad bet. Many of his ventures, from vodka and steaks to casinos and “university” degrees, have flopped like dying fish. Declaring corporate bankruptcy seems to be one of his favorite hobbies. And even when he wriggles away from failure largely unscathed, the other parties involved aren’t always so fortunate. Where money is involved, anyone still foolish enough to crawl into bed with him should be prepared for the experience to end in tears.Which leads me to gently note: Hey, Republican Party, pay attention! You are being herded toward potential financial ruin. The red flags are smacking you in the face. Wake up and smell the grift!One might assume that a presidential nominee who generates as much devotion as Mr. Trump would be a financial boon to his party. One would be wrong. With Mr. Trump, everything is about Mr. Trump. Other candidates and committees are an afterthought, left to squabble over his scraps. Which might not be problematic if the party’s money machine were whirring along smoothly. But it is not. Whether we’re talking about the battle for Congress or the basic health of the state parties, the G.O.P. is going through a rough financial patch, fueled in no small part by the MAGA king and his minions.The most recent campaign finance reports show that his campaign coffers are notably lighter than President Biden’s. Crunching the numbers, Axios noted recently, “The Biden campaign and the D.N.C. ended February with more than twice as much cash on hand ($97.5 million) as Trump and the R.N.C. ($44.8 million).” While the Republican base may be smitten with Mr. Trump, plenty of big-money donors are skittish about bankrolling his nonsense. The former president has been scrambling to close the gap, leering at potential funders as if they were contestants at the Miss Universe pageant.Now with Mr. Trump the de facto nominee, some top donors will hold their noses and start paying their tributes. But how do you build a strong party when at least part of your money is going to the nominee’s eye-popping legal bills? Being multiply indicted costs big bucks (more than $100 million and counting in his case). The former president has avoided paying those expenses with his own money so far — court costs are for suckers! — instead relying on his fans’ donations to accounts related to his 2020 election-fraud lies. But those accounts are drying up. Fresh income streams must be found. Anyone need a $59.99 Bible?Asked last month if she thought Republican voters would support the Republican National Committee footing Mr. Trump’s legal costs, Lara Trump, soon to be the committee’s co-chair, declared, “Absolutely.” I mean, what else is a good daughter-in-law supposed to say? Still, this possibility has raised enough eyebrows among donors that another Trump lackey, Chris LaCivita, who now oversees the R.N.C.’s operations, has vowed that committee funds will not be used for such.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Rekindles Relationships With Key 2016 Donors

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      The former president met with the Mercers and others as he sought to keep pace financially with President Biden.Donald J. Trump, facing a cash crunch that puts him at a severe disadvantage to President Biden, dined on Thursday night with a small group of donors including the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, according to two people with knowledge of the event.Mr. Trump’s dinner companions also included the entrepreneur Omeed Malik, the cosmetics firm founder Trish McEvoy and the real estate management billionaire Richard Kurtz, one of the people said.The Mercers, Ms. McEvoy and Mr. Kurtz did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Malik declined to comment, and a Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.The Mercers were a critical source of support behind Mr. Trump’s win in the 2016 presidential election. In addition to giving donations, they pushed him to make changes to his political team, including making Kellyanne Conway his campaign manager and Stephen K. Bannon his chief executive. The family was conspicuously quiet during Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election effort.But both Robert and Rebekah Mercer have lent their names for an invitation to a high-dollar fund-raiser on April 6, along with Mr. Malik. And their appearance with Mr. Trump at the dinner is additional evidence of a rekindled relationship.The dinner came at the end of a day when Mr. Trump flew to New York City from Florida to attend the wake of the New York Police Department officer Jonathan Diller, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Queens this week.Mr. Trump’s visit took place at the same time that Mr. Biden was preparing for a fund-raiser with two of his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, that raised a record $25 million at Radio City Music Hall. Mr. Trump’s team mocked the event as one for elites as he was received by Officer Diller’s family. More

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      Revisiting Florida 2000 and the Butterfly Effect

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      The evidence is strong that Al Gore would have won had it not been for an infamous ballot design in Palm Beach County.Theresa LePore, who designed Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot, with old ballots three years after the 2000 election. David FriedmanWe’re still in a post-primary lull before the campaign starts to heat up — and before Donald J. Trump goes on trial. Here are a few quick notes to end the week.Joe Lieberman and the butterfly ballotJoe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator, died this week at 82. He was Al Gore’s vice-presidential nominee in 2000, when the Gore-Lieberman ticket came less than 600 Florida votes away from winning the White House.We’ll never know what would have happened if the Supreme Court had allowed the recount to continue. But I don’t think it’s always appreciated that we probably do know that Mr. Gore would have won Florida, and therefore the presidency, if it weren’t for the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County.If you don’t remember — it has been a while — the butterfly ballot was very unusual. Candidates were listed on both sides of the ballot, and voters cast a ballot by punching a corresponding hole in the middle. What made it so unusual was that the ordering of the candidates on the ballot didn’t have the same logic as the corresponding punch hole: George W. Bush and Mr. Gore were the first two candidates listed on the left-hand side, but they corresponded to the first and third hole on the punch. The second punch corresponded with the first candidate on the right-hand side of the ballot: the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan, running as a Reform Party candidate.After the election, many voters from Palm Beach claimed they had inadvertently voted for Mr. Buchanan when they meant to vote for Mr. Gore. This is clear in the data. Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than he did on the other side of the county line. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than any politically or demographically comparable area in the country.You can see this pattern quite clearly in this map, courtesy of Matthew C. Isbell, a Democratic data strategist and consultant:We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Persistent Threat to Abortion Rights

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      The Supreme Court this week heard the first major challenge to abortion rights since it struck down Roe v. Wade two years ago — an attempt to severely limit access to mifepristone, the most commonly used abortion pill in the country, by a group of doctors who are morally opposed to the practice.The justices seem prepared to throw out the lawsuit. During oral arguments, they questioned whether the doctors had suffered the harm necessary to bring the suit in the first place.But that should come as small comfort to anyone concerned for the future of reproductive freedom in America. Judges at the state and federal level are ready to further restrict reproductive options and health care access. The presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, has indicated support for a 15-week national abortion ban. And while the Supreme Court, in overturning Roe, ostensibly left it to each state to decide abortion policy, several states have gone against the will of their voters on abortion or tried to block ballot measures that would protect abortion rights. Anti-abortion forces may have had a tough week in the Supreme Court, but they remain focused on playing and winning a longer game.Even potential victories for reproductive freedom may prove short-lived: The mifepristone case, for instance, is far from dead. Another plaintiff could bring the same case and have it considered on the merits, a possibility Justice Samuel Alito raised during oral arguments.“Is there anybody who could challenge in court the lawfulness of what the F.D.A. did here?” he asked the solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar. Such a challenge would be exceptionally weak, given that the F.D.A. provided substantial support for its approval and regulatory guidance on the use of mifepristone, but the right-wing justices on the Roberts court may be willing to hear it again anyway. The justices have already illustrated their hostility to the authority of administrative agencies, and that hostility may persist even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence.Then there is the Comstock Act, a 151-year-old federal law that anti-abortion activists are trying to revive to block the mailing of mifepristone and other abortion medication. During the oral arguments this week, Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas repeatedly expressed their openness to the use of the law, which was pushed by an anti-vice crusader decades before women won the right to vote. If anti-abortion activists can get themselves before a sympathetic court and secure a national injunction on this medication being mailed, they may well be able to block access to abortion throughout the country, including in states where it is legal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Welcome to the Jess Bidgood Era

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      After a long and exhaustive search, we have found our next newsletter writer.Hi, everyone! I’m so pleased to tell you that after a long and exhaustive search, we have found our next newsletter writer, Jess Bidgood.Jess is new to this newsletter but not to The New York Times. Many of us worked with her back in the 2010s, when she covered the country as a reporter for The Times’s National Desk, based in Boston.Of course, the political world has changed dramatically since then. And Jess is just the right person to chart us through this uncharted territory. She has a keen eye for character, endless curiosity about the country and a wonderful sense of humor. (Just ask her about going off piste with Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.)She’ll take over on Monday with her debut newsletter. After that, you’ll find her in your inbox three times a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday.I talked to Jess about her past work, her current sense about politics and how she envisions the future of this newsletter.LL: We’re so happy you’re here. Tell everyone a little about yourself.JB: Lisa, thank you! I’m an England-born political reporter who grew up moving around this country and became kind of obsessed with it. These days, I live in Washington, D.C., with my husband and my dog, whose name is Rhubarb.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews John Ganz

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      Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters, like today’s episode with John Ganz. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.Transcripts of our episodes are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.The Rise of ‘Middle-Finger Politics’The political writer John Ganz walks through the long history of Trump’s brand of right-wing populism in the U.S.[MUSIC PLAYING]EZRA KLEIN: From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”[MUSIC PLAYING]I think a lot of Democrats, and even a lot of Republicans, are still a bit agog that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee once again in 2024. After everything he’s said and done, after what he did during Covid, after everything he did to try and overturn the 2020 election, amidst all the criminal trials and scandals and corruption, all the people he has betrayed and insulted and double-crossed — this guy, still.It’s not like there weren’t alternatives. DeSantis pitched himself as Donald Trump without the wild personality. Maybe what people liked about Trump were the positions, but he was being held back by who he was. At least not on the Republican side, that did not turn out to be the problem for Donald Trump. Vivek Ramaswamy was a younger, more cheerful, more multicultural spin on the Trumpist theme. Neither of them found any real footing. Both of them were missing something.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More