It’s been a crazy few weeks of news on the Trump beat. One day, he’s urging Russia to invade a NATO country; on another, he is attacking Nikki Haley’s husband, who is currently deployed to the Horn of Africa, for being absent on the campaign trail. There is also the $350 million fine levied against Trump for inflating the value of his assets to fleece lenders and insurers.

It is possible you missed the critically important story that appeared in Politico yesterday morning. According to reporting from Alex Ward and Heidi Pryzbla:

An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.

Vought was an influential advisor to Trump during his presidency and is one of few Trump Administration alums who has remained in the former President’s circle of advisors. His involvement is a giant warning sign that the threat is very real.

Few voters have heard Trump’s NATO comments, and even fewer heard about Trump’s fraud verdict, but I would bet none of them have read a single word of this Politico story. I would also bet my life that the prospect of the Trump Administration implementing extreme Christian Nationalist policies would be more concerning to swing voters than the NATO comments or the fraud.

Some of you might be surprised to learn that very few voters know about the major stories that have dominated cable news and your social media feeds. The chasm between political junkies in both parties and everyone else has never been greater. You either consume a ton of political news or no news. And the no-news people will decide the election — and the fate of democracy.

Trump is so obviously corrupt that it hardly requires explanation; however, if we want to persuade people, we have to be specific about how he will negatively affect people’s lives. Otherwise, all of it sounds like partisan white noise.

In a previous media era, voters would learn about these Christian Nationalist plans in their local paper while looking for the sports scores, on the radio while driving to work, or while scrolling Facebook to check out their nieces and nephews. No more.

Voters will only hear about it if Democrats — and all of us — tell them. Huge swaths of the electorate never hear good things about Biden or bad things about Trump. I want to use Message Box to put these stories in the hands of as many people as possible, so those people can share them with as many people as possible.

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What a Christian Nationalist Agenda Looks Like

Christian Nationalism is a term many voters reflexively react to with negativity. However, it’s a very esoteric term that desperately needs a definition. The documents obtained by Politico did not include policy specifics. However, based on the positions held by Vought and other advisors to the project, we can imagine what Trump’s Christian Nationalist Agenda would look like. Just based on the public statements of those advisors, Trump’s Christian Nationalist Agenda will include:

• A national abortion ban;

• Using FDA authority to ban or greatly restrict access to abortion medication (a defacto abortion ban);

• Undermining marriage equality;

• Attacking the rights and freedoms of trans people;

• Ending no-fault divorce;

• Invoking the Insurrection Act to stop protests;

• Making it harder to access contraception;

• Ending surrogacy; and

• Getting rid of sex education in schools.

This is not theoretical. All across the country, Republican extremists are implementing policies to further involve the government in people’s private decisions. Republicans want to regulate what you read, who you marry, how you procreate, and your medical decisions. In Alabama, the State Supreme Court just ruled that frozen embryos are people which could end access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). There is no doubt that a Trump Administration would argue against IVF in this case.

There are two things we know about Trump. One, he is not a details guy. He pays little attention to what his government does. The Christian Nationalist hacks that he places in these government jobs will have the freedom to run amok. Two, given a choice between appealing to his MAGA base or the broader electorate, Trump will choose the base every day and twice on Sunday.

If a Christian Nationalist agenda is what the base wants, a Christian Nationalist agenda is what they will get. The only way to stop it is to beat Trump in November, so you should immediately go toVote Save America and sign up for information on how to defeat Trump and protect our freedoms. Also, consider becoming amonthly donor to the Biden-Harris campaign. It’s all hands on deck time, because losing this election would be disastrous.

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