Uh Oh the religious screwballs are leaving trump.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night promised to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the Biden family only hours after his arraignment on 37 federal felony charges in Florida.

Trump’s vow prompted cheers and chants of “lock him up!” from the audience. The idea followed Trump’s own proclamation that he was facing “political persecution like something out of a fascist or communist nation.”

The day would “go down in infamy,” he said, adding that on Election Day 2024, “justice will be done.”

Trump also hinted at what his defense might look like, claiming that photos included in the indictment — which show boxes stored in a bathroom and on a stage — were “staged,” and saying some of the boxes held memorabilia, not documents. Trump’s lawyers reviewed his speech, a person familiar with the matter said.

The goal of today was to “lay down a marker of how he wants to frame the entire case,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump.

Trump and his team of advisers crafted the day of his arraignment to work to his political benefit, with remarks to allies and friends at his club, a fundraiser for this campaign, and a surprise stop at a famous Miami restaurant packed with supporters. And Trump’s speech had hallmarks of a MAGA rally, with declarations to “Save America” and go after political enemies, including President Joe Biden.

“What did the other candidates do today? We know where Trump was. He was going to Cafe Versailles, giving a speech here tonight, and there was no other oxygen for other candidates,” Cheung said.

The former president opened his remarks with familiar attacks on Biden and the Justice Department while maintaining that he did nothing wrong in stashing boxes containing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, after leaving the White House at the end of his term.

Tuesday’s charges were nothing more than “political prosecution,” he told the crowd of his die-hard fans and allies who traveled to Bedminster for the last-minute invitation to hear him speak.

There was MyPillow CEO and election conspiracist Mike Lindell; Bernie Kerik, the former NYPD commissioner who was pardoned by Trump; conservative radio host and former White House official Sebastian Gorka; and Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist and former senior administration official. Dozens of Vietnamese American supporters of Trump wore matching red dresses with “Save America” emblazoned across the front, and they posed for photos in front of the clubhouse at his New Jersey golf club.

Mixed in were Trump donors who had already planned to attend a fundraiser at the club, along with members of Mar-a-Lago in Florida and personal friends of Trump who came to show their support, like Robert Jeffress from the First Baptist Dallas megachurch. Some in attendance had political aspirations of their own, like Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno, who is running for Senate and whose son-in-law Max Miller worked in the Trump administration and now serves as a U.S. congressman from Ohio, as well as Jim Marchant of Nevada, an election denier who is running for Senate after a failed bid for Secretary of State. Ed Cox, the current chair of the New York GOP and son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, was also spotted at the event.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) skipped a key Senate vote Tuesday to travel to Bedminster in support of Trump, although the day before he had expressed concerns about whether he would be able to do so.

Jeffress said he had been texting with Trump about the indictment news.

“I just have told him I’m praying for him, which I am, so I wanted to show him support,” he said. “Millions of people are praying for him, and this is not going to defeat him. This is going to make him stronger. I think these are serious charges, they are not frivolous. I think for the investigation and prosecution to have any merit it’s going to have all taint of election interference removed from it. I think the best thing Joe Biden could do is suspend the prosecution until after the election.”

Tuesday’s arraignment was Trump’s second since April, after he was charged with 34 state felonies in New York over his alleged role in a scheme to cover up allegations of extramarital affairs ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The former president gave a similar speech following his previous arraignment, during which he assailed those involved in the case, including Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, and acting Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the proceeding.

The current GOP front-runner is also facing two other ongoing criminal probes into his role in 2020 election interference, at least one of which could result in charges this summer.

The April indictment did not shake Trump’s standing in the polls, and a recent CBS News poll shows him holding a nearly 40-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his closest competitor in the race.

Antonio Rufa, a Trump supporter who came to see Trump’s remarks, said the indictment would only help the former president politically.

“They’re making [Trump] a martyr,” Rufa said. “Just look at the polls.”

Andrew Giuliani, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s son, who played golf with Trump the day after he learned of his indictment, said the ex-president seemed “unfazed.”

“I think he’s been no doubt frustrated with the way he’s been treated,” Giuliani said. “I would say more than ever he’s focused on the mission and what the next 17 months are going to take.”

Ahead of Trump’s speech, Bedminster members wandered in from rounds of golf and dinner at the club. Members had been invited to come see Trump’s remarks.

After he wrapped, half of the crowd wandered inside where the former president planned to hold a “candlelight dinner,” photo opportunity and meet-and-greet with some of his top donors at the first major fundraiser of his campaign.

They're not even pretending they care about freedom of religion.

Beware of Christian Nationalists peddling fake history lessons packaged in appeals of fear of the future and a sweeping nostalgia for a past that never existed. The belief that America is a Christian nation is the dominant idol in our nation. I define “idol” as any love that exceeds love and loyalty to God. In reality, God doesn’t need a secular political kingdom, a Christian nation.

How To Stress Less #2

How To Stress Less #2

Matthew Rogers tells the story about a brother and sister singing “Silent Night” in their school chorus. The little boy concluded the song with the words, “Sleep in heavenly beans.” His sister elbowed him and said. “No, it’s not beans. It’s peas!” I suppose for many people during the holiday season, the song might as well end with beans or peas. Because the stress of the season is anything but…

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This article is from 2018, but it’s extremely relevant today, because of how influential David Barton has been over the past five years since it was written. The change in tone from the right has shifted in that time as more and more of Barton’s followers have taken office and implemented his ideas.

One of the key elements of his phony mythology, for starters, is that the founders were divinely inspired evangelicals, and that they cannot be criticized whatsoever. From the article:

“It's also telling that so much of this revisionist American history is about blending Christianity with a very specific form of American (usually white) nationalism. Figures like Barton blend the idea that America is a "Christian country" with the idea that the only critiques of the Founding Fathers - that, say, they owned slaves or contributed to racial inequality - come from "politically correct" historians seeking to discredit America's great history for political ends.

“The founders double as hero-saints to Barton. Central to the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation is the idea that America was founded unproblematically; that only a return to this mythologized past will somehow solve perceived problems of structural inequality. "Real" America, in other words, is above criticism.”

This is the entire basis of DeSantis and others’ “anti-woke” and “anti-CRT” philosophy.

Further, watch out for any elected official claiming the US Constitution is divinely inspired. Whenever you hear it, you’re hearing a Barton-following Dominionist who should not hold political office.

And here the article explains just why so many Republicans are no longer hiding their complete & utter disdain for democracy itself:

“…Barton is among those who believe the ultimate goal for American government should be a Christian theocratic state, which is necessary to properly usher in the apocalyptic End Times. Dominionism takes many forms, …(n)evertheless, its fundamental principle is the same: Christians must work toward a theocratic state in which Christians are in control. Or, as current congressional candidate (and fellow Barton enthusiast) Rick Saccone said in an interview last year with Pastors Network of America, God wants Christians “who will rule with the fear of God in them, to rule over us.” ”

If you don’t recall, Saccone fortunately lost that election as well as the one after. (Thank you, Pennsylvania!) But others like him continue to win. Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz are notable Dominionists, and even Donald Trump has publicly embraced these ideas. This worldview they share isn’t undermining their support; it’s why they have any. Republicans’ strongest supporters are with them because of these views, while so-called moderates like Mitt Romney, Adam Kinziger & others continue to lose party support. This is exactly why influential pastors like Robert Jeffress and David Jeremiah are such avid Trump campaigners, because they believe in Christian authoritarianism and believe that Trump can (and will) make it happen.

We need to be very clear about this. Today’s Republicans are mostly Barton-inspired fanatics at all levels, especially locally. This is why after Tennessee Republicans ejected Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, they were caught on tape claiming that they were personally at the forefront of a “war” for control of the nation.

Base Republicans believe this nonsense. That’s why the very next thing the Tennessee legislature did after that recording was made was vote to allow unlicensed concealed carry, because they want their soldiers armed if and when they are voted out of office. If you look at the collateral damage of their war—our now-daily mass murders—it’s easy to see what impact their belief is having. The fear and distrust these killings create serve their goals as well, as those are critical ingredients for any authoritarian regime.

If we don’t start paying attention to this poisonous religious & racist rhetoric, we will not be able to stop not only our daily violence, but the coming violence as well. January 6th is going to look like the tourist visit Republicans claim it was. This is urgent. The change in right-wing rhetoric from this 2018 article to today’s full-throated endorsement and implementation of its ideas should make that very clear.

The central message of the Bible is salvation through Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the New Cov­enant. Apart from His work, through which He ac­quired and eternally possesses the Covenant, there is no hope for mankind. He has overwhelmingly con­quered so as to open the Treaty of the Great King; and through Him we too are more than conquerors.

Imagine someone finds you packing a sack lunch on a warm Saturday morning, and asks the reason for it. You answer, “Because I’m going to have a picnic at the park today.” What has happened? In a sense, the future—the planned picnic­—has determined the past. Because you wanted a picnic at the park...

Un gruppo di motociclisti – capelli lunghi, barba e veste di cuoio – attraversa il midwest statunitense dietro Gary Burd, il loro pastore. Sulla sua veste ci sono la croce e il simbolo dei Christians united for Israel (cristiani uniti per Israele, Cufi), un’organizzazione cristiana evangelica. Prima del viaggio iniziatico Burd ha preparato delle spade d’acciaio da distribuire ai suoi seguaci. Con quelle armi Burd e i suoi vanno in moto fino a Lebanon, in Kansas, negli Stati Uniti. Non temono l’apocalisse, pregano addirittura perché arrivi al più presto: non vedono l’ora di “poter combattere accanto a Gesù” nella battaglia finale, che sostengono si terrà in una valle situata in Israele. A Lebanon saranno nominati “cavalieri dell’apocalisse”Questi motociclisti evangelici sono tra i primi protagonisti dello sconvolgente documentario Praying for armageddon, di Tonje Hessen Schei e Michael Rowley. Il secondo gruppo seguito dai due documentaristi mostra tutto un altro stile. Sono anche loro cristiani evangelici, ma indossano giacca e cravatta, e gravitano ai più alti livelli del potere statunitense e sui set televisivi di Fox news. Tra loro ci sono due dei più importanti esponenti evangelici sionisti, il pastore John Hagee, capo della Cufi, e il telepredicatore Robert Jeffress, pastore di Dallas.

[...]

Il filo conduttore che lega queste tre realtà così lontane sono i Christians united for Israel, che hanno circa dieci milioni d’iscritti negli Stati Uniti e mettono a disposizione somme da capogiro per finanziare insediamenti illegali e progetti di espansione sionisti nei territori occupati. Insieme ad altri gruppi millenaristi, costituiscono l’ampio movimento dei cristiani evangelici negli Stati Uniti. Secondo il New Yorker, oggi questi ultimi rappresentano il 14 per cento della popolazione. È stata anche la loro pressione a spingere nel 2016 l’allora presidente Donald Trump a spostare l’ambasciata statunitense a Gerusalemme.

Jeffress, il pastore evangelico di Dallas, tra le altre cose in passato ha detto che gli ebrei “non potranno mai trovare salvezza”. Mentre Hagee ha affermato che “Hitler era parte del piano di dio per far tornare gli ebrei in Israele”.

[...]

Oltre ai motociclisti che pregano nei parcheggi del midwest, il documentario mostra quanto il potere degli evangelici stia indebolendo la democrazia statunitense, in particolare attraverso la loro influenza sul Partito repubblicano. Lauren Boebert, repubblicana, sostenitrice di Trump ed evangelica, all’uscita del congresso dice: “Ci sono solo due nazioni create per onorare dio: Israele e gli Stati Uniti d’America”. Ralph Drollinger, che gestiva il gruppo di studio settimanale sulla Bibbia della Casa Bianca durante l’amministrazione Trump, spiega che ci sono dei poteri demoniaci al lavoro: ‘Il movimento omosessuale, i transgender nel nostro esercito, i sostenitori dell’aborto”.

L’influenza evangelica non si ferma alla politica, il documentario mostra quanto sembra avere preso piede anche nell’esercito statunitense. Lee Fang, giornalista di Intercept, nel documentario intervista il colonnello in pensione Lawrence Wilkerson, figura di spicco della Military religious foundation, ex consigliere del generale Colin Powell e convinto repubblicano. Wilkerson spiega con preoccupazione che “molti cappellani dell’esercito provengono sempre più dalle sette fondamentaliste”, come quella dei cristiani evangelici nazionalisti.

Uscito prima del 7 ottobre 2023, cioè dell’attacco di Hamas contro Israele, oggi il documentario suona ancora più attuale. Secondo molti cristiani sionisti, “i conflitti armati che coinvolgono Israele sono legati alle battaglie per la fine dei tempi”. Molti credono che lo stato ebraico giocherà un ruolo durante l’apocalisse e vedono la guerra tra Israele e Hamas come il preludio della fine dei tempi tanto attesa.

[...]

Evangelical figures who previously supported Donald Trump are backing off now that he’s announced his third bid for the presidency.

“Donald Trump can’t save America,” Mike Evans told The Washington Post. “He can’t even save himself.”

Evans was part of a group of evangelicals who met with Trump at the White House, and at one point gave him an award.

Now, he says he’s done with Trump.

“He used us to win the White House. We had to close our mouths and eyes when he said things that horrified us,” Evans told the newspaper. “I cannot do that anymore.”

Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s evangelical advisers during the 2016 campaign and a longtime supporter, said he’s not ready to endorse him again.

“The Republican Party is headed toward a civil war that I have no desire or need to be part of,” Jeffress told Newsweek, adding that he would “happily” support Trump again if he wins the nomination.

That’s not a given, considering Trump’s plunging poll numbers among Republican voters. Jeffress also seemed to subtweet Trump on the day of his 2024 announcement by urging people to buy Mike Pence’s book:

Jeffress added on Twitter that he still considers Trump “a great friend and our greatest president since Reagan.”

Another onetime faith adviser to Trump, James Robison of Life Outreach International, said in a speech this week that Trump’s ego is getting in the way of the agenda.

“If Mr. Trump can’t stop his little petty issues, how does he expect people to stop major issues?” Robison said, according to The Washington Post.

He said he told Trump: “Sir, you act like a little elementary schoolchild and you shoot yourself in the foot every morning you get up and open your mouth! The more you keep your mouth closed, the more successful you’re gonna be!”

Robison did not say if he was planning to support Trump in 2024.

Another evangelical figure who previously endorsed Trump was even more blunt, with Washington Times columnist Everett Piper writing that Trump cost the GOP big in the midterms and could hurt them even more in two years.

“The take-home of this past week is simple: Donald Trump has to go,” Piper wrote. “If he‘s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed.”

What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again?

What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!”

What if the influential evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, after Trump was caught on tape explaining that as a TV star he felt entitled to “grab” women in the most intimate places — or after Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury of having done pretty much just that to E. Jean Carroll — declared that he would lead a campaign to ensure that anyone but Trump was elected in 2024 because Trump was a moral deviant whom Jeffress would not let babysit his two daughters, let alone the country?

Where would statements and actions like those have left Kevin McCarthy, his knuckleheads in the House G.O.P. caucus, and other Republicans who now are defending Trump against the Justice Department indictment? Would they be so eager to proclaim Trump’s innocence? Would they be raging against Tuesday’s hearing in Miami? Would they be claiming, falsely, that President Biden was indicting Trump, when they know full well that the president doesn’t have the power to indict anyone?

I doubt it. But I know that all of these questions are rhetorical. None of those people have the character to rise to these ethical challenges and take on Trump and what he has done to break our political system. Trump is like a drug dealer who thrives in a broken neighborhood, getting everyone hooked on his warped values. That is why he is doing everything he can to break our national neighborhood in two fundamental ways.

For starters, Trump has consistently tried to denigrate people who have demonstrated character and courage, by labeling them losers and weaklings. This comes easy to Trump because he is a man utterly without character — devoid of any sense of ethics or loyalty to any value system or person other than himself. And for him, politics is a blood sport in which you bludgeon the other guys and gals — whether they are in your party or not — with smears and nicknames and lies until they get out of your way.

Trump debuted this strategy early on with John McCain — a veteran, a man who never broke in five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, a man of real character. Do you remember what Trump said about McCain at a family leadership summit in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2015?

When McCain ran for president, “I supported him,” Trump told the audience. “He lost. He let us down. But he lost. So I never liked him much after that, because I don’t like losers.” When the audience laughed, the moderator, the pollster Frank Luntz, interjected, “But he’s a war hero!”

Trump — who wangled a dubious medical deferment to avoid the Vietnam War draft — then responded: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Later that day, Trump retweeted a web post headlined, “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser.’”

So part of the way Trump tries to break our system is to redefine the qualities of a leader — at least in the G.O.P. A leader is not someone like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney, people prepared to risk their careers to defend the truth, serve the country and uphold the Constitution. No, a leader is someone like him, someone who is ready to win at any cost — to the country, to the Constitution and to the example we set for our children and our allies.

And when that is your definition of leadership, of winning, people of character like McCain, Cheney and Romney are in your way. You need to strip everyone around you of character, and make everything about securing power and money. That is why so many people who entered Trump’s orbit since 2015 have walked away muddied. And that’s why I knew that all the questions I asked earlier were rhetorical.

The second way that Trump is trying to break our system was on display on Tuesday in Miami, where he followed his appearance as a federal criminal defendant with a political meet-and-greet at a Cuban restaurant. There, once again, Trump tried to discredit the rules of the game that would restrain him and his limitless appetite for power for power’s sake.

How does he do that? First, he gets everyone around him — and, eventually, the vast majority of those in his party — to stop insisting that Trump abide by ethical norms. His family members and party colleagues have grown adept at running away from reporters’ microphones after every Trump outrage.

But precisely because key political allies, church leaders and close family members will not call out Trump for his moral and legal transgressions — which would make his 2024 re-election bid unthinkable and hasten his departure from the political scene — we have to rely solely on the courts to defend the rules of the game.

And when that happens, it puts tremendous stress on our judicial system and our democracy itself, because the decision to prosecute or not is always a judgment call. And when those judgment calls have to be rendered at times by judges or prosecutors appointed by Democrats — which is how our system works — it gives Trump and his flock the perfect opening to denounce the whole process as a “witch hunt.”

And when such behavior happens over and over across a broad front — because Trump won’t stop at red lights anywhere and just keeps daring us to ignore his transgressions or indict him so he can cry bias — we end up eroding the two most important pillars of our democratic system: the belief in the independence of our judiciary that ensures no one is above the law, and the belief in our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately.

Just consider one scene in Trump’s indictment. It’s after a federal grand jury subpoenaed him in May 2022, to produce all classified material in his possession. Notes written by his own lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, quote Trump as saying: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t. … What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them? Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

Better for whom? Only one man. And that’s why I repeat: Trump has not put us here by accident. He actually wants to break our system, because he and people like him only thrive in a broken system.

So he keeps pushing and pushing our system to its breaking point — where rules are for suckers, norms are for fools, basic truths are malleable and men and women of high character are banished.

This is exactly what would-be dictators try to do: Flood the zone with lies so the people trust only them and the truth is only what they say it is.

It is impossible to exaggerate what a dangerous moment this is for our country.

Thomas Friedman

New York Times

OF COURSE. What is new

BREAKING REPORT: Jeffrey Epstein associate Steven Hoffenberg is found dead in his Connecticut apartment...

O Anon!

Missed you 💋

His rotting corpse was found after a welfare check, eww. Blow flies. His body was so bad they were waiting on dental records to make a positive ID.

This is the only guy on earth to say that Epstein was involved in the Ponzi scheme. The post says that Epstein may have taken the stolen money to fund his lifestyle, but we all know he blackmailed the crap out of the Johns to provide their sick lifestyle of sexual slaves and sick fantasy.

I'd go further to say devil worship of Moloch.

Believe what you want. The Rusty Shackelford drone video of Epstein island has been taken down. If anyone can find it, please send it in. It's spooky, and it will make you wonder.

Sorry to get off track a bit, but these bastards are evil.

Love ya, O anon! 💋💋💋💖🤟🏻

Before Ben Garrison and before Jack Chick there was Vic Lockman.

Vic Lockman was a comic illustrator who did cruddy Disney comics (many of which some sad fandom accounts here on Tumblr salivate incessantly for), but when he wasn’t doing that, he was throwing together horrible religious comic tracts in the 1970′s. Much in the line of the wacko Evangelicals who thrived in the 70s (Bill Bright, Hal Lindsey, Salem Kirban, Bob “the beat is Satanic” Larson)-and yet going much,much further-Lockman’s work was conservatively politically charged. The only blogs I see elsewhere online that discuss the man’s work are horrible Evangelical ones praising him.

 The man went as far as to support apartheid in the mid-80s (an obvious unconscionable act coming from anyone from that time on, with one notable examples being the horrible 80s Evangelical Pharisee Jerry Falwell and near-pedophile rocker Ted Nugent). The man’s work echoed the pro-apartheid sentiment that Africans were inferior and incapable of governing themselves.

 His tracts included discussing Catholicism-which given he was cut from the same cloth as Jack Chick meant he was a hostile nutjob towards Catholicism (trademark of most popular Evangelicalism going back to the 1880s with Scofield on to Chick, to Promise Keepers to John Hagee to Trump’s own “spiritual advisor” Robert Jeffress-something I wish most Catholics would keep firmly rooted in mind when they consider their options of Trump/Trumpism in upcoming elections).

EDIT-upon further research, I was unsurprised to discover that Lockman was anti-Evolution, but what was surprising was his mixed messgaes that wafted between “less government” (Social Security=evil, taxation=evil, despite the whole “render onto Caesar” thing), and the waning Gold Standard) to being outright Reconstructionalist in his theocratic views---meaning he propounded a strong emphasis on the government reviving OT Levitcan laws-especially the ones that dealt in harsh capital punishments on adulterers and such.

I mean, look at his take on the ERA and see how backwards chauvinistic and homophobic the guy is:

(from The Comics Journal  February 1985- a critique into propaganda style comics- Gary Groth)

Because “gOd FOrbId woMeN SeRVe iN ThE milITaRY & polIcE FOrcE”.

Yeah, a fine example of how the splendid power of comics can be horribly misused in the wrong hands.

The Embassy opened at its Jerusalem location on May 14, 2018, the 70th Gregorian anniversary of the creation of the modern State of Israel.[3] It was relocated from its previous site in Tel Aviv by the Trump Administration and is situated in what was previously the former US Consulate in the Arnona neighborhood.[4] The opening prayer was delivered by the Evangelical Reverend Robert Jeffress, and the closing prayer was given by the Evangelical Reverend John C. Hagee.[5][6][7] The move came 23 years after the passage of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of October 23, 1995, which set a deadline of May 31, 1999, for the move.[8] The Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations had all deferred the move. Eugene Kontorovich claimed that the decision to shift the US embassy to this area is tantamount to the United States recognizing Israeli sovereignty over land that it captured in the Six-Day War in 1967.[9]

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On October 18, 2018, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US would be merging the Embassy and US Consulate General in Jerusalem into a single mission. The United States will continue conducting relations with the West Bank and Gaza through a newly created Palestinian Affairs Unit which will operate from the Agron Site of the Jerusalem Embassy.[1] While the decision was praised by the Israeli Government, Palestinian officials criticized the Trump Administration for siding with Israel's claim to Jerusalem and "Greater Israel".[11][12][13][14] In February 2019, it was announced that the US Consulate General would be formally merging into the US Embassy in March.[15][16][17] On March 4, 2019, the US Consulate-General was formally integrated into the US Embassy in Jerusalem. The Consulate-General's Agron Street premises were revamped as the Palestinian Affairs Unit, which would handle many of the Consulate-General's former functions. This ends the US practice of assigning separate diplomatic missions to the Israelis and Palestinians.[18][19][20][21] In response, Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee called for the international community to boycott the new Palestinian Affairs Unit.[22][23][24] Erekat's sentiments were echoed by fellow Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, who denounced the merger of the Consulate General as "political assault on Palestinian rights and identity".[25]

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On December 18, 2017, in a 14–1 vote, the US vetoed a United Nations Security Council draft resolution on the matter[27] then on December 21, 2017, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution by a 128–9 vote.[28] Palestinian officials warned that it could lead to an "inactive war" and violent protests.[29] The Embassy's opening coincided with the bloodiest day of the 2018 Gaza border protests, with more than 57 Palestinians killed.[30][31] French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian said, "This decision contravenes international law and in particular the resolutions of the Security Council and the UN General Assembly".[30] On September 28, 2018, Palestine brought a case against the US at the International Court of Justice alleging that the relocation of the embassy breached the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and other rules of general international law. The International Court of Justice asked for briefs covering jurisdiction and admissibility, Palestine's submission by May 15, 2019, the US by November 15, 2019.[32] The opening of a new US Embassy in Jerusalem led two other countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem. Two days after the US Embassy opened, Guatemala moved its embassy to Israel back to Jerusalem.[33] Paraguay also opened a Jerusalem embassy to Israel, citing the US precedent.[34] Newly elected Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez decided to relocate the Paraguayan embassy back to Tel Aviv.[35]

(OPINION) Ahead of a contentious election season, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas and former spiritual advisor to Donald Trump, is emphasizing the responsibility of Christians to vote based on biblical principles rather than party lines. “[Pastors] ought to...