Like most observers of the second Trump presidency, I've found myself at a disadvantage in the face of the regime's open strategy to dominate the news cycle with a never-ending torrent of lies, propaganda, and horrifying nazi policy announcements that leave little time for any analyst to work out what the Trumpenreich might be planning to do next; a strategy noted slimeball fascist propagandist Steve Bannon once described as "flooding the zone with shit." Despite this however, over the past few months I've noticed an increasing focus in the regime's propaganda on religion, Christian nationalist ideology, and obliterating the traditional US separation between church and state, under the guise of protecting the "religious liberty" of cracker fundie fascists who worship at the altar of Trump. As I've stressed before, analysis isn't actually prophecy, but to my mind it sure does look like the Trumpenreich is gearing up for a war to install Christian Nationalism as a quasi-state religion, while using the fig leaf of "religious liberty" to further entrench and enforce policies that are ultimately designed to create a fascist dictatorship under the Swine Emperor.

At this stage of our investigation, we're more or less collecting breadcrumbs; the kind of stories that don't directly prove the Trumpenreich is about to start a Christian nationalist crusade to target "enemies within" and create a fascist dictatorship, but still point to a regime looking to align church and state to increase its own power to do fascist bullshit. Take for example the IRS's recent announcement that engaging in political activity or campaigning, will no longer threaten the tax-exempt status of churches and pastors - including of course, powerful nazi fundamentalist megapastors in increasingly-gerrymandered "red" states like Texas.

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-churches-endorse-candidates-texas

The IRS Says Churches Can Now Endorse Candidates. That Could Give Texas Pastors More Power Than Ever.

"For more than 70 years, churches and other religious institutions in the United States were told to steer clear of “any political activity” or risk losing their tax-exempt status. That federal measure, the Johnson Amendment, was added into IRS tax law in 1954 and named after its author, Lyndon B. Johnson, then a Texas congressman.

In August 2024, during the last months of the Biden administration, an association of religious broadcasters and two East Texas churches sued the IRS, arguing that the Johnson Amendment infringed upon their freedom of speech and religion.

Nearly a year later, the IRS, now under Trump, and the plaintiffs filed a proposed joint settlement outlining in the agreement that when a house of worship speaks to its congregation about “electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith,” it neither participates nor intervenes in a political campaign and so doesn’t violate the amendment. The court must now consider their proposal."

While I often applaud Pro Publica's commitment to fairness in its analysis, this article is an absolute tire fire of bothsides-ism and false equivalency; all of which I'm just going to ignore because ain't nobody got time for that fascist-enabling, "enlightened centrist" nonsense anymore. The reality is that in an American oligarchy barely clinging to even the appearance of democracy, there is no practical equivalency between Black churches telling marginalized people to vote against the modern US nazi party, and millionaire right wing fundamentalist megapastors working with a fascist president, and a theocratic Supreme Court, to install a dictatorship - full fucking stop.

While we're on the subject of bullshit, I think we can also dispense with fundie fascist arguments that the government was "silencing" pastors and suppressing free speech rights by linking their tax-exemptions to staying out of electoral politics. There is after all a reason why political action committees are tightly regulated by the government and dipshit nazi pastors are not; what Trump's IRS is making a matter of facts on the ground here is the creation of an entire new lobbying and electioneering engine that is not only wholly unregulated, but likely to be protected in doing so under the guise of religious liberty by a US Supreme Court with between 5 and 6 sitting fundie fascists on it. These folks, including Christian Zionist evangelical nazis like John Haggee, who claims to represent over 11 million members of CUFI, have a lot of money and a lot of influence to throw around in American politics and the IRS just gave them the green light to do so.

Finally as the article indicates, we don't really have the theorize that this is what the (again, fascist) religious right is going to do because due to lax IRS enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, Trump-loyal fascist megapastors are already building that political apparatus.