A Christian nationalist organization involved in plotting out Project 2025, the extremely conservative plan to gut the federal government and refill it with MAGA loyalists, is expanding its push to rig the federal judiciary.
Last year, MSNBC columnist Sarah Posner wrote about a report from liberal watchdog Right Wing Watch that focused on an organization called the American Family Association and its plan to pressure all Republican presidential candidates, senators and White House counsels to apply a “biblical worldview” test to all Supreme Court nominees — basically, to ensure each nominee would be willing to act as loyal deputies for the Christian nationalist movement.
Right Wing Watch is out with new reporting this week finding that the AFA is urging GOPers to apply that same standard to lower court nominees as well. According to the outlet:
In a fundraising email sent Tuesday, AFA Action CEO Walker Wildmon revealed that the group is also seeking to apply its religious worldview test to judges for the lower courts, which he calls ‘a crucial, much-needed expansion of CJR’s scope.’ Walker makes the group’s Christian nationalist agenda for the courts quite clear, writing that ‘if America is ever going to return to its Christ-centered, constitutional roots, it’s up to us.’ In return for a ‘generous gift,’ the group will send donors a copy of the widely debunked Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton’s ‘God in the Constitution.’ Wildmon’s email also brags about the group’s involvement in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led project to engineer a far-right takeover of the executive branch if Donald Trump or another Republican is elected president this fall.
Stories like this highlight the obvious stakes of this fall’s federal elections. Particularly as we read of the conservative-led Supreme Court’s marriage to the Christian nationalist movement (pun intended) and Donald Trump’s apparent eagerness to offer just about anything to people in exchange for backing his campaign. If Trump is elected president and gifted a Republican-led Senate, it seems pretty certain he will pack the federal bench with a bunch of Ted Cruz facsimiles: shameless Trump suck-ups who are loyal to the Christian nationalist cause.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.