As I sat down to write this, I turned on the TV and watched Donald Trump speaking - if you can call it that - in front of the United Nations. Or rather, ranting, whining, bragging, and chastising. He claimed he had “ended seven wars” and deserved a Nobel Prize, boasted that sinking three Venezuelan fishing boats had ended drug smuggling, and barked at world leaders, “Your countries are going to hell.” He dismissed renewable energy as a scam and climate change as “the greatest con job,” warning nations they would fail if they pursued green energy.
For nearly an hour, he rambled, lied, and threatened in front of 200 world leaders. The embarrassment was global. The alarm was real. What the world saw was a delusional, deranged dictator on display.
And, here at home, because we have this man in the White House, most of Project 2025’s mandates have already been accomplished in just eight short months. Our democracy is now a corrupt, authoritarian government, managed by the project’s architects and headed by their chosen sociopathic, unitary executive.
The transformation is enabled by autocratic loyalists and incompetent opportunists vying to share the loot. Information that fuels our economy is being withheld or manipulated, while the press is denied access to the White House and the Pentagon. Speech is punished, truth is hidden, propaganda misleads, and junk science confuses and harms us. We have abandoned our humanitarian mission and our international alliances. The state of the union is discord and malice.
Many Democratic leaders say we are “on a path” to dictatorship. They need to tell it like it is: It has already arrived. After Trump’s performance at the U.N. this morning, the world knows it as well.
Manifest Destiny Then, Christian Nationalism Now
To understand what is happening, it helps to remember Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century belief that the United States was divinely ordained to expand across the North American continent—from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Coined in 1845 by journalist John L. O’Sullivan, the idea combined religious justification (“God’s will”), racial hierarchy (Anglo-Protestant superiority), economic hunger for land and resources, and nationalism. 1 It sanctified conquest as inevitable and righteous, erasing Indigenous sovereignty and justifying the near-extinction of the buffalo. 2
That same fusion of religion, racial hierarchy, and political power has returned under a new name: Christian Nationalism.
Where Manifest Destiny justified conquest of a continent, Christian Nationalism justifies the conquest of democracy itself. And the instrument is Project 2025. 3
The Heritage Foundation’s Long Game
The Heritage Foundation has been planning to replace democracy for more than forty years, with Project 2025 only the latest and most aggressive iteration. Heritage began in the 1970s as a conservative think tank but has evolved into a hub for Christian nationalist, plutocratic, and authoritarian forces - unified by their shared ambition to replace secular democracy with theocratic rule. 4 Under current leadership, it openly fuses religious dogma with political power. 5
The Rise of Christian Nationalism
Religion has become increasingly visible in government—never more so than under the current administration. Christianity is infused in the rhetoric of the White House and Republicans in Congress. But these are not Christians in the sense of following the Beatitudes or Jesus’s call to compassion. They are Christo-fascists: religious nationalists who weaponize faith as a political tool. 6
Christian Nationalists mock the Ten Commandments and ignore Jesus’s teachings, while working to impose their version of religion on every corner of public life - transforming faith into a political weapon. Officials, wearing prominently displayed crosses, lie their way through press conferences and congressional hearings - performing piety as cover for corruption. 7 The White House boasts an “Office of Faith,” run by a charlatan, that promotes loyalty tests, not spiritual guidance. “Thoughts and prayers” are trotted out after every tragedy, while Republicans block gun reform to appease the NRA and to fatten their campaign coffers. 8
Republican states have diverted taxpayer funds to private religious schools 9 and mandated Bible classes 10 and prayer in public ones - policies designed to indoctrinate the next generation of voters into obedience to theocratic rule.11 Christian Nationalists now hold a six-member majority on the Supreme Court - an unelected bloc that rewrites law to match theology, not the Constitution. 12
They have embraced the “unitary executive” theory, handing Trump near-absolute power and dressing up corruption and self-enrichment as the will of God.
Importantly, this movement is not only evangelical-Protestant. It also includes Catholic dominionists—integralists who reject the separation of church and state and argue that government should enforce catholic teaching as the law of the land. 13 Together, these factions form a massive coalition determined to erode constitutional protections and impose theocratic rule through Project 2025.
The Long March to Theocracy
Christian Nationalists have pursued this goal for decades - slowly, but persistently, eroding the First Amendment’s separation of church and state, and steadily replacing constitutional guarantees with laws written to enforce theocratic power. 14 But, this is not Christianity as charity or peace. It echoes Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century ideology that cloaked conquest and cruelty in biblical justification.
Biblical Roots of Manifest Destiny
Settlers invoked scripture to justify expansion. Genesis 1:28 declares: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over … every living thing.” This verse was treated as a divine license for conquest: the land, its peoples, and its creatures were all to be subdued. 15
Consequences Then
The results were catastrophic. Indigenous nations were forced from their homelands, bound by treaties that were then broken, subjected to massacres, and targeted for cultural annihilation. 16 Buffalo herds, central to the survival and spirituality of Plains people, were slaughtered by the tens of millions, often with encouragement from U.S. military leaders who saw starvation as a tool of submission. 17 The prairies and ecosystems left behind were ravaged, all under the guise of “progress.” 18
Parallels Now
The parallels are unmistakable. Then, expansion was preached as God’s will, justified by white Protestant supremacy. Today, Christian nationalism preaches that the “restoration” of America is God’s will, justified by evangelical and Catholic dominionist supremacy. Secular law and pluralism are steadily erased, plutocracy is sanctified, and state violence, from mass deportations to bans on reproductive care, is excused as “defense.”
America Was Not Founded as a Christian Nation
Christian Nationalists insist America was founded as a Christian nation. The historical record proves them wrong. In 1797, the Senate unanimously ratified the Treaty of Tripoli, declaring that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”19 Jefferson, in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, reaffirmed a “wall of separation between church and state.” 20 Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 of the dangers of religious factions dominating politics. 21 And, most striking of all, the Constitution itself contains no reference to God or Christianity—an intentional break from Europe’s theocratic models. 22
The Founders built a secular republic precisely to prevent theocracy. Yet, Christian nationalists today twist that legacy to legitimize theocratic doctrine.
The Through Line
The story is the same, only updated. Then it was “destiny” to conquer a continent; now it is “destiny” to conquer democracy. Both fuse religion, racial hierarchy, and political power into a myth of inevitability. And both erase freedom of belief, justify violence, and elevate the dominion of the few over the many.
Project 2025 encourages its followers to ignore laws and court orders, and and never take no for an answer. Surveys confirm this is not abstract theory: PRRI and Brookings found that Americans who embrace Christian Nationalism are far more likely to support authoritarian measures, from restricting voting rights to silencing critics. 23
Even within Christianity, pastors and congregations are warning against this distortion of faith, organizing the rise of Christian Nationalism. 24
This is not just authoritarianism. It is authoritarianism draped in scripture, as dangerous as the old Manifest Destiny. Unless we call it out and fight it, the damage will be just as lasting.
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