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# Kelly Shackelford

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President, CEO & Chief Counsel at First Liberty Institute

First Liberty Institute

Baylor University

Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex Contact info

About

As the president of Liberty Institute for nearly 20 years, I’m honored to serve everyday Americans who are the victims of religious discrimination and persecution across our great nation.

At First Liberty Institute:

FeaturedFeatured

The Craig James Story - Liberty InstituteThe Craig James Story - Liberty Institute

YouTubeYouTube](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyshackelford/overlay/50624771/single-media-viewer?type=LINK&profileId=ACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg)

Religious Liberty and the Wheaton College CaseReligious Liberty and the Wheaton College Case

YouTubeYouTube](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyshackelford/overlay/50624763/single-media-viewer?type=LINK&profileId=ACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg)

Kelly Shackelford and Ted Cruz speak out against Houston subpoenasKelly Shackelford and Ted Cruz speak out against Houston subpoenas

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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Liberty Institute's CEO and President, Kelly Schackelford, stood in defense of Houston pastors' First Amendment right to speak and worship freely, calling upon Houstonians to stand firm against the City of Houston's (HERO) recent subpoena requiring pastors to submit sermons and other forms of communication.U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Liberty Institute's CEO and President, Kelly Schackelford, stood in defense of Houston pastors' First Amendment right to speak and worship freely, calling upon Houstonians to stand firm against the City of Houston's (HERO) recent subpoena requiring pastors to submit sermons and other forms of communication.](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyshackelford/overlay/50604307/single-media-viewer?type=LINK&profileId=ACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg)

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1,062 followers1,062 followers

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ExperienceExperience

Founder, President, CEO & Chief CounselFounder, President, CEO & Chief Counsel

First Liberty InstituteFirst Liberty InstituteJul 1997 - Present · 27 yrs 3 mosJul 1997 to Present · 27 yrs 3 mosDallas/Fort Worth AreaDallas/Fort Worth Area

Freemarket FoundationFreemarket Foundation1997 - 2011 · 14 yrs1997 to 2011 · 14 yrs

Adjunct Professor of LawAdjunct Professor of Law

The University of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin1994 - 2004 · 10 yrs1994 to 2004 · 10 yrsAustin, Texas AreaAustin, Texas Area

EducationEducation

Baylor UniversityBaylor University Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), AccountingBachelor of Business Administration (BBA), Accounting1981 - 19851981 - 1985

Dallas Theological SeminaryDallas Theological Seminary 1989 - 19991989 - 1999

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SkillsSkills

Endorsed by Suzanne B. who is highly skilled at thisEndorsed by Suzanne B. who is highly skilled at this](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyshackelford/overlay/urn:li:fsd_skill:%28ACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg,6%29/endorsers?profileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg&tabIndex=1&modalTabIndex=1)

Endorsed by Kassie Dulin and 1 other who is highly skilled at thisEndorsed by Kassie Dulin and 1 other who is highly skilled at this](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyshackelford/overlay/urn:li:fsd_skill:%28ACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg,7%29/endorsers?profileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg&tabIndex=1&modalTabIndex=1)

Endorsed by 3 colleagues at First Liberty InstituteEndorsed by 3 colleagues at First Liberty Institute](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyshackelford/overlay/urn:li:fsd_skill:%28ACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg,7%29/endorsers?profileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABkmDk4Bfb0dre-A9A-8AT2vy4JB8-DnXWg&tabIndex=2&modalTabIndex=2)

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Honors & awardsHonors & awards

Issued by Life and Religious Freedom DefenseIssued by Life and Religious Freedom Defense

OrganizationsOrganizations

Board of Trustees · Jan 2011 - Present

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merri ok

kelly

a dude (related to dallas actor ted?]

SEE CNP HUB GINNI 5

see paxton

see maga mike

see leo

see ziklag

oops // but ntbcw Stephen Miller  Am 1st Legal

tag: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/kelly-shackelford/

Tags: Kelly Shackelford First Liberty

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off bs

...Kelly J. Shackelford, Esq. is President and Chief Executive Officer of First Liberty Institute. Mr. Shackelford is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate and has won numerous landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases, including three landmark religious liberty victories in the U.S. Supreme Court — Kennedy v. Bremerton, Carson v. Makinand American Legion v. America Humanist Association.

Mr. Shackelford was named one of the 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the past quarter century by Texas Lawyer, and is the recipient of the prestigious William Bentley Ball Award for Life and Religious Freedom Defense for his leadership and pioneering work protecting religious freedom.

Mr. Shackelford is on the Board of Trustees of the United States Supreme Court Historical Society. He has been featured in the National Law Journal, Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Times, The L.A. Times, and many others

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an pro p 924

ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.

Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.

[JUDGE SHOPPING?] NOPE SCOTUS

Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.

On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)

After the call, First Liberty sent a recording of the 45-minute conversation to some of its supporters. ProPublica and Documented obtained that recording.

Ginni Thomas did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

First Liberty Institute did not directly respond to ProPublica and Documented’s questions about the recording. Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said in a statement: “First Liberty is extremely alarmed at the Leftist attacks on our democracy and judicial independence and is fighting to bring attention to this dangerous threat. It’s shameful that the political Left seems perfectly fine destroying democracy to achieve the court decisions they favor instead of working through democratic and constitutional means.”

The July 31 call led by Shackelford came shortly after President Joe Biden had announced support for a slate of far-reaching Supreme Court changes. Biden endorsed term limits for justices, a constitutional amendment reversing the court’s recent presidential immunity decision and a binding ethics code for the court’s nine members. Kagan’s comments came before Biden’s. She did not mention any of the structural proposals Biden endorsed.

On the donor call, Shackelford voiced strong opposition to various court reform proposals, including the ones floated by Biden, as well as expanding the size of the court. All of these proposals, Shackelford said, were part of “a dangerous attempt to really destroy the court, the Supreme Court.” This effort was led by “people in the progressive, extreme left” who were “upset by just a few cases,” he said.

This is not the first time that a spouse of a Supreme Court justice injected themselves into controversial political matters. Ginni Thomas sent dozens of messages after the 2020 election that echoed then-President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Thomas said “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History” and urged Trump to not concede the election. In emails to Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers, she pleaded with them to fight back against supposed fraud and send a “clean slate of Electors.” She later wrote, “The nation’s eyes are on you now. … Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.” (Thomas said in 2022 she regretted sending the inflammatory messages to Meadows.)

Martha-Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito, faced scrutiny for flying an upside-down American flag at the family’s Virginia home — a symbol used by the Stop the Steal movement that claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The flag flew outside the Alito home as the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear a case related to the 2020 election. (Samuel Alito told The New York Times he had no role in flying the flag. He said his wife did it in response to “a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”)

The push to change how the court functions grew after a series of ProPublica stories showed that wealthy Republican donors have showered Thomas and Alito with free gifts and travel that they failed to disclose. Following ProPublica’s reporting, Thomas amended past disclosure reports, and the Supreme Court adopted the ethics code, its first ever.

Thomas and Alito have said they weren’t required to disclose free flights or hospitality from friends.

First Liberty has been at the forefront of a decades-long and successful effort to expand the First Amendment rights of religious groups, even as those interests can collide with other constitutional principles like maintaining the separation of church and state or providing equal protection for protected classes.

In the last several years, First Liberty has notched big victories. In June 2022, the Supreme Court’s six conservatives ruled in favor of several Maine families represented by First Liberty and the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning legal advocacy group, when it struck down the state’s ban on using public funding to pay for religious schooling.

Days later, the six conservatives ruled again in favor of a First Liberty plaintiff — in this case, a former football coach at a Washington state public high school who had been fired for praying on the field after games. The conservative majority said the coach had been wrongly removed from his job, a decision hailed by religious groups and criticized by some experts who said it would now be more difficult for public schools to keep education separate from religion.

First Liberty has also represented a bakery in Oregon whose owners refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, citing their religious beliefs; religious groups that opposed the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate; and nearly three dozen Navy SEALs and military members who refused to be vaccinated for the virus on the basis of their faith. In all the cases, First Liberty’s plaintiffs won partial or full victories in lower courts or at the Supreme Court.

Shackelford, who is First Liberty’s president and CEO, has led the group for nearly three decades. His influence extends into the broader conservative movement. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a former First Liberty attorney, once called Shackelford a mentor. Shackelford has served as vice president of the Council for National Policy, an umbrella group that brings together conservative leaders and deep-pocketed donors.

He also works closely with Ziklag, the secretive network of ultrawealthy conservative Christians that aims to “take dominion” over every major sphere of influence in American culture. According to internal Ziklag newsletters obtained by ProPublica and Documented, Shackelford has participated in Supreme Court prep sessions and appeared on strategy conference calls organized by the group.

On the July 31 donor call, Shackelford kept the focus squarely on the mounting calls to reform the Supreme Court. In addition to Biden’s proposals, several groups, including prominent liberal legal outfits, have proposed other changes including term limits and stronger ethics guidelines. And earlier in July, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law said it had received a $30 million gift from the private-equity investor Jim Kohlberg to create a new project that will “seek reform of the Supreme Court.”

Shackelford described all of this — Kagan’s speech, Biden’s announcement, the $30 million donation — as if it was a coordinated effort. “They’re doing everything in their power,” he told the donors. “They’re hitting from every direction.” The “extreme left,” he explained, was “upset by just a few cases, but that’s all they need to say, ‘We’re ready to totally’ — they would call ‘reform’ or ‘restructure’ the court — but almost everything they propose would actually destroy the court.”

He aimed his fiercest criticism on the donor call at Kagan. “That is incredible, somewhat treasonous, what Kagan did,” Shackelford said. “The chief justice rules the court. They’re trying to keep the other branches’ hands off of them. And then you’ve got Kagan from the inside really being somewhat disloyal and somewhat treasonous in what she’s doing.”

Shackelford accused ProPublica of being part of a campaign to “delegitimize or get rid of the court.” He said that the ethics lapses unearthed by ProPublica’s reporting were “false” and “baseless,” even though they helped spark the creation of a new ethics code and led to Thomas filing new financial disclosure forms, in effect admitting that he had failed to disclose certain gifts.

ProPublica stands behind all of the stories in its “Friends of the Court” series. Donors do not have access to stories ahead of their publication, and they have no say over coverage decisions.

Turning to what his donors could do to help, Shackelford said that prayer was at the top of the list. “This is a spiritual battle,” he said. “Because the evil that will occur if we lose the rule of law is beyond, I think, what any of us can even think through.”

But First Liberty needed more than prayer — it also needed money. “We need resources to be able to do a bunch of the things that will make a difference between now and the next six months. And that turned out to be key last time,” he said, referring to a similar instance in 2021 and 2022.

Near the start of the Biden presidency, he said, First Liberty raised $3 million to run a campaign that sought to block efforts to add more justices to the high court and to reform or eliminate the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Getting rid of the filibuster then would’ve removed the 60-vote procedural hurdle that currently exists for most types of legislation.

According to Shackelford, First Liberty conducted polling, ran advertisements, worked with social media influencers and urged Congress to oppose these changes. In particular, Shackelford said, his group focused its activities on convincing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to oppose filibuster reform.

In the end, both senators did just that. “We stopped this from happening,” Shackelford said. (Spokespeople for Manchin and Sinema did not respond to requests for comment.)

But now, he went on, First Liberty needed more money if it wanted to mount a similar campaign to stop Supreme Court reform. He mentioned the Brennan Center’s recent $30 million gift and then asked, “Where’s our, you know, $10 million guy or gal?”

And to anyone who wondered about the odds that Supreme Court reform would actually happen, Shackelford responded: “I don't know. I mean, 25%? 30%? Whatever it is, it’s amazing how big that is when you consider that our country will be over and the rule of law will be over.”

Before the call ended, Shackelford wanted his “very top supporters” to know that they had the support in this fight from key figures in high places. He said that a First Liberty staffer based in Washington, D.C., had recently been in a meeting with Ginni Thomas. Afterward, Thomas sent the email that praised First Liberty for joining the fight against Supreme Court reform.

“‘Great to meet through the meetings today,’” Thomas wrote, according to Shackelford, who read the email aloud to the donors. “‘I cannot adequately express enough appreciation for you guys pulling into reacting to the Biden effort on the Supreme Court,” she said, adding, “Many were so depressed at the lack of response by R’s and conservatives” to recent court-reform proposals. The rest of Thomas’ email, Shackelford said, was the all-caps gratitude.

Do you have any information about the Supreme Court and efforts to block court reform that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.

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Kelly Shackleford reported that they had met Mike Johnson in the Rotunda of the Capitol and had prayer with him. The night before, David Barton had led the First Liberty group in a tour of the Capitol. In the picture below, you can see Kelly Shackleford, along with David Barton standing next to Speaker Mike Johnson.

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klukowski:

trump coup came to DOJ late via OMB mikm? , many doj  resignations?

OMB mulvaney freedom caucus

incubator clerk, gmu scalia, FRC , liberty 1st (CNP ginni)

On Aug. 22, 2018, Neomi Rao, then the administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, was scheduled to have a “Groundswell Mtg.” It is not confirmed whether this is Ginni Thomas’ Groundswell. Early in her career, Rao served as a law clerk for Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court, and in 2019, she was appointed by Trump to serve as federal judge in Washington, D.C.

Paoletta OMB lawyer

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Trump-appointed judges have ruled favorably to conservative Christians but not other religions: study

Alex Henderson July 17, 2023

During his one term as president, Donald Trump left his mark not only on the U.S. Supreme Court, but also, on the lower federal courts.

One third of the High Court is now comprised of Trump-appointed justices: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The Court was leaning conservative long before Trump's presidency, but Trump pushed a specific type of Republican: strict social conservatives who are favorable to the Religious Right's evangelical fundamentalist agenda.

According to a study by New York University's Stephen J. Choi, the University of Virginia's Mitu Gulati and the University of Chicago's Eric A. Posner, the judges Trump appointed to the lower federal courts were likely to be favorable to the Religious Right — although not to Muslims.

READ MORE: 'Huge victory for democracy' as Supreme Court rejects fringe Trump-backed election theory

The New York Times' Adam Liptak notes, "The study found, for instance, that judges named by Mr. Trump had 'stronger or more numerous religious affiliations' with churches and other houses of worship, with religious schools, and with groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty, which have won a series of major Supreme Court cases for conservative Christians. Trump appointees were also much more likely to be members of theFederalist Society, the conservative legal group, than other Republican appointees: 56 percent versus 22 percent."

The study found that Trump-appointed judges had "stronger or more numerous religious affiliations" with churches and with Religious Right groups like First Liberty and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Choi noted, however, that"the specific religion in question" often had a lot to do with how Trump-appointed judges ruled.

"Trump appointees voted in favor of plaintiffs claiming that their right to free exercise of religion had been violated about 45 percent of the time, compared with 36 percent for other Republican appointees and 33 percent of Democratic appointees," Liptak observes. "The gap grew for cases that involved only Christians, to more than 56 percent, compared with 42 percent for other Republican appointees and 29 percent for Democratic ones."

Liptak adds that "the numbers flipped when it came to Muslims, with Trump appointees at 19 percent, compared with 34 percent for other Republican appointees and 48 percent for Democratic ones."

READ MORE: 'Arrest the reporter': Donald Trump demands Supreme Court jail journalists over abortion decision leak

According to the researchers, "The pattern that emerges is consistent with conventional wisdom: Democrats tend to protect minority religions, and Republicans tend to protect Christianity (and possibly Judaism)."

READ MORE: 'One of the very best decisions I ever made': Clinton honors Ginsburg on anniversary of nomination

Find the New York Times' full article at this link (subscription required).

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Christian Nationalists Launch ‘Major Push’ to Take Advantage of the Far-Right Supreme Court

By Kyle Mantyla |

Earlier this month, Right Wing Watch reported that religious-right activists are seeking to take advantage of the far-right majority’s control of the Supreme Court to start enacting Christian nationalist policies all across the nation.

Emboldened by recent Supreme Court decisions upholding prayer in schools, crosses erected on public lands, and flying Christian flags on public buildings, right-wing activists intend to “go on offense” by pushing Christian nationalist policies at all levels of government and society.

Among those leading the charge is Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty, which was integral to laying the groundwork for the right’s spate of Supreme Court victories. During a recent appearance on an Intercessors For America broadcast, Shackelford announced that his organization has launched a Restoring Faith In America campaign to mobilize far-right Christians to rush into the spaces opened by these court rulings and “occupy it”

“Everywhere that crosses went down, they go back up,” Shackelforddeclared. “Everywhere the 10 Commandments was taken into the closet, it comes back out. Everywhere that prayer was taken out, it goes back in. Everything has changed.”

“The problem is that people don’t understand this,” he continued. “It’s like God has won all this land for us—just massive land—and we just have to occupy it. This is about every person in every community in the country taking back their own communities. We are gonna have a nationwide campaign—really to educate people and empower them—called Restoring Faith In America, because that’s what this is going to do. As soon as people start realizing what they can do and one community does it, the other community is going to look at them and they’re going to do it. And people of faith everywhere need to be going and saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we have prayer at our school board meeting?’ Because there’s no reason not to. They can do that with a thousand different things where we can really restore faith in America. It’s going to be a major push." [vid]

Tags: Kelly Shackelford First Liberty

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recall CNP  3 prongs trump re-election

jane mayer is ginni threat to scotus

conflicts of interest:

In April, 2020, when Ginni Thomas was serving as one of eight members on the C.N.P. Action board, it was chaired by Kelly Shackelford, the president and C.E.O. of First Liberty, a faith-based litigation group that is currently involved in several major cases before the Court. Last week, to the surprise of many observers, the Court agreed to hear a case in which First Liberty is defending a football coach at a public high school in Washington State who was fired for kneeling and praying on the fifty-yard line immediately after games. Richard Katskee, the legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who is defending the school board, told me that the case was “huge,” and could overturn fifty years of settled law. Shackelford’s group is also the co-initiator of another case before the Court: a challenge to a Maine law prohibiting the state from using public funds to pay parochial-school tuition for students living in areas far from public schools.

In addition to these cases,First Liberty has filed lawsuits that challenge covid-19 restrictions on religious grounds—an issue that has come before the Court—and Ginni Thomas and Shackelford have served together on the steering committee of the Save Our Country Coalition, which has called covid-19 health mandates “unconstitutional power grabs.” In a phone interview, Shackelford told me that he couldn’t see why Ginni Thomas’s work with him posed a conflict of interest for Justice Thomas. “It’s no big deal, if you look at the law on this,” he said. It would be different, he argued, if there were a financial interest involved, or if she were arguing First Liberty’s cases before the Court herself—but, he said, “almost everyone in America is connected through six degrees of separation.”

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https://ministrywatch.com/30-largest-christian-advocacy-organizations/

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Below is a list of the 30 largest Christian advocacy organizations in the United States.

The organizations on this list are those whose work is not primarily direct aid, but in advocacy, including those who work in the arena of public policy — including life, marriage, and religious liberty.

The total revenue of the advocacy organizations on our list is more than $800 million. In order to make this list, an organization needs about $4.4 million in revenue. Last year, the #30 organization on the list had $2.3 million. That means a few organizations fell off the list this year.  They are Advocates for Community Transformation, The Exodus Road, Frontline Response/Atlanta Dream Center, and Americans United for Life.

Organizations new to this list include: Faith and Freedom Coalition, Acton Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty, Atlas Free, and ZOE International.

This list should not be interpreted as a list of recommended ministries.  They are ranked by revenue, and not by ministry effectiveness, financial efficiency, or any other measure.  That said, the Financial Efficiency rating, Transparency Grade, and Donor Confidence Score of each ministry is listed.

To learn more about these ministries, click on the ministry’s name and read the complete MinistryWatch profile on this organization.

Access to MinistryWatch content is free.  However, we hope you will support our work with your prayers and financial gifts.  To make a donation, click here.

We should note that the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) is not a Christian organization, but it advertises heavily in Christian media and has thousands of evangelical Christian donors, so it is included on this list so as to provide transparency into its operations.  To read more about IFCJ, click here.

If you would like to know more about our Financial Efficiency Rating, click here.  If you would like to know more about our Transparency Grades, click here.  To learn about the Donor Confidence Score, click here.

Editor’s Note:  Stephen DuBarry contributed to this list.

Rank Last Year Organization name CEO Total revenue ECFA Rating Transp DCS Latest 990

«‹12›»

1 1 International Fellowship of Christians and Jews Yael Eckstein $219,904,132 No 2 C 79 2021

2 2 AbleLight Keith Jones $107,612,471 Yes 2 A 82 2021

3 3 Alliance Defending Freedom Kristen Waggoner $78,833,050 Yes 1 A 92 2021

4 4 The Voice of the Martyrs Cole Richards $77,331,603 Yes 3 C 85 2020

5 5 Giving Children Hope Pete Bowen $32,370,795 No 5 C 75 2020

6 6 American Family Association Tim Wildmon $31,046,881 Yes 4 A 100 2021

7 NR Faith and Freedom Coalition Timothy Head $23,533,527 No 2 D 43 2019

8 7 American Center for Law and Justice Jay Alan Sekulow $22,860,452 No NA C 45 2021

9 8 Family Research Council Tony Perkins $18,177,498 Yes 5 A 92 2020

10 9 Human Coalition Jeff Bradford $17,281,324 Yes 2 A 78 2020

11 10 First Liberty Institute Kelly Shackelford $14,810,344 Yes 3 A 88 2020

12 11 Home School Legal Defense Association J. Michael Smith $13,876,643 Yes 2 A 88 2020

13 13 Students for Life of America Kristan Hawkins $11,694,814 No 4 C 79 2020

14 14 Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Mark Rienzi $11,216,379 No 4 C 65 2021

15 12 Christian Medical & Dental Associations Mike Chupp $9,244,893 Yes 1 A 82 2021

16 NR Acton Institutefor the Study of Religious Liberty Kris Alan Mauren $8,804,881 No 2 C 69 2020

17 16 Care Net Roland Warren $8,724,760 Yes 4 A 96 2022

18 15 Save The Storks Diane Ferraro $8,203,663 Yes 3 A 96 2021

19 17 The A21 Campaign Nicholas Caine $8,050,835 Yes 2 A 78 2019

20 18 Safe Families for Children David Anderson $7,741,735 Yes 4 A 82 2020

Rank Last Year Organization name CEO Total revenue ECFA Rating Transp DCS Latest 990

«‹12›»

21 21 Live Action Lila Rose $7,476,280 No 1 D 63 2020

22 NR Atlas Free Jeremy Vallerand $6,740,936 Yes 5 A 100 2022

23 19 Bread for the World Institute Eugene Cho $6,419,987 No 1 C 69 2021

24 NR ZOE International Michael & Carol Hart $6,345,288 Yes 1 A 74 2021

25 20 Kingdom Advisors Rob West $5,246,145 Yes 4 A 92 2020

26 22 The National Center on Sexual Exploitation Dawn Hawkins $5,085,859 No 1 C 65 2021

27 23 Bridges for Peace Rebecca J. Brimmer $4,839,459 Yes 5 C 67 2020

28 25 Rapha International Stephanie Garman Freed $4,670,544 Yes 2 A 92 2021

29 26 Shared Hope International Linda Smith $4,492,238 Yes 3 A 100 2021

30 24 Concerned Women for America Penny Young Nance $3,834,675 Yes 1 A 96 2021

tags

AbleLightActon Institute for the Study of Religious LibertyAlliance Defending FreedomAmerican Center for Law and JusticeAmerican Family AssociationAtlas FreeBecket Fund for Religious LibertyBread for the World InstituteBridges for PeaceCare NetChristian Medical & Dental AssociationsConcerned Women for AmericaFaith and Freedom CoalitionFamily Research CouncilFirst Liberty InstituteGiving Children HopeHome School Legal Defense AssociationHuman CoalitionInternational Fellowship of Christians and JewsKingdom AdvisorsLive ActionMinistryWatch monthly listRapha InternationalSafe Families for ChildrenSave The StorksShared Hope InternationalStudents for Life of AmericaThe A21 CampaignThe National Center on Sexual ExploitationTHE VOICE OF THE MARTYRSZOE International

Warren Cole Smith

Warren previously served as Vice President of WORLD News Group, publisher of WORLD Magazine, and Vice President of The Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He has more than 30 years of experience as a writer, editor, marketing professional, and entrepreneur. Before launching a career in Christian journalism 25 years ago, Smith spent more than seven years as the Marketing Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/desantis-appoints-judge-from-religious-right-group-known-for-anti-choice-anti-lgbtq-stances/

trump-appointed federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has become the go-to judge for right-wing groups seeking rulings that advance their political agenda. Kacsmaryk worked at religious-right First Liberty Institute before his judicial nomination; now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gone to that same well, appointing First Liberty Institute senior counsel Jordan Pratt to the state’s Fifth District Court of Appeal.}:

First Liberty Institute is hostile to reproductive choice and legal equality for LGBTQ Americans. For years, it has sounded false alarms about supposed anti-Christian persecution in the United States. After Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, First Liberty Institute’s president signed a letter urging GOP senators to contest Electoral College votes from swing states won by President Joe Biden.

Pratt, a member of the Federalist Society, joined First Liberty in 2021. During the Trump administration, Pratt worked at the Justice Department to help Trump fill federal courts with likeminded judges. His nomination by DeSantis was praised by the Federalist Society’s Jacksonville chapter as well as byFirst Liberty President Kelly Shackelford.

Kacsmaryk’s record suggests what we might expect from a Judge Pratt. In 2019,People For the American Way strongly opposed Kacsmaryk’s confirmation, noting his “history of targeting those who do not live according to his particular social and religious beliefs” and warning—accurately—that his confirmation would “put reproductive freedom in danger.” Just last week, Kacsmaryk issued a ruling suspending the Federal Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. The lawsuit challenging FDA approval of mifepristone was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a powerful religious-right legal group with a goal of banning abortion nationwide.

In his anti-mifepristone ruling, Kacsmaryk adopted advocacy language from the anti-choice movement, rejecting the medically accurate term “fetus” in favor of “unborn human.” Loyola Law School Professor Jessica Levison has described Kacsmaryk’s decision as “riddled with legal and factual errors,” and wrote that his use of an 1870s law, the Comstock Act, “essentially resurrects baseless arguments and once-dead law to wreak havoc on our settled legal principles.” Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board recognizedthat Kacsmaryk is “overstepping his authority”in the case.

Florida appeals court judges are appointed by the governor from a list prepared by a judicial nominating commission. After serving for at least a year, they face a yes-or-no retention vote on a general election ballot, potentially winning a six-year term.

Tags: Jordan Pratt Matthew Kacsmaryk Anti-Abortion Anti-Choice Anti-LGBTQ Courts Religious Liberty First Liberty Institute

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/10/25/god-trump-closed-door-world-council-national-policy/

wapo

in October 2015, Donald Trump was still a laugh line for right-wing Christian activists. By their lights he was a failed casino owner and thrice-married playboy. He had no apparent principles, no policy blueprint and no grasp of the Bible. He didn’t even understand free-market theory, something they consider to be a fountainhead of American liberty. Yet here he was in a conference room at the Ritz-Carlton in McLean, Va., soliciting support from a closed-door group of conservative leaders called the Council for National Policy.

Trump looked the part. He wore a blue suit, white shirt and shiny blue tie. But he seemed to lose his way during the pitch and began riffing about his hair. He turned his head to various angles for the crowd. “It looks pretty good back here,” Trump said, as CNP’s president, Bill Walton, would later recall during a confidential talk captured on video.

It was too much for Marjorie Dannenfelser, an antiabortion activist also in the crowd. “This is insulting,” Dannenfelser said, according to her recorded recollection. She pulled on Walton’s sleeve. “Can you believe what is happening here?” she asked.

For months after the event, Dannenfelser and some other CNP members were determined to stop Trump. While he solidified his lead as GOP front-runner, they denounced him as a “charlatan” in the conservative magazine National Review, blasted his prior support of abortion rights and implored Republican voters to choose another candidate.

“America will only be a great nation when we have leaders of strong character who will defend both unborn children and the dignity of women,” Dannenfelser and other women wrote in an open letter to Iowa voters in January 2016. “We cannot trust Donald Trump to do either.”

Then came a great swerve that would upend politics in America: Millions of conservatives — Dannenfelser and other CNP members among them — got firmly behind Trump. Today, the Republican Party has been transformed, and Trump or one of his ideological heirs is likely to be the GOP nominee in 2024.

[As Trump hints at 2024 comeback, democracy advocates fear a ‘worst-case scenario’ for the country]

Much has been written about this turn of conservatives toward Trump. But I wanted to learn more about the political and communications infrastructure that converted this support into votes and influence. How did these leaders and activists — once so critical of Trump — end up helping shape and advocate for his agenda? And now that he is almost a year removed from the White House, how are they continuing to serve him and his cause?

Working with fellow Washington Post reporter Shawn Boburg, I started gathering documents and cultivating sources. We zeroed in on key figures and groups, making charts of their ties and timelines of their actions. We identified networks of groupsthat served as a kind of nerve system for conservative influence campaigns.

  The Council for National Policy provides a window into the conservative political and communications infrastructure that boosted Donald Trump. (Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images)

Enmeshed in these efforts was the Council for National Policy. CNP may be the most unusual, least understood conservative organization in the nation’s capital. A registered charity, it has served for 40 years as a social, planning and communications hub for conservative activists in Washington and nationwide. One of its defining features is its confidentiality. In a town where people and groups constantly angle for publicity, CNP bars the press and uninvited outsiders from its events. All members — even such luminaries as former vice president Mike Pence, Ralph Reed and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — agree to remain silent about its activities.

Other bastions of conservative influence — from policy groups like the Heritage Foundation to media outlets like Breitbart News — generally have clear missions. By contrast, CNP’s executive director, Bob McEwen, told me that the organization itself does not “do anything.” He and other CNP leaders will tell you it is merely an educational venue aimed at uniting its conservative members.

Yet as I began to learn more, I came to see that it would be a mistake to underestimate the group’s significance. I also realized that researching CNP represented a rare opportunity: to get a behind-the-scenes look at the outlook, goals and methods of activists who have so successfully promoted Trumpism. “I just wanted to thank you and the Council for National Policy for your support and for consistently amplifying the agenda of President Trump and our Administration,” Pence wrote to CNP last year. “I know our collaboration with CNP will only strengthen and deepen this year and beyond.”

The Council for National Policy began taking root on Jan. 22, 1981, when six religious and social conservatives gathered for dinner at a home in Dallas. Most American conservatives were still jubilant about the inauguration of Ronald Reagan two days earlier. They rejoiced at the prospect that Reagan might make good on one of his campaign slogans: “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Over dinner, they resolved to bring together Christian activists, business interests and wealthy donors under one umbrella to cajole and pressure the new administration.

Details about CNP’s history have emerged periodically over the decades, as journalists, authors and left-leaning activists pieced together leaked internal documents and other material. In early June this year, Nick Surgey, executive director of a progressive watchdog group called Documented, reached out to say he had obtained a speech from a CNP meeting in May that celebrated the group’s 40th anniversary. Did I want it?

The speech offered a wealth of new information and context. And it supplemented dozens of hours of confidential conference recordings and documents that I obtained from Surgey and other sources. “I’m not going to crystal-ball-gaze about the way ahead,” speaker Ed Feulner told the crowd gathered behind closed doors in Naples, Fla., on May 21. “Rather, I’m focusing on the early days of CNP. How we started, who did what and how the foundations were laid for us now, four decades later.”

One of the organizers of the initial dinner was Tim LaHaye, an evangelical minister, writer and political activist. LaHaye later wrote the popular Left Behind series, books about the end of times and the Antichrist, using themes derived from the Bible. He thought the Christian right would have greater force if its components banded more tightly together. “This new organization could help bring America back to moral sanity,” he told Feulner, according to the speech.

LaHaye knew the endeavor would need funding, so he reached out to Cullen Davis, a wealthy Texas oil scion. Davis — who told me recently that the original organizers thought that communists were going to take over the U.S. government and that Christianity in America needed staunch defenders — agreed to host the dinner. He called his pal Nelson Bunker Hunt, another wealthy oil figure known for trying to corner the global market in silver. They also tapped Richard Viguerie, a fundraising pioneer and master of far-right persuasion campaigns who once said he mailed out 1.5 billion letters for more than 100 public policy groups.

During the dinner they agreed to reach out to a long list of other influential evangelicals and social conservatives. Several weeks later, more than two dozen activists gathered around a conference table at a hotel near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to sketch out CNP’s ambitions. Together, they made up a formidable force: Paul Weyrich spoke about a group he was building to help elect conservatives to Congress. Phyllis Schlafly described her campaign to thwart the Equal Rights Amendment. For his part, Feulner, a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, spoke about how religious conservatives needed an alternative to the Council on Foreign Relations.

On a rainy evening in May 1981, the group had a coming-out party in the suburbs of the nation’s capital, or, as Feulner put it in his speech, “the belly of the beast.” Some 160 activists and politicos ventured to tents set up in the backyard of Viguerie’s home in McLean. It was a rare exception to the fledgling group’s rules around confidentiality. Guests found a spread of Peking duck, lobster, sushi and piña coladas served in coconuts, according to Feulner’s account.

The special guest, David Stockman, Reagan’s Office of Management and Budget director, received a standing ovation for his efforts to scale back the government. Optimism and good cheer wafted through the tents. But even then, CNP members grumbled that the Reagan administration needed to change how it was selecting political appointees. “Appointments have been made on the basis of credentials rather than shared values,” one CNP member complained, according to Feulner’s speech. “The council hopes to identify people with these values and put them forward.”

In a town where people and groups constantly angle for publicity, CNP bars the press and uninvited outsiders from its events.

Feulner told me recently that CNP has always aimed at providing a forum where certain conservative elites could socialize and strategize — and raise money from wealthy donors. “You could let your hair down and just talk candidly about shared visions,” he said. “You also have a lot of people who can write significant checks.”

[The Post's Biden Political Appointee Tracker]

From the start, CNP members cultivated political power at the highest levels in Washington. In an early letter to the Reagan White House, a CNP leader wrote that the group included “some of the most influential business, political and religious leaders in America” who wanted to “plan together the future of our country.” Their goal was a “moral rebirth” for our society.

CNP’s leaders had much experience in political fundraising, organizing and communication. Among them was a political operative named Tom Ellis, who had played on White racial fears as he helped build the career of the late former senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. (Helms, who became a revered member of CNP, was once described by The Post’s David Broder as “the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country.”) Others included televangelist Pat Robertson; Ed Meese, the attorney general under Reagan; Sam Moore, the nation’s largest Bible publisher; and Rich DeVos, billionaire co-founder of Amway and funder of conservative causes.

CNP members showed they were willing to participate in behind-the-scenes activity in support of their values. Consider the covert campaign run by Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council staff from 1981 to 1986. In 1984 — apparently before he became a member — North spoke at a CNP meeting about the importance of supporting the contra rebels opposing a leftist regime in Nicaragua. At the time, Congress had imposed a prohibition on government financial support for the contras.

According to an audio recording of the session, North told CNP members that Nicaragua’s leaders and their Soviet supporters had more than Central America in their crosshairs. “The real target is the United States,” he said. “This country is in great, great jeopardy from these people, who are truly godless communists.”

North sought financial support from CNP members, including a wealthy elderly woman named Ellen Clayton Garwood, whom he met at a CNP meeting. “With tears in his eyes,” a Senate report later recounted, “North explained to her that the Contras were hungry, poorly clothed, and in need of lethal supplies.” Garwood eventually gave about $2.5 million to support North’s off-books effort, according to the Senate report. Using old CNP directories and other documents, I determined that four CNP founders, members or funders were cited in the Senate report as contributors to North’s mission. (I reached out to North, but a spokesman declined my requests for an interview.)

In internal videos, audio and documents, the conservatism of CNP members often seemed linked to fear — not just of the godless foreign communists that North invoked but of liberal Americans as well. In September 2017, a guest of CNP was invited to discuss his efforts to map leftist organizations. “I almost think we might want to call it tracking and defeating evil,” an unidentified CNP leader said during the speaker’s introduction, according to an internal CNP audio recording. “The activists on the left and the people who fund them are out to destroy everything you hold dear,” the leader explained. “Your families. Marriage. Your businesses. Your freedom of speech. Your freedom of religion. Everything.”

LEFT: An internal CNP directory for 2015 had about 400 members across the country. They includedKellyanne Conway, who would become a White House counselor. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) RIGHT: Steve Bannon, who was chief executive of Trump’s campaign, was also listed as a member. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP)

When candidate Trump arrived at the CNP meeting in the fall of 2015, many White conservative evangelicals were still aggrieved about Barack Obama’s presidency and his promotion of progressive policies, such as near-universal health care. The presence of a Black man in the White House served as a reminder of a new demographic reality: They constituted a diminishing proportion of the electorate and were losing their power to shape America’s culture and politics.

[‘We’re talking about a big, powerful phenomenon’: Multiracial Americans drive change]

Trump’s appearance was part of a weekend-long meeting in suburban Washington; CNP usually holds these meetings three times a year in posh hotel conference rooms around the country. All the candidates had been invited to speak, but only Republicans responded, a CNP official told me.

I obtained an internal CNP directory for 2015 and examined it for insights about the kinds of people Trump would be courting. There were about 400 members from across the country, many of them leaders of relatively small nonprofits focused on social and religious conservatism. But I also saw some now-familiar names: Leonard Leo, then of the Federalist Society; Steve Bannon, then leader of Breitbart News and later chief executive of Trump’s campaign; David Bossie, the head of the group Citizens United and later Trump’s deputy campaign manager; and Kellyanne Conway, who would become a White House counselor.

On hand for Trump’s presentation was Ralph Reed, an evangelical political leader and CNP member. By his own account, he had come to know and admire Trump. But Reed sensed intense skepticism from other CNP members, as he writes in his book “For God and Country: The Christian Case for Trump.” Then, at the meeting, something unexpected happened. After his presentation, Trump, like the other Republican candidates, answered questions and offered to stand with any CNP member for a photo. The line went clear out of the ballroom.

Still, in early 2016, just months before the election, Hillary Clinton appeared to be ahead in the esteem of most Americans. It was increasingly clear Trump needed the conservative evangelical vote to win. “The Trump train kept rolling, and Evangelical leaders were either going to have to get on board or get out of the way,” Reed writes.

That March, Trump and Donald McGahn, who would become a White House lawyer, hosted a meeting with Leo, who was involved with a nonprofit network that was raising hundreds of millions to fund media campaigns and other initiatives in support of conservative judges and causes. The three men focused on the Supreme Court seat left open after the recent death of Justice Antonin Scalia. McGahn thought Trump could benefit by releasing a list of nominees to replace Scalia, an unusual move that would reassure religious and social conservatives who wanted an antiabortion jurist. Trump expressed support for one of Leo’s long-cherished goals: a federal court system dominated by judges who would interpret the Constitution in ways that favored business and conservative views.

As Leo later told members of CNP — where he served on the board of governors— that was only going to happen through a campaign by the conservative movement. “We’re going to have to understand that judicial confirmations these days are more like political campaigns,” Leo said, according to one of the videos I reviewed. “We’re going to have to be smart as a movement.”

[Trump’s conservative imprint on the federal judiciary gives Democrats a playbook]

On May 18, 2016, Trump greatly boosted his prospects when he released the list of judges. The next month, he convened a faith advisory board of conservative evangelicals at Trump Tower. Reed and James Dobson, a Christian activist who had been with CNP from the early days, were on the board, according to Reed’s book. The meeting was followed by an extraordinary closed-door conclave at a Times Square hotel for nearly a thousand conservative Christians.

The Religion News Service accountasked in a headline: “Could conservative Christian leaders rescue a Republican presidential candidate whose personal lifestyle and religious bona fides have been punchlines more than a testimonial?” But something else in that story popped out at me: It said a chief organizer of the Times Square conclave was CNP member Bill Dallas.

Dallas was an unusual figure. He had been convicted two decades earlier on felony embezzlement charges. He was sent to San Quentin State Prison, where a newfound commitment to Christianity deepened, according to his book, “Lessons From San Quentin.”Now he was a data entrepreneur who headed a nonprofit called United in Purpose, which gathered and parsed information about Christian voters. Among the board members was CNP executive director Bob McEwen, who is also a former House member from Ohio.

United in Purpose’s network of allies and clients included other CNP members from groups such as the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition, according to Anne Nelson, a research scholar at Columbia University and author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” a book that examines CNP. Dallas’s operation seemed a perfect complement to other initiatives by groups affiliated with CNP members. “What the CNP has done is convene these forces in a highly strategic way and create an environment in which they can collaborate and leverage each other’s work off the radar,” Nelson told me. “It’s a well-oiled machine.”

In a chat with me, Dallas said he is no longer a member of CNP and is stepping back from political activism. He expressed pride about the 2016 Times Square event and recalled one remark there that he believes won over the Christian activists. It was when Trump told them not to be ashamed of their own religious culture and beliefs. “He said, ‘Christians should not be afraid to say Merry Christmas at Christmastime,’ ” Dallas told me. “I think that was a turning point.”

In the summer of 2016, Trump made another strategic move that would seal the deal with Dannenfelser, the antiabortion activist,and other CNP members. He pledged to oppose abortion and put the promises onto paper in September. “Dear Pro-Life Leader,” Trump’s letter began. “I am writing to invite you to join my campaign’s Pro-Life Coalition, which is being spearheaded by longtime leader Marjorie Dannenfelser.” Trump said he would nominate “pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court,” defund Planned Parenthood and take other measures that the antiabortion activists had demanded.

Dannenfelser was thrilled. “Before that we were still stomping our feet,” she said last year at a CNP meeting, according to one of the internal videos. “Little did we know that this man, who was a performer and can incite audiences in ways we never even thought could be, would galvanize audiences in battleground states all over the country and put life at the center of the project.” The CNP crowd whooped and hollered at her remarks. In Reed’s book, he writes that Dannenfelser told him: “Trump was my last choice until he was my first.” (A spokeswoman for Dannenfelser declined my request for an interview.)

In an early letter to the Reagan White House, a CNP leader wrote that the group’s goal was a “moral rebirth” for our society.

Pence acknowledged CNP’s support in his letter last year: “We are grateful for CNP’s timely counsel and unique capacity to rapidly garner support for the difficult decisions the President and I are making each day.” And CNP meetings reflected the group’s standing with the administration. In May 2017, for instance, Environmental Protection Agency AdministratorScott Pruittappeared at a CNP meeting and crowed about the rollback of regulations, with an emphasis on Obama administration measures aimed at climate change. “With respect to the EPA, the future ain’t what it used to be,” he said, drawing cheers.

Surgey, the director of Documented, who first obtained the internal CNP videos I reviewed for this story, said he “started studying CNP because it seemed like its members were becoming a power base, in terms of their public support of the Trump administration.” He added, “I was surprised by just how many leading Trump advocates appear on the videos.”

[Tracking Biden’s unwinding of Trump’s energy and environmental policies, and new ones of his own]

Activist David Horowitz spoke at a CNP meeting later in 2017. Horowitz, leader of a nonprofit group called the David Horowitz Freedom Center, captured the sense of desperation expressed by many on the right — a feeling that had drawn them to Trump. “For all of Donald’s faults, and everybody knows them, he stood on the right side. We are in a civil war,” he said. “This is the standard-bearer for us in this war.”

I met Bob McEwen at the small suite of offices CNP maintains in the Hall of the States building, just down the hill from the U.S. Capitol, a remarkably tiny space for a group with such a large reach. Joining us was lawyer Alan Dye, a CNP member and nonprofit specialist.

Meeting with someone like me was a departure for a group that has spent decades trying to avoid attention from the mainstream media. McEwen emphasized that CNP was not involved in political campaigns and exists only to educate its members, leaders of allied nonprofit groups across the country who are invited to join. Like all tax-exempt charities, CNP may not under Internal Revenue Service rules engage in political activity or support particular candidates for office.An affiliated group called CNP Action — another type of nonprofit — is permitted by the IRS to focus more on political activity.

McEwen, also president of CNP Action,told me he would not discuss the conservative movement in general or the activity or advocacy of CNP members. When I asked about his group’s efforts to operate in secret, he rejected the premise of the question. “It’s not secret,” McEwen said. “It’s just private. And anything that we want to elevate is going to be elevated by the members.”

He said CNP and its members have privacy rights, and confidentiality helps create an atmosphere where participants can freely exchange ideas without unwanted judgment. “Quite frankly, in a nonpolitical sense, this is like a Rotary Club,” McEwen said. “CNP is a convening organization of patriotic Americans that love their country and have increasingly been of the opinion that the information they receive is unreliable. And there’s not very many places they could get the truth. And CNP seeks to deliver the truth.”

I asked about the influence campaigns — the advertisements, social media and such — run by various networks of people and groups linked through CNP. As an example, I mentioned the concerted efforts of interlocking nonprofit groups allied with Leonard Leo.

“What you’re really talking about is a whole bunch of different networks. You could do a Venn diagram, I suppose,” Dye said. “So there’d be pro-life. There’d be this and that. All the various issues, and in every place they overlap would be a network. And clearly there’s a network of people supporting conservative judicial nominees. And Leonard, of course, would be in that network. It might not encompass the entire CNP membership, but it might encompass a fair number of them.”

Both men asserted the networks on the left are far larger and better funded than those on the right, and that some are financed by billionaire philanthropist George Soros. “They’re much bigger,” Dye told me. McEwen said, chuckling, “We’re a gnat.”

I learned about another dimension of CNP through a video featuring Jim DeMint, a former senator and tea party favorite. It was 2018, and he was telling CNP members about an initiative called the Conservative Action Project, which had been launched years earlier by CNP leaders.

CAP claims to include more than 100 groups “representing all major elements of the conservative movement — economic, social, and national security.” Its website publishes policy memos signed by the leaders of its member groups. It turns out that, according to documents, CAP shares an address with CNP, and many CAP activists are members of both groups. CAP also works hand-in-hand with yet another group that DeMint had started not long before called the Conservative Partnership Institute. (“The Conservative Partnership Institute arms, trains, and unites conservative leaders in Washington ready to fight,” itswebsite until recently stated.)

“The whole point was to support people on the inside,” explained DeMint, listed on the 2018 video as a CNP executive committee member. “But that doesn’t work unless we’ve got people like the folks here tonight with the Council of National Policy on the outside building public support for the right ideas to get things done. We’ve got an outside game. We’ve got an inside game. And it’s the only way to win.”

DeMint said CAP’s efforts were coming to fruition under the Trump administration. “Folks, there are more of us than there are of them. There is no reason for conservatives to be losing,” he said. “We got the power in our hands.”

At one point in the video, DeMint praised Trump. “We’ve got an amazing opportunity here,” DeMint told them. “And it’s incredible with this president, who is the last person I ever thought would promote religious freedom, pro-life. I mean, the Lord confuses things!” He grinned and paused while the CNP crowd broke into laughter and applause. “But this guy’s more genuine than anybody I’ve ever known,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know, I’m just really confused. But then, he seems willing to work for us because he’s confused, too.”

I recalled another internal CNP video where others described how a delegation of CNP and CAP officials met most every week with Trump administration officials, often at the White House. “It’s kind of thislittle secretive huddle that meets every Wednesday morning,” Paul Teller, director of strategic initiatives for Pence when he was vice president, said on the video.

Yet another video included Rachel Bovard, a conservative activist who works closely with DeMint at CPI. She said CAP people worked behind the scenes with the White House and allies in Congress to maintain public support for Trump during impeachmentproceedings. “We worked a lot to coordinate messaging,” Bovard said. Throughout the Trump administration, she explained, CAP leaders also collaborated with White House officials to select political appointees. “We work very closely — CAP does and then we at CPI also — with the Office of Presidential Personnel at the White House to try and get good conservatives in the positions, because we see what happens when we don’t vet these people,” she said, adding: “All these people that led the impeachment against President Trump shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

Last year, in the months before the election, there was anew air of desperation in some of the rhetoric of CNP members. L. Brent Bozell III, a CNP executive committee member, claimed in a closed-door meeting that “evidence is pouring out of an attempt by the far left to steal the election,” an internal video shows.

“Today we’re as close to losing this nation as we ever have been,” Kay Coles James, then president of the Heritage Foundation, said at another CNP session, according to an internal video. “And make no mistake about it: This November is not about winning or losing an election. It’s about winning or losing our country.”

[Senate report gives new details of Trump efforts to use Justice Dept. to overturn election]

The integrity of elections has been a preoccupation on the right for years. In 2017, Trump announced a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which included two CNP members: Kenneth Blackwell, the former secretary of state in Ohio, and J. Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. In August 2019,Lisa Nelson, a CNP member and chief executive of the American Legislative Exchange Council, launched an initiative called “ALEC Political Process Working Group,” according to an internal email. Among other things, the group was going to focus on “election law and ballot integrity.” (In a letter to funders defending that effort this year, Nelson said the group “connected legislators with each other as well as federal officials to discuss process and governance issues including the census, redistricting and other issues related to how state governments work.”)

Among those working with her was a CNP board of governors member named Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who often speaks in the closed-door meetings about issues around election integrity.Mitchell has described herself jokingly as “consigliere to the vast right-wing conspiracy.” She was a driving force behind the allegations a decade ago that the IRS and Obama White House engaged in a political witch hunt against tea party groups — and later worked closely with Trump as he disputed the 2020 election results.

[“We’ve got an amazing opportunity here,” Jim DeMint told CNP members about Trump in one video. “This guy’s more genuine than anybody I’ve ever known.”

In February 2020, Nelson told a CNP Action session that ALEC, in collaboration with Mitchell and other CNP members, had begun prepping state lawmakers on rules they could invoke during an election dispute.“And I think we’ve identified a few,” she said in the meeting. “They can write a letter to the secretary of state questioning the validity of an election and saying, ‘What did happen that night?’ So we are drafting a lot of those things. If you have ideas in that area, let us know and we’ll get those to the state legislators, and they can start to kind of exercise their political muscle in that area.”

That spring, the election preparations coincided with efforts by CNP members to push back against pandemic restrictions.Working through newly formed coalitions, the members pumped out messages aimed at opposing face masks, business closures and other measures to contain the coronavirus.

The campaigns received attention in mainstream media. But the fact that CNP members played leading roles was not generally understood. One new push was called the Save Our Country Coalition. It was announced by FreedomWorks, whose leader is a CNP member. Other participants included Nelson from ALEC and Jenny Beth Martin, a CNP member and leader of Tea Party Patriots. Nearly two dozen participants in all were CNP members. The group called for a resumption of normal economic activity, an end to federal control of the nation’s pandemic response andprotection of “individual liberties of our citizens from unconstitutional power grabs by the federal, state and local governments.”

Weeks later, McEwen and other members hosted a confidential conference call for activists that included Trump campaign officials. Their goal was to make recommendations to the campaign and coordinate efforts to pressure state and federal officials to reopen the country. According to a recording of the call obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning group, McEwen opened with a prayer: “We would give you the praise in Christ’s name.” He described government efforts to contain the pandemic as “tyranny.”

[Analysis: The grim reality of a partisan pandemic]

CNP member Nancy Schulze told the campaign officials about “adoctors coalition who are extremely pro-Trump that have been preparing and coming together for the war ahead in the campaign, on health care.” A campaign official expressed enthusiasm. “Those are the type of guys that we should want to get out on TV and radio to help push out the message,” the official said.

The next few months became a whirlwind for CNP members. At a CNP meeting in August, the organizers of the health-care initiatives offered more details on what they were up to, internal videos show: It was an advertising campaign crafted or promoted by several nonprofits and CNP allies, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Tom Price, former health and human services secretary under Trump.

In a video of the session, organizers showed examples of ads featuring doctors in white lab coats. “And so I remind people that what we’re trying to do is put on theater here,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president of a group called Job Creators Networkand chief executive of its affiliated foundation. “It’s the stage. It’s the script and the actors.”

During another CNP session that August, various members also discussed the upcoming election in breathless terms. Some zeroed in on the proliferation of mail-in balloting as an ominous trend, claiming it made the system ripe for fraud. “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” said Tom Fitton, CNP’s new president and the leader of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

J. Christian Adams, the former Justice Department official who served on Trump’s election integrity commission,described mail-in voting in the video as “the number one left-wing agenda.” He urged CNP members not to be cowed by criticism about efforts to stop such voting. “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” Adams said. (Fitton and Adams did not respond to requests for comment for this article. In a previous email, Adams stood by his remarks. In an interview last fall, Fitton told me: “The left has war-gamed this out. … And it could cause civil war.”)

As I watched the video of these men and other CNP members describing the election with such passion, I wondered: Were they trying to outdo one another in the zeal department in a play to wealthy donors? I knew from tax filings that donations to some groups led by CNP members had soared during the Trump years. Donations to Judicial Watch, for example, rose to $104 million last year from $44 million four years earlier, tax filings show.

In October 2020, I wrote a Post story about those and other election-related discussions at the group’s meetings. But of course, I learned later that much more was in play. Multiple people from far-right groups were promoting a movement to “Stop the Steal” that included specious claims that Trump won. One of the most prominent leaders was a former CNP fellow named Ali Alexander, formerly Ali Akbar. “We will not go quietly. We’ll shut down this country if we have to,” Alexander said at a Phoenix rally in December, later leading the crowd in a chant of “1776.”

[Timeline: Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election]

At least five other CNP members and their groups worked with other Trump supporters to amplify the Stop the Steal claims. On Dec. 30, Cleta Mitchell wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud, according to an email included in a report this month by Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Three days later, Mitchell joined Trump on a call aimed at pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state “to find 11,780 votes,” the report said.

[Read more

This rural liberal set out to talk to his pro-Trump neighbors. It didn’t go well — until it did.

Why did Latino men shift toward Trump in 2020? I looked to my dad for answers.]

Several CNP members were involved in the organization or promotion of the rallies preceding the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. Jenny Beth Martin was listed as a speaker in promotional materials (though she did not speak, in the end) and Tea Party Patriots was listed as a “coalition partner.” CNP member Charlie Kirk — the leader of Turning Point USA, a group oriented to conservative students, and Turning Point Action, its political advocacy arm — offered to transport and house student protesters. Months earlier, Turning Point Action was behind a secretive campaign that relied on teenagers to pump out social media postings in favor of Trump.

Meanwhile, Ginni Thomas, then a CNP Action board member, praised rallygoers in tweets: “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” Ultimately, Stop the Steal organizers urged protesters to “take to” the Capitol steps “to make sure that Congress does not certify the botched Electoral College” on Jan. 6, according to webpages that have since been removed.

Thomas did not respond to a request for comment. She wrote a note on social media stressing that her encouragement came before the violence. Kirk, Martin and other CNP members who helped the rallies condemned the subsequent events at the Capitol. “We are shocked, outraged, and saddened,” Martin told me in an e-mail in January.

McEwen also condemned the insurrection, saying CNP had no role in the events or its members’ activity. “What they do on their own time — I won’t say I don’t care — we have no interest or capacity to monitor,” McEwen told me earlier this year.

[Rallies ahead of Capitol riot were planned by established Washington insiders]

That reminded me of something he told me last year: CNP itself “doesn’t do ad campaigns. It doesn’t do brochures. It is a meeting of leaders,” he said. “Anything that’s done is done by the membership, not by the Council for National Policy.”

[LEFT: Former vice president Mike Pence recently became a “dues-paying CNP member,” according to one speaker at a CNP event. (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images) RIGHT: Charlie Kirk, center, listens as President Donald Trump speaks at the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit in the East Room of the White House. Kirk, a member of the Council for National Policy, is leader of Turning Point USA, a group oriented to conservative students. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)]

After it was clear that Biden was the next president — and nothing was going to undo that — CNP members and their allies dove headlong into new initiatives. Much of their activism now seems focused on state legislatures and election rules. And once again, groups with ties to CNP appear to be closely coordinating with one another.

In March, two months after Biden’s inauguration, a CNP leader named Kelly Shackelfordhosted a private Zoom session organized by CNP Action. Shackelford is president of First Liberty Institute, a legal organization that promotes religious liberties. The call focused on H.R. 1, sweeping reform legislation that Democrats promised would, among other things, make it far easier for Americans to vote. Shackelford said the bill represented “the existential threat for our country.”

“The number one priority of the Nancy Pelosi Democrats was to change the rules for our elections to ensure that the Democrats would never, ever, ever lose again,” said Sen. Ted Cruz(R-Tex.), according to someone participating on the call. “This bill is a partisan power grab at an order of magnitude we have never seen.”

For nearly an hour, speakers urged CNP members and their allies to coordinate their efforts to pressure Congress and sway regular Americans. They recommended the use of billboards, websites, social media, Internet memes and “on the street” videos of people opposed to H.R. 1. They suggested organizing protests at the homes of certain Democratic lawmakers.

“Urban art is another really exceptional strategy, both for the media and for actually awakening the American people with a visceral campaign,” one official on the call said. Instead of a Stop the Steal movement, “we want to establish ‘Stop the Pigs’ or ‘Stop the Corrupt Politicians,’ ” as social media themes. It was vital, the official said, to “kill this bill” without getting “trapped in a voter suppression conversation.”

In an interview, Shackelford defended the call. “I’ve looked at that bill. It’s just crazy stuff,” he told me. He also defended the persuasion tactics. “I mean, I’m sure everybody on every side does that, right?”

At the same time, CNP members have expanded related campaigns regarding voter laws. An effort called the Election Transparency Initiative was started with the endorsement of Dannenfelser, who has continued to make dubious claims about the election. “The integrity of our electoral system was severely compromised in 2020 when pro-abortion Democrats — utilizing the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse — weakened state laws that ensure free and fair elections,” she said in a Feb. 23 news release.

Leonard Leoand a former Heritage Foundation official have ties to a group launched last year called the Honest Elections Project. Kenneth Blackwelltook the lead of a group called the Center for Election Integrity. He told me election-rule changes during the pandemic to encourage mail-in balloting created significant vulnerabilities in the electoral system. He said that allied groups would collaborate to become “force multipliers” on the issue.Cleta Mitchell and FreedomWorks, meanwhile, are teaming up for the National Election Protection Initiative. “What is urgently needed today is the involvement by conservative and patriotic Americans in the election process at the local and state levels, challenging the vast resources of the leftist groups who have dominated election activism for too long,” Mitchell told Newsmax. By early October, 19 statehouses had passed 33 laws curbing voting access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. (Mitchell declined to comment for this story.)

CNP members have also joined Advancing American Freedom, a new group co-founded by Mike Pence. About half of the 40-some people on the group’s advisory board and its board of directors have been CNP members or guests in recent years, a review of internal directories and videos shows. And Pence himself recently became a “dues-paying CNP member,” according to Feulner’s speech.

[In weighing 2024 run, Pence tests whether there is political life after Trump]

Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, told me that, for AAF, Pence wanted a combination of people who served in the Trump administration and those “who represent the more traditional elements of the conservative movement.” “I think we can marry them together to sort of build a winning coalition,” Short added.

That will be a tall order. Some conservatives I interviewed for this story said that Trump had effectively fractured the movement. Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center who was previously a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, said the conservative movement was in a long decline by the time Trump was elected. “The conservative movement, I think it was already sort of stuck in a time warp,” he said. “It was like every day was January 20th, 1981.”

That remark stuck with me. It captured a feeling I had about CNP throughout my efforts to understand the group. In their quest to remake our country — to purge it of the cultural and political decay they believe has sapped it of virtue — CNP members are looking backward to receding triumphs. But it’s clear they’re also looking forward — and they are as determined as ever to shape the nation’s future.

Late this month CNP leaders and the Conservative Action Project are slated to host a strategy summit in the nation’s capital for the leaders of more than 100 conservative groups. They want to seek ways “to slow the Administration’s left wing policies” and advance a conservative agenda in Congress and the states, according to an invitation obtained by American Oversight, a left-leaning group in Washington. The title of the meeting? “Saving the Country: The Pathway Forward.”

Robert O’Harrow Jr. is an investigative reporter at The Post.

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/kelly-shackelford/

Religious Right Leaders Endorse Franklin Graham Call for National Day of Prayer for President Trump

Right Wing Bonus Tracks: Acting Like Prostitutes On A Corner

Secretive Council For National Policy Pushing Trump To Sign ‘Religious Liberty’ Order

Yet Even More Proof That Religious Right Myths Never Die

Religious Right Leaders Vow To Defy Laws On Abortion, ‘Sexual Perversion’ In ‘Declaration Of Dependence Upon God’

Trump Cozying Up To Activists Who’ve Supported Criminalizing Homosexuality

Kelly Shackelford: Racial Tensions Are The Result Of America Rejecting God

Kelly Shackelford: Trump Would Pick A More Conservative Supreme Court Than Mitt Romney

Right Wing Bonus Tracks – 1/13/16

Who Really Won At Values Voter Summit (It Was Me)

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kelly Shackelford, Esq., is President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, the largest legal firm in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious freedom for all Americans. He has served in this role since 1997, leading First Liberty’s efforts to defend religious freedom in the courts and in the public arena. Under his leadership, First Liberty’s legal team has participated in cases before the United States Supreme Court, federal courts of appeals, federal district courts and various state courts, where they have won more than 90 percent of their cases.

Shackelford is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate, and has won a number of landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases.

He was recently named one of the 25 greatest Texas lawyers of the past quarter-century by Texas Lawyer and is the recipient of the prestigious William Bentley Ball Award for Life and Religious Freedom Defense for pioneering work protecting religious freedom.

Shackelford is a highly sought-after speaker and frequent guest on national news and talk shows including Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, Fox and Friends, MSNBC, and Hannity.He also has been featured in the National Law Journal, Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, and The L.A. Times, and many others.

Shackelford is on the Board of Trustees of the United States Supreme Court Historical Society and earned hislaw degree from Baylor University.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/supreme-court-states-establishment-clause/

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A far-right legal group believes states are exempt from the Establishment Clause. Some Supreme Court justices agree

Alex Henderson June 29, 2022

During the 1990s, Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia were viewed as the lunatic fringe of the U.S. Supreme Court. But their theocratic views and far-right social conservatism were balanced out by other justices, from liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to Justice Anthony Kennedy — a Ronald Reagan appointee and right-wing libertarian who, although fiscally conservative, was quite protective of abortion rights and gay rights.

Those days are long gone. Theocrats, thanks largely to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump, now dominate the High Court— a fact that was painfully evident when the Court announced, on Friday, June 24, that it had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and Thomas argued in favor of reconsidering protections for contraception and gay rights as well.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution — specifically, the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Establishment Clause makes it abundantly clear that while people of all faiths can freely practice and promote them, the government cannot establish an official religion. This means that while Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Bahais are more than welcome to gather on New York City’s 5th Avenue and promote their faiths, the government itself has a strict separation of church and state.

[Read more: Columnist likens U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority to a ‘junta in long black robes’

But in Christian Right legal circles, some theocrats, including the far-right group America First Legal, are arguing that individual states are exempt from the Establishment Clause — and Reuters reporter Lawrence Hurley notes that the group believes that states have a right to decide “whether and to what extent they will establish religion within their borders.”

Moreover, America First Legal is hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will officially take that position in a future ruling.

According to Religion News Service (RNS) reporter Jack Jenkins, Thomas and Justice Neal Gorsuch share America First Legal’s view of the Establishment Clause — and Justice Amy Coney Barrett has “expressed interest in the idea.”

Thomas, Gorsuch and Barrett are among the justices who voted to strike down Roe v. Wade in the case Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/03/11/revealed-new-leaders-of-council-for-national-policy-set-extremist-agenda/

david a

at its first meeting of 2022, the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP) laid out its plans for influencing this year’s midterm elections, abolishing abortion rights, defunding the left, limiting China’s influence, and countering a topic of great concern to Republicans: “wokeness.”

According to an agenda obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the CNP meeting took place the last weekend in February at the posh Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, California. The agenda reveals  changes in leadership and current priorities of the influential group, which is closelytied to Trump and the Republican Party.

Kevin Roberts, a CNP board member and president of the Heritage Foundation, kicked the event off with a speech on “how the Conservative Movement can go on the offense to promote America’s founding principles across the country.”

CNP is known for “connecting the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives,” as Columbia University Professor Anne Nelson describes the group in her definitive book Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{Secret Hub :(style="background-color:#ff9900ff"):}::{of the Radical Right.

Leadership Changes Elevate Voter Suppression Advocates 

The program for the February meeting offers the first glimpse of the secretive group’s high-level members and leaders since CMDpublished its September 2020 Membership Directory, provided by open source intelligence researcher Brent Allpress.

The group’s Executive Committee is headed by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who has taken over from William Walton as CNP’s president. Judicial Watch’s “Election Integrity Project” has pushed for voter roll purges and promotes the myth that voter fraud is widespread in the U.S.

At the August 2020 CNP meeting, Fitton facilitated two panels on “election integrity,” CMDreported. “We need to stop those [vote-by-mail] ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” Fitton told meeting attendees, according to videos obtained by The Washington Post.

Another lifelong advocate of voter suppression now serves as CNP’s vice president: J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former secretary of state in Ohio and member of Trump’s failed voter fraud panel, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He currently chairs the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit spin-off of the Trump administration.

In May 2021, Blackwell facilitated an “Action Session” at CNP’s 40th anniversary meeting on how to combat the national voting rights effort, featuring U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential electoral college results, and GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who has promoted Trump’s Big Lie and advised him on his infamous call pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes for the former president to win the state.

At its February meeting, CNP hosted a screening of the filmCapitol Punishment with director Chris Burgard, which promotes the claim that, “Everything that we are being told [about the insurrection] is a lie and Americans are being persecuted to support that lie.” CNP has extensive ties to #StoptheSteal and the violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, CMD reported.

Others joining the CNP executive committee this year include Jerry A. Johnson (treasurer), former president of the National Religious Broadcasters; William G. Boykin, retired Army lieutenant general and executive vice president of theFamily Research Council; Chad Connelly, president of Faith Wins; and Millie Hallow, managing director of executive operations at the National Rifle Association.

Blackwell is also listed as president of the board of directors for CNP Action, and Fitton is a new director of the affiliate.

The Gold Circle Members list is largely similar to the September 2020 directory, with many of the new additions representing shifts from lower membership tiers. Notable new members include Ashland University President Carlos Campo; Lynn Friess, widow of GOP megadonor Foster Friess;and Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center and a vice president at Liberty University.

Politicizing Covid

“The pandemic led to unprecedented government mandates, the erosion of civil liberties, and an outright assault on freedom,” CNP’s agenda booklet argues. “Americans have seen and experienced what unchecked government power can do, and they have had enough.”

CNP has been instrumental in the relentless push from the right to ignore public health guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the deadly Covid-19 pandemic. It played a leading role in the anti-lockdown coalition known as “Save Our Country,” with members making up half of its leadership counciland organizing weekly conference calls to coordinate response tactics.

In May 2020, CMD also revealed that CNP Action, CNP’s 501(c)(4) affiliate, organized a call to discuss a plan for recruiting “extremely pro-Trump” doctors to campaign against Covid public health restrictions.

CNP’s February meeting featured a general session on the state of the pandemic in the U.S. led byDr. Jay Bhattacharya, a leading advocate for herd immunity who has advised Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) on his controversial anti-mask policies.

Focus on Elections 

Despite being a tax-exempt organization barred from engaging in electoral politics, CNP is focusing heavily on elections this year, according to the agenda for its February meeting.

Dave Bossie, president of Citizens United, led things off at the Gold Circle Dinner with a presentation on “the most pressing political battles in DC and their impact on the Conservative Movement.”

A general session titled “Virginia 2021: Lessons Learned” featured Chad Connelly, founder and president of Faith Wins; Mark Campbell, campaign manager for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican who won the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia; Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation of Virginia; and Chris Wilson, CEO of WPA Intelligence sharing “their analyses of the Virginia race” and “what it means for 2022.”

After not winning a statewide race in more than a decade, in 2021 Republicans in Virginia won the offices of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, while also recapturing the majority in the state House.

Former Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop, a past president of CNP,  joined the four “Lessons Learned” panelists for a CNP Action session “to chart the course to success nationwide in November.”

In his capacity as CNP Action chairman, Blackwell also hosted “Candidate Introductions” for attendees. While candidates were not listed on the program, CMD obtained a flier for Drew Montez Clark, a Republican candidate for Florida’s 25th district seat in the U.S. House, that was circulated at the meeting.

Clarkreportedly co-organized two buses carrying 100 Floridians to the Jan. 6 rally in DC that led to the violent insurrection at the Capitol. He also spoke at a far-right “America First” rally in April 2021 headlined by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Supreme Court Takes Center Stage

“This term of the Supreme Court could be one of the most consequential ever, and CNP Members have been central to some of the landmark cases being decided,” the CNP’s February meeting program notes. Speakers at a general session on the subject included Alan Sears, founder of the Christian right litigation powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom; Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser; and First Liberty President Kelly Shackelford.

“CNP has been strategizing to dominate the Supreme Court for decades,” CNP expert Anne Nelson told the Associated Press in Oct 2020. “They have worked through the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association, all run by members of the CNP.”

Dannenfelserwas among 14 other CNP members to attend the Sept. 26, 2020, Rose Garden ceremony [SUPERSPREADER] at the White House where Amy Coney Barrett accepted the nomination for the Supreme Court, solidifying the far-right’s hold on the nation’s highest court.

The agenda notes that Dannenfelser “will provide an update on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that could result in completely gutting or overturning Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing women in America the constitutional right to an abortion.

Mississippi’s Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn (R-Miss.), the 2020 chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), touted the Dobbs v. Jacksoncase and its prospects for leading to a decision to overturn Roe v. Wade during a panel at the CNP meeting last May, CMD reported.

“We think that’s going to be a landmark case. All of us know that the United States Supreme Court composition has changed… in a way that is more pro-life,” Gunn told meeting attendees last spring. “They say that Amy Coney Barrett is one of the most active, pro-life people in America, so we believe that she brings a new dynamic to that court. We think our case, our law that we passed in 2018, will be transformative in the arena in abortion. We’re proud of that.”

Dannenfelser then led a CNP Action panel “on how the Conservative Movement can be best equipped for the impending Supreme Court decision onDobbs” and to “strategize on messaging, state legislation, and more with attendees.”

One of the panelists,Mike Thompson, is a senior vice president with CRC Advisors. Leonard Leo,who played an integral role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges, founded CRC Advisors in 2020 with Greg Mueller to “funnel big money and expertise across the conservative movement.” As of September 2020, Leo was aBoard of Governors member of CNP....

Pushing Back Against China, the Left, and a “Woke” Military 

Placing China “at the heart of the greatest challenges facing the United States in recent years”—from Covid to currency manipulation, climate policies, and “undue influence over American corporations”—Economic War Room host Kevin Freeman led a discussion titled “The 21st: An American or Chinese Century?”

Freeman was joined in the panel by Beau Brunson, Consumers’ Research Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs. Consumers’ Research has committed millions in dark money to fight environmental, social, and corporate governance concerns (ESG) and “woke” capitalism, where BlackRock has emerged as a top target of its campaign for its “hypocritical” investments in China.

CMD recently exposed Consumers’ Research as one of the largest sponsors of the State Financial Officers Foundation, a group of Republican treasurers, auditors, and staff from 16 states, which has  also prioritized fighting the ESG movement and “woke” capitalism.

Also on the panel were Pete Hoekstra, former ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump, and Steve Milloy, a FoxNews contributor and paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil, and other corporations.

The three also participated in a CNP Action panel on “Countering China,” where they collectively worked “on ways to combat the increasing and pervasive threat China poses to the United States and American life.”

Leading an CNP Action panel discussion on “Defunding the Left,”Buckeye Institute President and CEO Robert Alt facilitated a tutorial on how to cut off contributions to “left-wing causes” by targeting public employee unions, trial lawyers, and investment management firms. O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, and Bridgett Wagner, vice president of policy promotion at the Heritage Foundation, joined the discussion.

New CNP Executive Member Boykin led a panel discussion focused on the question: “Can a Woke Military Address Future Threats?” with Mike Berry, First Liberty’s general counsel, and Keith Kellogg, retired Army lieutenant general and co-chair of AFPI’s Center for American Security. The three talked about “extreme policies [that] have been implemented through the Department of Defense” and “how woke ideologies have influenced our armed services.”

Two other CNP meetings are scheduled for this year, May 18–20 in McLean, VA, and September 15–17 in Frisco, TX.

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SEE CNP GINNI

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Alliance Defense Fund To Launch Law School Aimed At Creating "Liberal Chaser" Attorneys

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wed, 09/28/2011 - 12:56pm

Religious Right leaders are coming together to form yet another law school to train future lawyers of the conservative movement.The right-wing Alliance Defense Fund is helping Louisiana College, a Southern Baptist institution,start the Paul Pressler School of Law, which will join Liberty University, Regent University and others in providing politicized training to the next generation of Religious Right lawyers.

Pressler’s ties to the Alliance Defense Fund will be similar to the Liberty University School of Law’s partnership with Liberty Counsel and the Regent University School of Law’s (originally Oral Roberts University’s Coburn School of Law) alliance with the American Center for Law and Justice. As Sarah Posner notes, such law schools intend to“teach the ‘biblical’ foundations of the law” and create “lawyers unafraid to inject their particular Christian beliefs, not only into the public square, but quite deliberately into legislation, policy, and jurisprudence.”

According to the National Law Journal, the new law school “is named for Paul Pressler III, a former Texas Court of Appeals judge who helped lead the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention during the 1970s.”

The founding dean of the Pressler law school, J. Michael Johnson, was previously senior counsel of the ADF and, according to his Townhall.com bio, has “provided legal representation to organizations such as Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Toward Tradition, the American Family Association, and Coral Ridge Ministries, and numerous family policy councils and crisis pregnancy centers.” In 2005, Johnson won the “Faith, Family and Freedom” award from Family Research Council president Tony Perkinsfor his work defending the Louisiana Marriage Protection Amendment, which placed a ban on same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution.

Yesterday on Today’s Issues, Perkins, who is a member of Pressler’s board of reference, spoke to Johnson about the new law school. Johnson said the law school would be “not unlike what our colleagues are doing at the Liberty University School of Law and the Regent University School of Law.” Perkins said, “This law school’s not going to be pumping out ambulance chasers, this is going to be pumping out liberal chasers, I mean we’re gonna track them down, wherever they are and we’re gonna defeat them, and if we can’t defeat them in the policy realm we’re gonna defeat them in the courts.” He added, “This law school is gonna be pumping out God-fearing, American-loving, family-defending attorneys”:

The choice of Louisiana College is no surprise. The school claims it “seeks to view all areas of knowledge from a distinctively Christian perspective and integrate Biblical truth thoroughly with each academic discipline” and believes “academic freedom of a Christian professor is limited by the preeminence of Jesus Christ, the authoritative nature of the Holy Scriptures, and the mission of the institution.”

In 2008 the school barred members of the Christian LGBT group Soul Force from appearing on campus. In his decision to bar the group, the college’s president cited a fake James Madison quote propagated by David Barton, which states that the U.S. government was based on “the Ten Commandments.”

Now David Barton is serving on the board of the law school.

Along with Perkins and Barton, Religious Right leaders on the board include Alan Sears of the Alliance Defense Fund, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association,Alveda King of Priests for Life, Religious Right luminary Tim LaHaye and his wife Beverly LaHaye of Concerned Women for America, Kelly Shackleford of the Liberty Institute and Reagan’s Attorney GeneralEdwin Meese. Republican politicians including Reps. Rodney Alexander and John Fleming, former congressman Bob McEwen, and senatorial candidate and Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz are also on the board.

PFAW

Filed under:

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https://www.alternet.org:{/2020/01:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:/indicted-texas-attorney-general-sides-with-anti-gay-judge-instead-of-state-agency-in-legal-fight/

indicted Texas attorney general sides with anti-gay judge instead of state agency in legal fight

Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is refusing to defend a state agency that’s being sued by a a bigoted justice of the peace who got pissed that she was disciplined for refusing to follow the law and marry…

get lnx

Indicted Texas attorney general sides with anti-gay judge instead of state agency in legal fight

Written by Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos January 31, 2020

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is refusing to defend a state agency that’s being sued by a a bigoted justice of the peace who got pissed that she was disciplined for refusing to follow the law and marry same-sex couples. “We believe judges retain their right to religious liberty when they take the bench,” said Paxton’s spokesperson, Marc Rylander.

It’s not just that Paxton is camouflaging his own homophobia and lawlessness in claims of “religious liberty”; it’s that this shameless motherfucker is also doing it while he faces three securities fraud charges.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/19/1517425/-Indicted-TX-Attorney-General-knows-lawlessness-when-he-sees-it-and-Obama-s-crossed-the-line

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200117/criminal-case-against-paxton-still-inching-along

This upcoming summer will mark five years since Paxton was indicted for allegedly violating state securities laws, and for nearly five years now he and his legal team have apparently pulled every trick in the book to delay his trial. Prosecutors said that those tricks have included an alleged “campaign to taint potential jurors by maligning the prosecution and the case against him,” the Austin American-Statesman reported.

Prosecutors moved to have the trial take place in Houston, but Paxton, who could face as long as 99 years in prison, argued “that his case was improperly transferred to Houston by a judge who no longer had the authority to issue such a ruling,” the Statesman continued. Someone facing as serious charges and prison time as Paxton probably shouldn’t even be in office while doing so, yet Paxton not only refuses to budge—he’s gonna stay to buck his own state’s commission to continue his anti-LGBTQ agenda.

The office he’s refusing to defend, the Commission on Judicial Misconduct, had warned justice of the peace Dianne Hensley for “her yearslong refusal to marry gay couples while continuing to marry heterosexual couples,” NBC News said, with PinkNews reporting that Hensley had allegedly called gay marriage “offensive.” She then sued the commission for $100,000, PinkNews continued, “claiming that her rights have been infringed upon.”

In what’s surely just a coincidence, CBS Austin reports that the firm defending Hensley, First Liberty Institute, is led by Kelly Shackelford, who has “endorsed Paxton and contributed to a legal defense fund Paxton has used to fight off a four-year-old criminal indictment for securities fraud.” Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing at all.

https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-wont-defend-state-agency-in-gay-marriage-case

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see CNP Ginni Blackwell

First Liberty Institute is a nonprofit Christian conservative legal organization[2] based in Plano, Texas.[3][4]

Prominent in the legal circles on the Christian right,[5] the organization litigates in First Amendment cases on religion,[6] and is often referred to as a law firm.[7][8]

First Liberty Institute is headed by Kelly Shackelford[9] who founded the organization in 1997 under the name Liberty Legal Institute.[10] The organization changed its name to Liberty Institute in 2009 and then, in 2016, to First Liberty Institute.[11]

Prominent cases

First Liberty Institute is one of several Christian conservative legal organizations in the United States; others include theAlliance Defending Freedom, American Center for Law and Justice, Thomas More Society, Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, Liberty Counsel, National Legal Foundation, Christian Legal Society, and Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.[2] The group has taken stances against LGBT rights.[12][13] Among its most prominent cases are the "Candy Cane Case"; legal actions taken to stop a report on an investigation into Sarah Palin being published; and numerous legal cases filed in Texas courts concerning First Amendment and religious freedom issues.[14][15]

Coach Joe Kennedy

First Liberty Institute represents high school football coach Joseph A. Kennedy in a lawsuit against the Bremerton School District in the state of Washington.[16] The dispute centers around the dismissal of the coach after a school policy conflict pertaining to his practice of a prayer after each game.[17][18] The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in January 2019.[19][20] In March 2020, a federal district court ruled against Kennedy.[21] In January 2022, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.[22] In April 2022, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case.[23]

Maine Tuition Program

First Liberty, alongside the Institute for Justice, represented three families in the Supreme Court case Carson v. Makin. ^[24] The case centered around the limits of school vouchers offered by state governments to pay for religious-based private schools. [25] A Maine law excluded religious schools from a state tuition program, which pays for students to attend private schools. [26] In December 2021, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case. [27] In June 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the three families, holding that Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from otherwise generally available tuition assistance programs violated the Free Exercise Clause. [28] The case was remanded to a lower court for further proceedings. [29]

Oregon Cake Bakers, Aaron and Melissa Klein

First Liberty represents Aaron and Melissa Klein, who owned a family bakery in Oregon, Sweet Cakes by Melissa. In 2013, they declined to design and create a custom wedding cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding because doing so would violate their religious beliefs. In 2015, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries found the couple had violated the state's nondiscrimination statutes and ordered them to pay $135,000 in compensatory damages. That decision was reaffirmed by a ruling from the Oregon Court of Appeals in 2017. [30] In 2018, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. [31] In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the ruling anddirected the Oregon court to review its decision in the wake ofMasterpiece Cakeshop,***Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission*, which favored a Colorado baker who also declined to serve a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs. [32] In January 2022, the Oregon Court of Appeals, for a second time, held that the Kleins had illegally discriminated against the same-sex couple, but ordered the state to reconsider the monetary damages. [33]

Veterans Memorials

First Liberty Institute has litigated veterans memorial cross cases. Among these cases was the Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial case, which has been in litigation since 2014, after the American Humanist Association sued to remove the memorial claiming it was in violation of the U.S. Constitution.[34][35][36] In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in American Legion v. American Humanist Association upholding the cross memorial, citing that it did not violate the Establishment Clause.[37] In previous years, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the ACLU, and the American Humanist Association have challenged other similar veterans memorial cross cases.[38][39]

Dr. Eric Walsh

First Liberty Institute represented Dr. Eric Walsh in a lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Health (DPH), which hired Walsh in 2014 as a public health director for northwest Georgia, and then fired him one week later after reviewing his Seventh-Day Adventist sermons. Walsh alleged that Georgia DPH had unlawfully discriminated against him based on religion. The state settled the case for $225,000.[40]

Religious Expression for Military Service Members

First Liberty filed a lawsuit against the Navy and the Department of Defense on behalf of 35 Navy SEALs in November 2021. ^[41] The suit alleges that the service members had faced a range of military discipline for declining to take the COVID-19 vaccine due to their religious beliefs. In January 2022, a U.S. District Judge issued a preliminary injuction, blocking the Navy and the Department of Defense from punishing the service members and enforcing the vaccine mandate. ^[42] In March 2022, the Supreme Court issued an order affirming the Biden Administration’s authority to make deployment decisions based on vaccination status. ^[43]

In May 2022, First Liberty Institute, alongside law firm Schaerr Jaffe LLP, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense and the Air Force on behalf of several U.S. Air Force service members. The suit alleges that the Department of Defense is violating the First Amendment by denying several service members a religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. ^[44]

In 2011, First Liberty filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs alleging that the department had censored prayers and the use of the words "God" or "Jesus". The Department's response was that its regulations stated that there is no censorship but that the religious preferences of the families of the deceased are respected and that at times families have complained about volunteers and the Veterans of Foreign Wars had included religious references in services even though the families had requested that there be none. The Department's response said, "Defendants believe that it should be the family's choice and decision what to have read in accordance with their faith tradition, if any, because it would be improper for others to impose their own religious preferences on a Veteran’s family, especially during this meaningful event".[45] The case was settled in September 2012 after mediation by former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas R. Phillips.[46]

The Candy Cane Case

The "Candy Cane Case" began in 2004, after a student in Plano, Texas was prohibited by school officials from distributing candy canes with a religious story attached at his school's Christmas party.[14] In 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted two school principals immunity in the case against the Plano Independent School District.[47] The Liberty Institute appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court,[48] which refused to hear the case in 2012, upholding the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.[49]

Prominent individuals

In November 2016, Ken Klukowski, First Liberty's senior counsel and director of strategic affairs was appointed to head the issue area of "Protecting Americans' Constitutional Rights" in the Donald Trump presidential transition team.[50] Klukowski, later Senior Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, was one of several Trump campaign officials subpoenaed in the Jan. 6 Select Committee investigation.[51]

Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who served as Deputy General Counsel to First Liberty Institute, and Jeff Mateer, who previously served as general counsel, were nominated in 2017 by President Trump for District Court positions. Mateer subsequently withdrew after a May 2015 speech where he referred to transgender children as "Satan’s plan" became public.[52][53] The Senate confirmed Kacsmaryk on June 19, 2019.[54][55]

References

  1.  "First Liberty Institute - Nonprofit Explorer". 9 May 2013.
  2. ^ ^Jump up to:^a^ ^b^ Henry Farrell, These are the conservative legal groups behind the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, Washington Post (December 5, 2017).
  3.  Monson, Rani (May 7, 2017). "Religious leaders in Dallas express mixed feelings about Trump order". Culture Map Dallas. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  4.  Jackson, David M. (June 21, 2016). "Trump to evangelicals: Pray for people to vote for me". USA Today. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  5.  "Anti-Trans Bathroom Debate: How a Local Religious-Right Faction Launched a National Movement". Rolling Stone. January 22, 2018. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  6.  Thomas, Robert Murray (2007). God in the classroom: religion and America's public schools. Praeger. p. 199. ISBN 9780275991418.
  7.  Green, Emma (May 4, 2017). "Why Trump's Executive Order on Religious Liberty Left Many Conservatives Dissatisfied". The Atlantic. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  8.  Green, Emma (December 28, 2016). "The Religious Liberty Showdowns Coming in 2017". The Atlantic. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  9.  "Two Bears make list of top 25 Texas lawyers of the last 25 years". Baylor University. 31 August 2010. Retrieved 27 May 2012.
  10.  Ferguson Jr., John (2009). "Liberty Legal Institute". The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Middle Tennessee State University. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  11.  Smith, Morgan (March 10, 2016). "Religious Liberty Champion Joins Paxton's Team". The Texas Tribune. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  12.  "Paxton Stacks AG's Office With Anti-LGBT Culture Warriors". The Austin Chronicle. April 12, 2016. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  13.  "Anti-LGBT roundup 10.13.17". Southern Poverty Law Center. October 13, 2017. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  14. ^ ^Jump up to:^a^ ^b^ Haag, Matthew (24 July 2010). "Plano's Liberty Institute expands reach from candy cane pens to Palin, prayer, cross on federal land". Dallas Morning News. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
  15.  Byrd, Don. "VA Responds to Houston Cemetery Allegations". Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
  16.  Clarridge, Christine (August 10, 2016). "Praying football coach Joe Kennedy sues Bremerton School District". The Seattle Times. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
  17.  "School district takes action against praying football coach". CBS News. October 29, 2015. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
  18.  Dolan, Maura (August 23, 2017). "Football coach's on-field prayer not protected by Constitution, appeals court rules". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
  19.  Wolf, Richard (January 22, 2019). "Supreme Court refuses to consider appeal from high school football coach fired for praying after games". USA Today. Retrieved April 9, 2019.
  20.  Gregory, Patrick (April 9, 2019). "Football Coach's On-Field Prayer Won't Get High Court Review". Bloomberg Law. Retrieved April 9, 2019.
  21.  Clarridge, Christine (March 6, 2020). "Praying coach Joe Kennedy's lawsuit against Bremerton School District thrown out". The Seattle Times. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  22.  Barnes, Robert (January 14, 2022). "Supreme Court to hear case of high school football coach who lost job after praying with players". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
  23.  Quinn, Melissa (April 25, 2022). "Supreme Court weighs case of high school coach who lost his job after praying on the field". CBS News. Retrieved June 7, 2022.
  24.  {{cite court |litigants=Carson v. Makin |vol= |reporter= |opinion= |pinpoint= |court=U.S. Supreme Court |date=4 February 2021 |url= https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1088/168134/20210204140045165_Petition%20for%20Writ%20of%20Certiorari.pdf |accessdate=9 June 2022 |quote= |
  25.  Howe, Amy (July 2, 2021). "Justices add one religious-rights case to docket but turn down another". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  26.  Dunn, Joshua (December 8, 2021). "Supreme Court Oral Argument in Carson v. Makin Sends Hopeful Signal for Religious School Aid". Education Next. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  27.  Carlisle, Madeleine (December 6, 2021). "This Supreme Court Case Could Take a 'Wrecking Ball' to Separation of Church and State". TIME. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  28.  Liptak, Adam (June 21, 2022). "Supreme Court Rejects Maine's Ban on Aid to Religious Schools". NY Times. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  29.  Revello, Katherine (June 21, 2022). "Supreme Court strikes down sectarian exclusion in Maine's town tuitioning program". Maine Wire. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  30.  Keizur, Christopher (January 21, 2020). "Sweet Cakes owners return to court over same-sex discrimination". Portland Tribune. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  31.  Casseins Weiss, Debra (October 23, 2018). "Supreme Court is asked to rule Oregon bakers had a right to refuse to make cake for same-sex wedding". ABA Journal. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  32.  Barnes, Robert (June 17, 2019). "Supreme Court passes on case involving baker who refused to make wedding cake for same-sex couple". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  33.  Goldberg, Jamie (January 26, 2022). "Court affirms ruling against bakery that refused to sell same-sex wedding cake but tells state to reconsider damages". The Oregonian. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  34.  Adam Liptak (November 2, 2018). "Supreme Court to Rule on 40-Foot War Memorial Cross at Center of Church-State Debate". The New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
  35.  Bravin, Jess (November 2, 2018). "Supreme Court to Hear Case on Giant Cross on Public Maryland Land". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
  36.  Richard Wolf (November 2, 2018). "Supreme Court's latest church-state conundrum: Must a 'peace cross' memorial to World War I vets come down?". USA Today. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
  37.  Thomsen, Jacqueline (June 20, 2019). "Supreme Court rules cross at state-run WWI memorial can remain". The Hill. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  38.  Robert Barnes (February 27, 2019). "Supreme Court seems to seek narrow way to uphold cross that memorializes war dead". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
  39.  Adam Liptak (February 27, 2019). "Supreme Court Seems Ready to Allow Cross Honoring War Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
  40.  Bonnie Pritchett (February 10, 2017). "Georgia settles with doctor in religious freedom case". wng.org. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
  41.  Harper, Casey (November 9, 2021). "Navy SEALs sue Biden administration over COVID mandate". The Center Square. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  42.  Whitcomb, Dan (January 4, 2022). "U.S. judge blocks Pentagon from punishing Navy SEALs who refused COVID-19 vaccine". Reuters. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  43.  Barnes, Robert (March 25, 2022). "Supreme Court won't stop Biden Administration from deployment decisions involving unvaccinated Navy SEALs". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  44.  Laco, Kelly (May 31, 2022). "Air Force members denied religious exemptions to COVID vaccine file lawsuit to stop punishment, terminations". Yahoo! News. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  45.  Wise, Lindsay (July 18, 2011). "VA denies censorship at Houston National Cemetery". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
  46.  Wise, Lindsay (Sep 22, 2011). "VA agrees not to censor prayer at Houston cemetery". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved January 19, 2013.
  47.  Morgan, et al. v. Swanson, et al. (U.S. Court of Appeals for 5th Circuit 27 September 2011) ("the views of the majority of the en banc Court granting qualified immunity to the principals and the judgment reversing the district court.").Text
  48.  "'Candy Cane' Case Appealed to US Supreme Court". CBN News. 1 January 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2013.
  49.  "U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Dismissal of 'Candy Cane' Case". PR Newswire. 11 June 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2013.
  50.  Arnsdorf, Isaac (2016-11-11). "More lobbyists on the transition". Politico. Retrieved 2016-11-15.
  51.  "Select Committee Subpoenas Former Officials with Close Ties to the Former President". Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. 2021-11-09. Retrieved 2021-11-09.
  52.  "Cornyn has doubts about nominee who said transgender rights were 'Satan's plan'". San Antonio Express-News. September 28, 2017. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  53.  "Grassley: Two controversial federal bench nominees won't be confirmed". Washington Post. December 13, 2017. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  54.  Moreau, Julie (June 19, 2019). "Trump pick slammed as 'anti-LGBTQ activist' gets lifetime judicial appointment". NBC News. Retrieved June 20, 2019.
  55.  Itkowitz, Colby (June 19, 2019). "Senate confirms Trump judicial nominee who called homosexuality 'disordered'". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 20, 2019.

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Kelly Shackelford

President, CEO & Chief Counsel at First Liberty Institute

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About

As the president of Liberty Institute for nearly 20 years, I’m honored to serve everyday Americans who are the victims of religious discrimination and persecution across our great nation.

At First Liberty Institute:

Experience

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    Founder, President, CEO & Chief Counsel

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    Jul 1997 - Present25 years 1 month

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    1997 - 201114 years

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    1994 - 200410 years

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Education

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    Baylor University School of Law

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    A Time to Stand 2015

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    Supreme Irony

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    Undeniable: The Survey of Religious Hostility in America 2013 Edition

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    Undeniable: The Survey of Religious Hostility in America 2014 Edition

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    25 Greatest Lawyers of the Past Quarter-Century

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Jeffrey Carl Mateer is an American lawyer. From 2016 to 2020, he served as First Assistant Attorney General of Texas. In September 2017, he was nominated by President Donald Trump to become a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas; however, the nomination was withdrawn in December 2017.[1] Mateer previously served as general counsel of the First Liberty Institute, a religious liberty advocacy group headquartered in Plano.[2] He returned to the Institute, following his resignation from the Attorney General's Office.[3]

Biography

Mateer earned his Bachelor of Arts with honors from Dickinson College and his Juris Doctor with honors from the Dedman School of Law. He spent nearly 20 years litigating in private practice, where he handled a range of trial and appellate matters. He then became general counsel and executive vice president of the First Liberty Institute.[4] In two 2015 speeches, he described the issue of transgender children as a deception and "part of Satan's plan".[5] He also spoke in opposition to state bans on conversion therapy at a conference hosted by Kevin Swanson, a pastor who preaches that the Biblical punishment for homosexuality is death.[2] Mateer said that the legalization of same-sex marriage could lead to the legalization of polygamy and bestiality.[2]

From 2016 to 2020, Mateer served as the First Assistant Attorney General of Texas under Attorney General Ken Paxton, supervising the state's active litigation matters.[4] Upon resigning, he filed a complaint against AG Paxton alleging wrongdoing along with other top attorneys in the litigation division.[6]

Following his public service, Mateer returned to the First Liberty Institute.[3]

Failed nomination to District Court

On September 7, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Mateer to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, to the seat vacated by Judge Richard A. Schell, who assumed senior status on March 10, 2015.[7] Mateer was recommended to the White House by Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.[8] After Mateer's remarks about transgender children being part of "Satan's plan" and his support for conversion therapy were publicized in late September 2017, John Cornyn, the senior Republican Senator from Texas and then-Senate Majority Whip, expressed skepticism about Mateer's suitability to sit on the federal bench.[9] Cornyn and members of a committee that screens Texas judicial candidates said that Mateer had not disclosed the statements.[8] Cruz said that he still supported Mateer's nomination.[5] In December 2017, Mateer's nomination for the federal judiciary was withdrawn.[1] On January 3, 2018, his nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.[10] On January 8, 2018, the White House renominated 21 of 26 federal judicial nominees who had been returned by the U.S. Senate. Mateer was not among the 21 individuals who were renominated.[11]

See also

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wiki 7 22

#1 pick transgender satan

Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk (born 1977) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He was nominated to the position by President Donald Trump.

Biography

Kacsmaryk received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from Abilene Christian University in 1999 and his Juris Doctor with honors from the University of Texas School of Law in 2003.[1]

From 2003 to 2008, he was an associate in the Dallas office of Baker Botts, where he focused on commercial, constitutional, and intellectual property litigation. From 2008 through 2013, he was an Assistant United States Attorney (federal prosecutor) in the Northern District of Texas where he was lead counsel in over 75 criminal appeals and co-counsel in high-profile criminal and terrorism trials.[1] In 2013, under the Obama Administration, Kacsmaryk received the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Furthering the Interests of U.S. National Security for his work in United States v. Aldawsari.[2] He was Deputy General Counsel to First Liberty Institute. ^[3] He has been a member of the Fort Worth chapter of the Federalist Society since 2012.[3] He has been a member of the Red Mass Committee for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Forth Worth. ^[3]

Federal judicial service

On September 7, 2017, Trump nominated Kacsmaryk to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, to the seat vacated by Judge Mary Lou Robinson, who assumed senior status on February 3, 2016.[4] On December 13, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.[5] On January 3, 2018, his nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI,**Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.[6] On January 5, 2018, Trump announced his intent to renominate Kacsmaryk to a federal judgeship.[7] On January 8, 2018, his renomination was sent to the Senate.[8] On January 18, 2018, his nomination was reported out of committee by an 11–10 vote.[9]

The American Bar Association rated Kacsmaryk "qualified" for the nomination (a ranking below "well qualified").[10] However, Senate Democrats and a number of LGBT advocacy groups opposed his nomination due to his writings and comments on LGBT rights and women's contraceptive rights.[11][12] He has worked on religious liberty cases opposing certain LGBT protections in housing, employment and health care.[13]He has referred to homosexuality as "disordered",[14] and to being transgender as a "delusion" and a "mental disorder".[13] He opposes the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the United States.[13][10] He opposed the legalization of premarital sex.[15]

On January 3, 2019, his nomination was returned to the President underRule XXXI,** Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate. On January 23, 2019, Trump announced his intent to renominate Kacsmaryk for a federal judgeship.[16] His nomination was sent to the Senate later that day.[17] On February 7, 2019, his nomination was reported out of committee by a 12–10 vote.[18] On June 18, 2019, the Senate voted 52–44 to invoke cloture on his nomination.[19] On June 19, 2019, his nomination was confirmed by a vote of 52–46.[20][14] He received his judicial commission on June 21, 2019.

Kacsmaryk currently presides over the Amarillo Division of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which encompasses twenty-six counties in the Texas Panhandle.[21]

In 2021, Kacsmaryk ordered the reinstatement of a Trump administration policy that required that asylum seekers wait outside U.S. territory while their claims are processed. In Kacsmaryk's order, he said that the Biden administration had ended the policy without fully considering the consequences.[22] His decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States on June 30, 2022.[23]

See also

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First Liberty Institute is a nonprofit Christian conservative legal organization based in Plano, Texas. First Liberty. Formation, 1997.

Executive General Counsel: Hiram Sasser

President, CEO: Kelly Shackelford

Headquarters: 2001 West Plano Parkway, Suite ...

First Liberty | Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com › ... › Nonprofit organization

Intro · Page · Nonprofit organization · First Liberty Institute. is responsible for this Page · 2001 W Plano Pkwy · (972) 941-4444 · info@firstliberty.org.

First Liberty Institute - YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com › firstlibertyinstitute

First Liberty Institute is the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious liberty for all Americans.

Rating for First Liberty Institute - Charity Navigatorhttps://www.charitynavigator.org › ein

First Liberty Institute has earned a 4/4 Star rating on Charity Navigator. This Religious Organization is headquartered in Plano, TX.

Rating: 4/4 · ‎Review by Charity Navigator

First Liberty Institute - GuideStar Profilehttps://www.guidestar.org › profile

First Liberty is the nation's largest legal organization solely dedicated to protecting religious liberty for all Americans. Our mission is to defend and ...

First Liberty Institute (Accredited Organization Profile) - ECFAhttps://www.ecfa.org › MemberProfile

First Liberty Institute is engaged in defending and restoring religious liberty in America - particularly in our churches, schools, the public arena, ...

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/kelly-shackelford/

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