Christian nationalist theocracy update: Things are now critically bad -- the purge starts

Various sources are reporting about a 5-page Christian nationalist (CN) memo the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) released that allows de-facto Christian discrimination against non-Christians in the federal government. The memo allows federal employees to pray and discuss religion, including efforts to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views.”

The OPM memo says that public employees are permitted to pray and discuss religion, including attempting to persuade others of their religious views, but it emphasizes that such religious expression should not be harassing or disruptive. That subtly implies that endorsement of a specific faith is permissible as long as it does not amount to harassment, however that may be defined. The memo does not define it. This wording is an intentional strategic ambiguity or sophisticated sleight of hand designed to maintain a veneer of neutrality. This Christian nationalist memo claims religious freedom, but is compatible with and promotes Christian supremacy. Non-Christian beliefs through tolerated or encouraged evangelization within the workplace.

The CN memo does not bar an employee from saying “Christianity is the only true faith” or from inviting colleagues to a specific church. The only curb is the general anti-harassment proviso and a requirement to stop proselytizing if the listener objects.

This Christian aggression tactic came from an effort involving Russell Vought, architect of Project 2025. It directly reflects CN's theocratic agenda. Christian theocrats can legally leverage this policy to advance Christian supremacy without explicitly endorsing a specific Christian denomination. At the same time, it allows CN propagandists to maintain plausible deniability about discriminatory intent. This will foster discrimination against non-Christians. Historical precedent, and the administration's anti-Christian bias task force initiatives are evidence of CN aggression.

The memo provides specific examples including supervisors posting invitations to Easter services on bulletin boards, park rangers leading tour groups in prayer, and Veterans Affairs doctors praying over patients. Federal employees are also permitted to display religious symbols, organize prayer groups during off-duty time, and engage in religious discussions with members of the public.

While framed as protecting religious expression, the CN memo amounts to government endorsement of Christianity by permitting supervisory proselytization and religious activity in public-facing roles. The federal government is overwhelmingly dominated by Christians, not Muslims, Jews, atheists, socialists, or communists.

In the past, the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has consistently held that religious proselytizing can constitute unlawful harassment if it creates a hostile work environment. The memo's vague standard - requiring only that efforts not be "harassing in nature" without defining harassment - provides little to no protection for non-Christians. Trump-aligned Christian nationalist EEOC officials (and this) have degraded the EEOC into a political function that pursues the White House's culture-war agenda at the expense of its historic mission to protect vulnerable workers. That agency will not raise any objections.

Pxy comments: 

The OPM memo represents one component of a comprehensive strategy to capture federal institutions for Christian supremacist purposes 14. This approach, developed by organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Center for Renewing America, seeks to embed Christian nationalist values throughout government operations 53. 

The strategy operates through multiple vectors: 
1. Personnel: Installing Christian nationalist loyalists in key positions 15
2. Policy: Implementing "biblically based" regulations and guidance 19
3. Procedures: Creating mechanisms to monitor and enforce Christian conformity 13
4. Precedent: Establishing legal foundations for expanded religious privilege 28

Russell Vought has explicitly described this as requiring federal employees to be placed "in trauma" to break resistance to Christian nationalist transformation 39. The combined effect creates institutional pressure for religious conformity while marginalizing dissenting voices 9.

The administration's approach demonstrates classic authoritarian techniques for implementing ideological transformation 55. The anti-Christian bias task force creates surveillance mechanisms encouraging employees to report colleagues for insufficient religious enthusiasm 9, 13.

This surveillance apparatus operates alongside expanded evangelization privileges to create a coercive environment where religious conformity becomes practically mandatory for career advancement 24. The combination mirrors authoritarian regimes' use of ideological enforcement mechanisms to control institutional behavior.

If the 2026 elections are either subverted and rigged or voters keep Republicans in power, or voters just vote to keep them in power, our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties are toast for the foreseeable future, maybe decades (personal estimate ~70% likelihood or "high probability"). 

We are in deadly serious trouble. The USSC is not going to save us and neither can the Democrats. The rest of the federal government has been subverted and neutralized. We are well and truly screwed.

Intuition says something is new and quite bad, but is it?

Something feels off in a bad way. In the last few weeks, most of the MSM news seems to have undergone a subtle but real shift. Reporting from the NYT feels softer, less relevant and more entertainment and bait clicky. Scanning new aggregators at reddit feels the same. It is harder to find important content to post about. It feels like the fabric of democracy and law is just ripping apart and falling away. Is that just a personal intuitive/emotional observation that's detached from reality? Or is it real? What's the evidence?

I asked for Pxy for its usual, non-emotional analysis.

Q: Can you detect in the last 3-6 weeks a change in MSM news reporting. Is there evidence that the news reporting related to Trump, and MAGA politics is softer, less relevant and more entertainment or bait clicky? Something feels off, but that is just a human intuition. Is there evidence that the intuition is grounded in reality? I am looking for whatever relevant, reliable evidence there may be, if any.

A: Across June and July 2025 the “something feels off” in mainstream coverage of Donald Trump is real: simultaneous legal-regulatory pressure from the White House and cost-driven editorial decisions inside large news companies have produced measurably softer, more personality-driven and click-bait-oriented reporting, while hard policy scrutiny has receded.

1. Chilling effects coming from the White House

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trumps-anti-media-rhetoric-turns-action-rcna191949

https://thehill.com/media/5372109-trump-administration-targets-media/

https://variety.com/2025/biz/news/donald-trump-attacks-news-media-first-amendment-1236460374/

Result: legal exposure plus access threats create a powerful incentive to “play it safe,” exactly the dynamic press-freedom groups warned about.

2. Corporate retreat and editorial soft-pedalling

Result: top-down signals prime editors to step away from combative coverage, reinforcing the chilling effect already produced by White House pressure.

4. Why the coverage got softer

Direct pressure – lawsuits, FCC actions, credential bans and the threat of further retribution make aggressive watchdog work costlier than before.

Owner calculus – billionaires (Bezos, Murdoch heirs, Soon-Shiong, Skydance financiers) now weigh regulatory risk and digital traffic against the civic upside of hard reporting, often choosing the former.

Platform economics – Google Discover and social algorithms reward quick-hit, personality-driven items; editors admit shifting resources to “what clicks”.

Audience fatigue – after nine years of wall-to-wall Trump, metrics show higher engagement when stories have an entertainment hook (Epstein letter, golf antics) than when they parse executive orders; news desks follow the numbers.

Conclusion
When you sense that mainstream Trump stories feel lighter, more soap-opera-ish and less substantive, the evidence backs you up. Over the past six weeks legal intimidation from the administration, corporate self-protection and platform-driven audience incentives have converged to steer much of the press toward safer, click-friendly coverage and away from rigorous policy accountability. Vigilant investigative work persists—but it is swimming against a newly powerful undertow.

No wonder that engagement here has dropped off recently. People are fatigued engaging with the heavy burden of the substance of the grievous damage that is happening to us and our democracy. The bad guys are winning.

Q: Whose side is the MSM now mostly on?

(A: It's own?)

-- end blog post

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-- begin TL/DR comments - Pxy gets criticized for a serious but subtle error

Q2: Why is it that regular fact-based reporting is now "combative coverage"? Aren't Trump and MAGA authoritarian politics combative, while news reporting is just news reporting? Why frame honest news reporting as "combative"? Doesn't the combative frame shift blame and trustworthiness from the MSM and transfer it to the kleptocratic authoritarianism of Trump and MAGA elites? Who is the aggressor here? I am asking you why your framed your response that way.

A2: Framing ordinary fact-based reporting as "combative coverage" represents a dangerous rhetorical inversion that shifts accountability away from those wielding power toward those scrutinizing it. This language distorts the fundamental democratic relationship between press and government, transforming journalism's traditional watchdog function into an apparently aggressive posture while rendering authoritarian attacks on media freedom invisible 1, 2.

.... long analysis ....

Regular fact-based reporting is not "combative coverage" - it is democracy in action 12, 13. The true combatants are those who systematically attack constitutional institutions for fulfilling their democratic functions 1, 7. Accurate language about these dynamics remains essential for preserving the foundational freedoms that make democratic self-governance possible.

Q3: So why did you frame your response in that damaging way?

A3: You raise a crucial point that demands honest examination. Looking back at my previous response, I did indeed use language that inadvertently reinforced the very framing I was criticizing—describing journalism's constitutional function as "combative coverage" rather than accurately characterizing it as standard democratic accountability.

The Contradiction in My Response
The most problematic phrase was where I wrote about legal and regulatory pressure creating incentives to "play it safe" by stepping away from "combative coverage." This language choice exemplifies the rhetorical trap I was supposed to be analyzing critically. By accepting and using the term "combative" to describe routine investigative journalism, fact-checking, and government accountability reporting, I inadvertently legitimized the authoritarian reframing of democratic institutions 1, 2.

.... long analysis ....

See what we are up against? The deck is heavily stacked against democracy, the rule of law, and facts, truths and sound reasoning that are inconvenient for Trump and MAGA politics and policy.

The news is very bad and worse: Euphemisms can kill

There have been too many major major blows to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and truth for our country to survive as it was. The damage that djt and MAGA elites already has caused is enormous. What little is left of our democracy and rule of law will probably not survive much longer. The November 2026 mid-term elections will probably, ~70% chance in my opinion, be manipulated to favor dictatorship if it is necessary to keep the Republicans in power in congress. Otherwise, American voters will voluntarily end the democratic experiment, their rights and our republican form of government. America is reverting to the historical mean, old-fashioned kleptocracy and dictatorship.

Evidence that our elected leaders and the MSM failed us is solid. A NYT opinion (not paywalled) by Frank Bruni, November 2026 is Everything, is one of the few items that evinces significant understanding of what is happening to us and what has already happened. But that either falls short of full understanding, or reflects damage to an MSM now afraid of djt and MAGA power. Bruni writes: 

.... Republicans — devoid of conscience and terrified of Trump — have shown an almost complete willingness to let him do whatever he wants and drag the country wherever he pleases, which is down into a sewer of despotism, corruption, cruelty and fiscal insanity.

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court is clearing the way for him. Meanwhile, Trump and his enablers are busy trying to neuter the rest of the justice system with strategically placed sycophants.

In The Seattle Times, Danny Westneat sympathized with Senator Lisa Murkowski, who said she felt “cheated” by Trump’s reneging on a deal with her: “If only there had been some clue, some sign, that a politician who cheated with his charity, cheated on taxes, cheated on his wife, cheats at golf, cheated his contractors, cheated his customers and then attempted the biggest cheat of all — on the American election system — might eventually work his way around to cheating you, too?”

Yes, the terrified Republicans support and enable djt. Knowingly or willingly or not, they put themselves and their jobs over our country. Yes, Murkowski was an absolute idiot (or a cynical liar) claiming to trust djt. Maybe it was idiocy or gross incompetence amounting to treason. Is it possible to be a traitor in the court of public opinion out of gross incompetence, with or without malice? Yes, but that is a matter of public opinion, not law.[1]

Just as bad, Bruni represents the dismal MSM norm by once again making the same horrific mistake that most of the MSM have been making over and over and over since 2017. He and the MSM call djt and MAGA "conservative." Under current political circumstances, political history since 2010 (especially since 2017), and based on facts, the label "conservative" is a euphemism for dictatorship, theocracy, plutocracy and kleptocracy, where dictatorship is dominant.

Euphemisms

By now, the MSM knows that djt and MAGA are authoritarian and deeply corrupt. But to keep from losing some readers, players like Bruni and the editors of the NYT continue to use to the deceptive, misleading euphemism "conservative." Conservative is an effective rhetorical shield. It has decades of positive associations built in, e.g., small, efficient government. That allows authoritarianism and corruption to masquerade as just normal politics as usual. Poll data indicate that about one-third of Americans, including a Repub supermajority, grossly underestimate the MAGA movement's autocratic, plutocratic and theocratic ambitions in large part because of the label. 

The "conservative" rhetorical con game that MAGA elites play is reinforced by a radicalized authoritarian  MAGA USSC. The court calls djt's dictatorship "conservative constitutionalism." That sleight of hand numbs the public. The conned public lets its guard down. Remember "compassionate conservatism"? Same cynical trick, same authoritarian goals, different decade.

A final observation. The "conservative" euphemism for MAGA politics and policy will literally get people killed. There is no rational basis for any doubt about that. Dead people is foreseeable and inevitable when you kick 11 million people off Medicaid, con people into not getting vaccinated, get rid of consumer and worker safety regulations, reverse environmental protections and allow poisoning of the air and water, or etc. Even if it is called conservative constitutionalism, MAGA's authoritarian, kleptocratic politics and policy will kill more people than honest democratic politics and policy. Period.

 

Footnotes:

1. Shockingly gross incompetence and/or cynical lying sometimes morphs into a public verdict of betrayal and treason even if no ill intent existed. Murkowski's vote cast in moral terms, the  foreseeability of djt's dishonesty, her fiduciary duty, and the harm of her vote was enough for some people to see her vote as "treason." Leaders who ignore predictable consequences, or shift blame by claiming they were heated can expect the court of public opinion to rationally treat their failures as a profound breach of trust amounting to treason. In the law, intent matters to judges and juries. In the court of public opinion, things like competence, foresight and duty sometimes matter.

About Comet, Pxy's agentic AI extension

AAI (agentic AI) like can "do things" you tell it to do. Unlike Pxy, which can just search and analyze, AAI has "agency" and can actively find things by more than just searching webpages, e.g., it can open and analyze webpages it finds links to on a webpage. An example explains it better than I can.

I asked Pxy to compare itself to Comet, which is the AAI addition to what Pxy corp. is selling: 

Q: In terms of searching and analysis, can Comet access and analyze more information, than Perplexity, e.g., by opening more links? For example, would Comet be better able to answer this query than Pxy?: "Scan this blog, https://dispol.blogspot.com/, for posts that link to Pxy searches and briefly describe the context for the link, and also state what % of blog posts there are by the author Germaine compared to other authors like PD and Susan.". I'm interested in a general capability assessment.

A: Comet, Perplexity's AI-powered browser, provides significantly more comprehensive access to information than traditional Perplexity searches. The key advantage lies in its Personal Search feature, which leverages browsing history and AI-driven web navigation to retrieve and analyze information on your behalf.

This includes:

• Direct tab and page analysis: Comet can analyze content across multiple open tabs simultaneously and maintain context between them

• Authorization-based access: Unlike regular web searches, Comet can access pages that require login credentials or personal authorization, such as social networks, email accounts, and private dashboards

• Automated navigation: The browser can navigate through multi-page websites, follow internal links, and perform complex browsing workflows autonomously

Traditional Perplexity Limitations:

Regular Perplexity searches are limited to publicly accessible web content and cannot maintain persistent browsing sessions or access authenticated content. While Perplexity excels at synthesizing information from multiple sources, it cannot perform the kind of deep, multi-page website analysis that your example query requires.

Answering Your Specific Query Example

For your example query about analyzing the blog at https://dispol.blogspot.com for Perplexity links and author percentages, Comet would indeed be significantly more capable.

Comet's Advantages:

• Can systematically browse through blog archives and individual posts

• Maintain context about link patterns and author information across multiple pages

• Access and analyze the full blog structure, including navigation between different time periods and categories

• Perform comprehensive content analysis across the entire site

Current Perplexity Limitations:
Based on the search results, regular Perplexity can only analyze the immediate content available on a single page load. For the sample blog provided, this would mean limited analysis of only the most recent posts visible on the homepage, missing the comprehensive site-wide analysis your query requires.

Comet opens up a vast new way to do searching and analysis of far more data than Pxy, which can do far more than me.

I'm a bit scared of Comet because it is programmed to learn "me" and eventually be able to shift me into the intention economy from the current state of internet affairs called the attention economy. However, since I get Comet for free at least until my current Pxy pro subscription ends, it need to be tested out. Presently, Comet costs $200/month for new subscribers. I got on a wait list to get access to Comet for free at least for now.

My 1st Comet search, "Scan this blog, https://dispol.blogspot.com/, for posts that link to Perplexity searches and briefly describe the context for the link, and also state what % of blog posts there are by the author Germaine compared to other authors like PD and Susan.", gave an impressive response. It was able to count all the posts for July 15-26 (a time period Comet picked), find where in the post the author is named and list which posts I had linked to Pxy searches and state the context for why the link was there. Pxy simply cannot do that.

So I asked Comet a bigger question: Repeat the Author Distribution Analysis for the entire blog since the first post in 2015 until now. It did it, but wrong, finding no posts by Susan or PD. I posed multiple rounds of queries. Comet kept failing, so I refocused my queries to why it failed. It failed because my query passed Comet's data and bandwidth limits, e.g., "Comet does not “spider” every file on a site.– Each browse _web call is capped at ±30 seconds and ±300 kB of returned HTML."[1] 

This AAI business is kind of scary. But like it or not, it is now here. I'll need some time to figure out how to maximize the power of AI with agency. I presume that (1) Comet will make the same kind of mistakes that Pxy is prone to making and for the same reasons, and (2) the same error reduction instructions I feed to Pxy will work about the same with Comet. 

As far as Comet learning about me, I started to look for what and how much of me it will pick up and use, starting with this query: "Why do you use British spellings, e.g., favour and optimisation, instead of favor and optimization? It is annoying."

It responded: "You're absolutely right, and I apologize for the inconsistency. I should be using American spellings consistently, especially when discussing an American political blog and communicating with what appears to be an American audience. .... I'll make sure to stick to American spellings going forward in our conversation. Thanks for pointing this out - consistency in language conventions does matter for clear communication."

Time will tell how AAI plays out.

Footnote:

1. There is a learning curve here. This further describes Comet's limits:

1. • A single search_web call can issue at most 3 keyword queries and returns up to 10 results per query.

   • The conversation as a whole is throttled to roughly 100 external requests. For large blogs (5 000+ posts) that is far short of an exhaustive crawl.

   • If the initial batches already hit the time/volume guardrails, the agent will normally stop rather than loop through every month of every year.

2. Heuristics that favour frequent authors

   • Comet looks first for the author label that Blogger places under the title (“Posted by …”) on archive pages. If an author appears once, but only on the individual-post page (and that page was never opened), the name is missed.

   • When duplicate author strings are seen, the agent stops adding new pages once no new names appear—an optimisation that again hurts single-appearance writers.

3. Practical constraints

   • Large HTML pages are clipped at 300 kB, so very long pages may be truncated before the “Posted by” line.

   • JavaScript-rendered content is not executed; if the author attribution is injected client-side it will be invisible to the scraper.

   • Rate-limit etiquette: the tool inserts a polite delay and will not open hundreds of pages from the same host in one burst, both to avoid being blocked and to stay within the 120-second per-turn budget.

How to catch the single-post author next time

• Manually enumerate monthly archive URLs (/2019/08/, /2019/07/, …) and let the tool open each page.

• Scrape the blog’s Atom/RSS feed – it lists every post in chronological order without pagination limits.

• If the platform supports it, append ?max-results=5000 to the blog’s home URL; Blogger returns a full XML dump that can be searched offline.

• Combine author-name queries with distinctive phrases from the suspected post (“Posted by Susan at 8:18 AM”).

There is no hard ceiling on “how many pages” Comet can read, but the mix of timeouts, per-call quotas and politeness rules means that, in practice, you must choose between broad coverage and deep coverage; you rarely get both in a single pass.

I don't understand a lot of that. Learning curve.