On this episode we talk about the recent bombshell story from the New York Times, “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years.” We note that these stories of men abusing women and children cut across ideology and reflect a broader brokenness in our culture. But we note that one thing that matters always: how institutions react when these kinds of credible, corroborated allegations come to light. Do they take them seriously or protect the powerful men at the top. We also talk about the new Varieties of Democracy (full V-Dem report here) that shows the massive decline in the United States as a liberal democracy over the past year under the Trump administration, which has by these metrics wiped out 60 years of democratic progress. Finally, we talk about the Republican push to pass the so-called SAVE Act, whose draconian voter identification measures would dramatically restrict the ability especially of women to vote.

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This week, we open the conversation with reflections on the challenges of living daily life amid the onslaught of horrific news, so often these days instigated by our own government. We reflect on normalcy—focusing on daily tasks of caring for family, tending friendships, and connecting with local community—as a mode of resistance. We then turn to address the war in Iran, particularly how Pete Hegseth and the Trump administration are glorifying domination and violence itself through their rhetoric and recent propaganda videos officially released by the White House. And we discuss the administration's utter lack of moral justification for the war, including how Trump has failed virtually all criteria from the just war theory tradition in Christian ethics—as two prominent American Catholic cardinals pointed out this week.

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Jemar Tisby- JemarTisby.Substack.com

In this TCU+LIVE conversation, we covered a lot of ground. We opened with the significance of Trump’s falling favorability numbers in a brand new survey, especially among white non-evangelical Protestants and Latino Protestants. We also talked about Pete Hegseth’s dangerous commitments to Christian Nationalism and how it is entangled in the War in Iran—noting that the story is much more complex than some of the viral hot takes circulating on social media. For the theology nerds, we unpack the critical differences between “seven mountains mandate” dominionism and premillennial dispensationalism (but we don’t get too far into the weeds!). We also spent the latter half of the show answering listeners’ insightful questions. Thanks so much for all of you who posted, and if we didn’t get to your question, we’ll hope to next time.