As of the close of the first week of the new year, Donald Trump’s average approval rating, as measured by FiveThirtyEight, stands at 38.2 percent–easily the lowest of any newly-elected president at this early stage of his presidency.

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One of Trump’s most ardent religious right supporters has a theory about the 39 percent of white evangelicals who don’t warmly support Trump–they’re forgetting the truth of the Bible.

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Jeffress mused that there was indeed a “divide” among evangelicals–one that has existed for some time, but has only now been “exposed” by Trump.

“It’s been a growing divide, Janet, between evangelicals who take the Bible seriously and those who don’t. I call them the ‘evangelical elite’—the ‘Christianity of the day’ crowd. And here’s where it comes down to—think about this. President Trump is the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-Israel president in history. So why do we have this resistance among the evangelical elite while the mass of evangelicals in the pews support him? And what it comes down to is the evangelical elite really don’t embrace these values.”

Jeffress went on to slam the “evangelical elite” for being more concerned about protecting Dreamers than ending abortion, and claimed they were on the wrong side of the Palestinian debate for being more concerned about the plight of Palestinians when the Jews have a right to the land “God gave them.” He also mused that this same elite wants to make Christian bakers make cakes for LGBT weddings.

The Trump administration, inviting a political backlash from coastal state leaders, on Thursday proposed to open for exploration the largest expanse of the nation's offshore oil and natural gas reserves ever offered to global energy companies, including waters off the coast of California.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the draft five-year leasing plan would commit 90 percent of the nation's offshore reserves to leasing, including areas off all three regions of the California coast that have been off limits to oil and gas exploration since the Reagan administration.

The draft plan, now subject to review and debate, would allow the first new federal lease sales off the California coast since 1984. It sparked immediate fury from Democratic leaders in the state.

"The American people deserve smart, strong action to keep our communities healthy, clean and safe. Yet the Trump administration is racing forward with its increasingly brazen attempts to loot our environment and our planet," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. "Americans from coast to coast will make their voices heard to oppose this blatant corporate giveaway."

One Dem senator says Mueller time is coming soon.

Interviewed on CNN by Anderson Cooper, Connecticut senator and former attorney general Richard Blumenthal predicts that multiple convictions and indictments of past and present White House staff are coming “early in the New Year.”

The context: recent revelations that White House attorney McGahn and two other as-yet-unnamed high-ranking White House officials attempted to stop Sessions from recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

Via press release from Christian Newswire:

PureFlix.com, the leader in faith and family streaming video, has the perfect antidote for the winter blues: the sunny, new sitcom “Malibu Dan-The Family Man.”

“Our audience appreciates our commitment to clean content and the high production values of our original series,” said PureFlix.com CEO Greg Gudorf. “I’m thrilled to be starting the new year with ‘Malibu Dan’ because it delivers on both of those elements, along with providing a couple of laughs along the way.”

“Malibu Dan” follows PureFlix.com’s latest original series “Hilton Head Island,” which debuted in late fall 2017 and became one of the most-watched series on the platform. It was the first streaming “hope” opera and followed the lives of the fictional Trisk family. While it featured plenty of power plays and family drama, it also focused on the family’s faith and power of prayer.

“Look, I think it’s absolutely insane to think all of these individuals, reporters and others, who suddenly have a medical degree and think that they can diagnose somebody, many times who they’ve never even had a conversation with. It’s absolutely outrageous to make these types of accusations, and it’s simply untrue, and it’s sad that people are going and making these desperate attempts to attack the president.

“What I think is really mentally unstable is people that don’t see the positive impact that this president is having on the country. The economy is booming, we’re crushing ISIS, day after day things are getting better for Americans all over this country. And I think it’s really sad that these people don’t see that, and that they’re not celebrating and trying to join in the president’s efforts to turn our country around.” – Sarah Huckabee Sanders, speaking today on Fox News.

This could be the most brazen request ever made in a courtroom! In the western Kansas town of Garden City, three men were arrested in October 2016, charged with plotting to bomb a mosque and an apartment complex because it housed Somali refugees. Terrorist behavior.

In an attempt to get the three men excused from all charges, the defense attorney is trying a new strategy. He has asked the judge to allow him to stack the jury pool with people from a more rural part of the state where people are “more likely to have voted for President Donald Trump.”

The men, Curtis Wayne Allen, 49; Patrick Eugene Stein, 47; and Gavin Wayne Wright, 49, are being charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy against civil rights. Because their plot was foiled after an eight-month-long FBI investigation, they didn’t actually get to blow anything up or kill anyone.

Lawmakers in Egypt are seriously considering passing a law that would make atheism illegal.

Blasphemy is already illegal in Egypt, and people are frequently arrested for insulting or defaming religion under the country’s strict laws. But the newly proposed rule would make it illegal for people not to believe in God, even if they don’t talk about it.

So this is what we’ve become? This is the sort of compassion-free pablum that’s Making America Great Again? Why let truth or context get in the way of perfectly good propaganda, eh?

It takes a sociopathic personality utterly devoid of class and compassion to use the picture of a grieving woman and mother who’s lost the man in her life and the father to her child to war. That’s not “WHY WE STAND,” nor is it “So beautiful.” It’s sad and tragic and deserving of every ounce of compassion, love, and kindness we can muster. Instead, this woman’s pain is being used to push a political agenda. I’m not certain it gets more craven, insensitive, and cruel than that.