It's not surprising that Trump's job approval rating has slipped below the 40% mark, his disapproval is just a couple of points short of 60% and the country is falling apart because he has chosen a cabinet and executive branch staff who is even more incompetent and unable to do those jobs than he is. Those on the fringes who voted for him this time because they thought he might be better in some way were disabused. All he's got left right now is the Heritage Foundation's money and influence that is part of his MAGA base.

I'm not surprised that Democrats in Congress have an even worse job approval rate, 26%. Of course, Republicans in Congress are doing about the same, maybe a little worse, because they are slowly realizing they are being made responsible for Trump's abysmal job performance and accountable for his failures. But for all the talk about the midterm elections of 2026 being the best chance to put a stop to the Trump insanity, Democrats are doing surprisingly little to change the perception of themselves. At a 26% job approval rating, hopes of winning a majority in both houses during the midterms is not running very high.

The party leadership is protecting its own turf, rather than making some bold moves, requiring personal sacrifice and risk. That sends the wrong message. They can say that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, but until they do something that shows this is an urgent priority for them, rather than just electioneering and campaign sloganing, those miserable job approval ratings will continue, as they are even as this is read, and will get worse.

The party needs fresh faces who understand the seriousness of this threat enough to be bold, and take risks to protect our democracy, instead of protecting their own turf, traditions, and feathering their own nests. Look where the momentum is, and who the people are following. It's clearly not about age, since an 83 year old Senator is one of the most energetic, and crowd-drawing attractions in the anti-Trump movement. It's about priorities, and while a lot of lip service was given to the "Trump is an existential threat to democracy," mantra, the party's actions spoke louder than its words, and proved, with irresolute cowardice, that was not what they believed. Hence the current frustration and tanking job approval ratings.

My Senator, Dick Durbin, has a long and distinguished career in the United States Senate, but Senator Durbin passed is prime about 5 years back and his failure to be up on the front lines taking risks, being bold and protecting democracy means that it is time for him to step down, and let someone else with more energy and willingess to take a risk step up and take his seat. I feel the same way about Senator Schumer. Retire, Senator, and let Governor Hochul appoint Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to your seat. Let's get Bernie in position as Senate Minority Leader and position ourselves to win in the midterms and then erase every vestige of the failed Trump presidency.

Led by Bush ally Richard Land, renamed the "Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the organization pushed hard to become an anti-abortion activist organization and to drag the SBC into Republican right wing extremist politics following the "Conservative Resurgence." Neither Land nor Paul Pressler, the Texas appeals court judge who was one of the major "architects" of the resurgence, were ever able to push the SBC to the point of outright endorsements of GOP Presidential candidates, but that was not for lack of trying.

Then Land stepped down in 2013, due to a shift in denominational politics, and Russell Moore became executive director. Moore's legacy at the ERLC looked to be more bland, conservative extremism, until the election rolled around in 2016 and he became an outspoken right wing Evangelical opposed to Trump's candidacy, because of his disgusting immoral behavior and crude, worldly attitude. Moore, now editor of Christianity Today , never backed down from that perspective, so the Trump machine within the SBC went to work to try and bring the whole organization down.

And that's what's happening now, with the involvement of the great Southern Baptist pontificator, Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Mohler wasn't a Trumper in 2016 either, but he's a "lick your finger and stick it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing" kind of Baptist leader. So he eventually changed his mind. But Moore never did. He managed to make an exit and land on his feet in a more sympathetic, more moderate, less politically insane branch of Evangelicalism. His successor failed to denounce him or trash his reputation or behave in other un-Christ-like vengeance, and so, jiggling with rage, Southern Baptist Trumpers are now pushing to simply shut down the whole ERLC to hurl their hatred and get back at the remaining leadership for not bowing at the feet of their political enamorata and favorite ungodly idol.

More Americans appear to be hitting the streets in protest of the unconstitutional, mostly illegal actions of a renegade Presidency than at any other point in our history, with the possible exception of the Vietnam War era. Even conservatively biased polls are indicating that the number of Americans showing dissatisfaction with the first 100 days of the second Trump administration is heading onward and upward toward the 60% mark, and his job approval ratings are even lower than the records he set during his first term.

You're not reading the words of someone here who trusts most of the data that now comes out of what are mostly corporate-owned media pollsters. Anything associated with the far right conservatives hasn't been trustworthy or truthful for a long time. So I do have some doubts when I see headlines from Newsmax or Newsweek making note of a 29% or 26% approval rate for Democrats. But there's a little more than just their bias involved in my observations of what's actually going on.

I'm a lifelong Democrat, and while I'll admit that feelings are not the best way to validate poll results, what I'm seeing in writing, on social media, from a lot of Democrats, is that some of the disapproval and dissatisfaction with Democratic members of Congress may be coming from within the party. For me, that doesn't mean I'm not going to vote when the time comes. Even a weak, self-absorbed Democrat is better than any Republican. But being weak and conciliatory, now, during this time, is unacceptable.

The GOP margins in both the House and Senate are slim. They should be easy to break down, given the disaster that has occurred during Trump's first 100 days. But where is our Democratic party leadership? I can't see anything that they are doing to try and position themselves to win, and I am seeing an increased number of commentators and columnists, and Democratic party media advocates, like Thom Hartmann and Stephanie Miller, who are trying to ring alarm bells and get things moving.

We are 100 days into a disaster. We are seeing rising opposition to this Presidency everywhere. And yet, Democrats in Congress have a 26% job approval rating. Something is seriously wrong, and isn't connecting.

I'm not a "sit on my butt and protect my own interests" kind of guy. I'm on social security, with a modest supplemental income, but I set aside something every month to give to Democrats. I'm getting to the point where standing for hours at a protest isn't possible, nor is making a long march, though I really enjoy doing that. Twice now, in the past year, I have volunteered to knock on doors in neighboring purple state Wisconsin, to help Democrats in elections. And if you want to get a good look at what I consider well-invested time and effort, click this link to The Signal Press and read to your heart's content.

Still calling itself the "Nation's Largest Evangelical Denomination," the Southern Baptist Convention posted an eighteenth straight year of declining membership, with just under 260,000 church members leaving the rolls of the church to which they once belonged, one way or another.

The nation's largest Evangelical denomonation reached is peak membership in 2006, at 16.3 million. Since then, membership has declined, with the sharpest and steepest declines occurring after 2016, when there were years when nearly half a million members disappeared from the rolls. The decline has slowed, somewhat, over the past three years, but even with annual losses falling below the 300,000 mark, over three quarters of a million members have been subtracted over the past four years. While weekly worship attendance has slowly crept back over the 4 million mark, since dropping during COVID, membership continues to drop sharply.

The attendance figure, averaging 4.3 million this past year, is still a much lower figure than the 6.2 million who sat in the pews prior to 2006. What's actually causing the "bounce" right now is the returning of those who didn't attend during the COVID pandemic. That's about over, as the increase over the past year was fairly insignificant. And the same study that shows this membership decline also points to the fact that 69% of the church membership is 50 years of age or older. Only 10% of Southern Baptists are under 30.

What that indicates is that a high percentage of those individuals who grew up in a Southern Baptist church, and likely participated in its children's ministry and youth group, have left, deciding that raising their family in the same church offers little in the way of value to them and their life. That's a big decision. It's interesting that the decline corresponds directly with the increased intrusion of right wing politics that started with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and their baiting by the GOP back just prior to the 1980 Presidential election.

The correlation between Southern Baptists' rapid membership decline, and the increased involvement of mostly Caucasian, conservative, Evangelical Christians in far right extremism, a political perspective that is anti-Christian in both its means and ends, is pretty easy to see. There's no other demographic study that shows anything else coming along in the early part of this century that would find a big enough presence in the church to cause membership to drop so subtstantially, especially the rise of a worldly, morally bankrupt, failed businessman, Donald Trump, whose public behavior is completely antithetical to the values of Christianity. With many of the denomination's pastors preaching a form of white, Christian nationalism in place of the biblical Christian gospel message Jesus revealed, and the intrusion of Trump's licentious lifestyle, many faithful church members have said, "no thank you," and have left.

The English rock band "Tears for Fears" recorded a song released in 1985 called Everybody Wants to Rule the World, which reflects political themes of the time. It was mostly considered a "cold war anthem," that's the best description of it, including that of its authors, who disagreed at one point over whether the line should be "Everyone wants to go to war." There are lines in the song which talk about turning one's back on mother nature, about the bombs come tumbling down, and the theme can be seen in the original music video that accompanies the song.

The use of the Christian religion to gain political power is a theme that runs for almost as long as the Christian church has existed. Christian nationalism emerged with Constantine, after two centuries of persecution of Christianity at the hands of the Roman emperors produced exactly the opposite result intended, and led to the conversion of something like half the Empire. Constantine recognized that his ability to ascend to the emperorship, and maintain military control would depend on the support of the Christian church. His successor, Theodosius I, who was Christian, saw a pathway to political success by making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, turning it into a Christian nationalist state.

Though there is nothing at all anywhere in the writings of the apostles that survived to become the canon of the New Testament to indicate that anything Jesus did, or taught, led to any indication that he intended for those who converted to Christianity to rule the world politically, and in fact, the values he emphasized and prioritized into Christian practice indicate that exactly the opposite is true, Christian nationalism, with a heavy dose of racism tilted toward light skinned Europeans, grew into the most influential heresy in the history of Christianity

What we are seeing, with Project 2025, is a takeover of the federal government by the Heritage Foundation, a group of pseudo-Christians who are once again aiming at the use of government and political power to acheive ends they claim are "Christian," and in line with "the will of God" ostensibly to prepare the world for the return of Christ, but in reality, to acumulate for themselves enough wealth to have the power to literally rule the world. Someone has to manage all of that wealth and power while waiting on Jesus to descend from the clouds, right?

So while 60% of the American people accurately observe the subversion of the Constitution and American democracy for exactly what it is, the only praise for Trump's first hundred days of his second term is coming from a minority of MAGA leaders and influencers, and the media outlets they control. Even the mainstream media, heavily biased in his favor, is not obseving anything but disaster from the illegal acts, aimless executive orders and ramblings of a demented President who is not completely under the control of his handlers.

They [the Heritage Foundation leadership] are bragging that about 41% (how they've arrived at that figure is hard to determine, and hard to swallow) of the Christian nationalist Project 2025 has been implemented so far. What steps do we think they are willing to take to make sure Congress doesn't get in the way of implementing all of it, or abolishing it if the Democrats gain control in 2026?

Please go ahead and correct me if I am wrong, I'll be glad to be wrong about not seeing any Democrats point this out, be concerned about it or actively engaged in doing something about it. We are here now because Democrats weren't bold to take some risks to stop it from happening, and use the power they had. Why should we think anyone is doing anything about it now?

So much for making a big deal out of fighting against an anti-Christian bias in government, huh?

Reverend William Barber, pastor of Greanleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and Reverend Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, who associates himself with a movement known as "New Monasticism," and promotes Christian peacemaking, were arrested for praying in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. They were charged with "crowding, obstructing and incommoding," considered "demonstrating" inside the Capitol building.

You know, the U.S. Capitol. The building where thousands of MAGA supporters, following Trump's instructions to incite an insurrection to stop the counting and certifying of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, broke out windows, set off smoke bombs, defecated on the floor and smeared the feces on the walls, urinated, and generally desecrated and disrespected the building, attacking police officers and aiming at attacking its occupants.

That Capitol.

There is an anti-Christian bias in the government. It's the whole Trump administration. It is completely opposed to the practice of any Christian value, especially in a government building.

It is not possible to defend the Constitution by violating the Constitution.

Let's be clear, right wing conservatism has abandoned every value it once laid claim to defending, in order to try and hang on to power. Trump embodies every "sin" they once claimed to crusade against, including being a pathological liar about everything he talks about, an adulterer and misogynist, a convicted felony rapist, a business fraud and cheat, who's moral bankruptcy spits in the face and who's denial of respect for his primary constituency's religious beliefs and practice makes them pathetic hypocrites.

The moral high ground, along with the defense of, and fidelity to patriotic American values, and to the Constitution and the rule of law belongs to any part of the left that is opposed to Trump's regime and is doing all it can to resist supporting or enabling it.

He is subverting the Constitution and its provisions for separation of powers with his lawless executive orders and with the support of members of a Congress who are not upholding their oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. He has crossed lines against rulings of the Judicial branch. He has crossed a lot of lines using power he does not have, leaving those who are affected by his illegal actions scrambling to pay for attorneys and file lawsuits.

I just want to put a question out here, and see if there is someone who can come up with an answer. He has been ordered, by more than one federal court, to facilitate bringing home Kilmar Abrego Garcia, including getting him out of the prison camp in El Salvador, and bringing him back to the United States. He's been threatened by judges. "You must execute this order now." Then he doesn't do it, so another court comes along and says, "We mean it this time." And then again, "Come on, you have to do this, so when are you going to do it?"

And Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still in El Salvador.