Christian Right Rises to Save Ukraine as “Bible Belt” for Europe

April 18: Ukraine arms … Israeli abuses … Mayorkas impeachment … Maine gun control …

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Former Ukrainian Member of Parliament Pavlo Unguryan, right, appearing on yesterday’s Washington Watch with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, far right. (Screengrab / Washington Watch video.)

Pres. Joe Biden yesterday threw his support behind House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) bill to re-arm Ukraine, signaling to House Democrats to pass it, and probably causing a few House Republicans to oppose it now that they know Satan loves it.

Johnson (R-LA) yesterday said he’s going to allow a vote on re-arming and re-supplying Ukraine because it’s the right thing to do, even if it costs him the speakership. Johnson also released the text of the Ukraine legislation and other bills, including new military aid for Israel, and yet another border bill, which will likely pass unless D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump remembers that he opposes more-militarizing the border because he thinks it will help Biden.

The Ukraine vote is expected Saturday. Trump had insisted that the Ukraine aid not be a “gift,” and in Johnson’s plan nearly $10 billion, most of it to help Kyiv keep functioning, is structured as a loan. Hilariously — and possibly without Trump’s knowledge, since he may have slept through this part — in Johnson’s legislation, Ukraine’s debt can be canceled by the U.S. president. Who is Biden.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said yesterday that he’s convening House Democrats this morning to discuss all the new bills. Johnson will likely need Democratic votes to approve a set of rules under which the House will handle these bills, before they can be approved.

Like the Ukraine bill that already passed the Senate, the House version allocates about $61 billion to give to U.S. weapons makers in return for them sending ammo and other materiel to Ukraine. The Israel bill, meanwhile, includes the $9 billion for humanitarian aid in Gaza that progressives have pushed for, but it’s not clear whether they’ll sign on to a bill that helps Israel continue to make humanitarian aid necessary.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “If they condition the offensive portion of the [Israel] aid, that would be a conversation, but I can’t vote for more aid to go into Gaza and continue to kill people.”

Asked yesterday why it’s taken months to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, Johnson said it takes “a long time to socialize and build consensus when you have the smallest majority in U.S. history.” Now, you may be wondering what the shit he’s talking about…socializing…?!?

But remember, Johnson himself used to insist Ukraine aid could only pass if it came with money to more-militarize the U.S.-Mexico border. So what happened?

As I reported last week, Johnson met with evangelical Ukrainian leaders in January, and conservative Christian Americans and Ukrainians have been working to push the same narrative they told Johnson — a true narrative, I should note: that Russia is engaged in religious persecution. And that if Christians help Ukraine today, they’ll get to shape a right-wing, evangelical Ukraine tomorrow.

As I predicted (hey, I cop when I get it wrong, let me take the victory lap!) the evangelical chorus for arming Ukraine has grown fundamentally since my story came out. And the anti-LGBTQ+, anti-reproductive-rights voices are being elevated.

Here’s former Member of Parliament Pavlo Unguryan being interviewed yesterday by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, one of America’s most influential right-wing Christians. (h/t)

Perkins starts off by shooting down claims by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that Russia is defending Christianity. Russia, Perkins says, is “creating this propaganda that Ukrainians are persecuting Christians when in fact reports show that they [the Russians] are.”

In fact, they both are. Ukraine has gone after orthodox church leaders affiliated with Russia — for working to help Russia. But Russia has done far, far worse. And Perkins explains, with Unguryan’s confirmation, why Russia targets evangelicals, both at home and in captured Ukrainian territory.

“They tend to see evangelicals as agents for the west?” Perkins asks. “Yes,” Unguryan says. “They call evangelicals American CIA agents.” Which is my cue to remind people that Unguryan is a covert agent — for years he’s been working with the leaders of the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast to decide who from Ukraine gets to go to the event, and get access to U.S. politicians. 

The breakfast folks, known popularly as The Family, have a history of working with the State Department, and it’s by no means a stretch to question whether there have been CIA ties there, as well. (Doug Burleigh, The Family’s Russian point man, has spoken publicly about the CIA’s attempt to recruit him when he was a young man.)

But it’s not just defending Ukraine’s evangelicals they’re arguing for. In yesterday’s discussion, Unguryan and Perkins floated a new rationale for American Christians to support arming Ukraine.

“It’s to be the Bible Belt for the European continent, such a liberal continent,” Unguryan explains, touting “pro-family, pro-life issues,” euphemisms for anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-reproductive rights policies. (In fact, Ukraine is only 2% evangelical, and Unguryan’s efforts at anti-LGBTQ+ legislation largely failed.)

Nevertheless, Unguryan said, preserving Ukraine’s status as a counterweight to “liberal” Europe, is “one more spiritual reason” to support Ukraine. Please note that these are not the arguments evangelicals use when discussing these issues before a general audience.

Perkins asked Unguryan how his viewers — all of them but me right-wing Christians — can help. “Ask your congressmen to help us,” Unguryan said.

“Let’s create strategic partnership between Christians, evangelicals, conservatives in U.S. and Christians and conservatives in Ukraine to do our missionary ministry, global missionary ministry, and to protect our values.” Of course, neither Unguryan nor Perkins mentioned that they already have that partnership. (Perkins has his own ties to The Family and said he’s known Unguryan for “years.”)

Nevertheless, Perkins assured Unguryan, “We will stand with you.”

And Unguryan’s not the only player out there pushing the message.

One past prayer breakfast guest, Ruslan Kukharchuk, wrote in the Christian Post this week that Ukraine is a bastion of “religious freedom.” But he also signaled to his readers — all of them but me right-wing Christians — that defending Ukraine means defending far-right Christian “values.”

Kukharchuk notes, approvingly, that “Ukraine is one of the few countries in Europe where same-sex partnerships or ‘marriages’ are not legal.”

Touting his conservative bona fides, Kukharchuk says, “I lead a large movement ‘United Together for Family’ in Ukraine. For more than 20 years, our team has systematically worked to maintain and promote the natural order of things, to protect faith, family, and freedom.”

What Kukharchuk doesn’t mention, but I did in my report, is that Kukharchuk also led “Love Against Homosexuality.” His past remarks include “Homosexuality is a parasite of the society” and calls to “defeat the virus of homo-dictatorship.”

Unguryan has used similar language, calling homosexuality “a treatable disease,” and gay people pedophiles. He’s also one of the Ukrainians who met with Johnson in January.

And just yesterday, more than a dozen Christian leaders wrote to Johnson urging him to support religious freedom in Ukraine. Which he will, and there’s no evidence as of yet that Democrats are aware that Russia isn’t alone in wanting to shape Ukraine’s future.

U.S. Funding Israeli Military Units Recommended for Defunding by State Dept. Panel

The U.S. is continuing to fund Israeli and military police units, despite federal law prohibiting such aid for human-rights abusers, even after a State Dept. panel recommended defunding them, ProPublica reports.

According to unnamed sources, Secretary of State Tony Blinken has sat on the panel’s recommendations for months, allowing the money to keep flowing to these military/police units. And this, according to multiple State Department officials, has sent a message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Pres. Joe Biden’s rhetoric about human rights isn’t serious.

The bottom line: Because the U.S. itself won’t act on Israeli human-rights abuses, Israel doesn’t have to.

And it turns out that the cases being ignored pre-date Israel’s almost universally condemned response to the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. In other words, the State Dept. panel that reviews these allegations recommended defunding these units not because of their extreme, post-Oct. 7 response, but because of their run-of-the-mill conduct beforehand. Such as…

• Extrajudicial killings,

• Gagging and handcuffing an elderly Palestinian-American and leaving him for dead, and

• Allegedly torturing and raping a teenager suspected of throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks.

The recommendations to defund the accused units were sent to Blinken in December. 

Mayorkas Impeachment Deported from Senate

The Republican impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas got stopped in the Senate yesterday as surely as if it had been snagged by razor wire on the Rio Grande.

After waiting weeks to deliver their articles of impeachment to the Senate, House impeachment managers finally did so on Tuesday. Then yesterday, the senators were sworn in as impeachment jurors. Within just three hours, the Senate voted not to even hold a trial.

In two procedural votes — along party lines — the Senate ruled that the House articles didn’t satisfy constitutional requirements for impeachment.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it the “least legitimate, least substantive and most politicized impeachment trial ever.”

Personally, I think there would’ve been some benefit for democracy in holding the trial, and letting people see just how least legitimate and least substantive the impeachment was. And if anyone’s wondering why Republicans brought such a shitty case, it’s not just that D4FRFP Donald Trump wants to impeach any Democrat with border jurisdiction, it’s also that the Republican Party is now perhaps historically bad at thing-doing.

As I reported earlier this year, the House staffers who led the impeachment effort reflect a mix of the kind of political and theocratic incompetence that’s gradually (not really) swamping the Republican Party.

Some of the top impeachment staff were trained by theocrats. Another had Stephen Miller as a patron. And another cut his teeth on the Benghazi hearings, in which Hillary Clinton knocked their teeth in.

A State Passes Sweeping Gun Control without Being Devoured by NRA

Maine legislators have passed a sweeping set of gun-control laws which their Democratic governor is expected to sign while the National Rifle Association (NRA) sits with its thumb and a 9mm up its ass and does jack shit about it despite all their tough-guy bullshit rhetoric about how the government will never take their guns away, just like they did when New York State Attorney General Letitia James fucked their shit up and the NRA also didn’t do jack shit.

The new Maine laws were prompted by the Oct. 25 shooting spree, despite multiple warnings, by a gunman trained by terrorists the U.S. Army.

Among the new measures expected to be signed by Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME):

• Background checks on private gun sales,

• Waiting periods before sad, lonely men who want to buy a gun can actually get one,

• Making it a crime to sell guns to people barred from having guns for reasons other than being sad and lonely.

Republicans argued that it was “wrong” to push the legislation through based on last year’s shooting. In recent years, state Republican parties have preferred to push legislation based on unfounded fears of things that haven’t happened at all rather than on actual reality of real things that really happened.

Maine, of course, has a robust hunting culture, which is sad in its own way, but hunters have typically been less fearful of strong gun laws — at least in part because they don’t wanna get shot any more than the animals they kill do — and so their gun culture is marginally less about tough-guy bullshit and fear of home invasions by rampaging voting-rights rioters.

Campaign Watch

NEW JERSEY One reason you’ll hear Democrats say it’s important to have a viable Republican Party is that one-party control breeds corruption. I saw it in Democratic-controlled South Bend, IN, during my year reporting on then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg, now secretary of transportation. And as a resident of usually/mostly-Democratic controlled New Jersey, I’ve seen it here, too.

The absolute flagship of Democratic machine politics in Jersey for years has been “The Line,” the preferential placement of machine-endorsed/incumbent candidates on the state’s ballots.

In June’s Democratic primary, however, The Line will be gone. That’s what a federal appeals court decided yesterday, in a case brought by Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), the frontrunner in the race to replace Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who’s facing trial for alleged corruption and is also an avatar of the kind of machine politics that he’s perpetuated and that have benefited him (and his son!)

The ruling only applies to this year’s primary, but it’s a good indication that a permanent fix for The Line is only a matter of time.

bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'² Remember Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)? And how he used to be speaker? And how a handful of Republicans, with help from Democrats, took McCarthy’s gavel away?

It’s payback time.

Politico reports that a dark-money political action committee allied with McCarthy and run by a McCarthy ally and funded by McCarthy funders and hellbent on punishing McCarthy’s enemies is taking out ads against those Republicans.

The American Prosperity Alliance ads are coming as three McCarthy rebels in particular are facing primary challenges: Reps. Eli Crane (R-AA), Bob Good (R-VA), and Nancy Mace (R-SC). It’s either McCarthy’s revenge, or he just really hates people whose last names are also words.

They’re spending seven figures against those three and others (Democrats, too), and Politico says there’s more to come. Stay tuned! 

TCB 

I swear, nothing engages you people like screwing up state abbreviations. You’re still talking about it! And, I must confess, it’s okay. I’m the same way. I lose my shit at tiny errors, from me or others, because right now it seems really really important that journalism make sure to get every. little. thing. RIGHT.

Anyway, keep letting me know when I fuck up. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Spoutible or whatever new social-media platform is launching this week And if you appreciate the work I put in to get the little things (mostly) right and also to reveal not-so-little things like far-right evangelicals plotting to impose their values on Ukraine, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.

Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.

2. “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” translated from Klingon.