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sarahposner.bsky.social
Sarah Posner
@sarahposner.bsky.social
79K followers 660 following 9.7K posts
Investigative journalist, columnist, expert on the Christian right.

Author, Unholy. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605774/unholy-by-sarah-posner/

More info, links: https://www.sarahposner.com/portfolio
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sarahposner.bsky.social
More details on the Bish subpoena situation

wapo.st/3JPz0Dw
The subpoena also asked for any contact Bish may have had with Scott Strauss — a former Justice Department prosecutor who was pushed out of his job after attempting to launch investigations of baseless voter-fraud conspiracy theories tied to the 2020 election, according to three other people familiar with the matter, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects. It also sought any communication Bish had with Robert Bowes, a former banker who was a political appointee at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the first Trump administration but does not currently appear to have any formal ties to Pulte or FHFA.
November 20, 2025 at 11:43 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
On the left side, Yoram Hazony to Ross Douthat in the NYT, today. (www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/o...)

On the right side, a headline in the Washington Post, also today. (wapo.st/3Mbd9a6)
Now, that wasn’t a question for a number of years. People have accused Trump of antisemitism, but it turns out that that was pretty much hot air. Donald Trump gave a very, very clear answer to this. He likes having Jews in his coalition. Trump turns out to have probably the most pro-Jewish administration that there’s ever been. A U.S. Coast Guard vessel sails past the Statue of Liberty in New York earlier this year. (Getty Images) BREAKING NEWS U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols The military service, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has drafted a new policy that classifies such items “potentially divisive.”
November 20, 2025 at 6:36 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
👀

www.cnn.com/politics/liv...
What you need to know • Bombshell about grand jury: Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan took the stand briefly Wednesday, saying only two grand jurors reviewed the final indictment it handed up against former FBI Director James Comey. Comey’s attorney then argued Halligan’s testimony indicates, “there is no indictment” against his client.
November 19, 2025 at 6:00 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Ahem

www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
Only 20% of Americans - including just 44% of Republicans - approve of how Trump has handled the Epstein case, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. Some 70% of poll respondents - including 87% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans - said they believe the government is hiding information about Epstein's clients.
November 19, 2025 at 12:40 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11...
Speaker Mike Johnson, who for months sought to delay this vote on the resolution to release the Epstein files, just voted for the measure.
November 18, 2025 at 7:29 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Old guard Christian right leadership has been pretty quiet on Epstein files lately, but last week Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, close friend of Mike Johnson, and important ally in Trump I, wrote this:

washingtonstand.com/article/perk...
Before the August break, I asked Florida Congressman Greg Steube (R) whether public outrage over Epstein would fade. His response proved prophetic: “I don’t think this issue is going away,” he told me. “I think we’ll be dealing with this after the August recess.” He was right. And the only way to prevent this political storm from becoming a political disaster is transparency. Whatever the files contain — or don’t contain — the perception of a cover-up is eroding what little public trust remains. And that erosion isn’t limited to this administration; it’s corroding confidence in our government as a whole, which is why it should concern all of us. We would do well to remember Watergate. It wasn’t the break-in that brought down a presidency — it was the cover-up. That scandal shattered confidence in the Oval Office for a generation and diminished America. The lesson remains painfully relevant today: when leaders hide the truth, the people lose faith — not just in them, but in the very institutions they represent.
November 18, 2025 at 6:48 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Super smart observation from @pbump.com

www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
Given the past decade, it would be foolish to anticipate that Trump’s approval rating among Republicans will completely collapse — or even drop significantly. (The Epstein files, for example, will presumably not continue to be a salient element of the political discussion indefinitely.) But his approval rating isn’t really what will be important in the months ahead. Instead, it will be the extent to which Trump is able to direct his base’s anger and attention in the face of increasing competition from ambitious politicians and external media figures and influencers looking to carve out some of that power for themselves.
November 14, 2025 at 6:58 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
🫠
Another former Oath Keeper, Jessica Watkins, an army veteran who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for her role in the Capitol attack, says she hadn’t even heard about the relaunch when WIRED contacted her this week. “I have not heard of a relaunch, but most J6ers I know are trying to rebuild their lives,” says Watkins, who added that even if she wanted to rejoin, she would be unable to do so as she had her sentence commuted rather than being pardoned. “Felons are not allowed to be in the Oath Keepers or work with them.”
November 14, 2025 at 6:34 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
I keep thinking about this bit in @hunterw.bsky.social's piece on Rod Dreher's tete-a-tete with Vance, and how it connects with Christian Zionists being furious with Kevin Roberts. 🧵

talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jd-vanc...
In his Substack post, Dreher suggested his message to Vance was based on extensive conversations he had with other conservatives during his trip to Washington. He specifically quoted one “DC insider who said that in his estimation, ‘between 30 and 40 percent’ of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes.”
November 13, 2025 at 8:23 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
She also has a close relationship with ADF

www.typeinvestigations.org/investigatio...
But a paper trail shows Barrett would have not only known about ADF’s policy positions, but would have had to agree with them to speak at the seminar. Documents obtained by Type Investigations since that time show that Barrett, while a professor at Notre Dame Law School, spoke twice at Blackstone seminars, in 2013 and 2015, delivering a speech titled, “Construction and/or Interpretation: Navigating the Scylla & Charybdis.” ADF sent faculty emails regarding rules and logistics for the gathering, and thanking them for “your commitment to the Lord’s Kingdom work through Blackstone.” The materials included a confidential “lexicon” containing a list of phrases participants should and should not use when speaking. Participants were told to use the phrase “defending biblical, religious principles, convictions,” but not “bigotry, anti-tolerance;” and to use “demands of/by the homosexual legal agenda, demands of/by advocates of homosexual behavior, special privileges,” but not “homosexual/gay rights, hate-crimes legislation, anti-discrimination laws,” noting that Alan Sears, one of the co-founders of ADF, has written that “the goals and agenda of advocates of homosexual behavior are not ‘rights,’ but ‘demands.’” Similarly, ADF’s lexicon called for using “homosexual behavior,” not “homosexuality or gay,” because “homosexuality is a personal struggle” and “the word ‘gay’ was conceived by advocates of homosexual behavior to de-stigmatize their behavior and advance their agenda.” Because ADF frequently litigates Supreme Court cases, taking positions against abortion, LGBTQ rights, and church-state separation, it is likely that if Barrett, who is only 48, is confirmed, she will be hearing arguments from ADF attorneys for many years to come.
November 13, 2025 at 7:40 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
This is an incredible resource, you can word search it and find out, for example, that Michael Wolff, Epstein, and Steve Bannon emailed each other about the @miamiherald.com getting a @sidneyhillman.bsky.social award for its reporting on Epstein.
November 13, 2025 at 1:19 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Armando Iannucci couldn't write the script better.

via @davidkurtz.bsky.social @talkingpointsmemo.com

talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...
Damage Control Gone Wrong The tranche of emails released yesterday came from the Epstein estate in response to an August subpoena from the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee, which sought the emails as a way of tamping down right-wing outrage over the Trump DOJ not releasing its Epstein files. So this started as a damage control effort. Early Wednesday, House Democrats released three choice emails from the tranche. House Republicans accused them of cherry-picking the emails and in an apparent attempt to muddy the waters released the entire tranche of 20,000+ documents. Another effort damage control gone very wrong.
November 13, 2025 at 12:59 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Um

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...
Mr. Summers declined to comment on Wednesday beyond referring to previous remarks in which he acknowledged “regretting my past associations with Mr. Epstein.” (Mr. Summers is a contributing writer for The New York Times Opinion section.)
November 13, 2025 at 3:17 AM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Republicans have generally been steadfast in their support for the president, making their growing displeasure particularly notable. “I’m thoroughly disturbed by the government shutdown for 40-something days,” said Beverly Lucas, 78, a Republican and retired educator who lives in Ormond Beach, Florida, and compared Trump’s second term to “having a petulant child in the White House, with unmitigated power.” “When people are hungry, he had a party,” she said, referring to a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “I thought he seems callous.”
November 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
One of my favorite photos from No Kings is this clergyman taking a rest near the woman with the sandwich meme Free DC sign.
November 6, 2025 at 7:36 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
100%. Wrote about WV in Unholy. Having many deja vu moments recently, over incidents like this:
like Whitaker, “all but anonymous figures in the Federal bureaucracy,” who “toil away with titles such as executive assistant, personal assis tant, special assistant,” and are “among the earliest links in a network of young conservatives that is only now emerging in Washington.”83 Later, Whitaker spun off the Populist Forum into a new group he called Republican Action for the 90s, whose chief purpose was sup porting the Senate candidacy in Louisiana of former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke. Washington Repub licans steered away, and so did Whitaker’s old friends from the New Right. Still, Weyrich understood the Duke appeal.84 About Duke’s failed bid for Louisiana governor in 1990, Weyrich told the Heritage Foundation’s influential Policy Review journal that Louisiana voters “knew about his sympathies for Hitler, his racist past, and his asso ciation with the Ku Klux Klan.” But, he went on, Duke was “touching a chord and raising issues that people want to hear about and want dealt with.” A “substantial number” of Louisiana voters, he said, “feel so alienated from the political establishment that they’re willing to pick somebody as embarrassing and as scary as David Duke”—a can didate who, Weyrich said, raised important issues “of fundamental fairness and colorblindness in race relations, welfare and the destruc tion of families, unchecked crime.”85 In other words, as long as a white supremacist candidate didn’t wear a white hood or a swastika, Weyrich could get behind his ideas that were matters of “fundamen tal fairness.” (Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, p. 146)
November 6, 2025 at 1:30 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Severino was the director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services under Trump I
During a meeting with one Heritage employee who has since left, Roger Severino, the group’s vice president of domestic policy, allegedly suggested that she and her husband have six children, according to people familiar with the meeting. After a different meeting, a former intern raised Severino’s behavior with the Heritage human resources department, saying that he allegedly suggested during a mentorship session that she consider skipping law school in favor of motherhood, the people said. Heritage declined to comment on Morgan and Severino.
November 6, 2025 at 1:15 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
One of Roberts’s executive vice presidents and new chief of staff, Derrick Morgan, said in an all-staff meeting that he encouraged summer interns to “make yourselves marriageable and go out and seek marriage,” according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Post. In response to questions from The Post, Morgan pointed to a quotation from slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk encouraging people to get married and have children that Heritage displayed on its building. Such views also surfaced in the think tank’s research. A draft policy paper called for robust incentives to induce heterosexual married couples to have more children. Subsequent drafts suggested awarding straight married couples an additional “half vote” in federal elections for each of their children, according to people involved.
November 6, 2025 at 1:13 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Three employees wrote a letter to the board
The letter also accused Roberts of angry and profane behavior in meetings that the employee said made him or her “frightened for my physical safety.” The letter alleged that Roberts favored Catholic employees and humiliated female employees by saying single women without children had “no skin in the game.”
November 6, 2025 at 1:11 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Oh my god
Some staffers defended Roberts and pushed back against his critics. One wanted to know what would happen to those who agreed with Roberts and Carlson, and another likened employees talking to reporters to “Judas.” Roberts’s speechwriter, Evan Myers, suggested that Heritage’s attempts to address accusations of antisemitism would eventually mean he would be required to attend a Shabbat dinner, which he said would conflict with his faith.
November 6, 2025 at 1:07 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
????
A staff meeting Wednesday — Roberts’ latest attempt to quell a week of resignations and condemnations over his defense of Carlson — was marked with calls for him to resign and squabbling over whether Christian employees would be forced to participate in Jewish rituals.
November 6, 2025 at 1:01 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Meta is using revenues from advertising scams to fund its AI push

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show - www.reuters.com/investigatio...
The regulatory pressure on Meta to do more to fight scams occurs as the company, in a race with competitors, is pouring money into artificial intelligence and plans as much as $72 billion this year in overall capital expenditures. While acknowledging the spending is “a massive amount of capital,” chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has sought to reassure investors that Meta’s advertising business can bankroll it.
November 6, 2025 at 12:51 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
The biggest impact of last night’s result may be to collapse D.C.’s collective denial about the sheer scale of Donald Trump’s unpopularity. A mix of spectacle, aggression and speed have created this on-going pageant of Trump’s power. And he does have a lot of power. He can break things. A lot of things. Here and abroad. Like God imputed Abraham’s faith to him as righteousness, the political class has read Trump’s power, perversely, as popularity or at least political power. But that’s not how it works. These results tell a clear story: an electorate eager to send a message to Donald Trump and clip the wings of his untrammeled power.
November 5, 2025 at 6:04 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
The whole thing is great (of course) but this graf gets at how outrageous the Missing Mike act is, better than the news:
It’s been so freeing to step back from the constant, 24/7 cycle of downers. Whenever I hear about the news, which I do almost daily when taking questions from the media, it sounds pretty bad. The president asking for $230 million from the Department of Justice? Reports of ICE detaining U.S. citizens, including children? Threats on Hakeem Jeffries’s life by one of the pardoned January 6 insurrectionists? A jet, for the president, from Qatar? President Trump’s alarming, rambling speech to the generals at Quantico? A bailout for Argentina? Trump’s note to Jeffrey Epstein? A pardon for Changpeng Zhao, former CEO of Binance—whom Trump says he knows nothing about? Yikes, yikes, yikes! I’m so glad I made the choice not to follow the news anymore. I am a gray rock. I am a floating cloud. I am a happy little tree. The other week, I spent a whole day in a sensory-deprivation chamber. It was awesome! By the time I emerged, I felt like I almost had a great idea for a health-care plan. Almost.
November 4, 2025 at 8:31 PM
sarahposner.bsky.social
Poll: Frustration with Trump gives Democrats an opening a year before the midterms

www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...
November 4, 2025 at 2:55 PM