Trump to Recite Eyebrow-Raising Scripture at Bible Reading Event

President Trump is reading a very notable passage, as the separation of church and state crumbles further.

President Trump is not exactly known for his piousness, but one Bible verse seems to have struck his fancy—probably because it was used by evangelical Christians to sing his praises while they tried to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021.

In the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 consists of God responding to a prayer from Solomon, a king of ancient Israel. God promises Solomon he will bless his temple as long as he and his people are not idolaters. As is common in the Old Testament, God’s message rings with both love and fury. But verse 14, the most famous bit of the passage, is positive: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

As part of a weeklong “America Reads the Bible” event organized by the White House and the election-denying evangelical group Christians Engaged, a prerecorded video of Trump reading 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 will air at 6 p.m. E.T. Tuesday evening. Remember the separation of church and state? That was nice.

Trump reading the passage will thrill what’s left of the January 6-ers. During the Capitol riot, Couy Griffin—the founder of “Cowboys for Trump,” a fan club that rode on horseback to Trump’s political events—recited verse 14 over the crowd.

According to the Christian Post, Trump’s association with the passage goes back even further, to 2016. After his unlikely election win, evangelist Anne Graham Lotz—Billy Graham’s daughter—used the verse to claim that God had responded to America’s prayers.

MS NOW opinion writer Ja’han Jones called it “predictably Trumpian” that the president is reciting a passage that his supporters have used to heap praise on him. As the passage is over 400 words long, The New Republic would also like to note that it will be interesting to see whether Trump gets bored halfway though and starts talking about something else.

DOJ Launches Criminal Probe Into Southern Poverty Law Center

The prominent civil rights group warned it could face criminal charges for its past use of paid informants on extremist organizations.

The Southern Poverty Law Center revealed Tuesday that it’s under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for previously using paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

The nonprofit public interest group announced that the Trump administration appears to be preparing a case against the organization or some of its employees.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.

Fair said that the SPLC had used informants to monitor the threat of violence inside extremist organizations, and had frequently shared its findings with local and federal law enforcement.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The Montgomery-based SPLC was founded in 1971 in order to combat white supremacist groups after the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the nonprofit’s purview has been nationally perceived (at least on the right) as less and less acceptable, in the decades since. Conservative politicians and personalities have railed against the advocacy group, claiming that its work—which includes tracking extremist groups, promoting tolerance, and kneecapping bigotry through litigation—is inherently partisan and overly leftist.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced last year that his agency would sever ties with the SPLC, ending a long-standing research arrangement between the nonprofit and the federal government.

The investigation has reignited concerns that Donald Trump is trying to weaponize the Justice Department during his second term, morphing the agency into his personal law firm in order to harm or attack his dissidents and critics.

DHS Creating Smart Glasses for ICE to ID People in Real-Time

The Department of Homeland Security is developing smart glasses for ICE, according to budget documents.

The Department of Homeland Security is developing smart glasses that would allow federal agents to identify people using biometric data in real time.

Journalist Ken Klippenstein, citing a budget request from DHS, reports that these devices, slated to be released by September 2027, build on existing smart glasses that include video cameras and heads-up data displays. They would be able to pull from the federal government’s archives of biometric data, including facial recognition, walking gait, and iris patterns.

“The project will deliver innovative hardware, such as operational prototypes of smart glasses, to equip agents with real-time access to information and biometric identification capabilities in the field,” the document states. The project is under the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate, the........

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