Wenhold led the class through a lesson that discussed how the country was abandoning the #FoundingFathers’ egalitarian vision— initially limited to #WhiteMales —of a govt that existed to protect #Americans’ “inalienable rights” as individuals. Instead, the govt was providing special rights & benefits to groups based on their race, class, sexual orientation & countless other categories.

#Trump #radicalization #extremism #law #politics #PatriotAcademy #MAGA

The #PatriotAcademy classes urged participants to run for local office, especially #SchoolBoard, & to fight back against the “secular leftists” & “Marxists” in their country & communities. In Nov, Wenhold won a seat on the Palisades School Board. The position was unpaid, but it gave her a little bit of power. She wanted to use it to make sure students…were taught #America’s “true history” as a #Christian nation, as she had come to understand it.

#Trump #radicalization #extremism #law #politics

It’s a message sounded in recent years from church pulpits, #conservative think tanks, right-leaning colleges & the #1776Commission report, released in the final, chaotic days of #Trump’s presidency. This sense of loss has become a central part of Trump’s 2024 campaign & his outreach to conservative #Christians. Like his #MAGA movement, the #PatriotAcademy was calling for a restoration.

#radicalization #extremism #law #politics

#ThePatriotAcademy, [is] a #Texas-based *#nonprofit* whose mission is to “restore our Constitutional Republic” & the “Biblical principles that cause” the #UnitedStates “to thrive.”

The #PatriotAcademy’s classes were tapping into a growing #fear among some #evangelical #Christians that their faith & what they saw as its rightful place at the center of #American culture & govt were under siege.

#trump #radicalization #extremism #law #politics
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/17/patriot-academy-biblical-citizenship-school-board/

The education of a true believer

Linda Wenhold absorbed the Patriot Academy’s message that America is falling apart as it drifts from its biblical roots. Then she won a local school board seat.

The Washington Post