As the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial, popular memory naturally turns toward the triumphant moments in the Revolutionary War—moments like George Washington crossing the Delaware, the British surrender at Saratoga, and the decisive victory at Yorktown. Yet some of the greatest chapters in the story of America are not the Patriots’ victories, but the survival of their fragile experiment in the dark autumns of the late 1770s.

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Yesterday, for instance, was the anniversary of some of the lowest moments of the Revolution in 1776 and 1777, marked by crises of faith and governance. One saw Washington in despair, the other saw the physical eviction of the Continental Congress from its capital. Yet these low moments became the catalysts that forced a fractured alliance of thirteen colonies to organize their fledgling country under its very first constitution.

September 30, 1776: Washington Hits Rock Bottom.

By the final day of September 1776, General Washington was trapped in a nightmare. In the preceding weeks, the British had smashed the Continental Army at Long Island, seized Manhattan, and sent the Americans into a disorganized, demoralized retreat. Raw militia forces were panicking and fleeing the field at the mere sight of the redcoats. Supplies were virtually exhausted, and the army was on the verge of melting away as winter approached.

Pushed to his limits, Washington sat down on September 30, 1776, to write a deeply candid, private letter to his cousin, Mount Vernon estate manager Lund Washington. “In confidence I tell you that I was never in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born,” he wrote, confessing that he was “wearied to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances.” The Commander-in-Chief feared his reputation would be ruined by an army incapable of standing its ground, yet he knew he could not resign: “If I fall, I shall fall with a property that will give me no respectability… and yet, if I do not satisfy the public expectation, I must expect to be the scapegoat,” he said.

The general turned the remainder of his letter to providing meticulous instructions on how to repair the fireplaces and chimneys at Mount Vernon, an escape for a man who genuinely believed he might be facing the ruin of his cause.

September 30, 1777: The Continental Congress Is Exiled.

A year on, the crisis had reached through the military front lines and into the halls of government. Following a crushing victory at the Battle of Brandywine, the British Army under General William Howe successfully outmaneuvered Washington and marched into Philadelphia.

The capital had fallen. The delegates of the Continental Congress were forced to pack their legislative papers onto wagons and flee into the countryside in the dead of night. On September 30, after days of exhausting travel, the fugitive delegates crossed the Susquehanna River and reassembled in the small, frontier town of York, Pennsylvania. Gathering in the modest brick courthouse, they declared York the temporary capital of the United States. They were a government in exile, isolated and operating entirely on a handshake agreement between thirteen separate, sovereign states.

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The Articles of Confederation.

It was the sense of fragility created by this flight into exile, perhaps reinforced by the memory of Washington’s near-collapse a year prior, that altered the mindset of the delegates in York. For more than a year, Congress had bickered and stalled over how to formally bind the colonies together. Big states argued with small states over voting power; Northern merchants clashed with Southern planters over taxation and Western land claims.

But as the delegates looked around their cramped, temporary quarters in York, resolve hardened. They realized that a loose association of independent states could not survive a war against a global empire. They needed foreign alliances—specifically with France—and European powers would not sign treaties or lend millions to a rogue committee of politicians in hiding. They needed a legitimate, legally recognized government.

Spurred by the desperation of their situation, Congress threw themselves into the stalled draft of a national constitution. Working through the bitter cold of that autumn in York, the delegates compromised on state sovereignty, representation, and war powers.

Less than two months after arriving as fugitives, on November 15, 1777, the Congress officially adopted the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.

The Legacy of the Dark Autumn.

The Articles of Confederation were imperfect. To avoid creating a new tyranny like the British monarchy, the writers created a central government that was unable to levy taxes directly or easily enforce national laws. A decade later, it would be replaced by the current U.S. Constitution.

Nevertheless, the Articles were an enormous step forward out of the dark autumns of 1776 and 1777. They legally transformed a rebellious colonial alliance into a singular political entity recognized by international law. They provided the legal framework that kept the army funded, secured the French alliance, and guided the nation to victory at Yorktown.

The United States was not forged in a moment of easy triumph. It was hammered out in a drafty courthouse by fleeing politicians, under the protection of a Commander-in-Chief who was wearied to death, but refused to give up.

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President Donald J. Trump is making moves to tie congressional representation to the total number of citizens and legal immigrants living in each state, with illegal aliens discounted. New polling data reveals that a majority of Democrat voters are in favor of changing the current system.

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Under the current system, the number of seats in the House of Representatives for each state is determined by the state’s population, including not just citizens and legal immigrants, but also illegal aliens. Crucially, this gives extra seats to states with high concentrations of illegals and noncitizens, which are often centered in Democrat sanctuary cities.

A new Census Bureau proposal, released on September 10, seeks to radically change the existing structure by counting only citizens and lawful permanent residents when determining a state’s population for the purpose of congressional apportionment in the next census in 2030.

President Trump has been arguing for changes to the system since his first term, noting in 2020 that the current system essentially encourages and rewards states that allow violations of U.S. immigration law by counting illegal aliens in the census and increasing their power in Congress.

Under the 14th Amendment, congressional seats are detemined by the “whole number of persons in each State” but, the Trump administration has consistently argued that while in practice that has counted noncitizens and illegals, the amendment itself “does not specifically define which persons must be included for the purposes of apportionment and requires only that Representatives be apportioned according to what has long been understood to mean the ‘inhabitants’ of each State.”

Even Democrat Voters Support the Change. 

Polling released on September 30 by McLaughlin & Associates reveals that of 1,000 likely voters, 65 percent support President Trump’s proposed changes to the congressional apportionment base. The highest support, 80 percent, comes from Republicans, but even a majority of Democrats, 54 percent, agree with the changes.

The results of the polling also revealed that 75 percent of voters believe that those responding to the census should indicate whether or not they are citizens of the United States, a question that would make it much easier to allocate congressional seats under Trump’s proposed changes.

 Democrat Politicians Admit Counting Illegals Benefits Them.

Some Democrat politicians have been quite open and frank about how counting illegal aliens in their areas benefits them in the form of redistricting.

In 2021, Democratic New York Rep. Yvette Clarke made a case for resettling Haitian migrants in her district, saying, “I need more people in my district, but just for redistricting purposes,” during a meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Democrat Yvette Clarke said the quiet part out loud. They want to flood our country with illegals just for redistricting. This is why they want open borders! pic.twitter.com/VxtRoe23Yw

— Heritage Action (@Heritage_Action) April 19, 2026

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How Trump’s Reform Could Affect the States.

Given that the changes will only be made to the 2030 census, Trump’s policy will have no immediate effect on Congress and will have no impact on the upcoming midterm elections in November. However, projections have been estimated by redistricting researcher Jonathan Cervas, who published an independent study suggesting that California, Illinois, and Texas would each lose a seat, while Michigan, Tennessee, and Wisconsin would each gain a seat.

Cervas states that overall, the policy would likely benefit Republicans, as the seats gained are in states that voted for President Trump in 2024, even though, because of its high population of illegal aliens, the Republican stronghold of Texas would lose a seat. California, projected to lose a seat according to Cervas’s projections, was already set to lose seats by 2030 due to population trends, with many leaving the state in recent years due to high taxes, housing costs, and a generally high cost of living.

A citizen-only policy, which goes beyond the Trump administration’s proposal to apportion seats based on citizens and legally resident foreigners, would have far different results, and give Republicans a far clearer advantage, according to projections from the American Redistricting Project.

Under a citizen-only counting system, blue states would lose the most seats, with California losing six seats instead of one, New York losing two, Illinois losing one, and New Jersey and Rhode Island each losing one. Florida and Texas would gain two seats, and Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona would all gain a seat each.

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The Falkland Islands are British. They have been British for 260 years. Yet this has not stopped successive governments in Argentina from repeatedly claiming sovereignty of the southern Atlantic islands. President Javier Milei has become just the latest Argentine leader to claim the islands, referred to as “Las Malvinas” in Argentina, at the latest United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan.

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Milei’s newest claim to the islands includes threats of international legal action over the development of an offshore oilfield named Sea Lion, which lies north of the islands and nowhere near Argentina’s national waters, more than 400 miles from the Argentine coast. Discovered in 2010, the oilfields are currently being developed, with extractions of around 50,000 barrels of oil per day scheduled to begin in 2028.

“If in 2 weeks the United Kingdom does not halt the illegitimate exploitation, we will go to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. THE MALVINAS ARE ARGENTINE, and they are defended with facts, not words,” Milei wrote on X on September 28.

Yet despite Milei’s claims, the history of the Falklands, from the first European to discover them until today, shows they are fundamentally British in character.

Found By an Englishman and Named By an Englishman, After An Englishman.

English navigator John Davis is widely considered the first European to ever set eyes on the Falklands in 1592, although it was not until nearly a hundred years later, in 1690, that English captain John Strong actually landed on the remote islands. Strong was the one to name them the Falklands, after Anthony Cary, the 5th Viscount Falkland, who served as a Member of Parliament at the time.

Settlements on the island were not established until the latter part of the 18th century, with France establishing Port Louis on East Falkland in 1764. Britain asserted possession of West Falkland for King George III in 1765, establishing Port Egmont a year later. France later gave up its settlements in the Falklands, handing them over to Spain, which managed to briefly expel the British in 1770. The British returned shortly after, but left again in 1774 due to economic issues.

Argentina, during this time, did not exist as an independent state, and was still part of the enormous Spanish Empire in Latin America. Spain abandoned the Falklands in 1811, and Colonel David Jewett, an American-born mercenary, claimed them for the United Provinces of the River Plate in 1820. The United Provinces included modern-day Argentina, but it was not an exact predecessor state, including portions of other modern-day countries, including all of Uruguay and southern Bolivia.

Britain maintained that the Falklands remained British and sent a warship to the islands in 1833, expelling the Argentine military garrison that had been placed there a year prior. Argentina has claimed that Britain also expelled civilians, but British sources indicate that the majority of the just 30 or so people living in the Falklands at the time stayed there.

An agreement was signed by both Argentina and Britain in 1850 settling the differences between the two nations over issues like the Falklands. This peace was to last nearly a hundred years, with only one diplomatic complaint by Argentina about the islands in 1888. Britain’s rule was unquestioned, and virtually the entire resident population of the Falklands was British.

A Failing State Declares a Hopeless War.

After the Second World War, aside from giving refuge to some of the most notorious members of Hitler’s Third Reich, Argentina became plagued with government instability. This occurred particularly following the death of President Juan Peron in 1974. Peron, who is still seen as a major political figure in Argentina and a source of inspiration for many of its presidents, had been overthrown in 1955, but returned to power in 1973 after almost two decades in exile, only to die a year later.

By the 1980s, the country was no longer ruled by a charismatic strongman like Peron, but a military junta of assorted generals and admirals who had overthrown Peron’s wife, Isabel Peron, in 1976. Under the junta, Argentina’s economy deteriorated sharply, with runaway inflation and a severe recession in 1981.

On April 2, 1982, seeking to shore up support, the junta decided to invade the Falkland Islands.

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The Royal Navy Sails to Victory.

Shortly after the Argentine invasion, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 502, demanding that Argentina leave the islands. When this was ignored, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dispatched a large naval task force on a voyage of around 8,000 miles. The British declared an exclusion zone around the islands, warning the Argentine navy to stay out of it.

On May 2, the British nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror fired three Mark 8 torpedoes at the Argentinian cruiser ARA Belgrano, a former American naval vessel from the Second World War. Two struck the ship, sinking her and killing 323 sailors on board, a full half of Argentina’s total military deaths during the conflict. While some argued that the ship had not been in the exclusion zone, the British navy countered, saying the Belgrano had been part of a pincer movement against British forces. Regardless, the sinking led to Argentina removing nearly all of its surface fleet from the theatre for the remainder of the war. In retaliation, the Argentinians sank the British destroyer HMS Sheffield on May 10, using French-made Exocet missile systems. Twenty British sailors died.

British forces finally landed on the Falklands proper later in May, making amphibious landings from May 21 to 25. On May 28, British forces fought a decisive battle at Goose Green, and later surrounded the Falklands’ occupied capital, Port Stanley, on June 11. Just days later, on June 14, Argentine forces surrendered, returning the islands to Britain and liberating the local population.

On July 3, 1982, Prime Minister Thatcher addressed the victory, saying:

When we started out, there were the waverers and the fainthearts. The people who thought that Britain could no longer seize the initiative for herself.

The people who thought we could no longer do the great things which we once did. Those who believed that our decline was irreversible—that we could never again be what we were.

There were those who would not admit it—even perhaps some here today—people who would have strenuously denied the suggestion but—in their heart of hearts—they too had their secret fears that it was true: that Britain was no longer the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world.

Well they were wrong. The lesson of the Falklands is that Britain has not changed and that this nation still has those sterling qualities which shine through our history.

The Men (and Women) Who Cry ‘Malvinas.’

Since the British victory in the Falklands War, multiple Presidents of Argentina have addressed the Falkland Islands and their sovereignty. This tends to occur when Argentina faces severe domestic problems, such as hyperinflation or a recession. Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the best-known, claiming the Falklands were a “colonialist enclave” in 2012. Fernández went even further in 2011, convincing other Mercosur (a trading bloc of South American nations) members to refuse to allow vessels with the Falkland Islands flag into their ports.

The escalation from President Kirchner was the greatest since the buildup to the Falklands War, and in response, Britain took steps to put an end to the question of sovereignty: they asked the Falklanders what they wanted.

The Falklanders Choose Britain.

In March 2013, the Falkland Islands held a vote on whether the residents wanted to remain part of Britain as an Overseas Territory. With a turnout of 92 percent, the vote was 1,513 to three. This  99.8 percent vote to remain British remains one of the most lopsided votes on such a question in the 21st century.

“I’m very happy. Everyone has come together to express ourselves. I think this is massively significant. It’s important to show how much we want to stay British,” Falklander Kyle Buiggs said at the time. Another local resident, Barry Nielsen from Stanely, said, “We are British and that’s the way we want to stay.”

Argie Bargie.

In response to the referendum vote, President Kirchner at the time simply said that the views of the island residents did not matter. The current President, Javier Milei, believes the same thing, and has explicitly stated the vote does not count, accusing the Falklanders of being colonists.

As with the junta, Milei’s rallying cry of “Las Malvinas” comes amid economic crisis and declining popularity at home. For Milei, like so many other Argentinian leaders, the islands are just a distraction from failure.

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On September 25, Tanweer “Tan” Ikram, Deputy Chief Magistrate of England and Wales, refused bail to Daniel Thomas, the anti-immigration activist better known as Danny Tommo, at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court. Thomas has pleaded not guilty to criminal damage over an allegation that he punctured a small boat used by organized criminals to ferry migrants across the English Channel. The migrants had already left it, with only one rescue worker who appeared to be in no danger still aboard. Nevertheless, Ikram said he was “satisfied there is a real possibility of an immediate custodial sentence in this case.” The trial is listed for March 2027.

With far more serious criminals, many of them migrants, being granted bail on a regular basis, the decision reignited the longstanding debate in Britain over “two-tier” justice, with Ikram, in particular, often being accused of treating suspects perceived as politically incorrect or right-leaning with disproportionate harshness. Significantly, he is one of the most senior magistrates in the country, a prominent diversity official, a member of the commission that selects judges, and an adviser to a Pakistani organization that attacked Reform MP and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman for calling out Pakistani grooming gangs.

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Beginnings.

Tanweer Ikram was born in Slough, west of London, to Pakistani parents. A 2018 profile in Counsel magazine, unearthed by independent journalist Steven Edginton, reveals that he grew up partly in Pakistan and then had to “re-integrate during his primary school years.”

His early career was not promising: he switched to law from engineering, graduated with a lower second-class degree, and initially failed to pass the Bar. He entered the legal profession eventually, however, admitting to using his ethnicity as “a bit of an advantage.”

Soon after reaching the bench, he became the Deputy Lead Diversity and Community Relations Judge. Under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, he was made a CBE—Commander of the Order of the British Empire—“for services to judicial diversity.” In December 2023, still under the Conservatives, he joined the Judicial Appointments Commission for a three-year term, allowing him to help select new judges.

EXCLUSIVE: Tan Ikram, deputy chief magistrate, is an adviser to a Pakistani organisation that referred to “so-called ‘grooming gangs’” and called Suella Braverman’s comments about British-Pakistani gangs “reprehensible”.

My investigation reveals:

• He targeted Bradford to…

— Steven Edginton (@StevenEdginton) September 30, 2026

“We Need You.”

On July 15, 2024, speaking to Women in Law Initiative Pakistan, Ikram described a recruitment trip to Bradford, a city in northern England known for its large Pakistani population. “Bradford is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the UK. [There are] lots and lots and lots of Pakistani practitioners in practice in that area, and I specifically went there to reach out to that particular group of lawyers,” Ikram said, adding: “I’ve worked with the British Pakistani Professionals Forum… to try to reach out to Muslim Pakistani background lawyers to try to encourage them to apply.”

The British Pakistan Foundation lists him as an adviser, and in a 2021 foundation webinar, he stated: “The judiciary has to represent the community it serves. We want there to be true diversity in the judiciary and as an old adage goes, we need you.”

Significantly, the foundation’s public line on Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs in Britain is highly contentious. In 2023, after Suella Braverman, then Home Secretary, spoke about the involvement of British-Pakistani men in group sexual exploitation of girls, the foundation objected to what it called “so-called ‘grooming gangs.’” In an open letter to then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, it wrote: “The divisive and dangerous way in which the Home Secretary is seeking to portray all British Pakistani males and insinuating that the community is complicit in their actions is reprehensible.”

Fiona Goddard, a survivor of Pakistani-led grooming gangs, told Edginton: “I find Tan Ikram’s association with the British Pakistan Foundation deeply concerning as a survivor of Pakistani grooming gangs.” She added: “To call them ‘so-called grooming gangs’ is an insult to all survivors. Why is a senior judge connected to such a partisan group?”

Ikram is also listed as visiting faculty at the Pakistan College of Law. At an event in Pakistan in October 2018, he complained to an audience of Pakistani politicians and jurists about media attacks on the judiciary for its rulings against Brexit during the EU withdrawal negotiations, complaining, “One cannot underestimate the power of [the] media, but problematically the Government stayed silent, giving into the right of [the] media’s freedom of speech.”

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‘Two-Tier’ Tan.

Ikram is most infamous for what his critics perceive as “two-tier” sentencing, handing down draconian punishments to alleged racists while treating ethnic minority terrorists with a light touch.

In February 2024, he handed non-custodial sentences to three women convicted of a terrorism offense for glorifying Hamas paragliders after the October 7 massacres in Israel. “You crossed the line, but it would have been fair to say that emotions ran very high on this issue,” he told them, confirming that he had “decided not to punish” the defendants.

Soon afterward, it emerged that he had ‘liked’ a strident pro-Palestinian post on his LinkedIn account. He received a formal misconduct warning in June 2024.

In December 2024, he handed a suspended sentence to Victoria Thomas Bowen after she pleaded guilty to assault by beating and criminal damage for throwing a milkshake over Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party. Farage said at the time, “We now live in a country where you can assault a Member of Parliament and not go to prison. The latest example of two-tier justice.”

In August 2023, Ikram acquitted transgender activist Sarah Jane Baker of intentionally encouraging an offense. Baker had told a rally: “If you see a TERF [Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist], punch them in the fucking face.” Ikram insisted that it was possible Baker had been seeking attention and publicity without intending anyone to act on the words.

Meanwhile, in June 2022, he handed a former police officer James Watts a 20-week prison sentence for sharing allegedly racist memes in a private WhatsApp group.

Setting the Tone.

As Deputy Lead Diversity and Community Relations Judge, Ikram helps oversee a national network of diversity judges. In 2018, he cited Labour lawmaker David Lammy’s review of racial disparity in the criminal justice system and asked: “Why is it that a country which prides itself on diversity, equality and justice has so many people of colour languishing in prisons?” He added: “We don’t reflect the face of the society that we serve.”

He has also organized meetings between Islamic clerics and judges, and discussed his Islamic faith in official channels.

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Ikram holds a leadership rank in the magistrates’ courts, a seat on the commission that chooses judges, and an advisory role at a foundation that downplays “so-called” grooming gangs. Coupled with his seemingly unequal treatment of the people appearing before him, many will question whether he is truly suitable for the bench.

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Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham has told the Labour Party’s annual conference that a return to full European Union membership is back on the table. “We could go all the way,” he said, alleging that Brexit had done “more harm than good.” Full EU membership means a return to the EU’s Free Movement migration regime, in which virtually any EU citizen can move to any EU country with almost no restrictions or vetting. The National Pulse has modeled the likely impact of this on immigration, and the results are staggering across high, middle, and low EU immigration scenarios.

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The Starting Point.

Significantly, the immigration status quo is already unmanageable, even after the unprecedented inflows of the “Boriswave” years under the former Conservative Party government. For the year ending December 2025, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) provisionally recorded 813,000 long-term arrivals and net immigration of 171,000. Non-EU+ nationals account for almost all of the inflow at present, with net negative migration from the EU+ (the EU plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland, which are also party to the Free Movement migration regime).

Compared with staying outside the EU, modeling suggests that, in a middle EU immigration scenario, Britain would take in an extra 82,000 migrants a year by year five, net, if it rejoined the bloc. Over ten years, the additional inflow totals 714,000. The high-immigration scenario is larger still: 200,000 extra migrants a year by year five, and 1.76 million extra over a decade.

This means moves by Germany to naturalize migrants, and the pathway to citizenship created by Spain’s amnesty for illegal immigrants, for instance, could open up Britain to significant additional immigration of EU migrants who were originally from countries outside the bloc.

The Numbers.

*Ranges span the middle 80 percent of 20,000 modeled simulations. They are not statistical confidence intervals.

The middle scenario may be the most important to consider. It shows total immigration climbing toward 944,000, with net immigration hitting 253,000. That is the “reasonable center” for Britain back in the EU, not an extreme scenario.

The high scenario—and immigration to Britain is usually significantly higher than projected—shows more than 1.1 million arrivals in a single year, with net immigration hitting 371,000, an extra 200,000 people a year against Britain’s baseline outside the EU.

Easier availability of EU migrant workers may result in the number of non-EU migrant workers falling, as accounted for in the low EU immigration, strong replacement of non-EU migrants scenario. However, if employers keep hiring from outside Europe at today’s pace and regain easy access to a large EU labor pool, the two streams will stack. That is how a country already taking in 627,000 non-EU immigrants a year ends up facing seven-figure inflows.

Importantly, there is scant evidence of increases in EU immigration causing non-EU immigration to fall in the years prior to the Brexit referendum, with an increase in EU immigration from roughly 201,000 to 284,000 from 2013 to 2016 being accompanied by a rise in non-EU immigration from 248,000 to 289,000 over the same period.

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The 2026 midterm elections are giving rise to a new political force in America: an explicitly woke form of so-called Christianity, with over a dozen Democrat candidates directly linked to ultra-progressive churches, some of whom are pastors themselves.

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The candidates range from major Senate races to various House seats across the country, and while many come from different Christian denominations, they all support a radically progressive agenda that is making some denominations, primarily mainline Protestant churches, politically louder even as their congregation numbers fall.

The Woke ‘Christian’ Candidates.

James Talarico, the Democrat nominee for the Senate in Texas against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, is a former Presbyterian seminarian and perhaps the most high-profile woke “Christian” candidate in the midterm elections. Talarico has made a number of bizarre and controversial statements in recent years regarding his interpretation of the faith.

Comments from Talarico include statements that Allah and other religious concepts, such as the pagan “Great Spirit,” are equal to Jesus Christ as a pathway to God. This contrasts starkly with Christian scripture, with Christ stating in John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me.”

The Texas Democrat has made a number of positive statements on Islam, in particular, stating that “Islamic mystics” have shaped his Christian faith, such as the Sufi Muslim poet Rumi. The St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, which Talarico attends, explicitly supports progressive causes, funding pro-abortion groups and LGBT children’s camps. The pastor of the church has even declared that he does not believe in Christ’s literal resurrection, a key pillar of the Christian faith.

Talarico has previously contended that the Bible does not explicitly address abortion on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2025. According to Talarico, the Annunciation, which saw the Archangel St. Gabriel visit the Blessed Virgin Mary, with the latter choosing to accept her role as the Mother of Jesus Christ, justifies abortion because Mary was allowed to choose.

Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico’s pastor (PCUSA) preaches during his Easter sermon that Jesus NEVER rose bodily from the dead and that he does NOT believe in a literal resurrection. pic.twitter.com/Z6ZH7hMJXg

— Protestia (@Protestia) September 21, 2026

Adam Hamilton, a woke megachurch pastor in Kansas, is also looking to win a race in the U.S. Senate, facing incumbent Senator Roger Marshall (R). Hamilton was the senior pastor at America’s largest United Methodist church and, in prior sermons, told parishioners to repent for eating beef and driving their cars because of climate change. Significantly, the beef industry is one of Kansas’ largest employers, providing thousands of jobs and making tens of billions of dollars for the state.

Sarah Trone Garriott, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in Iowa, is an active Lutheran pastor who has been sharply criticized by her Republican opponent, Representative Zach Nunn, who told WHO NewsRadio 1040 in Iowa that while in seminary, Trone Garriott had presided over a wedding for a pair of self-professed Satanists. Nunn claimed that Trone Garriot joked about the affair, saying, “She even joked about picking Bible verses so the Satanists could feel more at home.”

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How the Denominations Went Woke.

Mainline Protestantism consists of the United Methodist Church (UMC), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Episcopal Church (TEC), the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA), American Baptist Churches USA, the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). These are the primary denominations that have championed woke ideology in recent years, but their progressive history often goes back decades.

As early as 1972, the UCC ordained its first openly homosexual minister, William R. Johnson. While LGBT advocacy remained largely marginal across the other denominations, things changed rapidly at the turn of the 21st century, with the Episcopal Church ordaining its first openly homosexual bishop in 2003. In 2005, the UCC declared that marriage was between two people regardless of their gender, endorsing same-sex marriage. The ELCA opened ministry to “partnered” homosexual clergy in 2009. The Presbyterians (PCUSA) opened ordination to homosexuals in 2011, followed by approval of same-sex marriage in 2015. Finally, the United Methodists, who had declared homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching” in 1972, removed all prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy in 2024.

Roman Catholics, too, have seen woke movements within the Church, though unlike the mainline Protestants, the Vatican has not supported openly homosexual clergy or same-sex marriage or taken institutional stands on other woke issues. The American Jesuit priest Father James Martin is one of the most high-profile Catholic priests advocating for LGBT issues, though he does not have any formal institutional power in the Church. Fr. Martin has connections to many Democrats, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and once stated that he believed Buttigieg and his homosexual partner were married, despite the Catholic church not recognizing same-sex marriage as legitimate.

Immigration, however, is an issue that unites many of the mainline Protestants with progressive Roman Catholics and many Roman Catholic charities, which have been given billions of dollars by past Democratic regimes like the Biden government. That money was later cut by the second Trump administration.

Mainline Protestant pastors have been even more direct in their opposition to President Donald J. Trump’s policies on immigration, with many openly opposing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions and operations. Reverend David Black, senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, participated in protests against ICE in September of 2025, when he was shot with pepper balls by federal agents. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin argued at the time that Black was part of a protest that was blocking federal government vehicles and that they had been ordered off federal property repeatedly.

Woke pastor preaches ROBOCOP-themed service to protest the militarization of ICE and government efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants. pic.twitter.com/5NJ60MKA8z

— Protestia (@Protestia) June 27, 2025

Woke Churches Are Loud, But Dying.

While the new breed of ultra-progressive political Christianity appears to be getting louder and louder, the number of people actually attending progressive churches is suffering a sharp decline. Mainline Protestantism in America has seen its attendance fall rapidly for years, dropping from 18 percent of America’s adult population in 2007 to just 11 percent in 2023-2024.

In the 1970s, mainline Protestants accounted for nearly a third of the population.

Among the individual denominations, some of the most progressive, like the United Methodists, have lost over two million members from 1990 to 2020, a decline of 29 percent.

Others, like the ECLA, have also lost well over a million parishioners.

Could Christian Wokeism Triumph in 2026?

Traditionally, the Evangelical movement and much of the “religious right” has been a reliably Republican voting bloc. Woke Christianity, however, is turning into the ultra-progressive Democrat antithesis to traditional Christian politics. While the number of people attending woke churches is clearly declining, their influence appears to be growing, and if representatives like James Talarico and megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton win their Senate races in November, that influence could spread further.

Instead of a Church that calls on politicians to ground their morality and policies on the Bible and Christian tradition, woke Christianity takes the opposite approach, using existing progressive political beliefs to reinterpret Christianity to suit ideological leftism.

This is causing many voters to ask, “Is woke Christianity really Christianity at all?”

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The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam has warned on Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room show that Britain is now struggling with a deeply embedded “fifth column,” arguing that mass migration, restrictions on speech, and a two-tier justice system have left many Britons afraid to openly challenge the transformation of their communities.

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Kassam said there is “multi-tiered policing and multi-tiered justice going on in the United Kingdom,” adding that the issue extends beyond the preferential treatment of Islam and minorities to “how white people are being treated as second-class citizens in their own home nations at the moment.” Complaints against “two-tier policing” have become a growing political controversy in Britain in recent years.

Kassam argued that Britain’s speech laws also contribute to an atmosphere in which people think twice before discussing immigration, Islam, or some political leaders in a negative way. “It is one of the most stifling environments to speak that I’ve ever experienced,” he said, explaining that he is “certainly aware” that something he writes could potentially be construed in a way that results in criminal prosecution while he is in England.

Those concerns exist against a real legal backdrop: Britain’s Malicious Communications Act and Communications Act criminalize certain communications deemed offensive. Freedom of Information data reported in 2025 indicated police were making more than 12,000 arrests annually under the two laws.

Britain has also established 150-meter “safe access zones” around abortion facilities where conduct intended or likely to influence someone accessing so-called abortion services can be criminalized. Significantly, government guidance says that, depending on the circumstances, this can include silently praying inside your head.

Kassam said the larger danger is what happens after alien communities become sufficiently entrenched that assimilation and political integration become increasingly difficult. “I think that there is a fifth column in this country, Steve, that we’re not allowed to talk about, we’re not allowed to mention,” he told Bannon.

Kassam connected that warning directly to his 2017 book No Go Zones, for which he traveled through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods in the likes of Britain, France, Belgium, Sweden, and later Dearborn and Hamtramck in Michigan. Recalling a warning he attributed to the late Christopher Hitchens, Kassam argued that “if you allow these people into your midst, this fifth column into your midst, it is incredibly difficult to cut that cancer out of your society once the roots have taken hold.”

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