An influential grassroots group with close ties to Texas Republican lawmakers is hosting a conference next month that encourages its attendees to embrace Christian nationalism and resist a Democratic campaign “to rid the earth of the white race.”
Speakers include retired U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, two prominent Christian nationalist authors, and Paul Gottfried, a far-right writer who has for years collaborated with white supremacists and mentored neo-Nazis such as Richard Spencer.
Formerly known as the NE Tarrant Tea Party, True Texas Project was integral to the rise of the state’s ultraconservative movement throughout the 2010s, but rebranded after its founder, Julie McCarty, wrote on social media that she sympathized with the gunman who murdered 23 Hispanic people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 — one of many mass shooters who have been motivated by a belief in Great Replacement Theory.
The conference was announced as Republicans continue to embrace once-fringe ideologies such as Great Replacement Theory and Christian nationalism, which claims that America’s founding was God-ordained and that its laws and institutions should therefore be dictated by their fundamentalist religious views.
In an email exchange this week, the speaker for that session, Wade Miller, pushed back against claims that Great Replacement Theory is inherently antisemitic or racist, and said that he is “pretty vocal” in his “support for Israel and the right of Jews to defend themselves from terrorists and violent hate.”
In an email to the Tribune this week, Gottfried downplayed concerns about the conference, its embrace of Great Replacement Theory and the comments by True Texas Project’s leaders in the wake of the El Paso WalMart massacre.
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If you're in a red district, call your rep and tell them you'll donate to Joe Biden if they support these theofascists. Maybe they'll get the message.
Even if you're a Christian, remember that they don't want Christianity in power, they want only their version of Christianity in power, with them in the inner circle.
While serving time for an unrelated assault in 2002, Gonzales confessed to the rape and murder of Bridget Townsend in Medina County, west of San Antonio, and guided police to her remains.
In a statement on Monday, Gonzales’ attorneys, Thea Posel and Raoul Schonemann, called their client “a man who today is, in almost every sense, a different person than he was when he killed Bridget Townsend in 2001.”
A pleading filed this month by Gonzales’ legal team challenging his death sentence asserted that he didn’t receive effective counsel during his post-conviction review.
Gonzales’ pleading this month cited research about his childhood conducted by Kate Porterfield, a clinical psychologist who studies the impact of trauma on children.
The failure to properly investigate and present this evidence during Gonzales’ initial habeas petition showed that his lawyer was ineffective, his current legal team argued while asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its dismissal.
They cited multiple studies and medical or legal associations that have proposed raising the age for death penalty eligibility from 18 to 21, based on brain development.
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