Politics

Last year was hottest on record: NOAA

Published

2 years ago

January 11, 2025

Last year was the hottest ever recorded, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released Friday. In 2024, Earth overall saw its highest global temperature dating to the beginning of NOAA’s climate record in 1850, according to the agency. The planet’s average temperature was 1.46 degrees Celsius warmer than the preindustrial…
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Politics

Raphael Warnock is ‘nauseously optimistic’ about Dem’s midterm chances

Published

36 minutes ago

November 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Raphael Warnock is ‘nauseously optimistic’ about Dem’s midterm chances

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Politics

As Democrats preach faith, conservative pastors condemn their campaigns from the pulpit

Published

17 hours ago

October 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

When Robert Jeffress takes the pulpit at First Baptist Dallas on Sunday, he’ll give his 16,000 congregants a not-so-subtle message: Beware of false faith.

Jeffress will preach about the Tower of Babel, a topic that shares “some parallels to what’s happening in the election,” he said in a recent interview with Blue Light News.

“My goal as a pastor is not to get people in the voting booth, but to keep them out of hell,” the archconservative megachurch pastor, televangelist and longtime Republican backer said. Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, “seems harmless,” Jeffress continued, “but the toxic faith he is preaching will lead people away from heaven, not toward it.”

On Sunday morning, conservative evangelical pastors across the country will be sharing a similar message, with the hope of galvanizing their congregations to support right-wing candidates and causes on Election Day.

But the big difference from recent years: They’ll be preaching against Democrats in four battleground U.S. Senate and House races who’ve made their faith a key part of their campaign message.

Talarico is a few classes short of becoming an ordained minister. Kansas Senate Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton is pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country. In Iowa, Presbyterian pastor Lindsay James and Lutheran minister Sarah Trone Garriott are running for Congress. All four are in tight races in red territory, according to polls.

They’ve all made their faith an explicit part of their closing message.

“Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.’ This is really important. All of these things guide us,” Hamilton says in his stump speech.

“I approve this message because my faith teaches me that caring for my neighbor is not optional,” James says in a face-to-camera ad.

It’s a marked deviation from decades of the Democratic Party’s gradual march toward a less religious tone that has matched their increasingly secular voting base, and an effort to win over politically moderate believers who have grown disgruntled with Trump and the Republicans.

These Democrats’ campaigns have put the country’s conservative evangelical pastors in unfamiliar territory: needing to convince their congregants that self-described fellow believers deserve their condemnation, not their vote.

“There are some Christians that don’t know how to respond to it, because [the candidates] are using all the same language that we do, but they are advocating for a lot of things that we are not for,” said Josh Bingaman, lead pastor of the First Church Open Bible in Des Moines, Iowa.

Many conservative pastors contend these Democrats are wolves in sheep’s clothing, pointing out disagreements on abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender rights or even the nature of God.

In Wichita, Kansas, Rob Rotola of Word of Life Church will lay out the stakes of the election in his Sunday sermon.

He said he has “no problem” calling Hamilton a false prophet, and imagines when his sermon is through, his congregants will “feel sorry for Adam Hamilton and would pray for him, but would tell their friends where he stands.”

In Iowa, Mike Demastus of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ plans to remind his congregants of “the importance of every single one of us, as believers, to go and vote and be engaged in this process.” He doesn’t include Trone Garriott among those “believers”: “She’s a poser and a fake, and most conservative evangelical Christians see through that as quickly as she can say it.”

Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in the state, called Trone Garriott a “dangerous politician” and dismissed James as straying from the true path.

“To hijack Scripture to make it fit your agenda, versus to embrace the comprehensive nature of Scripture to fit God’s agenda, that’s a very, very risky thing to do,” Vander Plaats said in an interview.

A spokesperson for Talarico pointed to the candidate’s past statements on faith, including his assertion that “when I take on the politicians who are serving themselves and not the people, I’m doing it on biblical grounds.”

Trone Garriott spokesperson Zach Schenkman said that “while others try to divide Iowans and dictate how every Christian should practice their faith, Sarah is focused on showing up to make a difference for her neighbors.”

James spokesperson Jackson Smith said: “No politician gets to define or dictate how any Iowan practices their faith, and Iowans are disgusted by this kind of politics.”

Hamilton’s campaign declined to comment.

Trump has long enjoyed overwhelming support from white evangelical Christians: In 2024, exit polls found more than eight in 10 white evangelical Protestants voted for the president. Even now, as his approval rating among other demographic groups has declined sharply, Trump’s support remains relatively strong with white evangelicals, according to polls.

Some conservative evangelical leaders have long mixed faith and politics, criticizing Joe Biden for how he practiced his Catholicism, questioning whether Hillary Clinton was really a practicing Methodist, and attacking Barack Obama’s sincerity as a Christian (Jeffress once said Obama was “paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist”).

Other pastors feel newly empowered by the Trump administration’s moves to loosen restrictions on tax-exempt churches engaging in partisan political activity.

Joseph Hall, lead pastor of Crossroads Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, said that for weeks he has dedicated a portion of his Sunday sermon to talking about the midterms: “I am promoting ‘vote red.’ Most every Republican stands closer to our beliefs and people of faith’s lifestyle than obviously the Democrats.”

Jeffress, a longtime Trump booster, says he will not be explicitly endorsing Republican candidates this cycle. He argues his dalliance into the election is a moral engagement, not a political one.

“As a pastor, I’m reacting to what James Talarico is saying about his faith more than his politics,” Jeffress said. “Look, James Talarico’s religious beliefs don’t disqualify him from being a senator, but they do disqualify him from being a Christian pastor, or even a Christian.”

Politics

El-Sayed campaign wants Stevens to stay away after day of back-and-forth sniping

Published

1 day ago

October 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Michigan’s Democratic coalition is fragmenting in real time days before a critical Senate election.

After it seemed like former primary rivals Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens might finally appear together, they’re back to sniping at each other. And it could hardly come at a worse moment as Democrats look to unite behind El-Sayed and hold on to a pivotal Senate seat.

El-Sayed’s campaign is asking Stevens to stay away from all future campaign events in the closing days of the race, two people familiar with the decision told Blue Light News, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign dynamics. She should stay away “as not to distract from the central issues of the campaign,” one of the people said.

The brushoff capped off a day of the two lobbing increasingly pointed statements back and forth at each other, frustrating Democrats who say the infighting risks imperiling a state the party can hardly afford to lose as they try to flip control of the Senate.

“I have no idea what the hell Haley Stevens is doing. This is a moment where we have to recognize the stakes,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who was squeezed out of the Democratic primary by the two other candidates, told BLN earlier on Friday, before El-Sayed issued his response. “People are not talking about ads. They are not talking about Haley Stevens. They are talking about the price of gas and groceries.”

Stevens did not immediately respond to a question on if she will now stay off the trail, and did not respond to an earlier question about whether her appearance was contingent on him apologizing. El-Sayed’s campaign declined to comment.

El-Sayed narrowly defeated Stevens in a bitter and hard-fought primary in August that exposed division over support for Israel.

Michigan is crucial to Democrats’ plans to take back the Senate: the party can hardly afford to lose retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters’ seat as it hopes to use an otherwise-favorable year for Democrats to win seats in much redder states and seize control of the chamber.

Stevens and El-Sayed have not campaigned together since a post-primary unity breakfast, but appeared on the verge of doing so earlier on Friday.

Stevens initially said she would appear alongside El-Sayed and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) at a church in Detroit on Sunday.

But she said she expected the Democratic nominee to apologize for some of his past comments and condemn an ad run by an outside group supporting him that she described as antisemitic. The ad featured a conversation in a grocery store where a woman told a man they couldn’t buy eggs because they had to set aside money for “killing Palestinians.”

El-Sayed’s campaign had previously noted he was not affiliated with the ad.

In response, El-Sayed did not touch on the ad or his past comments on Israel, instead saying that has campaign “has always been focused on addressing the most critical challenges Michiganders are facing” and that that focus “is why our people-powered campaign defeated a historic $70 [million] in outside spending from big corporations and AIPAC on behalf of Congresswoman Stevens.”

“So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the task at hand: that’s beating Mike Rogers,” El-Sayed said.

Some Democrats tried to downplay the fight heading into the final days of the race.

“There’s been a lot of efforts to coalesce Democrats, both from Abdul and from the congresswoman. I think everybody’s on the same page of Democrats just beating Mike Rogers,” said Joe Tate, a state representative from Detroit who supported Stevens in the primary and is now backing El-Sayed. But he acknowledged that “when you have people that have competed through a primary, I know it can always have those lingering effects.”

Republicans have sought to play up the Democratic divisions.

“If you’re Black, or if you’re Jewish, and you vote for Abdul, you’re not smart,” President Donald Trump said at a Friday night rally in Daytona, Florida.

And Stevens’ comments so close to the pivotal election left some Democrats wondering what her goal was.

“If you are someone with a large platform — whether you are, say, an outgoing member of Congress or an out-of-state streamer — who genuinely wants Abdul El-Sayed to become the next U.S. Senator from the state of Michigan and for Democrats to take back the Senate and put a meaningful check on Donald Trump, before you speak publicly I would implore you to ask yourself ‘is what I’m doing actually helping, or am I just seeking attention?’,” Democratic operative Adam Carlson, who has polled for a pro El-Sayed super PAC, wrote on X.

Sophia Cai contributed to this report.