Political Glance
Two scenes from the past two weeks capture something unsettling – and familiar –about American public life. In San Francisco, a tech billionaire delivered a sold‑out, off‑the‑record lecture series on the antichrist. In Michigan, a man rammed his pickup truck into a Latter‑day Saints meetinghouse during Sunday worship, opened fire and set the building ablaze, apparently believing that Mormons are the antichrist.
The antichrist is clearly back. But perhaps he has never really left.
As a historian of American apocalypticism, I’ve traced how this symbol – a protean figure cobbled together from obscure biblical passages – has repeatedly migrated from pulpits to politics and back again.
Almost a century ago, fundamentalists mapped European dictators and New Deal bureaucrats on to biblical prophecy. During the cold war, evangelicals scanned Moscow and Jerusalem for signs of the Beast. In the first Gulf war, some Christians argued that Saddam Hussein was the antichrist who was rebuilding the Tower of Babel.
Whenever American power felt threatened or social change accelerated, antichrist talk surged. Today’s version arrives with AI, deepfakes and venture funding. And with bullets.
US military veterans increasingly face arrest and injury amid protests over Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and his push to deploy national guard members to an ever-widening number of American cities.
The firings of hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been reversed, according to several reports citing officials familiar with the matter, and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal workers.
Scrolling through social media during a work break, Alexandra realized she was going to lose her new job.
President Trump’s plans to use the Justice Department to seek revenge against his perceived enemies may have just hit a major roadblock. Earlier this month, Memphis federal district court judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. issued an opinion in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in response to a motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution.
The Trump administration laid off more than 4,100 employees Friday amid the ongoing government shutdown, according to a new court filing from the Justice Department. 
