Conservative Mormons, much like conservative Catholics, may be starting to realize they are not exempt from the Trump administration’s religious bigotry. 

President Donald Trump and his administration’s crusade to cut off funding to Catholic groups that provide aid to immigrants, the condemnation by Trump officials of Catholic leaders for urging sympathy toward immigrants and Trump’s repeated attacks on Pope Leo for opposing his deadly war with Iran have created an environment in which even some right-wing Catholics have had to reckon with hostility toward Christians coming from some of their presumed allies in administration. 

Lawmakers and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may be having a similar realization after the Pentagon, which is led by Christian nationalist Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, excluded the church from its list of recognized religions, along with 179 other faith traditions. The move was apparently a part of the Pentagon’s controversial push to slash the number of religious faiths it recognizes.

The move comes amid a long-standing resistance among some conservative evangelicals to classify Latter-day Saints as a branch of Christianity. 

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who is Mormon and a staunch Trump ally, was taken aback by the exclusion of his faith from the Pentagon’s list of Christian denominations.

Can anyone tell me why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was left out of the list of Christian churches? pic.twitter.com/t4u6PI29ON

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) June 6, 2026

Republican Sen. John Curtis and Rep. Mike Kennedy, also both Utah Republicans who are members of the church, objected to the new classification as well. 

Latter-day Saints are among the most patriotic, service-oriented individuals in our country. They are also unequivocally Christian—just look at who is in the name of the Church.

It is unacceptable for a government entity to characterize a faith in a manner that contradicts the… https://t.co/ywqk59ZtRz

— Senator John Curtis (@SenJohnCurtis) June 6, 2026

Amid backlash, Sean Parnell, assistant to the defense secretary, said in a social media post that the reclassification “is not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of ‘officially approved’ religions.”

The outcry seems to have prompted a reversal from the Defense Department. On Monday, a social media post from the department included a new list with a caption that said the previous one “included redundant and unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed.”

Last week, a proposed list of simplified faith codes was released to the media. The Pentagon list included redundant and unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed.

The goal of this effort is to simplify a previously out-of-control “belief” coding system that had… pic.twitter.com/yCsQDhZcGp

— DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) June 8, 2026

The new list’s codes no longer identify which of the recognized faiths are considered Christian, which raises the question of whether Pentagon officials consider the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a form of Christianity, or if they would simply prefer not to flaunt their beliefs on the topic in public.

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The threat of a potential labor crisis at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium continues to loom just days before the World Cup kicks off, after a union representing more than 2,000 hospitality workers voted to authorize a strike.

The union representing concession workers, servers, bartenders, dishwashers, cooks and other SoFi Stadium workers voted overwhelmingly Friday in favor of a strike. In the lead-up to the vote, union leaders voiced concerns about the possible presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at games, worker compensation and the potential automation of some services using artificial intelligence.

According to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll released last week, Americans broadly oppose ICE agents being present at stadiums during the World Cup, which is also being held in Canada and Mexico.

The findings are unsurprising, given that ICE agents have garnered comparisons to the Ku Klux Klan and are central to President Donald Trump’s deadly, racist anti-immigrant crackdown. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has vowed that “every single” federal agency will be on-site at the games, “not for immigration, but for terrorist threats.”

The Athletic reported that 96% of union voters voted to authorize a strike, effectively permitting workers to walk off the job at the first game at SoFi Stadium — Paraguay vs. the U.S. — on Friday if a labor deal isn’t reached before then.

The company that operates concessions at SoFi Stadium said it has a “contingency staffing plan” in place, according to The Wall Street Journal. But one of the union co-presidents painted an unflattering picture of how the games could play out if a strike happens — particularly for wealthier attendees.

Per the Journal:

“I guess soccer can be played” if workers go on strike, said Kurt Petersen, co-president of the local union, in an interview. “But someone paying $100,000 for a suite, and they’re ending up getting bottled water and Doritos, I’m not sure that’s what they’re expecting.”

The Wall Street Journal noted that a strike would be embarrassing for Los Angeles and FIFA:

A strike at SoFi Stadium would be an embarrassment for Los Angeles as it gears up to host eight World Cup matches, the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympics. It would also be a black eye for FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, which has advertised high-end food and beverage service in the stadium’s suites while charging thousands of dollars for tickets.

I would argue that a strike would also amount to an embarrassment for Trump and his allies. The president has basically adhered his brand to this tournament, having named himself chair of the 2026 World Cup task force he created and having appointed Andrew Giuliani — Rudy Giuliani’s son — as the task force’s executive director.

A strike stemming in part from his administration’s policies would only add to Trump’s toxic influence at this year’s World Cup.

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Donald Trump’s administration has been a boon to gun traffickers, and a new lawsuit seeks to shed more light on the illegal guns being used in crimes.

To those who followed along as the GOP attempted to kneecap the Obama administration with its “Fast and Furious” inquiries back in 2012, the fact that Republicans firmly support Trump despite his being a major enabler of gun trafficking will reek of hypocrisy.

ProPublica recently reported that Trump has gutted many of the policies the Biden administration implemented to combat illegal sales of guns — a crackdown that experts have said contributed to a decline in violent crime that occurred during Biden’s term and has continued into Trump’s.

One of the Trump administration’s regressive moves was to repeal a zero-tolerance policy of pulling licenses from gun sellers who engaged in illegal sales. Per ProPublica:

But the Trump administration, driven both by gun-lobby advocacy and its own political priorities, quickly set about undoing much of its predecessor’s moves to combat gun violence. It repealed the zero-tolerance policy, going so far as to invite revoked dealers to reapply for new licenses. It shifted hundreds of ATF agents to immigration work. And it scaled back on prosecutions for gun trafficking. The White House declined to comment, referring questions to the ATF and the Department of Justice.

ProPublica’s report noted that the effect of Trump’s moves could be felt in the years ahead:

The homicide rate fell further last year, but criminologists warn against complacency, because the illicit gun trade is a classic pipeline problem: The harm can take a while to make itself felt. Research has found that the typical “time to crime” for trafficked firearms ranges up to about three years, which means that any positive lag of the anti-trafficking efforts of the Biden years would still be in effect now, with any negative effects of the Trump pullback lying in the years to come.

The Trump regime’s trafficker-friendly agenda is at the heart of a new lawsuit from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The suit stems from the withholding of federal requests for information from gun dealers who have sold weapons that were used in violent crimes. These requests, which are known as DL2s and issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, have been decried by the firearm industry.

“Americans deserve to know about the sources of firearms that are driving crime in our communities and what ATF is doing, or not doing, about it,” Brady Center President Kris Brown said in a statement.

The ATF did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

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Despite Donald Trump’s campaign vows in 2024 that he would fix the housing crisis that’s affecting more than a million Americans across the country, the president’s administration has been doing seemingly all it can over the past year to cut off assistance to people without homes. 

The New York Times reported on a policy announced this week by extremist-friendly Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, which will gut “Housing First” programs by diverting $1.2 billion from programs that support long-term living arrangements for people without homes and route that money instead toward short-term housing programs that focus on addiction and mental health. 

The Times explained the dire picture that could play out as a result:

The plan, which seeks to promote “law and order,” is a scaled-back version of one the administration issued last fall. Congress and a federal court blocked that proposal after critics warned it could send as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back to the streets. The administration’s revised plan is still a frontal assault on the longstanding model of homelessness aid known as Housing First. The move is likely to shift about $1.2 billion away from housing programs, with the risk of displacing current tenants. It constitutes the sharpest change in homelessness policy in a generation.

In a press release announcing the policy, Turner said “the ‘housing first’ experiment failed Americans by warehousing the vulnerable without results,” and that the change, which threatens housing options for many Americans, will help promote “self-sufficiency.” This is the same illogic the administration is using to justify cuts to food aid, which have put millions of Americans at risk of going hungry.

I would argue that another phrase for “warehousing the vulnerable” is “housing the vulnerable,” and that it does have results, namely that people have homes, at least for as long as they’re allowed to benefit from such policies. There is no evidence that cutting Americans off from housing programs, as Turner’s preferred short-term programs inevitably do, improves their prospects for finding long-term housing. 

Turner also said this shift to short-term housing programs is about stemming a housing crisis “driven by addiction and mental illness,” promoting stereotypes that experts for years have noted don’t apply to the majority of unhoused people. Experts typically cite other causes, like rapid increases in housing costs and poor wage growth, which have nothing to do with drug addiction or mental health.

Trump has openly said he doesn’t want housing prices to come down. 

Turner is not unlike Ben Carson, who was HUD secretary during Trump’s first term. Both are Black conservatives who have denounced federal programs that help others escape poverty, even as they have touted their personal stories of having done so. Neither Turner nor Carson entered their position with any experience in leading a large bureaucracy like a federal agency, much less directing housing policy. This lack of expertise is especially important, given the fact that Turner is proposing ideas rooted in bias that stand to worsen America’s housing crisis rather than improve it. 

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