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Trump’s close call in assassination attempt fuels talk he was ‘chosen by God’

The former president’s supporters have said his survival is a sign of divine intervention — and his White House destiny.

“Surviving an assassination attempt just confirms for these folks everything they say and believe…that he is God’s chosen to bring salvation to the United States and to the world,” said Matthew Sutton, a Washington State University historian of American religion who focuses on apocalyptic Christianity and politics.

Sutton said the evangelicals’ focus on political power began building after the Second World War, as religion was injected more directly into campaigns and platforms. It continued as White evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell in the late 1970s and early 1980s pushed for the U.S. government to adopt their socially conservative values on topics from abortion to race and protection from competing non-Christian religions. That decades-long effort didn’t stem the rise of secularism and moves toward same-sex marriage and women’s rights, adding up to a feeling among some present-day evangelicals that Trump is their last chance.

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Washington Post

‘A history of resistance’ WSU class documents east Pasco Black history for National Parks

Community members and visitors will soon be able to learn more about east Pasco’s Black history on the National Parks Service app and website. Additions include a walking tour, digital exhibit, research essays, and audio and video content.

WSU Tri-Cities assistant professor of history Robert Franklin explained there is a lack of documentation of east Pasco’s history and the non-white communities that have lived there.

The effort to capture and share the area’s history is years in the making. In late February, 21 WSU architecture students and two history students in their last semester visited east Pasco from Pullman as part of a graduate student class, “Issues in Architecture.” Following weeks of readings, discussions and seminars about east Pasco history, they experienced being in the community and learned about the history live. Franklin and WSU Pullman architecture professor Phil Gruen led the course. Franklin, who lives in the Tri-Cities, serves as assistant director of the Hanford History Project.

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Tri-City Herald (plus 1:00 video)
Yahoo! News

If Alexander the Great had invaded Rome, would he have won?

Alexander the Great conquered a massive empire that stretched from Balkans to modern-day Pakistan. But if, Macedonian king had turned his attention westward, it’s possible he would have conquered Rome, too, feasibly smiting the Roman Empire before it had a chance to arise. So why didn’t Alexander the Great try to conquer Italy ? The answer may be that he died before he got the chance.

Some ancient texts suggest that Alexander the Great was planning a military campaign in West that involved conquering parts of Italy, among other locations along the Mediterranean. Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, who lived in 1st Century AD, claimed that Alexander the Great had planned a series of conquests that, if successful, would have expanded his empire all the way to what is now Strait of Gibraltar. Alexander planned to build 700 ships to support this invasion, Rufus noted. Other ancient writers made similar claims. “Romans were convinced that Alexander would have attempted the conquest of Rome, but for modern historians, it is impossible to say,” Nikolaus Overtoom, an associate professor of history at Washington State University.

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Archeao Histories

 

 

 

The Trump Revival

To a growing contingent of right-wing evangelical Christians, Donald Trump isn’t just an aspiring two-term president. He’s an actual prophet.

There’s a new entry in the warm-up material at Trump rallies, sandwiched between the classic-rock anthems and the demagogic diatribes of various local political leaders. It’s a two-minute video that Trump posted to his Truth Social account just prior to the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Called “God Made Trump,” the campaign spot is brazenly messianic in tone and substance alike, directly paraphrasing the “So God Made a Farmer” speech made famous by the conservative radio personality Paul Harvey.

At the center of this transformation is a new ideological upsurge of activism on the evangelical right, sparked by the rapidly growing revivalist campaign known as the New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR is rooted in a long-standing alliance of charismatic worship and business-driven grievance politics, dating back at least to post–World War II.

The spiritual insurgency of January 6 also underlined another defining trait of the NAR movement: Its interest in democratic governance, like its interest in other features of political and cultural life, is purely instrumental—and once a democratic result defies prophecy, as it did in 2020, that outcome gets instantly discredited as another show of demonic strength.

“It’s fascinating,and it explains how they’re different as an interest group,” says Washington State University historian Matthew Avery Sutton, who specializes in American prophecy belief. “For them, the idea of democracy and majority rule doesn’t matter. It’s not part of any equation for us to expect them to concede an election—it’s not thinkable. You can’t have majority rule when the devil rules the majority. You can’t negotiate; you can’t compromise.”

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The Nation

What life was like when Kennewick was a “sundown town”

From the early 1940s, legal segregation and the attitudes of the Tri-Cities community made Black people feel unwelcome, according to Robert Bauman, a history professor at WSU Tri-Cities.

“Kennewick was a sundown town…,” Bauman said. “There were some African Americans who worked there, not a lot. And Blacks could come to Kennewick to shop whatever during the day. But the understanding was you had to be out by sundown.”

At that time the only place Black Americans were allowed to own a home was east Pasco, according to Bauman.

Bauman said the sundown town practice wasn’t something city officials tried to hide, citing an interview by the Washington State Board Against Discrimination.

“One of the times they interviewed the police chief who said, yeah, this is, you know, we don’t allow Blacks to live here and if people are here after sundown, we remove them,” Bauman said.

It took years of persistence for civil rights organizations and community members to change the way things were with marches and even individual actions, according to Bauman.

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KNDO Tri-Cities