Read on Twitter
This tweet is intended to agitate and energize Trump's base, which has a long history fomenting conflict between the government and educational institutions.
A thread 1/n:
A thread 1/n:
As I show in UNHOLY ( https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605774/unholy-by-sarah-posner/), the Christian right became animated to get involved in national electoral politics after IRS efforts to yank the tax-exempt status of Christian schools over racially discriminatory policies. 2/n
The specter of Christian organizations losing their tax-exempt status for refusing to comply with non-discrimination laws or policies is still used by the religious right to stoke fear that the government (now known as "deep state") would target Christian orgs. 3/n
Thus, for example, after Obergefell (2015), religious right activists stoked fear that the IRS would, for example, pull the tax-exempt status of Christian schools or institutions who oppose marriage equality.
(That hasn't happened, of course.) 4/n
(That hasn't happened, of course.) 4/n
Trump's tweet is a sort of revenge tweet in this regard, as he threatens to use the power that the Christian right has claimed the IRS has wrongfully used against it to punish his perceived enemies. And to do this, he taps into *other* long-simmering grievances. 5/n
These grievances relate both to K-12 public schools (another issue that will surely continue to rear its head as conflicts over re-openings amid COVID persist) and higher education, the target of this particular Trump tweet. 6/n
"Radical left indoctrination" in higher education is such an old, tired hobby horse of the right. But Trump knows how potent it is, and how animating the IRS tax-exempt issue is. Double whammy in that one tweet. 7/n
In any case, I dive into all this history in UNHOLY, and it's important to know this history to understand Trump's deployment of it. 8/8 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605774/unholy-by-sarah-posner/
