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When the church doors open, only white people will be allowed inside.
That’s the message the Asatru Folk Assembly in Murdock, Minnesota, is sending after being granted a conditional use permit to open a church there and practice its pre-Christian religion that originated in northern Europe.
Despite a council vote officially approving the permit this month, residents are pushing back against the decision.
Opponents have collected about 50,000 signatures on an online petition to stop the all-white church from making its home in the farming town of 280 people.
“I think they thought they could fly under the radar in a small town like this, but we’d like to keep the pressure on them,” said Peter Kennedy, a longtime Murdock resident. “Racism is not welcome here."
The church the Asatru Folk Assembly bought and are requesting a permit to use as a regional church in Murdock, Minn. (Renee Jones Schneider / Star Tribune via AP)
Many locals said they support the growing population of Latinos, who have moved to the area in the past decade because of job opportunities, over the church.
“Just because the council gave them a conditional permit does not mean that the town and people in the area surrounding will not be vigilant in watching and protecting our area,” Jean Lesteberg, who lives in the neighboring town of De Graff, wrote on the city’s Facebook page.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Asatru Folk Assembly as a “neo-Volkisch hate group” that couches “their bigotry in baseless claims of bloodlines grounding the superiority of one’s white identity.”
Many residents call them a white supremacist or white separatist group, but church members deny it.
Lawyer and member of the Asatru Folk Assembly Allen Turnage returns to his seat, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, in Murdock, Minn., after taking questions from the public. (Renee Jones Schneider / Star Tribune via AP)
“We’re not. It’s just simply not true," said Allen Turnage, a folk assembly board member. "Just because we respect our own culture, that doesn’t mean we are denigrating someone else’s."
The group, based in Brownsville, California, says teachings and membership are for those of strictly European bloodlines.
The church was looking for a new church in the eastern North Dakota region when they came across Murdock. It’s unknown how many members they have worldwide or how many people will attend the new church.
“We do not need salvation. All we need is freedom to face our destiny with courage and honor,” the group wrote on its website about their beliefs. “We honor the Gods under the names given to them by our Germanic/Norse ancestors.”
Their forefathers, according to the website, were "Angels and Saxons, Lombards and Heruli, Goths and Vikings, and, as sons and daughters of these people, they are united by ties of blood and culture undimmed by centuries."
“We respect the ways our ancestors viewed the world and approached the universe a thousand years ago,” Turnage said.
A small contingent of church supporters in Murdock said the community should be open-minded and respectful to all.
“I find it hypocritical, for lack of a better term, of my community to show much hate towards something they don’t understand. I for one don’t see a problem with it,” Jesse James, who said he has lived in Murdock for 26 years, wrote on Facebook.
“I do not wish to follow in this pagan religion, however, I feel it’s important to recognize and support each other’s beliefs,” he said.
Murdock council members said they do not support the church but were legally obligated to approve the permit, which they did in a 3-1 decision.
“We were highly advised by our attorney to pass this permit for legal reasons to protect the First Amendment rights," Mayor Craig Kavanagh said. "We knew that if this was going to be denied, we were going to have a legal battle on our hands that could be pretty expensive.”
City Attorney Don Wilcox said it came down to free speech and freedom of religion.
“I think there’s a great deal of sentiment in the town that they don’t want that group there," he said. "You can’t just bar people from practicing whatever religion they want or saying anything they want as long as it doesn’t incite violence.”
Stephanie Hoff, whose council term ends this month, cast the only dissenting vote.
“I know that we have the legality standpoint, and I personally felt we had a chance to fight it. I think we could have fought it had we went to court,” she said, basing her argument on proving municipal harm. “I felt that we had a case with the emotional and mental well being of the city of Murdock.”
The farming town about a 115-mile drive west of Minneapolis is known for producing corn and soybeans, which are shipped across the country. Latinos make up about 20 percent of Murdock's small population. Many are day laborers from Mexico and Central America, city officials said.
"We’re a welcoming community,” Kennedy said, rejecting the Asatru Folk Assembly's exclusionary beliefs. “That’s not at all what the people of Murdock feel. Nobody had a problem with the Hispanics here.”
The AFA purchased its building this year on property in a residential zone. Constructed as a Lutheran church before the zoning was changed, it was later converted to a private residence. The folk assembly needed the permit to convert the residence back to a church.
The vote has drawn national attention and condemnation.
“It’s ironic the city council didn’t want to commit discrimination against the church, but the church is discriminating against Blacks," said Abigail Suiter, 33, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "It’s very telling of where the priority is and whose lives matter.”
Prominent lawyers disagree on the council's options heading into the vote. Some of the debate centered on the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects religious institutions and churches from unduly burdens and discriminatory land-use regulations.
The law prevents municipalities from discriminating against the placement of churches in residential neighborhoods, said attorney Brian Egan, a municipal law expert on Long Island, New York.
“It’s a tightrope for municipalities to walk,” Egan said. “One man’s religion of hate is another man’s religion of love.”
Other lawyers said the property's zoning was enough to reject the permit.
“They could have said the whole area has become residential, we don’t want churches in a residential area because it’s incompatible with our comprehensive plan," said David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota, " ... because at that point they’re not making a decision based upon the viewpoint or content of speech."
Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, said the council might have been able to prevent the private sale of the property, had it known about it, through laws focused on forbidding racial discrimination in property transactions.
“No institution that proposes to exclude people on account of race is allowed to run an operation in the state of Minnesota,” Tribe said.
Kavanagh said he stands by the council vote "for legal reasons only."
“The biggest thing people don’t understand is, because we’ve approved this permit, all of a sudden everyone feels this town is racist, and that isn’t the case,” he said. “Just because we voted yes doesn’t mean we’re racist.”
A self-proclaimed white supremacist who has advocated for the legalization of child porn and created online chat rooms for pedophiles was arrested and charged with kidnapping a 12-year-old girl.
Authorities said Nathan Larson abducted the girl after meeting her on social media in the fall, according to a Saturday press release from the Fresno County Sheriff's Office. Fresno police said Larson was arrested at the Denver International Airport during a layover with the girl, who was reported missing on December 14 and has since been reunited with her family. Larson, who is 40, was flying with the girl from Fresno to his home in Virginia, according to police.
Larson faces a misdemeanor charge of harboring a minor as well as federal charges of kidnapping, child abduction, soliciting child pornography from a minor, and meeting a child for the intention of sex.
Larson met the 12-year-old girl online in October. Police said he "was able to convince the Fresno girl, through manipulation and grooming, to send him pornographic images of herself" over the last two months. Tony Botti, the public information officer at the Fresno County Sheriff's Office, declined to share which social-media platform Larson had used to meet the victim. In an email to Insider, Botti said, "All social media can be used for malicious purposes."
Larson was previously arrested in 2008 for sending a letter to the Secret Service threatening to kill the president of the United States. He pleaded guilty and spent 14 months in prison, authorities said.
The 40-year-old is a known figure in the world of fringe online message boards, having previously created two websites for pedophiles and incels, or involuntary celibates. When he ran for Congress as an independent in Virginia in 2018, the IP address for his campaign website matched those of the message boards, HuffPost found.
Larson's Denver Jail booking photo; Larson's political campaign photo, circa 2017. Fresno County Sheriff's Office
In an interview with HuffPost in 2018, Larson admitted to being a pedophile. He also told the outlet that there was a "grain of truth" to an essay he wrote about father-daughter incest and another story in which he claimed to have raped his ex-wife. His ex-wife was granted a restraining order against him in 2015, the Washington Post reported, before she died by suicide.
Larson, who called Adolf Hitler a "white supremacist hero" in a 2018 campaign manifesto, has written extensively about his chauvinistic, patriarchal views, and engaged in discussions about violence, pedophilia, and rape on the message boards he previously ran. In one post published under a pseudonym in 2018, Larson wrote, "feminism is the problem, and rape is the solution," according to HuffPost.
"We need to switch to a system that classifies women as property, initially of their fathers and later of their husbands," Larson wrote in a 2018 campaign manifesto for his failed congressional run. "The purpose of women, in a patriarchal society, is to be reliable conformists to what is expected of them, and to be judged primarily based on their beauty and cooperativeness, i.e., their averageness; and only secondarily on the basis of intelligence."
In that manifesto, which was taken down but remains available through webpage captures, Larson said he supported the "legalization of child pornography possession and distribution." He also said he was running on a platform that included restoring "benevolent white supremacy."
The Fresno County Sheriff's Office said in its press release that "detectives believe he has victimized other children in the past, but those cases have never been reported to law enforcement," because of the "sophisticated nature" with which Larson groomed the girl from Fresno. Botti, the public information officer, told Insider on Monday afternoon that the sheriff's office had already received a "tremendous" amount of tips from people across the US and Canada who communicated with Larson.
Fresno police said Larson is currently incarcerated in the Denver County Jail and is expected in court on December 24. He has not yet entered a plea.
Two men shot up a strip club after getting kicked out for not wearing masks, police say. Now, they could face life in prison.
Two California men could face life in prison after shooting into a strip club they got booted from for not wearing masks.
A Halloween trip to the Sahara Theatre, a strip club in Anaheim four miles east of Disneyland, was cut short after Edgar Nava-Ayala, Daniel Ocampo and Juan Acosta-Soto were kicked out by security guards for not complying with the venue's mask requirements.
They returned to the Sahara in a red Toyota Camry. With an AK-47 in tow, Nava-Ayala allegedly fired around 15 rounds into the club “indiscriminately,” according to statements from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Anaheim Police Department.
“The suspects were kicked out for refusing to wear masks,” Sgt. Shane Carringer of the Anaheim Police Department told USA TODAY. “They returned and fired on the club in retaliation of being kicked out.”
Contrary to some reports, Carringer said, they did not attack the strip club specifically for their mask regulations.
At least four people were injured, and one had to undergo surgery because of bullet wounds in the upper body, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
“It is nothing short of a miracle that no one was killed,” Carringer told the Washington Post.
Nava-Ayala, 34, and Ocampo, 22, were both charged with attempted murder and assault, among other felony charges, on Monday after an arrest made last week led to the discovery of the AK-47 used in the attacks. Both face life sentences if convicted of all charges.
Acosta-Soto, 20, faces a maximum of 17 years with a felony assault charge.
All three are being held at the Orange County Jail with $5 million bail.
This is progressing rather nicely... The new strain is 70% more infectious. More infections mean more deaths and quicker herd immunity. More deaths mean less MAGAts. Less MAGAts mean a better world. Oh happy day!
MAGAts are doing this to themselves and we humans don't have to lift a finger to make it happen.
Currently the US is reporting 150,000 infections per day. The real numbers are much higher. A 70% infection rate will kick the virus up a notch or two. The Christmas surge will be far bigger than the current COVID-19 models predict. The surge is a purge and purge will surge. Let the MAGAts merge. Play a dirge to the MAGAts urge to merge and complete the purge.
I look at it like putting out cockroach poison bait that the cockroaches take back to the other cockroaches. While cockroaches don't actually have queens, termites and ants do but in many other ways MAGAts are like cockroaches. You get the point. MAGAts in their pathological selfishness are all too eager to take the bait. Aid them in their self-destruction.
Jentezen Franklin says he was invited to the White House by president and FLOTUS
(jentzen/Instagram)
A Georgia MAGAt Church mega-church pastor has contracted coronavirus just days after attending a White House Christmas party.
Jentezen Franklin, of Free Chapel in Gainsville, was absent from Sunday service after testing positive for the disease, his colleague, pastor Javon Ruff, said.
“We want to make you aware that pastor Franklin has come in contact with Covid, but he is doing perfectly fine," Mr Ruff told the congregation, according to local media reports.
He added: "He actually is doing great. He went and got tested and his test came back positive so he is doing the right thing to do and staying quarantined and continuing to be distanced.
"We'll continue to pray and lift him up."
Mr Ruff also announced that the church's Christmas Eve service will be held virtually “out of an abundance of caution.”
Video shows at least 100 people gathered at the service, many of whom did not wear masks.
Six days ago, Mr Franklin posted to Instagram a photo of himself and his daughter at the White House.
"Thank you @flotus and @realdonaldtrump for inviting us. It was gorgeous! Merry Christmas everyone!" he wrote in a message accompanying the post.
There is no evidence to suggest that Mr Franklin got infected with coronavirus at the White House party.
The coronavirus is continuing to sweep vast swathes of the US.
Health officials on 20 December reported 179,801 new infections and 1,422 deaths nationwide in the previous 24 hours, according to New York Times data.
In Georgia, where Mr Franklin delivers his sermons, there were 5,175 new cases and two deaths, the data shows.
COVID keeps coming the MAGAts keep denying. Now I can tell you that even more are dying A new strain of COVID they say is like the flu As more of them are dying let's say fuck you!
COVID Kills
COVID kills. COVID kills. Kills MAGAts everyday.
Oh what fun it is to watch this deadly virus slay hey!
COVID kills. COVID kills. Kills MAGAts everyday.
Oh what fun it is to watch this deadly virus slay.
Watching MAGAts die. Nothing could be greater.
Send them to the morgues from the ventilators.
Stupid fucking assholes, refusing to behave.
When you take a shit drop in on their grave.
Little COVID MAGAts
Lies Trump told them they're dumb dumb dumb dumb.
A new strain's on the way they're dumb dumb dumb dumb
They won't wear a mask. They're dumb dumb dumb dumb
In ignorance they bask. They're dumb dumb dumb dumb
Fox Business host Lou Dobbs aired a segment on Friday that amounted to a fact-checking refutation of claims that he and guests have made about an election tech company Smartmatic and its role in the 2020 presidential election, after the company threatened legal action.
Other similar segments will be shown on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday and Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News spokesperson said. Lisa Boothe will host Judge Jeanine, as Jeanine Pirro is off for the holidays
Earlier this week, Smartmatic announced that it had threatened legal action against Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network “for publishing false and defamatory statements,” after talking heads on the outlets have pushed claims of election fraud, including unfounded conspiracy theories of rigged voting machine companies.
Smartmatic sent legal demand letters to the networks, arguing that “these organizations could have easily discovered the falsity of the statements and implications made about Smartmatic by investigating their statements before publishing them to millions of viewers and readers.” The company said that its role in the 2020 election was limited to working on Los Angeles County’s publicly owned voting system, even though anchors and guests have advanced claims that it had a much greater role.
Related: Trump touts incorrect graphic as ‘great news’ and Twitter goes off
Scroll back up to restore default view.
On Friday, Dobbs opened a segment by saying that there were “lots of opinions about the integrity of the elections, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and software.” He then went to Eddie Perez, global director of technology development and open standard for the Open Source Election Technology Institute.
In the segment, an unidentified off-camera voice asks Perez, “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the U.S. in this election?”
Perez responded, “I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change, alter anything related to vote tabulation.” He also said that he was not aware of them having any other direct customers with election officials beyond Los Angeles this cycle. He also said that Smartmatic and another company that has been targeted by President Donald Trump, Dominion Voting Systems, are “two completely separate companies.”
“The ballots that are cast in the United States are tabulated in the United States,” Perez said, refuting another claim about votes being tabulated overseas.
In its 20-page letter, Smartmatic’s attorney J. Erik Connolly cited statements made by Dobbs and Bartiromo, as well as guests who have appeared on their shows including two lawyers who have been claiming election fraud, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who have represented the Trump campaign.
Among other things, Connolly cited comments that Dobbs has made, including a Nov. 18 show in which he said, “I am alarmed because of what is occurring in plain sight during this 2020 election for president of the United States. The circumstances and events are eerily reminiscent of what happened with Smartmatic software electronically changing votes in the 2013 presidential election in Venezuela.”
In the letter, Connolly wrote that Smartmatic has no operations in Venezuela, but did election projects in the country from 2004 to 2017. It said that it stopped doing business in the country after the National Electoral Counsel announced results “that differed from results reflected in Smartmatic’s voting systems.” It then publicly condemned election authorities and ceased operations there.
Connolly wrote that the network “would have easily discovered the falsity of statements and implications being made about Smartmatic by performing even a modicum of investigation.”
Smartmatic demanded a retraction “with the same intensity and level of coverage that you used to defame the company in the first place,” including that it be published on multiple occasions and across network platforms.
“Beyond the financial harm you have done to Smartmatic, your disinformation campaign has created personal risk for the men and women who work at the company,” Connolly wrote. “Smartmatic and its employees and management have received countless threats in the wake of your reports.”
A Smartmatic spokesperson declined to comment “due to potential litigation.”
Dominion Voting Systems, meanwhile, has demanded that Powell retract her statements about their voting systems. “You reckless disinformation campaign is predicated on lies that have endangered Dominion’s business and the lives of its employees,” Thomas A. Clare and Megan L. Meier, two attorneys for the company, wrote in their letter.
