Republicans across the country are not taking their historic midterm beatdown in stride, and according to a recent report from Right Wing Watch, a notably MAGA-linked pastor has taken his despair a step further, calling for “another January 6.”

Lorenzo Sewell is the leader of 180 Church, a non-denominational Christian church based in Detroit, and has become increasingly connected with GOP and MAGA politics in the last several years. In 2024, he was a guest speaker at the Republican National Convention, and in 2025, he conducted one of the benedictions at Trump’s second-term inauguration. Recently, reports have even suggested that he is considering running for public office himself as a Republican.

Right Wing Watch’s report this week also described Sewell as “an ardent stolen election conspiracy theorist whose obsession with exposing alleged voter fraud has become too extreme even for the Trump White House.” Now, his rejection of election results that are unflattering to Republicans and the MAGA movement has continued, as during an appearance on the “FlashPoint” podcast after the midterm blue wave, he once again called the elections fraudulent and suggested Trump’s followers should rise up against them.

Sewell’s argument for why fraud must have taken place in the midterms echoed the common right-wing misconception about elections, often lampooned with the phrase “land doesn’t vote.” Often, conservatives might share electoral maps of certain states with more counties colored red, and argue that this must be an indication that the state should elect Republicans in state-wide races, despite the fact that Democrats tend to win counties that are more heavily populated, giving them the edge.

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  • fake@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Trump and co are way too calm for them to not be cooking up some shitfuckery.

    Where’s the lawsuits? Fraud claims? They aren’t even trying.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      When the margins were too wide, it was obvious that even trying that way would be too much work.

      However a major theme among the project 2025 folks has been “prepare to do stuff while ignoring Congress”. Basically unless Congress gets 2/3rd of Senate to go against the administration, the administration still has a blank check to do anything since the only remedy is removal from office and the GOP is still too maga to help Congress overcome trump

      They would have preferred a compliant Congress, but they have until 2028 before real obstacles could appear.

    • Stolas@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      This has been what has been giving me anxiety this entire time.

      I’d love to celebrate but it’s not like these people to just concede to a fair election.

    • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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      they’re tried all their trickery leading up, and none of it worked, they know they’re beat and they know they aren’t getting voters back, they just created a Latino voter block, used to be very down the middle with Latinos, but not anymore and certainly not with young Latinos, they aren’t getting that back for a generation at least.

  • Fartemis@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    There’s this moron in my area, but closer to my job. They have two green, steel stakes firmly planted in their yard. During election cycles or even during downtimes, there’s always some wackadoo ass message.

    First one was some generic ass message along the lines of “we support our police, fire, ems!” etc… etc and then in even bigger letters underneath says “Say NO to socialism!” 🤦🏼‍♂️

    The most recent one was something about “be a patriot and storming the polls to watch over the elections!” This individual is beyond stupid. We all know, if one of us liberals were to do something similar, all hell would break loose! It would be front page news if any us said anything remotely similar. I always pass in my work truck and give a finger, but I so wish I had a train horn to fuck with them. Really get the neighbors fed up. This is all right down the street from a Elementary School and MS.

    These are the same people that removed and moan about kids being subjected to things, or “indoctrinated” by people or things they’ve deemed inappropriate for someone of that age group. My personal favorite was this idiot in the neighborhood across the service drive. Elementary school, MS, and a HS less than 500 yards away and this asshole has a Fuck Biden flag flailing in the wind. All fine and dandy, but motherfuckers need to have some consistency in their bullshit.

    Extremely childish and the best part, this idiot has his truck parked outside with his business on it. I think things have been slow for him. 😂 Thats not what pisses me off, though. It’s the flat out hypocrisy and how they stand for nothing. They’re a confused, pathetic bunch.

        • LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zip
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          It’s unpopular, but I disagree. Just because people are currently biased against Christianity (for good reason) does not mean tax exemption against places of worship should end. There’s still a lot of churches of multiple different faiths that feed the hungry, house the unhoused, and clean the unkempt. Until there’s a reliable safety net in place to do that, taxing the good will of congregations that genuinely trust their church more than government (for good reason) to care for those in need is moving backward.

          • ElChinchilla@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Those services should be tax exemptions/credits [write offs] just like they are for everyone else. Need to prevent the next Joel Osteen tax the fuck out of churches except the money they truly do use for good.

          • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            All of these should be publicly funded social services with accountability for every cent used, not some independent entity with no accountability that uses the needs of our most vulnerable to spread some 2000+ year old fairy tale.

            • LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zip
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              Yeah, in an ideal world that would be the case, but as it stands, America is about 100 years behind Europe in the infrastructure required to provide these social services. What I’m suggesting is building pilot programs to help rollout and build them out over time. As these programs start to become readily available, then we can kick churches off the exempt list. Taking them away suddenly would just cause undue harm to people in need because you have an axe to grind.

              • FrChazzz@lemmus.org
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                Plus doesn’t this whole argument send the message that taxation is a form of punishment?

          • thinkingofyouihaveananxietydisorder@quokk.au
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            I feed the hungry. I’m not tax exempt. most people I know who do that aren’t. I used to work to get people housed. I wasn’t just not tax exempt; I was a criminal. I literally used to set up warm camp shower setups for people. no tax exemption for anyone involved-i don’t know if it was illegal, but I’ve seen organized crime with worse opsec than our shower gang. plus, I’ve never hooked a car battery up to a 7 year old girl or raped anyone of any age. two things I can’t say about the Christians i grew up around.

            so, the people who tortured me as a child and raped most of my friends, and also never fed clothed or housed anyone, never let anyone crash at their place while they detoxed then helped them get clean, never walked anyone through a bad trip, never provided healthcare to anyone, never hid anyone from the genocide police and in fact sometimes were the genocide police, deserve better status than me in the eyes of the government? the world is better off without you. you believe in heaven, why the fuck are you defiling us all with your continued presence here?

            I mean fuck, by your logic, why not make punk bands tax exempt?

          • bthest@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Until there’s a reliable safety net in place to do that, taxing the good will of congregations that genuinely trust their church more than government (for good reason) to care for those in need is moving backward.

            That’s circular logic.

            To build trust in government you have to have working social safety nets. To build social safety nets you have to tax. To tax you have to remove tax exemptions. That’s the opposite of backwards.

            Eitherway fewer and fewer people attend church anymore so those charities are going away regardless in the coming years. Why wait for that crisis to materialize?

            • LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zip
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              You can’t in good faith argue that the United States doesn’t have enough tax revenue to provide these services. We spend $950 billion a year on the military. We would barely have to put a dent in that to fund these programs.

  • scathliath@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    So he’s using a pulpit to openly advocate for a political revolution-adjacent response? We all oughta be reporting his fucking megachurch for violations of tax exemption requirements.

    • Pirate2377@lemmy.zip
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      It depends! Whenever it’s advantageous for it to be an attack, it’s an attack, but if not, then antifa did it but also it wasn’t that bad but also it was a peaceful protest. Do you understand now?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      No no no. I’m being told this was an Antifa False Flag Riot and you shouldn’t be deceived by the Lying Liberal Media