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JONATHAN LARSEN
COVERS MRFF
Veteran journalist Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
The Quiet War to Save the U.S. Military
By: Jonathan Larsen
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Article excerpts:
But while Trump’s abuses and Hegseth’s crusade get the headlines, everyone should understand that they aren’t the only ones fighting to forge the future of the U.S. military. The Constitution still has defenders in uniform and those defenders still have allies outside the military.
One of those allies is the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which fights for constitutional secularism in the military as if divinely inspired. I’ve written before about founder and President Mikey Weinstein, a Jewish military veteran who worked in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and now endures the slings and arrows of outrageous Christian radicals every time he successfully defends members of the military — mostly Christian — from theocratic commanders.
The MRFF has been winning battles that rarely make the news, but serve to hold the line against Hegseth’s theocratic encroachments. I’ll get to (just a few of) those.
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We may never know how many legal victories The Orders Project or Trans Representation Project notch up, but the MRFF is considerably less shy.
The military has always had a problem in the ranks with radical Christian theocrats, white supremacists, and the Venn diagram where both of them serve. The MRFF, for instance, has been peeling back the ties of U.S. Army Lt. General Brian Eifler to election deniers, Jan. 6 backers, and the anti-democratic New Apostolic Reformation movement.
Responding to the MRFF’s reporting about Eifler abusing his position to waterboard Jesus down the throats of his troops, the Army’s inspector general launched an investigation. But now EIfler has his dream boss and his dream commander in chief.
Weinstein saw all of this coming decades ago, and has been ringing the alarm bells, as evidenced by his 2008 interview with New Humanist magazine. Weinstein hears directly from the canaries in the coal mines, the military and intelligence men and women who tell him about radical Christian encroachments, usually from the top down, usually targeting Christians for being wrongly or insufficiently Christian.
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Even before Trump won the election, congressional Republicans mounted an assault on every single person in the U.S. military and intelligence communities. They tried to rewrite U.S. law to make it illegal for any of them to contact the MRFF. That would include not only complaints to MRFF but responses to MRFF from the chain of command, the legions of base commanders and other supervisors who do the right thing when Weinstein educates them that, no, soldiers can’t be made to listen to sermons and that, no, veterans hospital can’t have a Bible display in the lobby, and on and on and on.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives actually approved this bill to curtail the speech rights and religious freedom of members of the U.S. military. Weinstein turned the tables and the legislative language was changed to codify Pentagon responses to Weinstein’s complaints.
Which means now Weinstein and the MRFF are positioned and established to defend infringements on the rights of those who serve in the military and intelligence communities.
Already in January, the MRFF wrote at the time, it had gotten “hundreds of calls from clients” — how the MRFF refers to the service members it helps — “anxiously asking the same question: ‘What do I do if I’m given an illegal order by Trump and his minions?’”
The answer, as Weinstein publicly declared, was “come to us.” The MRFF, in other words, announced it was looking for a fight. Lots of fights. Fights on behalf of service members under siege from military theocrats seeking to co-opt the United States armed forces and twist its legacy and the resources provided by a diverse populace to their own, personal, unconstitutional ends.
And while it’s easy to imagine that Hegseth and Trump are steamrolling all opposition, the MRFF has been racking up some victories.
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The MRFF pushed back after the Naval Academy removed displays celebrating Jewish women alumni prior to a visit by Hegseth. The displays were restored.
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The MRFF prevented a Christian commander from forcing soldiers to attend a mandatory Easter service.
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Hilariously, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took time off — from the awesome job he’s doing ensuring that our airports definitely aren’t fucked — to rescue a Jesus painting the MRFF got removed from display at the Merchant Marine Academy by putting it in his office — which, it’s worth noting, is not putting it on public display. Duffy, of course, portrayed this as a win.
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