For years, Christian supremacist ideology was coursing through American conservatism. Now it—and its antisemitism—is out in the open, in the halls of power and scaring Jews.

In the second week of July 2024, in Washington, DC, it was hard to tell exactly where the country was headed. President Joe Biden, fresh off a disastrous debate performance but still pushing for another term, told a meeting of NATO leaders that the United States and its allies had a “sacred obligation” to defend democracies under attack. Donald Trump, days away from an assassination attempt and then his nomination at the Republican National Convention, secured a GOP platform that was more moderate than what social conservatives wanted, with a softened stance on abortion and no mention of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s controversial blueprint for a second Trump term. Trump said he hadn’t bothered to read it.

What got less media attention that week, but deserved more, was a three-day “National Conservatism” conference at the Capital Hilton Hotel a half mile north of the White House. The conference highlighted an increasingly dominant strain of conservative thought centered on the promotion of America’s white European and Christian heritage and an America First nationalism. Speakers attacked globalism and advocated for greater Christian influence in the country’s social and political institutions. Several Project 2025 contributors were there, as well as eight Republican senators. Among them was JD Vance of Ohio, not yet revealed as Trump’s choice for vice president but a clear front-runner for the position after exchanging his sober anti-Trump politics of a few years earlier for a newly combative posture defending Trump’s most controversial positions.

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