A so-called “Take Our Border Back” convoy is underway to support Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding the southern border. Several convoy organizers are religious extremists with ties to disgraced retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, a top proponent of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement, which was fueled by religious extremism as well. (Link to tweet.)
Convoy organizer Kim Yeater has a show – “Take Your Power Back” – that is sponsored by Flynn. She has said that her activism began with a dream from God in which she saw an explosion and God told her, “IT IS THE SHOT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD.” an apparent reference to the shot that sparked the American Revolution.
Per LinkedIn, Yeater volunteers for the (San Diego-based) Awaken megachurch. The megachurch has hosted Flynn’s Reawaken America Tour (RAT), as reported by journalist Kate Burns in an expansive Awaken exposé in 2023. That year, Awaken hosted an “Emerge” men’s conference where participants wore military gear and wielded machine guns, while pretending to rescue a child from sex traffickers, as shown in a viral video posted by @ChristnNitemare on “X”. Awaken’s lead pastor, Jurgen Matthesius, has referred to “the Left” as “satanic murderers.”
Awaken partners with Turning Point USA, a nonprofit founded by Charlie Kirk, who has accused public schools of “grooming” children. Kirk has also championed the ”Seven Mountains” of influence, a dominionist ideology described here. The ideology was popularized by Lance Wallnau, an apostle in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) dominionist movement, who has spoken at Awaken, as has NAR Apostle Jim Garlow. Awaken also partners with “RMNT,” a political action group that trains school board candidates. Yeater has emceed RMNT events.
[LISTEN: The New Apostolic Reformation: A Revolutionary Theocratic Movement Coming for Pennsylvania, the Nation, and the World, with Frederick Clarkson]
Yeater’s convoy co-organizers include veteran Pete Chambers, who sits on the board of “Global Tek MD” with Flynn (as discovered by @visionsurreal on “X”) and has said that he left the military to “join the Army of God.” They also include Robert Agee, who claims to have spoken during Flynn’s RAT, calls the border situation a “spiritual war” and calls himself “part of the army of the Lord.”
Another convoy organizer, Craig Hudgins of Virginia Beach, helped organize an April 2023 gathering (the “First Landing 1607”) comprised of “Christian nationalists committed to ‘re-dedicating (re-marrying) the nation back to God,” per Virginia Beach local news. The gathering included Chambers, Family Research Council chair Michelle Bachman (a Garlow protege), media personality Glenn Beck, and David Barton, a top proponent of the militant “Black Robe Regiment” pastors movement. The gathering also included Reverend William Cook, founder and CEO of “America’s Black Robe Regiment” and the “Black Robe Regiment of Virginia.”
Cook (wearing an Oath Keepers shirt) had previously shared a stage with Flynn and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, a subsequently convicted seditionist, during the pro-Trump Jericho March rally in 2020. In 2022, Flynn and Garlow attended the commissioning of 150 pastors into Cook’s “America’s Black Robe Regiment.”
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