This article explores some of the less obvious and even surprising repercussions of September 11th. To do so, it draws on an online archive of more than 12,000 emails sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in response to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Just eleven days after September 11th, Congress created the fund for the express purpose of preventing victims’ families from suing the airlines. After the act passed, the DOJ solicited public comments and posted them to its website, and from the start, the tone was combative. This essay focuses on two especially acrimonious issues: first, gay rights and the recognition of same-sex partnerships and, second, economic inequality and populist anti-elitism. Taken together, the emails showcase how September 11th precipitated fundamental and divisive debates on who deserved the nation's largesse.

The media outlets usually identified as building blocks of New Right are niche ideological journals (such as National Review) and radio broadcasts. As crucial as these outlets were, other mainstream publications propagating similar ideas had a far greater reach—foremost among them the New York Daily News, the highest-circulation newspaper in the country. From the 1940s through the 1960s, the Daily News espoused a conservative populism further right than National Review, binding its readers into a community based on anti-elitism and white working-class identity.

Most histories fail to convincingly explain why 81 percent of American white evangelical voters supported Trump in the 2016 election. Many scholars, like political pundits, hold an idealized vision of the evangelical past, which leads them to assume that “real” evangelicals are actually not so enthusiastic about the deeply anti-intellectual, frankly authoritarian, materialistic, and sexually promiscuous media personality who won the White House. The history of evangelical thought and action after all includes many examples of sensible, humane, and intellectually creative work. How could such a wholesome religious tradition as evangelical Protestantism possibly share responsibility for the political success of Donald Trump?