I've just finished reading
A Strange Valley by Darrell Bain which is set in a near future USA which is dangerously veering to become a religious right theocracy after the presidency of a certain Bush Jr.
Then someone discovers a strange valley inhabited by atheistic, skeptical, rational humans who turn out to have been mutated by unusual prions and the president does everything in his power to stop the prions from spreading including setting off a dirty nuke. Quite a fun read.