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Court questions if Ten Commandments in classrooms are 'plainly unconstitutional'
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an 9 25
President Donald Trump announced Monday that the Department of Education will soon release updated guidelines to safeguard “the right to prayer” in public schools.
Speaking before the White House Religious Liberty Commission, Trump reaffirmed his strong religious convictions and criticized how he sees the separation of church and state as being used to marginalize devout students.
He declared, “To have a great nation, you have to have religion,” adding, “I believe that so strongly.”
READ MORE:'Irreconcilable with our constitutional guarantees': Sotomayor slams SCOTUS in stunning dissent
During the ceremony, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner delivered a prayer.
"Father, we thank you for our president, Donald J. Trump, whom you have anointed and appointed for this time, for such a time as this. Lord, thank you that the president prioritizes prayer," he said.
Turner's prayer led to strong reactions on social media from the president's critics.
Author Jennifer Valent wrote on the social platform X: "This brash taking of the Lord's name in vain by claiming His favorable anointing over a man with an unrepentantly blackened soul will never cease to make me feel physically ill. Nor should it."
READ MORE:Revealed: Wall St. giant erupted into intense clashes over Epstein's 'heinous crimes'
The X account @AntiToxicPeoplewrote: "What an insane cult. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sick. The last line is the best."
Journalist Michael McGough said: "What was that line about God not being mocked?"
Writer Paul Hughes-Cromwicksaid:"Interesting that the Father would anoint someone who abuses woman, lies with nearly every word, and is fond of bullying people of color. Must have been a slow day for anointing. Oh, and the Antichrist prioritizes prayer? Well, that's news!"
The account @RepublicansAgainstTrump reacted to the video and wrote: "It's a cult."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday said that the vast majority of schools in the Lone Star State should still plan on displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms even after a federal judge ruled against it last week.
In a statement, Paxton said that "schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide" by a state law that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in all public and secondary school classrooms.
"The woke radicals seeking to erase our nation's history will be defeated," he said. "I will not back down from defending the virtues and values that built this country."
Paxton asserted that only nine Texas school districts are affected by the injunction and said that all other districts "must abide by the law once it takes effect on September 1, 2025."
The Texas attorney general's defiant stance on the Ten Commandments earned him a quick rebuke from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who accused him of grandstanding instead of doing his job as the state's chief law enforcement official.
"Paxton's job is to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the separation of church and state—not the Ten Commandments," he wrote on X. "Our public schools should focus on educating Texas students, not stoking culture wars."
The Freedom From Religion Foundation also rebuked Paxton for failing to uphold the Constitution's prohibition of the government establishment of a religion.
"The Constitution, not the Ten Commandments, built this country," the foundation said. "Forcing students to observe one religion’s rules is a blatant violation of the First Amendment regardless of what Ken Paxton claims. Public schools are for education, not religious indoctrination."
Paxton's declaration came less than a week after US District Judge Fred Biery of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction against the state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed.
In his ruling, Biery argued that the classroom displays "are likely to pressure the [students] into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the state's favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school."
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AN 7 25
POlitical operative David Barton held up a thick Bible with years of wear on its dark brown cover and proclaimed its pages put Protestant Christianity at the center of the country’s very foundation.
*This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.
“This is actually printed by the official printer of Congress,” said Barton, a best-selling author and influential far-right Christian nationalist. Barton has spent the last 40 years arguing that the separation of church and state is a myth — and has built a multimillion-dollar media and lobbying operation to influence public opinion and shape laws around the belief that the United States was founded as a Judeo-Christian nation.
At [VID] in April, Barton appeared before the Texas House education committee and testified in favor of legislation, since signed into law, requiring that posters of the Ten Commandments be placed inside every classroom in the state’s nearly 9,100 public schools by September. With him, Barton brought a small collection of books he claims were foundational to the country’s public education system until the 20th Century.
Barton isn’t just a primary pitchman for the Ten Commandments law in Texas, his home state, an investigation by The 74 reveals. His fingerprints appear on 28 bills that have cropped up before the legislatures in 18 states this year. A data analysis of the bills exposes how their language, structure and requirements are inherently identical. In dozens of instances, they match model legislation pitched by Barton verbatim.
At the Texas hearing, Barton’s eyes fixated on the cover of the rare 1782 Aitken Bible.
“It also says it’s ‘a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools,’” he continued. “It has the Ten Commandments.”
In actuality, Barton lifted language from Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken calling on Congress to sanction a Bible that could also be for “the use of schools.” Christian nationalists have for years falsely claimed the Revolutionary-era printing includes a government promotion of Christianity. Barton has long been accused of taking historical quotes out of context, and in 2012, the Christian publisher of his bestselling book on Thomas Jefferson ceased its production because “basic truths just were not there.”
Texas is one of three states in the last two years to pass a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools. The mandates are part of a coordinated nationwide effort to overturn a 1980 Supreme Court ruling forbidding Kentucky from requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms.
As the influence of Barton and the burgeoning Christian nationalist movement find favor in state legislatures, the White House and with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson — who cites Barton as a “profound influence” — the lobbyists and lawmakers behind the state Ten Commandments bills told The 74 they’re confident the current Supreme Court’s conservative super-majority is on their side, too.
The analysis by The 74 reveals how language in virtually every state bill matches model legislation created by Project Blitz, a Barton-steered Christian “bill mill” that’s long flooded statehouseswith legislative templates that promote Christianity in public schools, legalize discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and restrict abortion.
A dozen bills specify, for example, that the Ten Commandments displays must be hung in a “conspicuous” location. Another 11 specify they should be at least 11-by-14 inches in size. Nearly all of the bills — 25 — mandate a Christian version of the religious and ethical directives be displayed as a “poster or framed.” The 74 tallied 96 instances where bills introduced this year match Project Blitz’s model legislation, including template bills to require the Ten Commandments or the phrase “In God We Trust” in public schools.
Among the architects of Project Blitz is the Barton-founded influence machine, WallBuilders. The flurry of state bills were introduced after WallBuilders — the name is an Old Testament reference to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem — convened its annual national conference of state legislators in November where the model legislation was promoted.
After Louisiana passed its first-in-the-nation Ten Commandments law last year, new mandates approved in Arkansas and Texas this year follow the same Project Blitz template.
‘No such thing as separation of God and government’
Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton is the joint author of the state’s new Ten Commandments law and the author of another new law permitting a daily prayer period and Bible readings in public schools statewide. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed both in June.
Middleton, whose district southeast of Houston includes his hometown of Galveston, acknowledged Barton’s influence over not just his own legislative agenda, but Texas’ broader conservative movement. Barton previously served as vice chair of the state Republican Party.
“Of course, WallBuilders is very supportive of the bill,” Middleton told The 74, as were the conservative legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and the First Liberty Institute. “And, of course, all of their missions is to advance religious liberties, especially in the public realm where there is no such thing as separation of God and government.”
Founded by Barton in 1988, WallBuilders promotes theories — discredited by serious scholars — about Christianity’s central role in the formation of the United States through its podcasts, books and a museum with “one of the largest private collections of United States historical documents.”
Through WallBuilders’ lobbying arm, the Pro-Family Legislative Network, Barton leads direct outreach to lawmakers and educators at its annual conferences at a four-star waterfront resort in suburban Dallas. It was at this gathering where Indiana Rep. J.D. Prescott, a Republican, got the idea for Ten Commandments legislation in his state, he told The 74.
Prescott proposed a bill requiring a “durable poster or framed picture” of the commandments in each library and classroom at all public schools statewide. The legislation ultimately failed to garner support. Bills in other states also failed to gain traction, including in South Dakota where the bill’s critics — including some Republicans — said a government mandate was the wrong way to spread Christianity and ran afoul of the Constitution.
“Our early common school system was really designed to teach biblical principles in the Bible, so it’s just getting back to that point,” said Prescott, who described himself as a “student of history.”
The Pro-Family Legislative conference offers lawmakers scholarships and discounted hotel rates to attend the event. In at least one instance, a New Hampshire state lawmakerfiled a disclosure form reporting that he had received $859.47 from the Pro-Family Legislative Network, including $500 reimbursing him for air fare, to attend the November 2024 conference.
Prescott told The 74, “I learned a lot of it at a WallBuilders conference hosted by David Barton. They’ve got a great conference for legislators down in Texas every November. I did look at the WallBuilders model legislation and it’s a good place to start.”
Not everyone’s Ten Commandments
Experts said the bills seek to do more than require “durable” Ten Commandments posters in every public school classroom. The campaign is part of a broader, well-organized and deep-pocketed assault, they argue, on the separation of church and state.
Although WallBuilders isn’t required to disclose its donors, the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy analyzed federal tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service to bring its finances into focus. In 2021, WallBuilders reported $5.9 million in revenue and $6.3 million in total assets.
The group relies heavily on donor-advised giving, a tax loophole that allows anonymous supporters across the political spectrum to contribute to contentious causes without scrutiny. For example, donor-advised funds have been exploited by far-right activists to leverage global campaigns against the civil rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, according to a 2023 investigation by openDemocracy.
Mercury One, a nonprofit founded by high-profile conservative pundit and media personality Glenn Beck, is both a WallBuilders donor and primary sponsor of Barton’s annual Pro-Family Legislative Conference to brief elected officials “on pressing issues from a constitutional perspective.”
Barton, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, describes himself as a self-taught historian and the owner of the largest private collection of historical documents about the Founding Fathers. His critics pan the graduate of the Oral Roberts University as a discredited pseudohistorian and propagandist.
Barton is “the granddaddy of Christian nationalist disinformation,” constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The 74.
John Fea, an American history professor and history department chair at Messiah University, a private evangelical Christian institution in Pennsylvania, accused Barton of cherry-picking historical information to present a misleading portrayal of the past, one that bolsters his own present-day political agenda.
“This is clearly an attempt by Christian nationalists to try to advance their own version of what America should be,” Fea said, noting that even as historians challenge Barton, he’s amassed influence among Republican lawmakers interested in leveraging a distorted accounting of history for political gain.
“Barton provides that history for these lawmakers. It adds a certain depth, even though it’s hollow.”
Darcy Hirsh, the senior director of government relations and advocacy at the nonprofit National Council for Jewish Women, said the Ten Commandments laws present an attack on “the strict wall of separation” between church and state.
“Any efforts to perpetuate the falsehood that the United States is a Christian nation is something that we find deeply alarming,” Hirsh said. Requiring a protestant Christian version of the Ten Commandments in schools, she said, is “exclusionary and coercive” to children from diverse backgrounds.
“A Protestant interpretation of the Ten Commandments is different than the Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments, in fact, they are numbered differently,” she said. Constitutional protections separating church and state, she said, are critical to the country’s democratic society.
“It’s that protection that has really allowed the Jewish community and other minority faith communities to flourish in the U.S.”
The laws successfully passed in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas now face lawsuits from parents alleging they violate the separation of church and state. The issue could soon appear again before the nation’s highest court. In June, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, among the nation’s most conservative, struck down Louisiana’s Ten Commandments display mandate, finding it “plainly unconstitutional.”
Parents with diverse religious identities are being backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State in challenging the laws. In a complaint filed in Arkansas, parents allege students will be “unconstitutionally coerced into religious observance” and “pressured to suppress their personal religious beliefs.”
Fea, the evangelical historian, told The 74 the far-right campaign isn’t about the Ten Commandments’ place in the nation’s founding but about advancing the influence of Christianity in society.
“They’re using this historical argument to disguise the fact that they believe that somehow — and I don’t know how this happens, by osmosis or whatever — a student sitting in a classroom where the Ten Commandments is displayed will somehow buy into those ideals and values and become more Christian,” he said.
‘The hostility is gone’
At the Texas House education committee hearing in April, Barton held up a second book. This one was much smaller than the first, but just as old and, Barton testified, just as significant.
Barton lectured the Republican-controlled state legislature on The New England Primer, a widely used Colonial-era reading text. The book, he said, drilled first graders with 43 questions about the Ten Commandments.
Then he introduced a third book, and a fourth.
“The courts have pointed to the Ten Commandments as the reason we have all types of laws,” Barton testified. “So there’s a lot of history and tradition for that document that’s not there for other documents.”
Barton’s prop-focused presentation isn’t just scripted — it’s well rehearsed. This year, the 71-year-old has traveled across the country with his books and a small team of collaborators to spread the gospel of Christian nationalism. Like the bills before the state legislatures, Barton’s speech was replicated again and again.
As Barton testified on the Ten Commandment bills nationally, legislative sponsors routinely parroted his talking points, not just about Christianity’s role in the country’s origin, but the Supreme Court’s support for their movement.
During his recent appearances in Nebraska and other states, Barton’s testimonies invoked the court’s 2022 opinion upholding the rights of a Washington state high school football coach to lead prayers with his team on the 50-yard line after games.
Prescott, the Indiana lawmaker, said he became interested in introducing his bill after learning of the implications of the coach’s Supreme Court victory.
To Barton and other members of his coalition, the court’s opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District creates a clear path to require Ten Commandments in schools — and inject Christianity into other facets of public life — by proving they’re part of a longstanding traditional practice.
In finding for Coach Kennedy, the Supreme Court abandoned its 1971 opinion ruling that religious displays don’t violate the Constitution if they have significant secular or nonreligious purposes. The court’s new standard revolves around whether the religious displays are part of historical practices. In other words, the heart of Barton’s pitch.
“That is the new standard, so the hostility is gone,” he testified. “Showing that this is something that is longstanding practice, you go back to The New England Primer.”
Bought and paid for — according to specs
Even as bill proponents championed states’ rights as one legal justification for their Ten Commandments display mandates, Middleton, the Texas legislative leader, said there is a key benefit to the near-identical requirements in the bills across the 18 states.
“We just wanted uniformity in these displays. We thought that was important,” the oil company president and cattle rancher told The 74. “Obviously, these are primarily going to be donated as well, so it’s probably going to be primarily private funds funding these.”
Project Blitz model legislation devises a funding scheme that revolves around donated displays without the reliance on public funds — a provision that appears in 16 states’ bills. Others invoke the model legislation by encouraging donated displays, but broaden the mandate so schools are also free to spend taxpayer dollars to comply.
Mirroring the Project Blitz model legislation, the new Arkansas law requires the Ten Commandments display be composed of a “durable poster or framed copy” of the document and that it be “prominently” positioned in each public classroom and library across the state. The law also stipulates that the posters should be donated by outside groups, meaning the same private entities who had a hand in crafting the specifications, supporting the bills and getting them on legislators’ radars, will also be the ones buying the versions of the Ten Commandments that wind up in schools.
Even as the Louisiana law is caught up in federal court, religious groups who lobbied for the law’s passage and have close ties to the WallBuilders have plans to donate the displays set to appear in classrooms across the state.
In April, First Liberty Institute and The Louisiana Family Forum announced that Patriot Mobile, which describes itself as “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider,” had donated 3,000 Ten Commandments displays “as part of a project to provide, at no cost to the Louisiana taxpayer, displays in schools throughout Louisiana.”[CHART]
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'Not a theocracy': Internet erupts after court blocks Louisiana's Ten Commandments law
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rww
04/18/2025
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- David and Tim Barton were on hand when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in Arkansas.
- Intercessors for America is so elated by the White House's Easter message that they are encouraging activists to send President Donald Trump a note of thanks: "Please know that I am regularly praying for you, Mr. President--and also for your family, staff, and the rest of your administration. Like you, I believe that God spared your life to use you to accomplish His godly purposes in our nation."
- Jackson Lahmeyer says that attending the Easter dinner at the White House was the "TIME OF MY LIFE."
- Rep. Mary Miller explains why she approves of Trump's deportation policy: "He loves and cares about our country like a father and he wants to protect us."
- Finally, Shane Vaughn wants to see Sen. Chris Van Hollen prosecuted for violating the Logan Act by traveling to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
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rww
03/14/2025
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The religious-right group Family Research Council promoted an excited letter to supporters Thursday saying that President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education could be a “game-changer” for FRC’s efforts to “bring faith and the Bible back to public schools.”
In her recent book “Money, Lies, and God,” Katherine Stewart wrote about the ways that “privatizers and proselytizers” work together to delegitimize and undermine public education. The right-wing funded Moms for Liberty demonstrates this dual strategy, urging activists to take over public school boards while advocating for “school choice” laws to divert funding away from public schools. FRC President Tony Perkins’ letter showcases such a two-front strategy to push religious indoctrination into public schools and shift more students (and education dollars) into religious schools that are free from public oversight.
Perkins begins by criticizing Supreme Court rulings upholding church-state separation, and moves quickly to Christian nationalists’ favorite target: LGBTQ people: “With God, the Ten Commandments, and biblical truths out of the way, the Left had ample room to push their radical indoctrination plan onto our children.”
Perkins’ letter praises recent actions by state officials to turn public schools into de facto Sunday schools, beginning with a 2024 Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. “Louisiana’s spark became a flame as other states – including Texas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota – have now taken steps to reintroduce biblical teachings back into their schools,” Perkins writes.
But even that is not enough, Perkins continues, calling on every church to start a Christian school in which the Bible “is more than historical context of our nation's founding or a general ethical context -- it is the complete worldview in which reality and life itself are grounded.”
Perkins’ letter comes in the context of Christian nationalist activists urging state legislators to take advantage of right-wing Supreme Court rulings and go “on offense” to dismantle separation of church and state, particularly where schools are involved.
Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters last year ordered public schools in the state to teach the Bible, which may have been an effort to keep him from being upstaged by Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law, which has been promoted as part of “Project Blitz,” a campaign to promote Christian nationalist legislation at the state level. Walters' plan to buy Trump Bibles for classrooms was put on pause by the state supreme court this week.
Trump chose his billionaire backer Linda McMahon to oversee the dismantling of the Department of Education. McMahon has chaired the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA think tank that promotes right-wing education policies as part of its agenda for “restoring a nation under God.” AFPI promotes so-called “school choice” laws that divert funding from public schools to unaccountable religious schools.
“AFPI has specifically taken credit for lobbying for the expansion of this approach in Arizona—over the objection of voters—where it has become an expensive ‘handout to the wealthy’ that has forced cuts in programs that serve needier families,” Right Wing Watch reported in February. “Pro Publica has reported on the lack of accountability in the program; a failing charter school shut down by regulators simply reopened as a private religious school funded by taxpayers.”