Editor’s note: AU’s “Wall of Separation” blog will provide this semi-regular summary of Trump administration actions to undermine church-state separation, religious freedom, and the rights and freedoms that depend on them. We’ll keep you updated on how AU is fighting these attacks, and how you can help defend church-state separation – the cornerstone of our democracy.
Even though the Trump administration has only had a few weeks under its belt, it has launched a barrage of assaults on our civil liberties and religious freedom. However, as AU’s Vice President of Public Policy Alessandro Terenzoni recently stated in a quick interview on our Tiktok channel, “The point is the chaos, the point is the confusion, the point is to put us in a place where we don’t even know where to start.”
At Americans United we know that this fight has never been a sprint; it has always been a marathon. We fought Trump’s attacks on church-state separation during his first term, and we are spearheading the fight for freedom without favor and equality without exception under his second. As AU President and CEO Rachel Laser likes to say, “Their overreach is our opportunity for progress.” Here is a quick summary of executive orders Trump has signed, what Americans United has done and how you can take action.
President Donald Trump and his allies have made attacks on public education a top priority of his administration. Not even two weeks into his administration he released an executive order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” which Laser described as nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to turn our public schools into re-education camps for white Christian Nationalist disinformation. Among other things, the order would re-establish his ineffective 1776 Commission, which would advance narrow Christian Nationalist beliefs about gender and a white-washed American history.
Another executive order titled “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families” is pulled right out of the Project 2025 playbook. It attempts to divert potentially billions of dollars each year of public money to private, predominantly religious schools. We also expect Trump’s allies in Congress to push for the first-ever, nationwide, federally funded private school voucher program in the coming months. If you haven’t already – and many of you have – you can urge your members of Congress to oppose vouchers by using our simple form here. We need to remind them that public funds belong in public schools that are intentionally inclusive and already serve 90 percent of America’s children.
Undermining progress on inclusivity and equality is a common thread in the dozens of executive orders Trump has signed so far – again, a major Project 2025 goal. Many orders would impose a narrow, Christian Nationalist view of gender that erases the identities of transgender and gender-nonconforming people. He also wants to roll back 60 years’ worth of civil rights protections for employees of taxpayer-funded federal contractors, exposing workers to potential religious and other forms of discrimination.
As my colleague Dena Sher, AU’s associate vice president for public policy, previously wrote on the blog, he also repealed a Biden-era order that laid the groundwork for religious-freedom protections for people who rely on government-funded services like food banks, homeless and domestic violence shelters, job training and elder care. These protections ensure vulnerable people aren’t pressured to participate in religious activities or required to meet a religious litmus test to get critical services. Trump had similarly rolled back these protections during his first administration, triggering a lawsuit filed by AU and allies.
Last week, during one of two National Prayer Breakfast events, Trump announced he was forming a task force to fight supposed anti-Christian bias. Laser called it out as an attempt to “misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination, and the subversion of our civil rights laws.” She also noted Trump’s hypocrisy: “If Trump really cared about religious freedom and ending religious persecution, he’d be addressing antisemitism in his inner circle, anti-Muslim bigotry, hate crimes against people of color and other religious minorities, but instead, he’s abolishing federal programs and protections that address those wrongs. This task force is not a response to Christian persecution; it’s an attempt to make America into an ultra-conservative Christian Nationalist nation.”
To justify his task force, Trump cited the 2020 arrest of an anti-abortion protester who was part of a group that forced their way into a reproductive health clinic and blockaded the doors with locks and chains, disrupting patient care for several hours. On our blog last week, AU’s Andrew L. Seidel dispelled all the disinformation Trump and religious extremists have circulated about the arrest.
There is supreme irony that Trump is presenting himself as a defender of Christians’ religious freedom considering how he treated Episcopal Bishop the Right Rev. Mariann Budde after she presided over an inaugural prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral the day after his inauguration. Budde merely asked for Trump to have compassion and “mercy” for those who are in fear of his campaign promises and policies. Trump lashed out afterward and demanded an apology from her on social media. One member of Congress even tweeted that Budde, an American citizen, should be subject to deportation.
Laser penned a powerful op-ed for Good Faith Media in response to Trump’s attacks, writing, “Theirs is not a fight for religious freedom, but a weaponized religious power that turns this hallowed protection from a shield into a sword that can be used to discriminate, harm, or, in this case, attack a bishop who has the courage to stand up to the anointed leader of a rising tide of Christian Nationalism.”
This torrent of executive orders is meant to feel like a biblical flood – overwhelming and unstoppable. But they’re not. In fact, many of these orders are, as of right now, rhetorical and performative. They need rules and regulations and agencies to implement and carry out, all of which is hard when you’re also dismantling the government. But rest assured that the AU is putting all of these under the microscope and picking and choosing our moments.
At AU we know this feels overwhelming and chaotic, but we aren’t giving up and we hope you don’t either. AU has been around for nearly 80 years; we’ve overcome fierce waves of Christian Nationalism before and we’re ready to defeat this one. It may not happen today, or even this year, but our eyes are on the horizon. I hope you’ll join us in the movement for a national recommitment to church-state separation. Here are a few more actions you can take now:
