As should by now be clear to all, the defining philosophy of President Donald Trump’s second term is his deliberate abuse of power to achieve corrupt ends.
The Justice Department, which historically has maintained a modicum of independence from the Oval Office, now cravenly caters to Trump’s raging desire for vengeance against his perceived enemies. Meanwhile, agencies overseeing the nation’s health and welfare have had their budgets and staffs slashed, devastating their ability to perform useful services.
Perhaps most tragically, Trump and his minions have set out to eviscerate every single part of the First Amendment. Really. Here’s the whole freaking thing: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Speakers who say the wrong things, like former student activist Mahmoud Khalil, have been targeted for detention, persecution, and deportation. Disfavored members of the press have been excluded from the White House and the Pentagon, while media organizations have been subjected to baseless lawsuits and harassment. U.S. citizens who challenge Trump’s cruel immigration policies have been shot and killed by Trump’s armed thugs, apparently with impunity.
And then there’s the very first part of the First Amendment, which forbids the government from favoring one religion over others or prohibiting the free exercise of anyone’s religious belief. The Trump Administration has done both.
On February 6, 2025, just days after retaking office, Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.” It claims that the federal government, under the tyrannical reign of President Joe Biden, “engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.”
A few weeks later, Trump issued another order creating a Religious Liberty Commission to “identify emerging threats” to the free practice of religion. As Ja’han Jones of MS NOW observed at the time, the commission was “filled with zealots who are primed to pursue an end to the constitutionally protected separation of church and state.”
That prophecy proved correct. Jones, in an article about the heavily Christian commission’s final meeting last April, noted that it had accomplished little except to purge and ostracize dissenting members. It predictably did not weigh in on Trump’s “puerile political attack” on Pope Leo XIV, his posting of an image of himself as Jesus Christ, or his deranged genocidal threat to wipe out “a whole civilization” in Iran.
Also left uncriticized was the violent religious rhetoric embraced by Trump team members, including “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth—a hardcore evangelical who sports tattoos that celebrate the Crusades, in which medieval Christians waged bloody war against Muslims. In March, shortly after the United States and Israel initiated their ongoing war against Iran, Hegseth held a Christian prayer service at the Pentagon in which he read a prayer that implored God to “let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness,” delivering “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Hegseth has been hosting a monthly “Christian Prayer & Worship Service” at the Pentagon since May 2025, featuring almost exclusively Judeo-Christian speakers. At the first such service, the pastor of Hegseth’s Tennessee church proclaimed: “Lord, may this become a place where Christians come together to do just this, and we see you move in power, not just through the Pentagon, but through our nation’s capital and down throughout this great nation.”
A more egregious violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause is hard to even imagine. But that hasn’t kept the Trumpsters from trying to make it happen.
On May 17 of this year, an all-day, almost exclusively Christian evangelical prayer event explicitly backed by Trump—arguably the most irreligious President ever—took place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The event, funded in part by taxpayers, was billed as a “rededication of our country as One Nation under God.” Trump, Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio made video appearances, while Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, and Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, among many others, made in-person remarks.
The event was planned by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership announced by Trump last December to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—aka the nation’s birthday. One of Freedom 250’s primary goals is to promote the false narrative that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed by God’s will.
Again, the violation of the Establishment Clause is glaring.
“This government-sponsored prayer fest is the epitome of exactly what our secular Constitution forbids our government from doing,” remarked Annie Laurie Gaylor, longtime co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, in a statement. “It is a fusion not only of church and state, but also of our federal government with Christian nationalism.”
Gaylor, in an interview with The Progressive, elaborates on this point: “There is no question in my mind that the federal government has been captured for Christian nationalism,” she says. “The federal government is Christian nationalist right now. Trump has appointed people at the Cabinet level and to various agencies who are Christian nationalists, and Congress is doing nothing about it.”
This is not what the American people want. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that a majority (54 percent) of U.S. adults believe the government should enforce the separation of state and church. Only 10 percent say they have a favorable view of Christian nationalism.
On May 20, Hegseth’s department announced it was reducing its list of recognized faith affiliations from more than two hundred to thirty-one, ending the ability of military service members to identify themselves as members of minority faith groups, including Deists, Druids, Heathens, Humanists, and Pagans.
Service members can still select that they are agnostic or have no religion. But the category “atheist” has been eliminated, says Gaylor, who feels the government “should not be picking and choosing what somebody wants to call themselves, or what religion or rejection of religion, what label they prefer.”
Yet again, the violation of the First Amendment is flagrant: The government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion or restrict the right to have no religion at all.
Gaylor says the Freedom From Religion Foundation intends to litigate over this transgression. It has lined up some potential plaintiffs: members of The Satanic Temple, a nontheistic religious movement that uses satire to push back on violations of the separation of church and state. They were among the religious faiths that the department relegated to the cutting-room floor.
“They want to be able to identify that way,” she says. “They used to be able to—now they can’t.”
Sadly, any attempt to counter Trump’s contempt for Constitutional compliance is like a game of Whac-a-Mole. It just keeps popping up.
Trump now wants to build a gilded, 250-foot arch near the Lincoln Memorial that will include the phrase “One Nation Under God,” as well as a replica of the Statue of Liberty with angel wings. “These are all being approved by his appointees,” Gaylor says. “There’s nobody [in government] minding the store when it comes to separation of church and state.”
Gaylor, in an op-ed published recently on this magazine’s website and distributed nationally through our Progressive Perspectives project, takes aim at the contention made by Christian nationalists and their supporters that the United States is “one nation under God.” This term appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, and this idea would have been anathema to the Founders.
“It wasn’t until 1954, during the height of the Cold War, that the words ‘under God’ were added to the Pledge of Allegiance after heavy lobbying of Congress by religious groups and clergy,” Gaylor points out. “Similarly, ‘In God We Trust’ was adopted as the nation’s motto in 1956.”
Moreover, she says, Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson “refused to issue any proclamations of prayer or thanksgiving, and coined the phrase ‘separation between church and state’ in reference to the First Amendment.” Gaylor urges Americans to rededicate themselves instead to the motto “E Pluribus Unum”—out of many, one—which was chosen by Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. The wisdom of this motto, though lost on Christian nationalist zealots, is that it affirms that “unity requires inclusion, pluralism, and freedom of conscience.”
Amen to that.