‘Secular Spotlight’ examines problematic upcoming Wis. ballot measure
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The latest episode of FFRF’s YouTube show “Secular Spotlight” showcases the potential dangers of a proposed constitutional amendment on Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 ballot.
FFRF’s Ryan Jayne and Mickey Dollens discuss the implications of Question 2 that will be voted on as part of the upcoming elections. It seeks to amend the state Constitution to prohibit government officials from closing places of worship during declared emergencies, including public health emergencies. Faith leaders Rev. Dr. Chris Ross and Buddhist monk Matt Kendziera explain on the show why they’re joining FFRF in opposing the amendment and in raising concerns about its potential impact on public safety.
“When I talk to people who care a lot about religious freedom, they care a lot about their faith. When they see this on the ballot, their first thought might just be, ‘Yeah, I don’t want the government telling me when I’m allowed to worship or not,’” Jayne begins. Kendziera continues, “This amendment has been crafted in such a way really to garner that reaction. That’s the target. That’s the objective, is to get folks to look at this amendment and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. This is an anti-religious freedom amendment.’”
You can catch this episode of “Secular Spotlight” on FFRF’s YouTube channel, or on your smart TV after downloading FFRF’s free app, Freethought TV, which also highlights FFRF’s other video programming. Previous episodes include a deep dive into India’s ruling Hindu nationalist movement with Faria Rehman of Hindus for Human Rights, and online personality Elizabeth Booker Houston discussing her approach to using humor to make complex legal and political issues accessible to millions. Make sure you’re subscribed to FFRF’s YouTube channel for all the latest updates!
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 40,000 members across the country, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
The post ‘Secular Spotlight’ examines problematic upcoming Wis. ballot measure appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
FFRF dissects Trump’s ‘250 victories for people of faith’
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The White House’s newly released list of President Trump’s “Top 250 Victories for People of Faith” is a revealing catalog of the administration’s efforts to redefine religious liberty.
The sprawling list, released to coincide with America’s 250th anniversary, claims to provide “250 reasons why Trump is the most pro-faith, pro-life, and pro-religious liberty president in American history.”
“Trump was elected president, not pastor in chief, and has long forgotten he took an oath to defend and support a Constitution that is godless and separates religion from government,” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “This inappropriate list is pure pandering to his white Christian nationalist base.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has reviewed the list. Far from documenting 250 distinct advances for religious freedom, it mixes a handful of legitimate protections for free exercise of religion with a deluge of Christian nationalist initiatives, culture-war policies, unfinished investigations and proposed rules, ceremonial proclamations, repetitious claims and assertions that omit crucial context.
“These are not 250 victories for religious liberty. They are a remarkably candid accounting of this administration’s campaign to privilege religion, especially conservative Christianity, through the machinery of what is supposed to be a secular government,” adds FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “Religious freedom means every American is free to believe or disbelieve as conscience dictates. It does not mean the president gets to enlist the federal government in promoting religion.”
Most revealingly, the White House repeatedly calls the government’s promotion of religion a “victory.” The administration celebrates establishing the White House Faith Office and faith centers throughout the federal government, creating its so-called Religious Liberty Commission and Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, expanding government funding opportunities for religious organizations, promoting prayer and religion in public schools, organizing Christian worship services at the Pentagon and using the federal government to encourage Americans to pray.
FFRF has repeatedly sounded the alarm about many of the very actions the White House now boasts about.
When Trump established the White House Faith Office and Anti-Christian Bias Task Force in February 2025, FFRF warned that the initiatives threatened to privilege religion rather than protect genuine religious liberty. The Faith Office was tasked not merely with accommodating religious exercise but with helping faith-based organizations obtain government grants and influencing federal policy.
FFRF has also closely monitored Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, which features overwhelmingly conservative religious voices and has repeatedly promoted greater religious involvement in government and public education. Its recently released report attacks the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and recommends expanding government entanglement with religion. FFRF has called the report a roadmap for transforming religious freedom from a shield protecting individual conscience into a sword for securing religious privilege.
The White House’s assertion that the commission represents “every major faith” is impossible to square with its official roster. The commission’s identified religious leadership is predominantly conservative Christian while the broader advisory structure contains barely any religious diversity.
Government promotion of religion becomes a ‘victory’
Some of the administration’s proudest entries illustrate exactly why FFRF is concerned.
The White House counts its “America Prays” initiative as a religious-liberty accomplishment. That government-backed campaign calls on Americans to organize weekly prayer gatherings as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary. FFRF objected when it was unveiled, warning that the White House was improperly using government resources and prestige to organize and encourage worship, which is outside governmental purview.
The administration similarly boasts of “Rededicate 250,” the National Mall May prayer rally at which Americans were called upon to rededicate the nation as “one nation under God.” FFRF protested the event and documented its overwhelmingly Christian character and participation by top government officials.
The list celebrates Trump and administration officials publicly reading Scripture during “America Reads the Bible,” something FFRF previously criticized as yet another example of the administration misusing public office to promote Christianity.
And the White House counts as a “victory” Trump’s Religious Freedom Day proclamation pledging to promote faith throughout American life. FFRF pointed out at the time that Religious Freedom Day actually commemorates the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, one of the foundational American statements against government-sponsored religion.
Pentagon proselytizing is celebrated as ‘spiritual support’
The list also touts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s religious activities as an achievement, including monthly Pentagon worship services and Hegseth’s encouragement that service members “lean into their faith” and “rely on God.”
FFRF has repeatedly objected to Hegseth using his government office to promote Christianity. It first challenged his Pentagon prayer meetings in May 2025 after learning that a Christian nationalist pastor had been invited to preach at the Pentagon, proselytize and lead attendees in the Lord’s Prayer.
FFRF has since documented Hegseth’s escalating sectarian rhetoric, including his declaration that “we are in God we trust” while attacking “godless” Americans, and called on him to resign after he invoked Scripture at a Pentagon prayer service while framing military conflict in explicitly religious terms.
The Constitution protects every service member’s right to practice a religion or no religion. It does not authorize the secretary of defense to turn the Pentagon into a platform for his personal theology.
The White House even claims victories that did not occur
The list is not merely ideological. Several entries are misleading or badly overstated.
Two entries celebrate efforts to weaken the Johnson Amendment, the federal law that prohibits tax-exempt nonprofits, including churches, from intervening in partisan elections. The White House says the Justice Department “reached an agreement” protecting houses of worship and separately credits the Treasury Department with announcing forthcoming guidance.
But the proposed agreement was never approved. On March 31, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit before considering the proposed settlement. FFRF applauded that ruling and subsequently warned Treasury and the IRS against attempting administratively to accomplish what the unsuccessful litigation did not. The White House list omits that consequential fact.
Another entry claims the administration eliminated a restriction that forced faith-based organizations to “ban religious aspects of their programs” to receive federal funds. That seriously mischaracterizes the previous rules. Religious organizations were free to retain their religious identity, names, symbols, governance and privately funded religious activities. The restriction generally prevented direct federal assistance from paying for worship, religious instruction or proselytizing.
In other words, the supposed burden on religious freedom was actually a safeguard preventing taxpayers from being compelled to subsidize religious worship.
Other “victories” are not victories at all. The list repeatedly counts investigations, lawsuits, proposed rules, statements, proclamations and requests to Congress as accomplishments. It even counts NASA astronauts talking about their personal faith and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Religious freedom belongs to everyone
FFRF concedes that a few items on the White House list represent legitimate government functions that protect religious freedom. Prosecuting attacks against synagogues, protecting houses of worship from violence and reasonably accommodating employees’ religious practices can help safeguard constitutional rights. That makes the administration’s conflation of legitimate protections with government-sponsored prayer and preferential treatment for religion all the more troubling.
And religious Americans do not speak with one voice on abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, vaccines, education or the numerous other policy disputes that the White House packages as “victories for people of faith.” The administration’s own list demonstrates the problem with treating “people of faith” as a political constituency whose interests supposedly coincide with one particular theological and ideological agenda.
Religious liberty protects Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and members of every other faith — but it equally protects atheists, agnostics and Americans who want nothing to do with religion.
“The First Amendment does not contain a ‘people of faith’ clause,” says Barker. “It protects freedom of conscience for all of us. The White House seems to believe religious liberty means asking what conservative Christian activists want and then using government power to give it to them. That turns the First Amendment on its head.”
FFRF will continue monitoring and challenging administration actions that cross the constitutional line between protecting private religious exercise and using public office, public money and governmental power to promote religion.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
The post FFRF dissects Trump’s ‘250 victories for people of faith’ appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Dearborn Ramadan lawsuit exposes pitfalls of government-sponsored religion
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
A new lawsuit challenging the city of Dearborn’s taxpayer-funded Ramadan displays shows why the government should stay out of the business of promoting religious holidays altogether.
A federal civil rights suit filed Sept. 17 against the Michigan city and Mayor Abdullah Hammoud alleges that Dearborn used public funds and property to celebrate Ramadan while failing to provide comparable recognition requested for Christian and Jewish holidays. The American Freedom Law Center filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Dearborn resident and The Federalist correspondent Margot Cleveland.
“This controversy shows the divisiveness caused by government bodies funding religious celebrations,” says Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Government neutrality doesn’t mean giving every religion its own taxpayer-funded decorations — it means leaving religious celebrations to private individuals at private events. Taxpayers should not be enlisted to promote any of them.”
Dearborn is the first Arab-majority city in the United States. (FFRF observes that state/church violations involving government promotion of religious celebrations on public property or with public funds typically favor Christianity, the majority religion in most American communities.) According to the complaint, Dearborn spent $1,500 on Ramadan banners and $5,000 on a large illuminated crescent-moon display in Peace Park in 2025. Cleveland says she subsequently asked city officials whether Easter and Passover would receive similar recognition and later sought recognition for additional Christian and Jewish holidays. The lawsuit alleges that those requests were ignored.
Dearborn expanded its Ramadan decorations in 2026, with illuminated crescent moons and stars installed on light poles in several commercial districts. Mayor Hammoud said of the decorations, “This initiative reflects who we are as a city.” He further described the displays as part of celebrating the community’s different traditions.
FFRF notes that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to America’s godless Constitution expressly bars the city from establishing a religion.
“There is no religious ‘we,’ contrary to the mayor’s assertion,” adds Gaylor. “All citizens of any religion or no religion are equal under the law in Dearborn and everywhere else in the United States.”
FFRF also notes, however, that the organization bringing the lawsuit is hardly a disinterested advocate for government neutrality toward religion. The American Freedom Law Center describes itself as the nation’s first “authentic Judeo-Christian” public interest law firm. Its founders, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise, state that the organization exists to defend what it calls America’s “Judeo-Christian heritage and moral foundation.”
The center’s mission statement goes even further. The organization declares that America’s strength rests on its “Judeo-Christian heritage” and “faith and trust in God,” and says that it seeks a return to what it characterizes as America’s founding commitment to God. It also states that it “aggressively seeks to advance and defend our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage” through litigation. Ironically, the lawsuit portraying Dearborn’s recognition of a Muslim holiday as unconstitutional seeks additional government recognition for Christian and Jewish religious observances.
The American Freedom Law Center has a lengthy history of litigation and advocacy focused specifically on Islam. Its own past press releases have described disputes in Dearborn using terms such as “Civilization Jihad” and “dhimmitization” and have accused officials of placating the city’s “sharia-faithful.” The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies center co-founder Yerushalmi as an anti-Muslim activist and describes him as a major figure behind state efforts to enact legislation targeting Islam.
FFRF remarks that this controversy demonstrates the inherent problem with the government getting into the religious-holiday business in the first place. The lawsuit shows the practical problems that arise once a government unwisely decides to promote a particular religious observance. There are myriad religious traditions, as well as a rapidly growing population of Americans — nearly one-third of adults — who practice no religion at all. Government officials should not decide which religious dates, symbols or traditions merit taxpayer support — because none of them should.
FFRF stresses an important distinction between government religious expression and citizens’ private religious expression, who are free to celebrate any religious traditions or none at all. Dearborn should stop its use of taxpayer resources for explicitly religious holiday displays rather than expanding the unconstitutional government promotion to additional religions — all of which turn nonbelievers into outsiders in their own community.
Gaylor advises Dearborn to heed the advice of Benjamin Franklin, who famously observed: “When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
The answer to government-sponsored religion is not more government-sponsored religion, concludes the state/church watchdog. It is a government that stays out of religion altogether.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 41,000 members nationwide, including more than 1,100 members in Michigan. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The post Dearborn Ramadan lawsuit exposes pitfalls of government-sponsored religion appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
FFRF’s advocacy removes cross from Calif. fourth-grade classroom
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The Lodi Unified School District in California has removed a Christian cross displayed by a teacher in her fourth-grade classroom following objections by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
A parent who informed the state/church watchdog about the cross personally observed it during a July 29 back-to-school event at Erma B. Reese Elementary School. According to the parent, the 12 by 16 inch tall cross was displayed on a wall where the teacher’s fourth-grade students couldn’t avoid it.
For the parent, the concern was not abstract.
“Any child in that classroom who does not follow a Christian-based religion has to look at that cross and know their teacher’s religion is different than their own,” the parent told FFRF. The parent expressed dismay over the fact that a child “may feel that [the teacher] disapproves of them or does not accept them or their own religious beliefs.” The parent was particularly concerned that their own child could be treated differently if the teacher learned that the child was not Christian.
To protect the First Amendment rights of conscience of these young and impressionable students, FFRF immediately contacted the district to ensure the removal of the religious symbol.
“By prominently displaying a cross on her classroom wall where students will inevitably see it, [the teacher], and thus the district, signals clear favoritism toward religion over nonreligion and Christianity over all other faiths,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to Superintendent Neil Young.
Religion is a divisive force in public schools, and the classroom cross, an unmistakably sectarian message, clearly crossed a constitutional line. The display also needlessly marginalized fourth-graders, such as the child of FFRF’s parent complainant, who is among the 43 percent of Generation Z members who are religiously unaffiliated.
FFRF is pleased to report that corrective action promptly followed FFRF’s letter. A representative of the district confirmed via email, “The issue brought to our attention has been addressed, and the cross is no longer displayed.”
“This is one of the more shocking violations of the separation between religion and government that we have encountered in a public school classroom,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “A fourth-grade classroom is not a Sunday school, or a venue for an overzealous teacher to espouse their personal religious views. We are glad that Lodi Unified took this egregious violation seriously.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 41,000 members and several chapters nationwide, including more than 5,100 members and two local chapters in California. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The post FFRF’s advocacy removes cross from Calif. fourth-grade classroom appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
