Trump is turning us into the Christian States of America
At 3:37 yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump sat with his shoulders slumped forward, his hands hidden on his legs beneath the dark wooden desk in the Oval Office. His eyes remained closed as he fought to stay awake while a circle of handpicked far-right religious power brokers and political loyalists stood packed tightly behind him. A stack of bright red “America Is Back” hats rested on the corner of his desk like campaign merchandise waiting to be handed out. For 21 minutes and 14 seconds, they filled the room with one proclamation after another about God, faith, and the future of America.
Many were there as members of his Religious Liberty Commission, the people now laying the ideological foundation for the so-called moral vision of his presidency and for the future of the United States of America. And although Trump had a very demanding schedule yesterday, he made time for this carefully staged event because it marked the next phase of his plan to retain power: wrapping his political movement in the authority of God, blurring the line between faith and politics until loyalty to one becomes loyalty to the other. That strategy was summed up in a single sentence spoken by the chairman of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission: “Again, the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution.”
That was Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the man Donald J. Trump personally selected to lead his Religious Liberty Commission. Standing in the Oval Office beside Dr. Phil McGraw, Ben Carson, Bishop Robert Barron, Paula White-Cain, Kelly Shackelford of First Liberty Institute, Ryan Anderson, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and other members of the commission, Patrick didn’t stop there. He went even further, declaring, “And from this day forward, that phrase should have no power over people of all faiths ever again in America.”
He then looked at Trump and said, “No president in our history has stood more for God than this president.” Trump, who had barely kept his eyes open through most of the presentation, perked up just enough to say, “We will never let that phrase be stolen from us. People are trying to steal it, we all know that very well.”
The document they placed on Trump’s desk was 224 pages long. It is called America’s First Freedom, the draft report of the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission. It doesn’t simply argue for greater religious liberty. It lays out a roadmap for weaving religion more deeply into the machinery of the federal government. It calls for dismantling long-standing barriers between church and state and replacing them with what the report describes as “bridges” between the two.
Among its recommendations are repealing the Johnson Amendment, the 1954 law that prohibits churches and other tax-exempt religious organizations from endorsing political candidates while keeping their tax-exempt status. It calls for the Department of Justice to establish a Religious Liberty Task Force to investigate and prioritize religious liberty litigation. It proposes “Know Your Rights” posters in schools, hospitals, and military installations, religious liberty hotlines, the nomination of federal judges with a demonstrated record of favoring religious expression, a new Presidential Medal of Religious Liberty, and expanded exhibits at federal historic sites celebrating the role of religion in America’s history, even as the Smithsonian is being directed to remove or minimize exhibits about slavery, Japanese American internment, and conflicts with Native Americans.
And one recommendation, in particular, should make all of us stop and think. They want to repeal the very law that prevents churches from openly campaigning for political candidates while keeping their tax-exempt status. Why remove that guardrail now? Because many churches have already crossed that line for years. Instead of enforcing the law, this commission proposes changing it. That’s a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly throughout this administration. When the rules become inconvenient, they don’t change their behavior. They try to change the rules. Expanding the ability of tax-exempt religious organizations to campaign for political candidates would give politicians direct access to millions of Americans who turn to their churches for guidance, community, and answers during the most important moments of their lives.
The Religious Liberty Commission was filled almost entirely by conservative Christians. Its very first hearing was held at the Museum of the Bible and opened with a prayer “in Jesus’ name.” Seven lawsuits have been filed against the commission for violating federal law requiring ideological diversity on advisory panels. The administration is trying to have those lawsuits dismissed by arguing that the law does not define what “balanced” means.
Bishop Barron, one of the commission’s most prominent members, told the press not to be “cowed” by the concept of separation of church and state. “I say, no, don’t buy that,” he said. Dr. Phil described Americans as being “persecuted in their jobs” for their faith. Ben Carson spoke of “egregious acts” against children as young as four simply because of their beliefs. And at the center of it all sat Donald Trump, a man who does not regularly attend church, who has publicly struggled to discuss even the most basic tenets of Christianity, and whose public engagement with religion has often been tied to political events rather than personal worship. Yet none of that seemed to matter. He didn’t need to be the theologian in the room. He only needed to be the politician willing to lend the power of the presidency to the people standing behind him.
Hours earlier, Trump stood before the crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition gathering at the Washington Hilton, continuing to play the part, boasting, “We saved religion, it was going down.” He accused the Biden administration of carrying out a “reign of persecution.” And then he said the part that revealed the real purpose of it all: the fear that everything they had already done to harm this country could be undone. With Trump saying, “Everyone needs to get out and vote in the midterms. We have to win this election. This election is very vital. If we don’t, everything that we’ve gotten, we’ve gotten so much.” That is what this is about. Not salvation or scripture. Not protecting the faithful. It was all about protecting power.
This attack on our actual freedom of religion did not stay inside the White House. Because on the very same day that the report was placed on the president’s desk, the Texas State Board of Education, led by the same Republican political infrastructure, voted 9-5-1, with one abstention, to make Texas the first state in the country to require that public school students read the Bible. Not as an elective or even an option, but as a mandatory curriculum, from kindergarten through 12th grade. Picture books about David and Goliath in elementary school. Passages about Jesus by fourth grade. The Sermon on the Mount by middle school. Specific Bible translations mandated, including the King James Version, which is favored by Protestant and Evangelical churches. No other religious tradition appears anywhere on the list. A Stanford professor who studies education said he is not aware of any other state that has ever mandated religious texts as required reading in public schools.
And then this morning, Trump posted a fake image of himself on Truth Social depicting himself as Atlas, the Greek god, on one knee, draped in an American flag, holding the entire planet Earth on his shoulders. This was two months after he posted another outlandish image of himself as Jesus Christ, wearing a white robe, healing a sick man in a hospital bed while light radiated from his hands and bald eagles soared behind him. He deleted that one after the backlash reached even his own supporters. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has previously called herself a “proud Christian nationalist,” said, “It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.” And when reporters asked Trump about it, he said, “I thought it was me as a doctor.”
And none of this is about God or even religion. Deeply religious people, truly faithful people, feel an obligation to their fellow human beings. They feed the hungry. They shelter the homeless. They visit the sick. They care for the poor, the weak, and the forgotten. That is what faith asks of people, in every tradition, language, and corner of the world. The Bible that they want mandated in Texas classrooms contains the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The same administration that is requiring children to read those words is gutting Medicaid. Slashing food assistance. Stripping protections from the most vulnerable people in this country. Concentrating wealth at the very top while telling working families that their rights come from God, not from government, which is just another way of saying: do not look to us for help.
This is not a revival. It is a takeover. And the tool is not scripture. It is control. Control over women, through abortion bans and restrictions on reproductive healthcare, justified by religious language that treats women’s bodies as property of the state. Control over the poor by dismantling every safety net and replacing it with a sermon. Control over education, by dictating what children are allowed to read and framing obedience as patriotism. Control over dissent, by collapsing the space between political disagreement and spiritual heresy, so that questioning the president becomes the same as questioning God.
Every authoritarian regime in the last century understood this. Franco wrapped his dictatorship in Catholicism and called it a crusade. The Taliban imposed religious law and called it virtue. The Islamic Republic of Iran fused mosque and state and called it revolution. And in every single case, the faith itself was not the point. The point was that once you convince people that their leader speaks for God, they stop asking questions. They stop demanding accountability. They stop believing they have the right to resist. Because resistance is no longer a political act. It becomes a sin.
That is the architecture being assembled right now in the United States of America. A government-backed prayer rally on the National Mall, where the Secretary of Defense asked Americans to pray to “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” A 224-page government report calling the separation of church and state a legal error. A state mandate requiring children to read the Bible in public school. A televised competition of teenagers where the White House decides who is patriotic enough to represent their state. And a president who posts images of himself as Christ, as Atlas, as a figure beyond human scale, while the people around him nod and call him the greatest champion God has ever had in the White House.
And we need to see it for what it is. We are a little over four months from the most consequential midterm elections of our lifetimes. Every single one of these moves is happening now for a reason. They see the writing on the wall. Their polling is slipping. The special elections keep breaking against them. The resistance is growing louder, not quieter. And every person in that Oval Office on Friday has something to lose. Political power. Financial empires. Legal exposure. Proximity to the one man who keeps them shielded from accountability. They are not building this infrastructure because they are confident. They are building it because they are desperate. And desperate people with institutional power do not slow down. They accelerate. They try to lock everything in place before the voters arrive. They flood the system with so much that it becomes impossible to fight on every front at once. That is what this week was. Not a show of strength. A show of fear.
And every single person standing behind that desk on Friday is telling Trump only what they want him to see. They are managing a man who cannot stay awake through his own commission’s report, feeding him images of himself as a god, so he feels powerful enough to keep signing what they put in front of him. The 224-page document was not written by Donald Trump. There is no doubt that he did not even read it and never will. It was written by the Heritage Foundation architects, the Alliance Defending Freedom lawyers, and the Christian nationalist operatives who have been planning this for decades. Trump is the vehicle. And the vehicle is running out of gas. So they are driving faster.
So what do we do? We talk to the people around us who are not paying attention. Not just the ones who are committed to this movement. We need to reach the people sitting this election out. The ones who think their vote doesn’t matter because nothing ever changes. Those are the people who decide elections, and right now, too many of them are still on the sidelines.
We have to reach them. Not with outrage, but with facts. Not with insults, but with evidence. We have to show them what is happening in plain sight: that Donald Trump’s presidency is being used as a vehicle to erode the separation between church and state, and that the only thing standing between this agenda and lasting political power is what we choose to do between now and November.
And we need people of every faith to stand with us. Christians. Jews. Muslims. Hindus. Buddhists. Sikhs. People whose faith is deeply personal, and people who have no religious affiliation at all. This isn’t a fight over whose religion is right. It’s a fight to preserve every American’s freedom to believe, or not believe, without the government choosing sides.
They are not slowing down. Every day brings another attempt to normalize what would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Tomorrow there will be another announcement. Another policy. Another line crossed. We have to slow them down now, and in November, we have to stop them.
They want us to believe this is inevitable. That the fusion of church and state and strongman is already complete. But it is not. The report is a draft, open for public comment until July 12th. The Texas mandate does not take effect until 2030. The lawsuits against the commission are still moving through the courts. The midterms have not happened yet. Nothing is set in stone, no matter how desperately they carve.
And if we need a reminder of what is possible, we only need to look at the very history they are trying to rewrite. This country was not founded as a Christian nation. It was founded by people fleeing religious persecution, people who understood, from lived experience, what happens when the state claims to speak for God. They wrote the First Amendment not to protect the government from religion, but to protect the people from a government that would use religion as a weapon. That protection has stood for 250 years. It has survived wars, assassinations, economic collapse, and every test this republic has faced. It can survive Donald Trump, too. But only if we refuse to surrender it. And we never will. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: After days of searching, I finally tracked this one down with my daughters' help. Looking forward to reading it, and hoping it might actually help change some minds.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/26/us/texas-schools-bible-curriculum-vote
https://www.newsnationnow.com/religion/no-separation-of-church-and-state-trump-appointee/
https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/trump-deletes-jesus-christ-ai-image-backlash-1236720390/
I don’t see anything resembling Christianity from the christofascists of America. Republicans have all been adhering to the same call for an authoritarian state. Did he actually think about signing the bill for housing or never had any intention of doing so because “the libs and the communists will be affected first so deal out the pain, we can take it.” The Department of Education and the public school system are being reevaluated to ensure a poor learning experience because “he loves the uneducated”.
Im old, and increasingly impatient. It's odd because the older you get, the faster time flies. Anyway, can we just skip all the nasty shit and get down to the nitty gritty.
A revolution, a coup, stroke maybe. Something to break the momentum if calamity after calamity. I live on the other side of the world, but if his reckless behaviour causes a shooting war that destroys governments, we will all be impacted. His flying monkeys need to be identified, documented, and all held to account. Before this whole shebang turns into a town by town, street by street war.