The Department of Education will issue new guidance “protecting the right to prayer” in public schools, President Donald Trump said Sept. 8 during remarks at the Museum of the Bible for the Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Commission.
The Trump administration previously reduced the workforce at the Department of Education and stated its intent to scale the department back.
In a statement shared with OSV News, Savannah Newhouse, press secretary for the Department of Education, said, “Free exercise of religion is a founding principle and a constitutionally protected right afforded to all citizens of our great nation. The Department of Education looks forward to supporting President Trump’s vision to promote religious liberty in our schools across the country.”
Neither Trump nor the Department of Education offered details about what that guidance may include.
Trump in May signed an executive order creating a religious liberty commission, which includes Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota. The commissioners gathered at the Museum of the Bible in Washington to examine what recommendations they should make to the president about promoting and protecting religious freedom in a report next spring. Their second hearing focused on religious freedom in public schools.
Trump also expressed condolences for the victims of the deadly Aug. 27 mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis during a liturgy marking the start of the school year.
“Two weeks ago in Minneapolis, a demonic killer shot 21 people and murdered two precious children at a Catholic school,” Trump said. “Can you believe that? Hard to believe.”
Trump said there have been “too many” school shootings, and “our hearts are shattered for the families of those beautiful children.”
“And I’ve made clear, Attorney General Pam Bondi is working really hard, we must get answers about the causes of these repeated attacks, and we’re working very, very hard on them,” he said.
Some of the Trump administration’s policy positions have been criticized by faith leaders, perhaps most notably on immigration. In January, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement that executive orders signed by Trump upon returning to office on issues including migration, the environment and the death penalty were “deeply troubling,” but praised other actions such as one on gender policy.
Trump touted his administration’s actions on gender at the hearing, criticizing a position he called “transgender for everybody.”
“On Day One of my administration, I signed an executive order to slash federal funding for any school that pushes transgender insanity,” Trump said.
The same day as the commission hearing, Trump wrote, “Happy Birthday Mary, Queen of Peace!” on his website Truth Social, in reference to the Nativity of Mary. The Sept. 8 feast is celebrated as Mary’s “birthday” and is a significant Marian feast in the Catholic Church, although Trump is not Catholic.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the commission’s chairman, said during opening remarks that one of the other goals of the committee is to “make sure America knows their rights.”
In opening remarks, Cardinal Dolan said while he was in Rome for the conclave that led to the election of Pope Leo XIV, his fellow cardinals from other countries where religious freedom is under threat expressed their concern
“My brother cardinals from all over the world,” Cardinal Dolan said, “came up to me, and I presume other of the other American cardinals, to thank us for our strong defense of religious liberty.”
“I was fascinated by that, and asked them why, and they said, ‘Well, because you in the United States serve as a beacon for the rest of us,’” he said.
“Doesn’t this give us an added sense of responsibility?” he continued. “We’re not doing this in a self-serving way ... (but in a) benevolent way to help others, because they look to us for the protection of religious liberty.”
Witnesses at the hearing included Lana Roman, a mom and petitioner in the Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor, where the high court ruled in favor of an interfaith group of Maryland parents who sought to opt their children out of classroom instruction pertaining to books containing LGBTQ+ themes to which they object on religious grounds.
Roman said, “As Christians, we teach our son that every person is loved by God and should be treated with dignity and respect.”
“We also teach him that sex is a gift from God and a natural, unchanging part of who we are. Many of these books introduced sexual concepts to children at an inappropriately young age putting children in the untenable position of having to question who to trust: their teachers, or their parents,” she said.
Sameerah Munshi, a member of the commission’s advisory board and a Muslim community advocate in Mahmoud case, acknowledged a diversity of views in her faith tradition, but urged the commission to make clear recommendations to protect religious minorities.
“Opt-out protections must be made clear, accessible and enforceable,” she said. “Oftentimes, these policies are in place on paper, but can be difficult to actualize.”
Munshi further argued that “laws on religious liberty must be implemented with transparency and consistency.”
“Public institutions need guidance and accountability to ensure that they’re not silencing only a particular viewpoint or voices on one particular issue,” she said.
Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and one of the commissioners, argued in response to witnesses’ testimony that “it seems that there’s a certain type of public school administrator who thinks that functional, practical atheism is neutrality.”
“The founders’ vision was that Jewish students could be authentically Jewish, Muslim students could be authentically Muslim, Protestant students could be authentically Protestant, Catholics to be authentically Catholic, it would be pluralistic,” he said, adding, “I think that’s a huge problem here is that we’ve allowed ourselves to think that secularism is somehow neutral and it’s not.”
The commission’s next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29. It will examine “religious liberty issues in education from the perspectives of teachers and coaches, as well as religious liberty issues in school funding and educational choice,” the Department of Justice said.
