Bloomberg Law: Clash Over Religious Charter Schools
First Amendment law expert Caroline Mala Corbin, a professor at the University of Miami Law School, discusses SCOTUS arguments over the first publicly funded religious charter school. Bloomberg Law Supreme Court reporter, Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson, discusses oral arguments that got heated. June Grasso hosts.
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Trump's Religious Liberty Commission meets for the first time: What to know
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution President Donald Trump has said during his second term "religion is coming back to America" and has launched a new Religious Liberty Commission in his administration. The creation of the commission followed the establishment of the White House Faith Office in February, which replaced former President Joe Biden's White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. According to the White House, the commission will advise the faith office and will reflect a "diversity of faith traditions, professional backgrounds and viewpoints." But some groups and experts are skeptical, suggesting the commission could serve as a platform for a specific Christian agenda. The commission will have its first meeting, which is open to the public, at the Museum of the Bible in Washington on Monday. Here's what to know about the group ahead of the event: What is the commission? The commission is a group of up to 14 people appointed by Trump who are tasked with advising the government on religious liberty issues. The executive order says the members' terms, and the commission itself, will end on July 4, 2026 – the 250th anniversary of American independence – unless Trump extends it. Members are not paid for their work, though they may receive travel expenses. The commission also has three advisory boards composed of religious leaders, legal experts and lay leaders. Who's involved and on the commission? What will the commission do? The commission's purpose is to 'safeguard and promote America's founding principle of religious freedom," according to the White House. Trump's May 1 executive order that established the group said Americans 'need to be reacquainted with our nation's superb experiment in religious freedom in order to preserve it against emerging threats.' More hearings will follow its initial June 16 meeting over the next year, the White House said, and the commission is tasked with publishing a report on the history and state of religious liberty in the nation by July 4, 2026. That report will highlight 'parental rights in religious education, school choice, conscience protections, attacks on houses of worship, free speech for religious entities and institutional autonomy," according to a White House fact sheet. What is the 'anti-Christian bias' they're referring to? The fact sheet also accused the Biden administration of '(targeting) peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.' When asked for further details about the claim, a White House spokesperson referenced the nearly two dozen anti-abortion activists whom Trump pardoned in January. The group included individuals charged with conspiring to storm a reproductive health clinic in Washington in October 2020. Among their charges were violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits individuals from interfering with another's access to reproductive health services 'by force, threat of force or physical obstruction.' The Office of the Associate Attorney General said in a Jan. 24 letter that charging individuals under the act '(has) been the prototypical example of this weaponization.' In a speech following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, which revoked a woman's constitutional right to an abortion and prompted nationwide protests, Biden said he '(calls) on everyone, no matter how deeply they care about this decision, to keep all protests peaceful.' Why are some experts concerned? The White House touted what it described as the diversity of the commission. "President Trump welcomes, honors and celebrates people of all faiths in the White House,' the White House spokesperson said, pointing to the president's commemorations of the religious holidays of Ramadan, Easter and Passover. The commission includes Protestants, Catholics and Jews, but no Muslims or members of other minority religious groups. There is Muslim representation on the advisory board of lay leaders. Given that composition, some experts were skeptical that the commission's work would uphold religious liberty for all in practice. 'Saying, 'we have a Catholic and a Protestant and a Jew on the committee' does not mean that we have balanced viewpoints or a wide array of viewpoints if you've gone through and chosen people who share and reflect the administration's favored religious beliefs and favored political beliefs, and that's what we have here,' Duke University law professor Richard Katskee said. Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor and dean of Berkeley Law, noted the commission appears to be 'an extremely conservative group' primarily focused on 'using government to advance religion,' particularly a Trump-friendly branch of Christianity. That, he said, is 'very troubling.' Eugene Volokh, a professor of law emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said time will tell if the commission lives up to its stated goal of protecting all religious groups and practices in the United States. "I think the commission's job is to protect everybody and they may very well take quite seriously that job," he said. "We'll see." BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@ USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Firing expert committee on vaccines won't restore trust in science
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up The advisory committee's guidance is key in determining which vaccines are covered by insurance and which are offered free through a Advertisement Kennedy announced his decision to replace the committee in Advertisement But Kennedy's decision to appoint to the committee people who have trafficked in misinformation is hardly a recipe to restore public trust. One problematic appointee is physician and infectious disease researcher Robert Malone. According to a Also appointed was Vicky Pebsworth Debold, director of research and patient safety at the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit dedicated to raising concerns about vaccine safety and protecting people's rights to opt out of vaccinations. Epidemiologist Michael Mina, Not all Kennedy's appointees are unqualified. For example, Advertisement A common thread among Questioning common wisdom is a hallmark of scientific research, and these stances — as long as they are not based on outright misinformation — shouldn't be disqualifying. The question is whether Kennedy chose appointees based on their medical expertise or their politics. A particular stance on COVID-19 precautions shouldn't be the primary selection factor for members of a committee that makes recommendations on vaccines against measles, RSV, and myriad other diseases. 'The worst thing about this is I think the medical and scientific community will look at this group and not trust their advice,' Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Editorial Board. Kennedy also recently Advertisement 'The last few weeks have been chaotic with announcements and processes that don't follow any tried-and-true, evidence-based science and recommendations,' said Mary Beth Miotto, immediate past president of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. These new committee members will have to prove, through public work on the committee, that they are willing to apply scientific rigor to in-depth analyses of vaccine-related topics. Physicians, parents, and patients are relying on their advice. Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
The peril of government by soldiers
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Now Trump and his Cabinet advisers are making things even worse by repeating a tragic mistake: calling in the military, a force ill-suited to the job of ordinary policing, to suppress the expression of dissent against unpopular and unwarranted government actions. We have seen this before. It did not end well for those who deployed the troops against the American people. Advertisement In 1766, Benjamin Franklin testified before the British Parliament in opposition to the newly instated Stamp Act. Colonists had protested the act — in part because the burdensome tax on printed materials like newspapers, pamphlets, and almanacs — came at a moment of economic distress, but mainly because the act violated a right deeply rooted in British history: the right of the people to consent to taxation. Advertisement The colonists had no representatives in Parliament, and their colonial legislatures had not been consulted on the Stamp Act. Protests were mostly peaceful but turned violent in Boston, where crowds destroyed the home of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, believed (wrongly) to be a supporter of the tax. A member of Parliament asked Franklin whether soldiers could enforce the Stamp Act. Franklin tried to disabuse Parliament of this terrible idea which was, in any event, a violation of England's Bill of Rights of 1689, which declared that keeping a standing army in peacetime without the people's consent was against the law. If Britain sends a military force to America, Franklin said, 'they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.' Franklin's advice was ignored. The crown sent troops to enforce constitutionally dubious laws such as the Townshend Duties, which levied import taxes on tea, glass, paper, and paint, among other daily goods. As Franklin anticipated, protesters were inflamed. The two thousand soldiers who occupied Boston in 1768 provoked the infamous Boston Massacre of 1770; five townsmen were gunned down on King Street in front of the Old State House. Four years later, after the Boston Tea Party, Parliament stripped Massachusetts of the self-government guaranteed by its charter and placed the Colony under martial law. The military governor, General Thomas Gage, once more used soldiers to suppress dissent. On April 18, 1775, he sent a thousand regulars out into the countryside, aiming to arrest resistance leaders and capture stockpiled weapons. This time they did find Americans in arms — the rebellion was sparked, and the Colonies were lost. Advertisement In Boston, this pattern of resistance was deeply etched in the consciousness of its fiercely independent population. Nearly a century before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, townsmen in Boston had arrested Edmund Andros, a soldier sent by King James II to seize the Colony's original charter and create an authoritarian government. Nearly 80 years after Lexington and Concord, President Franklin Pierce dispatched US Marines to Boston to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Anthony Burns, who had escaped from slavery in Virginia and fled to Boston, was captured by US marshals in May 1854. Boston abolitionists organized massive protests to prevent his deportation. They were unsuccessful. The protests turned into an assault on the courthouse where Burns was held, and a deputy marshal was killed in the fray. Fifteen hundred state militia and several hundred marines, supported by horse-drawn artillery, escorted Burns down State Street to a federal ship waiting to bring him back to Virginia. Massive force prevented further violence in Boston on that day, but it also spurred a transformational movement. Moderate and even pro-slavery Bostonians whose fortunes were built on New England's textile economy and its ties to the Cotton Kingdom were shocked by the scene of federal troops trampling the freedom of their city and Commonwealth. In the words of Amos Lawrence, son of the founder of the Lawrence textile mills, 'We went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs, and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.' Advertisement Boston had known abolitionists for decades — a small minority of its citizens, generally unpopular for their strident views. But the Burns incident triggered a change of heart among moderates, conservatives, and compromisers, people who tolerated the seemingly distant evil of slavery because it served their self-interest. The sight of marines with bayonets enforcing the law of slavery on the site where the Boston Massacre occurred, where colonists had arrested Andros and rejected a government of soldiers, crystallized what was at stake in appeasing the Slave Power — the planter oligarchs of the Southern states who wielded disproportionate influence in the US government. This change of heart explains the surge of support for a new antislavery party in the elections of 1856 and 1860. Thousands of New England men, not just a handful of abolitionists, turned out to enlist when, after the election of 1860, the Slave Power launched a violent rebellion against the Union. There are echoes of the Fugitive Slave Law in Trump's campaign to arrest and deport immigrants. Hard-working people who perform vital labor for the nation are being persecuted for seeking a better life and the human dignity America claims to stand for. The tactics of masked ICE agents who snatch people off the streets, terrorize their communities, and deny them due process is eerily reminiscent of the actions of the slave-catchers of the 1850s. Of course, today's issues are different from those of earlier centuries. Nevertheless, certain fundamental principles are essential and eternal if we claim to believe in self-government. Government should operate by deliberation and consent, not force or fiat. All people should be secure in their persons and properties, and government can intrude on this security only with due process and legitimate warrants. All people have the right to assemble and express their views, including criticism of the government, without fear of molestation. Advertisement Trump has undermined these principles and now turns to the military to enforce his will in the face of justified resistance. Wittingly or not, Trump seems to be betting that Americans have forgotten this history, that these constitutional traditions are dead. That leaves it up to the American people, in another moment of peril, to prove otherwise.
