Trump Reinforces Protections For Student Prayer In Schools
The president urged public schools to remember that students have constitutional rights to prayer — but one group says too many schools are promoting prayer ... 

BUT THAT IS ALL SMOKE TO COVER FOR THE REAL MEAT IN THE SANDWICH

Trump to make it easier for religious organizations to receive federal tax money. 

Trump administration updates public school prayer guidance on National Religious Freedom Day
The Trump administration on Thursday announced it is updating federal guidance for prayer in public schools and other initiatives aimed at protecting religious ...

Trump to underline his support for school prayer as he courts evangelicals
States will be required to report instances in which the right to pray has been denied in public schools under new guidance on religious freedom rolled out ...

Trump Vows 'Big Action' on School Prayer to Rally Evangelicals
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Jim Daly: Trump upholds religious freedom with new executive order, benefiting all Americans HE MEANS ALL CHRISTIAN AMERICANS
President Trump acted in the best interests of the American people Thursday when he signed an executive order to bolster and protect the rights of students to ...
Fox News Opinion

Trump said he will move to ensure students and teachers can pray in school. They already can.
President Trump has promised to ensure that students and teachers can exercise First Amendment rights to pray in school. Actually, they already can, and many ...


Trump’s new guidance on school prayer worries LGBTQ activists
Trump announced proposed rules that would protect prayer in public schools, and make it easier for religious organizations to receive federal tax money.

Donald Trump to lift up school prayer and head to Davos as White House offers counter programming
The White House is continuing business as usual even as the Senate prepares for Donald Trump's impeachment trial, providing a slate of counter programming ...

Trump boosts school prayer to rally base
In a significant show of support for the evangelical sector, President Donald Trump has vowed to protect prayer in public schools and to give religious organi... 

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=EDUCATION

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=TEACHERS

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SCHOOL

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SATANISM

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SCHOOL+PRAYER

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SATAN

US House Speaker Mike Johnson Spent Years Defending Christian Speech In Public Schools

“The ultimate goal of the enemy is silencing the Gospel," the Republican said in 2004 after Jewish parents sued a school for pushing Christianity on their kids.

By Jennifer Bendery
Nov 24, 2023

Before coming to Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) spent years taking up lawsuits in defense of Christian speech and activities in public elementary schools and universities.

Johnson, who was a relatively unknown Louisiana congressman before being elected House speaker last month, previously spent eight years as senior attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, an evangelical legal group focused on dismantling LGBTQ+ rights and outlawing abortion. It was in his role there that Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, took up case after case aimed at chipping away at the separation of church and state.

What’s alarming about this pattern in his background is that it raises questions about whether the House speaker ― the person second in line to the U.S. presidency ― disputes the first freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment in the Constitution: ”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

In 2004, Johnson was the lead attorney for Stockwell Place Elementary when the Bossier Parish public school got sued for pushing Christianity on its students.

A set of Jewish parents sued the school after learning it was holding prayer sessions, teaching Christian songs in class and promoting a teacher-led prayer group called Stallions for Christ that met during recess. The Jewish parents, who had two children at the school, also cited a teacher with a Christian cross on the classroom door, a Nativity scene in the school library and a graduation program featuring Christian songs and a student-led prayer, and religious speeches delivered by two local sheriff’s deputies.

In their lawsuit, which you can read here, the parents claim their children were ridiculed and bullied by other kids for not participating in the religious songs. They raised concerns with the principal, who allegedly responded by defending the school’s Nativity scene and religious songs, and told the parents to “deal with it.” The parents also complained to the school superintendent, who allegedly defended the teacher-led prayer group because “this is the way things are done in the South” and “welcome to the Bible Belt.”

Johnson spoke about the lawsuit at his church, the Airline Drive Church of Christ in Shreveport, before taking on the case. He warned the congregation what was at stake with cases like the Jewish family suing to keep Christian activities out of a public school.

“The ultimate goal of the enemy is silencing the gospel,” said Johnson, according to an April 2004 story in the Shreveport Times about the lawsuit. “This is spiritual warfare.”


Here’s the article in the the Shreveport Times from April 2004:

"The ultimate goal of the enemy is silencing the gospel,” Johnson said in 2004 amid a lawsuit involving a Jewish family suing a public school for engaging students in Christian speech and activities.
SHREVEPORT TIMES


The Louisiana Republican also told church attendees, some of whom were reportedly nodding and wearing “I support Stockwell Place” T-shirts, that “if we don’t (win), they’re going to shut down all private religion expression.”


Johnson’s comments at church came a week after he wrote an opinion piece in the Shreveport Times calling the Jewish family’s lawsuit “the latest example of the radical left’s desperate efforts to silence all public expression of religious faith.”




Here’s Johnson’s article:

Johnson said in 2004 that a Jewish family suing a public school for engaging in Christian speech and activities was "the latest example of the radical left’s desperate efforts to silence all public expression of religious faith.”
SHREVEPORT TIMES

Johnson spokesperson Taylor Haulsee on Tuesday disputed that the House speaker was referring to the Jewish family as “the enemy” in the 2004 lawsuit.

“You are mischaracterizing his remark,” he said in a statement. “Johnson was referring to any coordinated attempt to impede religious expression that is protected under the Constitution, not any single family.”

Haulsee also emphasized that the first bill Johnson brought to the House floor as speaker was a resolution condemning Hamas and standing with Israel.

The lawsuit was settled in August 2005 with a consent order clarifying the types of religious expression allowed in public schools. But most of the case had been dismissed months earlier because the family moved out of state.

“On or about December 28, 2004, the McBride family moved to Missouri to escape the harassment and threats Tyler and Kelsey were enduring at Stockwell Place Elementary,” reads a March 2005 amendment to the lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which was not officially a party to the case, said at the time that the Jewish family likely would have won their case had they not moved away.

“The ACLU believes (the complaints) were meritorious and had the plaintiffs remained in the state, they would have been found meritorious,” Joe Cook, then the executive director of the ACLU’s Louisiana affiliate, told the Shreveport Times when the case was settled.

Before coming to Congress, Johnson spent a lot of time defending religious speech and activities in public schools, specifically Christianity.
TOM WILLIAMS VIA GETTY IMAGES

In another case in 2006, Johnson represented parents suing the Katy Independent School District in Texas for allegedly trying to ban religious expression and “acknowledgement of the Christian religion.” The parents argued that the school district violated their First Amendment rights by preventing them from “speaking about their religious beliefs” and “distributing religious items or literature to classmates” on school grounds.

This lawsuit was dismissed in 2010 with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs can’t refile the same claim again in this court. The school did have to pay Johnson’s attorney fees, though.

The House speaker twice represented teenagers, in 2007 and in 2008, who were denied public school transportation to a “Just for Jesus” religious event.

In 2007, Johnson represented a high school student in a civil rights action lawsuit after her school refused to provide a bus for her club, called the One Way Club, to attend a “Just for Jesus” event. The student claimed that the school provided other clubs with transportation for fields trips and that it wasn’t fair to not provide a bus for the religious event. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed because the student found her own ride to the event.

A year later, Johnson represented a middle school student who sued her school for not providing a bus to the same event. This student, who was part of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, claimed that she was denied school transportation to the “Just for Jesus” event because she and others in her club talked about their religious beliefs.

School officials claimed the real issue was safety concerns, because there was a shooting near the “Just for Jesus” event the year before, and some students had been “injured and fearful.” The school officials suggested the organizers of the event hold it during non-school hours or on the weekend. As a compromise, school officials offered to give students excused absences if they went to the event on their own during the school day.

The judge in the case ruled that the school worked in good faith with the student by offering an excused absence and rejected Johnson’s argument that the student demonstrated “a substantial threat of irreparable injury.” The student voluntarily ended her suit shortly afterward.

“It is repugnant to Sonnier that he ... must obtain governmental permission to talk to a student about his Christian faith.”

- Johnson defending a traveling evangelist's right to preach on a public university campus.

Johnson also led lawsuits in defense of religious speech on the campuses of public universities. In 2008, he lost a case involving a traveling evangelist who sued Southeastern Louisiana University after a school police officer told him he had to move to a free speech zone on campus to deliver his remarks and get his speech pre-approved.

As they stood there, the evangelist, Jeremy Sonnier, began engaging with a student about religion, at which point the officer warned he would be arrested if he didn’t move.

Sonnier’ legal argument, led by Johnson, was that the university’s speech policy was “unduly burdensome” and based on religious grounds.

“It is repugnant to Sonnier that he, as an individual citizen, must obtain governmental permission to talk to a student about his Christian faith,” reads the legal document, presumably written by Johnson.

A passage from a lawsuit led by Johnson in 2008 in defense of a traveling evangelist.
U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA

A federal judge ultimately dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Sonnier can’t refile the same claim again in the court.

In another lawsuit in 2003, Johnson represented a student at Texas Tech University who accused the school of violating his First Amendment rights by requiring him to get his speech pre-approved in order to speak on campus in a spot that was not in the “free speech area” gazebo. The student was challenging a school policy that barred students from engaging in speech that might “intimidate” or “humiliate” another person on campus.

The university initially denied a permit to the student to deliver remarks outside of the designated area expressing his religious view that “homosexuality is a sinful, immoral and unhealthy lifestyle,” and passing out literature citing Scripture. But the student was ultimately given permission to do this if he moved across the street.

In 2008, Johnson was the lead attorney for the Tangipahoa Parish school board in Louisiana when it got sued for opening its meetings with prayers and requiring they be delivered by eligible members of the clergy in the parish.

The plaintiff took issue with the school board bringing religion into its meetings at all and with the denial of his wife’s request to give an invocation at a meeting because she was a non-denominational Christian.

“Plaintiff finds equally objectionable the non-secular manner in which the Board meetings are conducted,” reads the plaintiff’s legal filing. “The Board meetings are an integral part of Tangipahoa Parish public school system, requiring the Board to refrain from injecting religion into them. By commencing the meetings with a prayer, the Board is conveying its endorsement of religion.”

The lawsuit was dismissed in 2010 after the parties reached a compromise.

Asked Tuesday if Johnson fundamentally disagrees with the separation of church and state, his office pointed to comments that he made last week on CNBC, when he claimed that Americans “misunderstand” the concept.

“When the Founders set this system up, they wanted a vibrant expression of faith in the public square because they believed that a general moral consensus and virtue was necessary,” Johnson said in the TV interview. “The separation of church and state is a misnomer. People misunderstand it.”

He claimed that Thomas Jefferson meant something entirely different from what we think it means when he coined the phrase.

“What he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church, not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life,” Johnson said. “It’s exactly the opposite.”

He never actually said, though, if he disagrees with the separation of church and state.

“An abject danger to our democracy.”
- Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Rachel Laser, the president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said she has “grave concerns” about Johnson’s claims.

“Any public official ― let alone the speaker of the House and second in line to be president ― who claims America is a Christian nation and discredits church-state separation is an abject danger to our democracy,” she said.

Laser said Johnson is “repeating the myth that Christian nationalists typically use” to deny that church-state separation is foundational to democracy.

“Church-state separation is baked into the Constitution, from Article VI’s prohibition on religious tests for public office to the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections. Our freedoms, equality and democracy rest on that wall of separation. Without it, America would not be America.”

ABOLISH SCOTUS

The US supreme court is letting prayer back in public schools. This is unsettling

The court’s rightwing majority was extremely receptive to a case this week that would weaken the separation of church and state

A district judge called Kennedy’s claim to be engaged in ‘personal, private prayers’ a ‘deceitful narrative.’

Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Moira Donegan

THE GUARDIAN
Tue 28 Jun 2022 

On Monday, the United States supreme court overturned decades of precedent governing the separation of church and state, and achieved one of the most long-standing goals of the Christian right: the return of official Christian prayer to public schools.

Kennedy v Bremerton School District had a strange path to the supreme court. Initially filed in 2015, the case concerns Joseph Kennedy, formerly a public high school football coach from a Seattle suburb, who sued the community that used to employ him for religious discrimination after the school objected to his habit of making public, ostentatious Christian prayers on the 50 yard line at football games, surrounded by young athletes. Kennedy has lost at the district and circuit levels; he moved to Florida in 2019, which technically should have rendered his case moot. But the supreme court agreed to hear his case anyway. This week, they ruled in his favor, 6-3.

Students now face the prospect of their schools becoming sites of religious pressure and indoctrination

The facts of what happened with Coach Kennedy at the school district are contested, but only because Kennedy himself keeps revising them. In allowing Coach Kennedy to pray publicly at school, while conducting his official duties as a public official, Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, characterized the prayers this way: “Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.”

Sam Alito, in his concurrence, claimed that Kennedy “acted in a purely private capacity.” That’s Kennedy’s version of events. But evidence suggests things looked different. In her dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor cast doubt on the idea that the coach offered his prayers “quietly, while his students were otherwise occupied.” She included a photograph of Coach Kennedy at one of his game night prayers. In the picture, he stands surrounded by a dense group of dozens of high school football players, uniformed and kneeling at his feet. Kennedy is speaking with a football helmet in his hand, stretched high above his head in what looks like a gesture of command. Spectators can be seen in the background, looking on from the stands. Quiet and private this was not.

The court held that the school was required to allow this: that in attempting to maintain separation of church and state – as is required by the first amendment’s establishment clause – they were actually infringing on Coach Kennedy’s free exercise rights. Thus, the court allowed the free exercise clause to effectively moot the establishment clause, denying Americans like Coach Kennedy’s students the freedom from religion that the church-state divide had previously granted them. It should not escape us that in issuing this ruling, and overturning a decades-old test for establishing the efficacy of church-state separation measures, the court relied on a version of the facts that is blatantly, demonstrably false.

All of this could have been avoided, because in fact, over the course of Kennedy’s employment, the school district took pains to balance the coach’s desire for prayer with their own obligations to remain religiously neutral. Starting from when he began coaching in 2008, Kennedy, an evangelical Christian, initially prayed to himself at games, a practice that nobody had a problem with. He says that he got the initial idea from a movie, the low-budget 2006 Christian football drama “Facing the Giants,” which he saw on TV. The film features a fictional coach who prays with his high school football team. But at some point, Kennedy’s praying became louder, and more public. He would stand on the 50-yardline just after the final whistle, and pray out loud. Teen athletes, both from his team and from the opposing side, would kneel with him in a large scrum; Kennedy mixed his prayers with pep talks. Kennedy says that the visible center of the field was an important location for him. “It made sense to do it on the field of battle,” he told the reporter Adam Liptak.

It is these public prayers, conducted while Kennedy was acting in his official capacity as the coach, that became an issue. The school tried to accommodate Kennedy, offering him ways to exercise his faith that did not involve students, and did not risk giving the impression that his religion was endorsed by the public school. Kennedy refused, and lawyered up. He eventually left the school – voluntarily – and began to claim that the district’s policies amounted to both religious discrimination and a violation of his free speech rights.

Kennedy and the First Liberty Institute, the conservative legal group that is funding his lawsuit, have tried to cast him as a first amendment hero. Before his departure from Bremerton, Kennedy spent months working with his media-savvy legal team to draw attention to his own prayers. The football games became a chaotic mess of culture-war politicking, with reporters, politicians, and evangelical Christians flocking to the field to witness Kennedy’s displays and join him in prayer. Parents complained about the shambolic “stampedes” of Kennedy’s fans, who would run, phones outstretched through the stands to join his prayer circles at the end of the games, sometimes knocking people down. Players were made uncomfortable, with one telling his father that he feared that if he didn’t pray, he “wouldn’t get to play as much.” Other coaches weren’t thrilled, either. In effect, the school-district-sponsored football games became more about Kennedy’s religious practice than about the football itself.

As it has done with increasing frequency over this term, the court threw out a long-held precedent in order to secure a conservative outcome in Kennedy’s case: Lemon v Kurtzman, the 1971 case that established a three-part test for Establishment Clause compliance. The new right-wing court, it seems, isn’t interested in Establishment Clause compliance at all. By ruling in Kennedy’s favor, they have opened the door for any Christian public official to claim that they are being discriminated against if any limits are placed on their religious expression during the conduct of their jobs, and imperiling any public bodies that try to maintain a separation between their employee’s private religious actions and their own public official ones. And they have made American public schools vulnerable to the religious proclivities of their teachers and administrators, which can now be wielded in ways that coerce the participation of students.

The supreme court seems poised to allow this. Why? Because its conservative supermajority has adopted a radically expansionist view of the first amendment’s free exercise clause, interpreting the constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion in a way that in fact tramples on the freedoms of others. An emergent trend in conservative thought – backed by a growing body of case law emerging from the Republican-controlled federal bench – has begun framing what were once considered standard features of the separation of church and state as oppressive discrimination against Christians.

It’s an absurd argument, one that would not hold water before this court if it were brought by a non-Christian. But Kennedy got a sympathetic ear, and a maximalist ruling. “That’s protected speech,” Amy Coney Barrett declared bluntly of Kennedy’s prayer circles at oral arguments. For Christians, at least, the supreme court has redefined religious liberty – as religious privilege.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

‘They Painted a Narrative of This Coach Looking for a Quiet Corner to Pray’

CounterSpin interview with Dave Zirin on football prayer ruling

JANINE JACKSON  JULY 9, 2022

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Janine Jackson interviewed Dave Zirin about the Supreme Court’s football prayer ruling for the July 1, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

      CounterSpin220701Zirin.mp3

 

Coach Kennedy’s “private, personal prayer” (photo: Sotomayor dissent)

Janine Jackson: While we still reel from the theft of bodily autonomy from half the population, the right wing–dominated Supreme Court has delivered other blows to principles that many believed were assured.

In Kennedy v. Bremerton, a 6–3 ruling determined that Washington state high school assistant football coach Joseph Kennedy had a right to pray in the locker room and on the field. And why should a person be denied their right to what the Court described as a “short,” “personal,” “private” exercise of their religious beliefs?

As our guest and others want us to understand, the court’s ruling relies on a storyline that just doesn’t match the reality, and is much less about freedom than about coercion.

Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation and host of the Edge of Sports podcast. He’s also author of numerous books about sports and their intersection with history, politics and social justice, including What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, and, most recently, The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World, which is out now from New Press.

He joins us now by phone from Takoma Park. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dave Zirin.

Dave Zirin: Oh, it’s great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

The Nation (6/27/22)

JJ: I can feel the heat coming off your piece on this. And I think it’s because of the boldly false premise of this ruling, about the role of coach prayer generally, but in particular about Kennedy. You say that this ruling is wrong from the opening statement. So maybe let’s start there.

DZ: Here’s the issue; it’s a cliche, but it’s true: You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. And in the decision that was written by Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch, he relied on his own facts. Let’s put it more simply: He lied in describing what took place in the case.

And here’s the thing: Coach Kennedy was not off, as Gorsuch writes, praying on his own. He was not off quietly doing this, and he was not fired for doing it. So they painted a narrative of this coach looking for a quiet corner to pray and then this school board, with pitchforks and torches in hand, forcing Kennedy out of his job.

None of this happened. What Kennedy did in praying in the locker room, and then particularly his prayers after the game on the field, was draw in players to surround him in prayer, asking players to do testimonials about God. All of this thing creates this kind of maelstrom of pressure on the players, that if you are down with your coach, you will pray with your coach. And if you’re not down with that, then, hey, you’re free not to pray with the coach, but anybody who’s ever played high school sports knows that if you don’t do what the coach says, particularly in an autocratic sport like football, you’re going to pay a price for that.

You’re going to pay a price for it, whether it’s in terms of playing time or, maybe even worse for the high school level, you’re going to pay a price for it in terms of being outcast, in terms of being seen as a locker room distraction, or even worse in the parlance of sports, a locker room cancer.

And that is what the Supreme Court basically said could now take place, is a process of bullying in high school sports to make players feel coerced into praying with their coach, and that’s unconscionable. It’s absolutely unconscionable. And I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from folks, including tons of stories about what it was like to play high school sports at private or religious institutions, and the degree of religious peer pressure that would take place, and how it would alienate, ostracize and all the rest of it.

And I should probably add that we would be completely, completely naive if we didn’t just see this as an issue of prayer, but this is about Christian prayer. Like if the coach was Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, whatever you want, Shinto, or wanted to do a prayer of atheism beforehand, there would be a very different response from this Court than Christianity, because this Court has shown itself to be proudly in a relationship with a kind of Christofascism which is quickly overcoming the ruling structures of the United States, if not the people themselves.

Seattle Times (6/29/22)

JJ: And just to underscore the idea of the false narrative, Danny Westneat in the Seattle Times, very close to the issue, wrote a story in which he was saying, as you have said, that Kennedy explained himself. He said he was inspired to start these midfield prayers after he saw an evangelical Christian movie called Facing the Giants, in which a losing team finds God, Christian God, and then goes on to win the state championship.

So the very idea that he was trying to find a personal private space to pray in private, and that he was being denied that, it’s just wholly not true.

DZ: And can I say something else? The school district—and I say this as somebody who made phone calls, spoke to people, I’m not just saying this for the purposes of my own narrative—they made every effort to try to accommodate Coach Kennedy. They made every effort to create spaces for him to pray.

And they did not fire him when he repeatedly and repeatedly ignored what they had to say, thumbed his nose at what they had to say. Look, my wife is a teacher, and if she thumbed her nose at the rules of the district to the degree that Coach Kennedy was doing, she would’ve found herself out of work.

Now, Coach Kennedy, again and again thumbing his nose at what they’re saying to him, and in the end, you know what they did, they didn’t fire him. They suspended him with pay, with the opportunity to reapply back for his job, and partly because I think they realized how hot button this was.

Dave Zirin: “There is a political movement in this country that’s playing for keeps. They don’t care how nice you’re going to be about it.”

They made every effort to try to look like partners in trying to figure this out. And they wanted to look like we want to collaborate with you to find a solution that actually helps and makes everybody feel validated.

And I think what they learned, which I think a lot of us need to learn, is that there is a political movement in this country that’s playing for keeps. They don’t care how nice you’re going to be about it. They don’t care if you’re willing to meet them halfway. They’re not trying for a bigger piece of the pie. They’re trying to take over the bakery right now.

And I think the sooner we realize that the better, because a lot of people in the ruling corridors of the Democratic Party really seem to have not gotten the memo.

JJ: It’s important that it integrates with sports and with athletics here, which I think makes it slot into a different place in some people’s brains. This ruling, it galls, of course, for many reasons, but part of it is the ability for people who have a public platform to express political or social concerns, whether they’re athletes or musicians or artists, it’s framed so differently depending on who they are and what they’re saying.

DZ: Exactly.

JJ: It’s related, but if I can just transition you, you’ve written about Muhammad Ali, about Colin Kaepernick. It’s always been true that there’s been a kind of policing of what people can say, if it’s decided that they’re outside of their purview.

DZ: Yeah. If I could say something about that, I wrote this book The Kaepernick Effect. I interviewed dozens of young people, a lot of them in high school, who took a knee, and they were invariably subject to all kinds of ostracization, pushed off the team, made to feel outcast from the team, oftentimes at the behest of the coach.

And I think one of the things that we need to come to grips with is that this kind of aggressive Supreme Court–led Christian posturing is political. Because people say, well, that’s just religious, what the coach is doing. Taking a knee during the anthem, that’s a political act, and politics have no place in sports.

Do you honestly think it’s not political that this coach is defying the school district time and again, is drawing in students into the prayer circle time and again, is thumbing his nose at the concerns of parents time and again, and now, and I wish I could bet money on this, is going to be on the right-wing gravy train probably for the next decade, doing speeches time and again, and maybe there’ll even be one of those Hollywood movies that only a small segment of the population sees, starring, I don’t know, Gina Carano and Kevin Sorbo, whatever, the actors who occupy that space.

And I think we need to realize that these onward Christian soldiers, like, that’s not just a song to them. This is a movement that they’re trying to build, and trying to collaborate and figure out common solutions I think is going to be a very, very difficult task, because their eye is not on reconciliation.

New York Times (6/30/22)

JJ: Right, right. Thank you for that. And I’m going to let you go, but while I have you, I can’t resist. Today’s New York Times:

More than four months after she was first detained, the WNBA star Brittney Griner is expected to appear in a Russian courtroom on Friday for the start of a trial on drug charges that legal experts said was all but certain to end in a conviction, despite the clamor in the United States for her release.

I know I’m asking a lot in a short amount of time, but I know that for a lot of listeners who follow media closely, they’re going to say, “Wait, there was a clamor in the United States for Brittney Griner’s release? Wait, who’s Brittney Griner?” Thoughts on that?

DZ: We need a much bigger clamor, is my first thought. Brittney Griner is a WNBA superstar. If her name was Tom Brady or Steph Curry, there would be a national day of action to try to get them freed from a Russian prison.

I mean, Brittney Griner is a political prisoner, make no mistake about it.

JJ: In Russia, in Russia—we care about Russia, right?

DZ: Yeah. Facing 10 years behind bars, five years at labor behind bars. I mean, this has nothing to do with drugs. I have serious doubts in the charges in the first place. This is about Ukraine. This is about political posturing. This is about this new cold war that we’re dealing with with Putin.

And this is about them trying to extract political prisoners out of the United States, who are Russian, in an exchange, and I think we need to apply pressure to our own State Department that bringing Brittney Griner home should be an immediate priority.

What’s disturbing is the concern that Brittney Griner, because she’s a woman athlete, because she’s from the LGBTQ community, because she presents in a certain way, that she’s just not getting the coverage or the attention that she otherwise would get.

And I think that’s one of the things also we need to fight against. It’s not just about injustice in Russia; it’s about standing up to injustice and prejudice here at home.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Dave Zirin. He’s sports editor at The Nation, and you can follow his work at EdgeOfSports.com. Dave Zirin, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DZ: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

#TAXTHECHURCH  

Edmonton Catholic parents upset over message from school inviting families to abortion protest

Author of the article:Blair McBride
Publishing date:Sep 22, 2021 

 

Parent Erin Gaudet is concerned about a letter emailed as an attachment from Holy Cross Catholic School asking students and parents to join an anti-abortion protest. PHOTO BY GREG SOUTHAM /Postmedia

Parents in the Edmonton Catholic School District are irate that an invitation to join an anti-abortion protest was included in a recent school council message.

The letter, emailed as an attachment to Holy Cross Catholic School parents on Monday, invites families to “stand and peacefully pray with (parish) St. John the Evangelist” on Thursday at the public right-of-way outside the Woman’s Health Options clinic on 109A Avenue.

The event is part of “40 Days for Life – 40 days of prayer and fasting for an end to abortion,” a worldwide grassroots movement.

“Please help to spread the truth about abortion in this important community outreach,” says the notice, which includes contact information for St. John the Evangelist parish officials.

The notice is also in the parish’s most recent church bulletin.

For Neil McLeod, whose daughter attends Holy Cross, the invitation was “very unsettling.”

“What are we promoting in our school? This isn’t a call for a compassionate outreach. It’s a call to harass people, who are in a very troubled situation,” he said.

“With the (unmarked) graves (at former residential schools) coming to light, I would hope the Catholic Church would be doing a deep think on their roles in schools and their historical legacy. That’s not the case here. And it’s truly making me rethink having my daughter in a Catholic school.”

It’s the first time Christie McLeod, Neil’s former spouse, has seen this type of notice in the four years their daughter has attended the school.

She said that when she contacted Holy Cross principal Marlene Forest-Wallace about the letter, she received an apology and was told it was an error that wouldn’t be repeated.

“At this point it’s not even about the school anymore,” Christie said. “My issue is about the parish organizing this protest that I think is sort of passive-aggressively designed to intimidate women who are trying to access health care, and using this guise of peaceful prayer.”

Although Erin Gaudet’s children attend other Catholic schools in Edmonton, as a longtime participant in that system she is shocked and disappointed at the letter.

“I’ve been involved with Catholic schools for a long time. You see a variety of social justice projects and that’s what’s great about Edmonton Catholic schools,” Gaudet said. “But this is inappropriate. The deeper level misunderstanding that comes from this is really hurtful to the Catholic Church.”

Postmedia’s efforts to contact Forest-Wallace weren’t successful.

However, Edmonton Catholic Schools District spokeswoman Christine Meadows said in an email that “including standalone information from the parish, regardless of the content, was an error” and staff have since been educated on procedures.

“We are reminding all our schools that the best way to connect families with their parishes is by sharing the link to the parish website instead of sharing excerpts of information,” she said.

In a statement from the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, spokesman Andrew Ehrkamp said 40 Days for Life is a peaceful, pro-life prayer campaign for pregnant women seeking abortions and people performing abortions.

“Through peaceful prayer, the 40 Days for Life campaign touches hearts and changes communities. Faithful Catholic parents who attend our parishes are always made aware of events and activities which are consistent with the Catholic faith through our bulletin and other means. The parent and/or school newsletter may be an extension of this communication.”

ISLAMOPHOBIA IS NOT SECULARISM
Quebec bans use of classrooms as prayer spaces

Story by CBC/Radio-Canada • Yesterday

Quebec's education minister officially prohibited schools from transforming classrooms into prayer rooms Wednesday, as announced two weeks ago.


Quebec Education Minister Bernard Drainville responds to the Opposition during question period at the legislature in Quebec City, Wednesday, March 29, 2023. Drainville says it will soon be forbidden to have prayer rooms in the province's public schools.© Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press

"Schools are places of learning, not places of worship," said Bernard Drainville.

The guidelines put out by the Education Ministry say that "the development of places used for the purposes of religious practices" is "incompatible with the principle of the religious neutrality of the state" and "that it is likely to have an impact on the proper functioning of schools."

The minister also says that using classrooms to pray goes against secularism laws, which require that schools respect the separation of the state and religion

The guidelines state that students must be protected "from any direct or indirect pressure aimed at exposing them or influencing them so that they conform to a religious practice."

When an establishment goes against the guidelines, the school's director must take "the necessary means so that the appropriate corrective measures are taken," the document said.

Immediate backlash

Québec Solidaire's spokesperson for education, Ruba Ghazal, denounced Drainville's guidelines on Twitter Wednesday.

"It took [the minister] two weeks to write guidelines that are neither clear nor enforceable," she wrote.

"Are the teachers going to watch the halls and the schoolyards in case [students gather to pray]?"

Representatives from several mosques with the Table de concertation des organismes musulmans expressed their shock and indignation at the decision and said they are looking into legal options to rescind the ban.

The Canadian Muslim Forum (FMC-CMF) said in a news release it "calls on all political parties in Quebec to work together to unify society," and that the prayer-room ban "reinforces the regrettable impression that Quebec students are stigmatized because of their cultural and ethnic origins and that their fundamental rights have been violated."

It stresses that the use of classrooms for prayer has only happened a handful of times and for a few minutes during breaks, outside school lesson hours and with the permission of the administration.

"This approach places the educational environment once again within the framework of political polarization in Quebec and in the circle of societal tensions by imposing on Quebec students a strong sense of inferiority, injustice and double standards, two measures," said the FMC-CMF.

'Pray silently'

In early April, Drainville commented on a story reported by Cogeco Nouvelles that Laval high schools allowed students to pray in classrooms because they were gathering in stairwells or parking lots.

Claiming that he could not ban prayer at school, he invited the students to do so silently.

"There are all kinds of ways to pray. No, I can't ban prayer. I ban prayer rooms in classrooms. Now if anyone wants to pray silently, that's their basic right ," he argued.

The Parti Québécois had tabled a motion affirming that "public schools are not places of worship" and that "the establishment of places of prayer, regardless of faith, on the premises of a public school goes against the principle of secularism." This motion was adopted unanimously.

The office of the minister of higher education, Pascale Déry, specified that contrary to the decision concerning primary and secondary schools, the government does not intend to cease the use of meditation rooms in CEGEPs and universities in the province.

Louisiana’s ‘In God We Trust’ law tests limits of religion in public schools

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

The Conversation

October 28, 2023

When Louisiana passed a law in August 2023 requiring public schools to post “In God We Trust” in every classroom – from elementary school to college – the author of the bill claimed to be following a long-held tradition of displaying the national motto, most notably on U.S. currency.

But even under recent Supreme Court precedents, the Louisiana law may violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from promoting religion. I make this observation as one who has researched and written extensively on issues of religion in the public schools.

The Louisiana law specifies that the motto “shall be displayed on a poster or framed document that is at least 11 inches by 14 inches. The motto shall be the central focus … and shall be printed in a large, easily readable font.” The law also states that teachers should instruct students about the phrase as a way of teaching “patriotic customs.”

Similar bills are being promoted by groups like the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, a nonprofit that supports members of Congress who meet regularly to defend the role of prayer in government. To date, 26 states have considered bills requiring public schools to display the national motto. Seven states, including Louisiana, have passed laws in this regard.

Recent shift in the law

The Supreme Court has long treated public schools as an area where government-promoted religious messaging is unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s establishment clause. For example, the Supreme Court held in 1962, 1963, 1992 and 2000 that prayer in public schools is unconstitutional either because it favored or endorsed religion or because it created coercive pressure to religiously conform. In 1980, the court also struck down a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms.

At the same time, the court has protected private religious expression for individual students and teachers in public schools.

The Louisiana law comes at a time of rising concerns about Christian nationalism and on the heels of a pivotal court case. In the 2022 case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court overturned more than 60 years of precedent when it ruled that a public school football coach’s on-field, postgame prayer did not violate the establishment clause. In doing so, the court rejected long-standing legal tests, holding instead that courts should look to history and tradition.

The problem with using history and tradition as a broad test is that it can change from one context to the next. People – including lawmakers – are apt to ignore the negative and troubling lessons of U.S. religious history. Prior to the Kennedy decision, history and tradition were used by a majority of the court to decide establishment clause cases only in specific contexts, such as legislative prayer and war memorials.

Now, states like Louisiana are trying to use history and tradition to bring religion into public school classrooms.

A history of ‘In God We Trust’

Contrary to what people often assume, the phrase “In God We Trust” has not always been the national motto. It first appeared on coins in 1864, during the Civil War, and in the following decades it sparked controversy. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt urged Congress to drop the phrase from new coins, saying it “does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege.”

In 1956, amid the Cold War, “In God we Trust” became the national motto. The phrase first appeared on paper money the next year. It was a time of significant fear about communism and the Soviet Union, and atheism was viewed as part of the “communist threat.” Atheists were subject to persecution during the Red Scare and afterward.

Since then, the motto has stuck. Over the years, legal challenges attempting to remove the phrase from money have failed. Courts have generally understood the term as a form of ceremonial deism or civic religion, meaning religious practices or expressions that are viewed as being merely customary cultural practices.

The future of the law

Even after the Kennedy ruling, the Louisiana law may still be unconstitutional because students are a captive audience in the classroom. Therefore, the mandate to hang the national motto in classrooms could be interpreted as a form of religious coercion.

But because the law requires a display rather than a religious exercise like school prayer, it may not violate what has come to be known as the indirect coercion test. This test prevents the government from conducting a formal religious exercise that places strong social or peer pressure on students to participate.

The outcome of any constitutional challenge to the Louisiana law is far from clear. Prior cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance offer one example. Though the Supreme Court dismissed on standing grounds the only establishment clause challenge to the pledge it has considered, lower courts have held that reciting the pledge in schools is constitutional for a variety of reasons.

These reasons include the idea that it is a form of ceremonial deism and the fact that since 1943 students have been exempt from having to say the pledge if it violates their faith to do so.

The Louisiana law, however, requires instruction about the national motto.

If the law is challenged in court and upheld, teachers could teach that the motto was adopted when the nation was emerging from McCarthyism and fear of communism was widespread. Moreover, they could teach that many people of faith throughout U.S. history would have viewed this sort of display as against U.S. ideals.

Division is likely

More than two centuries before Roosevelt argued that it was sacrilegious to put “In God We Trust” on coins, the Puritan minister and Colonist Roger Williams famously proclaimed that “forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.” Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island, at least in part, to promote religious freedom.

Additionally, there is no prohibition on alternative designs for the national motto posters as long as the motto is “the central focus of the poster.” In Texas, a parent donated rainbow-colored “In God We Trust” signs and others written in Arabic, which were subsequently rejected by a local school board. This situation, which gained significant media attention, brought the exclusionary impact of these laws into public view.

It could be argued that accepting wall hangings that favor Christocentric viewpoints – and rejecting those that reflect other religions or add symbols such as the rainbow – is religious discrimination by government. If so, schools might be required to post alternative motto designs that meet the letter of the new law in order to uphold free speech rights and prevent religious discrimination.

The Louisiana law would have been brazenly unconstitutional just two years ago. But after the Kennedy decision, the law may survive a potential legal challenge. Even if it does, one thing is for certain: It will be divisive.

Frank S. Ravitch, Professor of Law & Walter H. Stowers Chair of Law and Religion, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

SAME OLD GOP
'MAGA Mike Johnson' wants commission to cut Social Security formed 'immediately'

Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
November 3, 2023 

Then-President Donald Trump is greeted by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) before the State of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

 (Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Images)

When Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives elected Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson as speaker last week, critics quickly sounded the alarm about his previous calls to cut trillions of dollars from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—and the GOP leader triggered a fresh wave of fears on Thursday with related comments to a Capitol Hill journalist.

NBC News' Sahil Kapur reported on social media that Johnson "says he pitched a debt commission to Senate Republicans yesterday and 'the idea was met with great enthusiasm.' He says it will be bipartisan and bicameral. He says he wants 'very thoughtful people' in both parties to lead it. He wants this 'immediately.'"

In response to Johnson's remarks—which echoed his first speech as speaker—the Alliance for Retired Americans wrote, "Translation: They're eager to begin gutting Social Security behind closed doors."

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla)—who led the ouster of ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—celebrated Johnson's rise as a win for the far-right. He declared last week that "MAGA is ascendant," referring to the "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan of former President Donald Trump, who is the GOP front-runner for 2024.

Critics of the new speaker have similarly framed his election as a display of the far-right's hold on the Republican Party, and are even calling him "MAGA Mike," including in response to his comments Thursday.

"A week into his tenure, MAGA Mike Johnson is ALREADY calling for closed-door cuts to the Social Security and Medicare benefits American workers have earned through decades of hard work," warned Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Social Security Works said that "MAGA Mike Johnson's NUMBER ONE priority is to cut our earned benefits behind closed doors."

"The White House has rightfully called this type of commission a 'death panel' for Social Security and Medicare," the group noted. "HANDS OFF!"

Back in February, long before McCarthy struck a deal with President Joe Biden to suspend the country's debt ceiling, Republicans in Congress and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) were floating the idea of a commission, and White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said that "the American people want more jobs and lower costs, not a death panel for Medicare and Social Security."

As Republican lawmakers have continued to pursue the idea, others have embraced the "death panel" description.

After Johnson's mention of the commission in his speech last week, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote:

On the whole, Johnson's approach to social safety net programs comes right out of the GOP library of lies about the programs' finances and their effect on the federal budget.

"The reality is, they're headed towards bankruptcy," he said in his July 2022 C-SPAN appearance. "In just a few number of years, Social Security goes belly up. So does Medicare, Medicaid, all of these big-spending programs because we're drowning in debt."

The idea that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going "bankrupt" is standard Republican hogwash. So is the idea that Social Security will go "belly up" in some number of years—even if Congress sits on its hands, the program will still have enough revenue to cover three-quarters of the benefits due.

"The notion that those programs are drivers of the federal debt is also a bog-standard GOP talking point," Hiltzik added. "A far more significant portion of the federal budget deficit is the lavish tax cut that Johnson's party gifted to corporations and the wealthy in 2017, a $1.5-trillion giveaway from which the U.S. economy received no significant gain."

Most House Republicans and a dozen Democrats on Thursday evening voted to pass a bill that would deliver on Biden's request for $14.3 billion to help Israel wage war on Gaza—which experts are condemning as genocide—and cut Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding.

Analysts and Democrats in Congress have warned that the IRS cut would hamper the agency's ability to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, bolstered by the Congressional Budget Office finding Wednesday that the measure would reduce federal revenues by $26.8 billion and add $12.5 billion to the deficit over the next decade.

Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), who opposed the bill and is among the few Democrats demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, said that "the only thing crueler than sending $14 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars for weapons that will result in the deaths of thousands more innocent Palestinian children in Gaza is exploiting that war—exploiting the death of over 1,400 Israeli mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, and hundreds more hostages—to help corporate CEOs and billionaire donors cheat on their taxes."

BEING HONEST ABOUT 'PROLIFE'

'Wildly out of step': Fox News host hits Mike Johnson on birth control crusade

IT'S ANTI-CONTRACEPTION

David Edwards
November 5, 2023 

Fox News/screen grab

Fox News host Shannon Bream challenged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) over his history of opposing certain forms of birth control.

While appearing on Fox News Sunday, Bream noted that Johnson had been accused of being "wildly out of step" with Americans on birth control.

"He supported bans that would not only criminalize abortion but ban IVF treatments and common forms of birth control and that you voted against access to contraception," Bream said, quoting Emily's List.

"Is that an accurate assessment of where you are?" she asked. "Because that's not in step with the American people."

Johnson, however, feigned ignorance.

"No, Shannon, look, I'm pro-life," he said. "I've said very clearly I'm a Bible-believing Christian. I believe in the sanctity of every single human life."

"Listen, prior to the modern time, I mean until recently actually, almost all of our nation's leaders openly acknowledged that they were also Bible-believing Christians," he added. "I mean, this is not something that should cause great unrest, okay?"

"To be clear, though, have you voted against fertility treatments and access to contraception?" Bream pressed.

"I don't think so," Johnson said. "I'm not sure what they're talking about. I really don't remember any of those."

As a member of Congress, Johnson has called some forms of birth control abortifacients.

Watch the video below from Fox News or at the link.

 

How Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans for a Christian law school unraveled

Johnson vouched for the school -- and agreed to serve as its dean -- without seeing a key feasibility study, he would ultimately admit


By Michael Kranish and Isaac Stanley-Becker
November 4, 2023 

In February 2012, Mike Johnson sent an aide on an urgent mission at the college where he had been working to open a law school: Locate a study that he believed would prove the project was financially possible.

For more than a year, Johnson — the dean of the not-yet-opened law school — had been telling donors and the public that the institution, which would focus on training Christian attorneys in northwest Louisiana, was not only achievable, but inevitable.

“From a pure feasibility standpoint,” Johnson, then 38, told the local Town Talk newspaper in 2010 after becoming dean, “I’m not sure how this can fail because … it looks like the perfect storm for our law school.”

But he had still not actually seen a feasibility study commissioned by the parent school, Louisiana College, a private Southern Baptist college in Pineville, La., now known as Louisiana Christian University.

The aide soon returned with disturbing news: The study had been buried in a filing cabinet. And it was all but useless.

Six months later, in August 2012, Johnson resigned as dean of the new school, which never opened even though the college spent $5 million to buy and renovate a Shreveport headquarters, among other expenses detailed in local media accounts.

The feasibility study was a “hodgepodge collection of papers,” with “nothing in existence” related to the need for the new law school, market studies, or “funding sources and prospects,” Johnson wrote the following year, describing the episode in what he called a “confidential memorandum” responding to questions from the Louisiana College Board of Trustees

Johnson’s April 2013 memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, reveals how he navigated a previous executive management experience as he takes over a much larger organization, the U.S. House of Representatives, and becomes second in line to the presidency. The memo suggests that Johnson encouraged and agreed to lead what he later described as a sparsely researched effort that collapsed soon after he left.

The new speaker’s congressional biography makes no mention of his tenure as dean of the never-opened law school. Before winning election to the Louisiana legislature in 2015, and Congress a year later, Johnson mainly worked as a litigator for conservative causes, once remarking that his profession was “legal ministry.” He has also taught college courses, according to his House financial disclosures.

A spokesman for Johnson did not respond to a request for comment about the failed law school. Several others involved in the effort said Johnson had worked hard to make the project a reality and was not to blame for its failure.

The 2013 memo suggests, however, that when given a leadership opportunity, Johnson oversold his project’s prospects and failed to divulge key problems until after he left the job. In the memo, he blamed others for the problems, writing that the project collapsed because of larger issues at Louisiana College. He also faulted administrators for failing to send him the feasibility study, and said that a crisis involving the college’s accreditation agency undercut his effort to have the law school win operational approval.

“The ordeal created a real hardship for me and my family,” Johnson wrote, saying that he resigned “with great sadness and only as a last resort.”

Joe Aguillard, the president of Louisiana College, later offered an alternative explanation of events — pinning the blame for the law school’s failure on Johnson, according to a memo written at the time by another board member, Heath Veuleman. Aguillard said that Johnson’s resignation was a selfish decision to pursue a “dream job,” according to the memo, which was obtained by The Post. Aguillard also blamed Johnson’s resignation “for the Law School’s present delays in opening its doors.” After leaving the school, Johnson said in a memo that he had accepted a job at a conservative legal institute in the Dallas area.

Veuleman wrote that Johnson had denied these allegations and said in an interview with The Post that the college’s financial and management turmoil made Johnson conclude that he “couldn’t be dean. He was constantly being usurped. … I remember phone calls in which Mike would say, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’”

Aguillard said in a brief phone conversation that he was hospitalized and could not give an interview. His wife, Judy Aguillard, later texted that “my husband loves Mike and mentored him. They are very close.”

Johnson had raised hopes in Shreveport that his project could be transformative for Louisiana’s third biggest city by bringing in its first law school. Today, civic leaders say that whoever was responsible for the failed effort, it was a significant missed opportunity.

Funding and opening a law school, said a former Shreveport mayor, Democrat Cedric Glover, “is a heavy lift even in the best of circumstances, so success was never a guarantee.”

Jay Adkins, a trustee of the parent school at the time, said in an interview that he was among those shocked at how the plans for the law school had collapsed. For several years, Adkins said, he had been led to believe everything was going perfectly.

“Mike did everything he needed to do to move forward, but Louisiana College got in its own way,” Adkins said. “There were a number of us on the board of trustees who felt duped, we felt misled, we did not receive information we asked for. I can’t say anything to defend Mike in that arena. All I can say is, I felt very similar to how he felt.”

‘One heck of a presentation’

Johnson had raised hopes in his hometown of Shreveport, La., that he could bring the city its first law school. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

Johnson, a Shreveport native, after law school joined a prominent local firm and then became an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian nonprofit that grew up as an answer to the American Civil Liberties Union and is now known as Alliance Defending Freedom.

In that role, he staked out positions that went further to the right than the views of Republican Party leaders, saying gay relationships were “inherently unnatural” and that same-sex marriage threatened democracy. He sought to take a failed quest to allow religious prayer at public meetings in North Carolina all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He left the group in 2010, according to a spokeswoman.

Soon, he was boosting plans for a law school in Shreveport. He was hired about September 2010 to be the school’s founding dean and joined Aguillard at a ceremony announcing the project.

The school’s concept was to create an army of Christian legal warriors, as laid out by Aguillard, who said at the announcement that the law school would have “a singular focus on Jesus Christ … We will affirm Jesus Christ in every lecture, in every classroom, in every office on every square inch of campus.”

That vision was in line with the traditions of the parent college, which was founded in the early 1900s by a Baptist clergyman. The college had long aspired to open a law school, but those efforts advanced considerably under Aguillard, who became president in 2005.

The law school was to be named for Paul Pressler III, a retired Texas judge and leader of the Southern Baptist Convention who, after the school’s collapse, was accused in a lawsuit and court affidavits of sexual misconduct or assault by multiple men, including some who said they were underage at the time of the alleged activity. Tim Johnson, who was executive vice president of Louisiana College at the time of the law school’s launch, said there was pushback about making Pressler the namesake due to his “ultraconservative” biblical views, but that the assault allegations were unknown at the time.

Pressler’s lawyer, Ted Tredennick, said the 93-year-old was unable to respond directly due to dementia but rejected the assault allegations on his behalf. “He denied those allegations categorically when they were first made 20 years ago; he has continuously and consistently denied them since; he would deny them today if he were able.” A trial in the lawsuit has been delayed but is expected early next year.

Beginning a new law school is a monumental task, requiring the recruitment of faculty, raising funds, creating a curriculum and winning accreditation from the American Bar Association.

The school was to open in 2012 in a Shreveport office building that required extensive renovation, including asbestos removal, a cost borne by Louisiana College. The plan was then to raise at least $20 million and as much as $50 million to support the law school, according to news accounts at the time.

Gabriel Little, who was in charge of the capital campaign, said Johnson led an impressive effort to recruit faculty, create a curriculum, and present a proposal to win certification from the American Bar Association.

“He put together one heck of a presentation for accreditation” by the ABA, Little said.

But as Johnson prepared to do that, he later wrote in his memorandum to trustees, he learned that Louisiana College had run into a roadblock in its own effort to bolster its accreditation status from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Johnson wrote that the college’s problem with accreditation meant he could not win ABA approval for the law school.

Around the same time, the college faced other struggles. As it moved in a more conservative theological direction, its leaders seized on doctrinal disputes within the Southern Baptist convention to discredit critics, sparking protests by students and some faculty.

Rondall Reynoso, a previous head of the college’s art department, said a culture of fear pervaded the campus — to the point that he stopped using his work computer because of concern that he was being surveilled.

“It was an inquisition-type atmosphere, almost,” Reynoso said, attributing the unrest to what he called the undue influence of the Southern Baptist Convention.

A spokeswoman for Louisiana Christian University, as the school is now known, said no one currently in leadership was serving at the time of the failed law school. The new administration, which took over in 2015, “has worked to address previous deficiencies,” the spokeswoman said, resulting in a 2021 review that affirmed the university’s accreditation “with zero findings of noncompliance.”

Johnson wrote in his memo that the “unrest” on campus was shocking, but others said he should have been well aware of the turmoil from news reports about threats to the college’s accreditation.

“By the time Johnson gets involved, the problems are well-known, but they’re dismissed by hardcore conservatives as a liberal attack,” Reynoso said.

At the same time, concern grew at the college about millions of dollars of deferred maintenance at the Pineville campus, raising questions about plans to spend money to start the law school and other projects.

Johnson wrote in his confidential memorandum that Louisiana College’s conflicts undercut his plans and he had “no choice” but to delay the ABA filing. In addition, he needed to provide information from the law school feasibility study to win over the ABA.

The problem was that he had never seen the study, notwithstanding his bold statement more than a year earlier that the school’s feasibility was beyond question.

Johnson wrote that he had long heard about the feasibility study, saying that the college as far back as 2007 had “heavily relied upon” it as part of its decision to open the law school. Indeed, Johnson wrote that the study would be the “most important” part of the accreditation process because both SACS and the ABA were “increasingly reluctant to approve new law schools.” Johnson did not say who wrote the study.

Johnson had to prove the school made financial sense and would have long-term support. He wrote in his memo that he repeatedly asked for the study, but it was never sent to him.

‘Minimize publicity’

Two years after Johnson walked away from a project to open a law school in Shreveport, he was elected to Louisiana state legislature. A year after that, he was elected to the U.S. House. This year, he became speaker. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By February 2012, Johnson said he could wait no longer. He wrote that an aide finally found the study in the bottom two drawers of a filing cabinet at the alumni center.

Johnson had spent the prior year insisting that there was a great need for the law school, that millions of dollars would pour in, and that there were more than enough students to fill it. But in the memo, he said it was “shocking” to read the feasibility study and realize that it undercut his rationale for opening the school, adding in a footnote that he was “deeply disturbed” that most trustees had never seen it.

Information from a solidly researched feasibility study was needed as part of the presentation to the accreditation officials, and now, Johnson wrote in the memo, “Suddenly, we realized we had to create all of this from scratch.”

Adkins said trustees also felt the college leaders did not respond to their inquiries.

“I felt that we asked questions and they were either obfuscated or ignored. There was material we asked for and couldn’t get,” the former trustee said.

Tim Johnson, the former Louisiana College executive vice president, who has no relation to the new House speaker, said in an interview that there were plenty of skeptics about the need for a new law school, but he said he and others were convinced that a Christian-based institution could thrive.

However, he said that when the law school struggled to raise funds, along with the accreditation issues, “Mike probably saw that it was going to be a long time to do it, if it ever got done, and he was a bright young man and just chose to pursue another path.”

On Aug. 15, 2012, Mike Johnson wrote Aguillard a letter of resignation. He said that developments “beyond our control” had affected his ability to run the school, citing the college’s accreditation problems that had made it difficult to raise funds and recruit students and faculty.

“Our hands are currently tied,” Johnson wrote, adding that he needed to look out for his family.

Privately, Johnson worked with the college on a public relations strategy to cast the resignation in the best possible light, according to internal documents reviewed by The Post.

The talking points included, “Minimize publicity on Mike’s resignation and keep all necessary messaging brief, positive and consistent,” and “Do not concede law school, but maintain it as a temporarily delayed and scaled-down future project.”

That didn’t happen. The law school never opened. Johnson, meanwhile, was elected as a state representative and then in 2016 to the U.S. House, followed by his elevation last month to the speakership.

Alice Crites and Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.


By Michael Kranishis a national political investigative reporter. He co-authored The Post’s biography "Trump Revealed," as well as biographies of John F. Kerry and Mitt Romney. His latest book is "The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor." He previously was the deputy chief of the Boston Globe's Washington bureau. Twitter

By Isaac Stanley-BeckerIsaac  is an investigative reporter on the national staff. Twitter