In just the last month, the Supreme Court has heard three important religion cases, culminating in yesterday’s argument over a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. Judging from the justices’ questioning, the side pressing religious-freedom claims seemed likely to prevail in all three.
That would extend a remarkable winning streak for religion at the Supreme Court.
Since 2012, the pro-religion side has won all but one of 16 First Amendment cases about the government’s relationship with faith. (The exception: The court rejected a challenge to the first Trump administration’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.)
The court has been especially active in cases involving religious education. It said if the government was helping private schools, it couldn’t exclude religious ones. It exempted religious schools from anti-discrimination laws. In one pending case, the justices seemed poised to let parents with religious objections withdraw their children during discussions of gay and transgender themes. Yesterday they seemed likely to let a Catholic organization start a charter school in Oklahoma — which would make it the first religious school to get state charter funds.
A 2021 study of religion rulings since Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court in 2005 found that the Roberts court ruled in favor of religious people and groups over 83 percent of the time, compared with about 50 percent of the time for other courts since 1953. “In most of these cases, the winning religion was a mainstream Christian organization, whereas in the past pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations,” the study’s authors — Lee Epstein, of Washington University in St. Louis, and Eric Posner, of the University of Chicago — wrote.
If the court rules in favor of religious claims in all three of the pending cases, that figure will rise to 88 percent.
A movement
Regardless of what the justices decide about yesterday’s Oklahoma case, state money is already helping faith bloom in American education.
The main vehicle is via school vouchers, which have proliferated in Republican-led states.
Vouchers allow you to use taxpayer money — funds the government would have spent on a public school — to pay for your kid’s private school (or home-school supplies). More than half of states have such programs, and more than one million students use them, double the number in 2019.
The Supreme Court blessed vouchers for religious schools in a 2002 case, but their use took off after the pandemic as more states embraced them widely. In states like Florida, where vouchers have expanded to be available to all students, some religious schools now receive nearly all of their funding from state dollars, said Doug Tuthill, who helps manage Florida’s program.
States are looking for other ways to expand religion in public schools, too. Oklahoma wants to put Bibles in its classrooms. Louisiana is in a legal battle to get the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Texas is considering a similar move.
State lawmakers pushing to expand religion in public schools sometimes cite the Supreme Court rulings that my colleague Adam mentions above, such as a 2022 decision siding with a football coach who prayed at the 50-yard line after games. “There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in our Constitution, and recent Supreme Court decisions by President Trump’s appointees reaffirmed this,” said a lawmaker in Texas, who put forth a bill proposing prayer in schools.
TRUMP’S DEPORTATION ALLY
In public, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is full MAGA. He swoons about President Trump. He trolls American judges who impede Trump’s immigration crackdown. He lets Trump ship deportees to a prison in his country designed for terrorists. He says he will not hand over a Maryland resident wrongly sent there.
But in private, Bukele was more equivocal. My colleagues and I reported a big new story about the Salvadoran deportations and found that there are limits to his willingness to host Trump’s penal colony.
During negotiations with the United States, Bukele told Trump’s advisers he would jail “convicted criminals” but not non-Salvadorans whose only crime was being in the United States illegally. Bukele worried about how that would look at home. He could not convince Salvadorans he was prioritizing their national interests if he turned their country into a dumping ground for U.S. deportees, he explained to Trump aides.
This caused a problem almost immediately. The Trump administration sent 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, saying they were members of Tren de Aragua, a gang. Bukele wanted to see the evidence. U.S. officials scrambled to gather evidence. They sent the Salvadorans a scorecard created by the Homeland Security Department in which the men were assigned points for different attributes. Having a lot of tattoos was worth four points, for instance. If a deportee got a score of eight points or more, he was considered a gang member.
That — and a coveted trip to the Oval Office — appeared to satisfy Bukele. The Salvadoran leader continued to accept U.S. deportees, whom the U.S. labels “violent criminals,” and he still enjoys a close bond with Trump.
Related: A judge ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a green-card holder whom the Trump administration tried to deport because he helped lead pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia.
THE LATEST NEWS
Ukraine Minerals Deal
The United States and Ukraine agreed to a deal that creates an investment fund to search for minerals in Ukraine, and set outs how revenues would be split between the countries. Zelensky proposed the deal last year, hoping to improve relations with Trump.
The deal aims to give Trump a personal stake in Ukraine’s fate and to address his concerns that the U.S. has provided Ukraine with a blank check to fight Russia.
The U.S. did not immediately provide details about the agreement, and it was not clear what it meant for the future of American military support for Ukraine.
The Economy
The economy shrank by 0.3 percent in the first three months of the year, a sharp reversal from the previous quarter’s strong growth. The decline, however, may not be as bad as it sounds. It mostly reflects quirks in the way we measure economic activity. (Ben Casselman, The Times’s chief economic correspondent, explained those quirks in detail.)
The data suggests that the economy would be solid if Trump’s tariffs didn’t fuel uncertainty and scare American consumers and businesses. David Sanger, a White House correspondent, explained how Trump’s own policies strike directly at his political appeal as a competent steward of the economy.
The report doesn’t cover the period after what Trump called Liberation Day, when he announced tariffs that tanked stock markets and launched a trade war with China. In other words, tariffs could make coming reports worse. We just don’t know how much worse yet. — German Lopez, writer for The Morning
More on Trump
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In an interview, Trump insisted that the man his administration had mistakenly deported to El Salvador had a gang name tattooed on his hand. He was referring to a photoshopped image, and the White House couldn’t explain why.
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Late night covered the interview.
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“I don’t regret voting for him”: The Times asked seven Americans for their thoughts on Trump’s second term. Watch the video.
International
The Tactical Games: It’s like CrossFit, but with guns.
Gull Scream Championship: Bird imitators from all over Europe brought their best squawks and struts to a contest in Belgium. See a video.
Social Q’s: “My girlfriend won’t introduce me to her children or friends. Help!”
Most clicked yesterday: A video of Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent, explaining why Trump is signing so many executive orders.
Lives Lived: Julia Parsons was a U.S. Navy code breaker during World War II, among the last survivors of a top-secret team of women that unscrambled messages to and from German U-boats. She died at 104.
SPORTS
N.B.A.: The Lakers’ season is over after a 103-96 loss to the Timberwolves last night, eliminating the league’s flashiest team after just one round.
A diver visited a fallen whale. When he returned, it was gone. So how does an 18-foot-long, 2,000-pound carcass just disappear? That question has puzzled some divers who regularly plunge into the waters off San Diego. We called experts for an answer.
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