In Latest Term, Supreme Court’s ‘Conservative Majority’ Plays By The Left’s Rules
The Supreme Court continues to grant legitimacy to the leftist revolution that has overtaken and transformed most aspects of our nation.The Supreme Court continues to grant legitimacy to the leftist revolution that has overtaken and transformed most aspects of our nation.Supreme Court Deals Blow To Deep State Control In Ruling Against EPA
The D.C. Circuit is essentially the judicial branch version of 'trust the experts,' the only difference being that these judges do not actually have any expert knowledge that makes them more equipped to decide court cases.Secularists think they won at the Supreme Court — but they’ll lose in the end
The Supreme Court disappointed Christians when it deadlocked in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond.
The justices' 4-4 split keeps in place the ruling of the Oklahoma Supreme Court that St. Isidore of Seville Virtual School may not operate as a charter school in the state — for now, anyway.
Denying American families access to the winning combination of a Catholic charter school is not only unconstitutional but also unconscionable.
The court’s “non-decision decision” came about, in part, because Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. Barrett did not explain her reasons, but her close ties to Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Clinic and her friendship with a chief adviser to the school likely played a role.
How this happened
In the face of progressive accusations of unethical behavior, the justices recently agreed to a code of conduct that represents “a codification of principles” governing their conduct. Importantly, a justice is “presumed impartial” and “has an obligation to sit unless disqualified.” The code adds, presciently, that “the absence of one Justice risks the affirmance of a lower court decision by an evenly divided Court — potentially preventing the Court from providing a uniform national rule of decision on an important issue.”
Back in 2003, Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Barrett once served as a law clerk, denied a motion for his recusal based on his friendship with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a named party in a case before the Court.
"The people must have confidence in the integrity of the Justices, and that cannot exist in a system that assumes them to be corruptible by the slightest friendship or favor, and in an atmosphere where the press will be eager to find foot-faults," Scalia wrote.
In any event, what is done is done. And more importantly, Barrett’s recusal is not binding for future cases.
The victory that wasn’t
Secularists and opponents of school choice have been celebrating the outcome, even though split decisions do not constitute binding legal precedent.
As Notre Dame Law Professor and Supreme Court scholar Richard Garnett observed, “The do-nothing denouement in this particular round of litigation does not preclude other courts, in other cases, from vindicating the no-discrimination rule and permitting religious schools to participate in charter-school programs.”
Garnett is right. The twin religion clauses of the First Amendment — the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause — permit certification of religious schools like St. Isidore’s as charter schools.
Take, for example, the court’s recent decisions involving the Free Exercise guarantee and school choice initiatives. When the court struck down the “No-Aid” provision in Montana’s state constitution that excluded religious schools and families from a publicly funded scholarship program for students attending private schools, Chief Justice John Roberts reaffirmed the Free Exercise Clause’s demand for fairness.
“A state need not subsidize private education,” he observed. “But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
Similarly, in Carson v. Makin, the court found that Maine violated the Constitution when it excluded religious schools from participating in a voucher program for rural students. Roberts, again writing for the court, explained that “the State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.”
No clause against faith
Allowing religious schools such as St. Isidore’s to participate in a state’s charter school program is merely a natural application of this principle of fairness. But what about the Establishment Clause?
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond argued that certifying St. Isidore’s as a charter school would violate the Establishment Clause.
His argument has some appeal, particularly for secularists who want public schools to have a virtual monopoly over America’s educational system. Granted, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Establishment Clause prohibits public schools from providing religious instruction. Private schools, by contrast, are free to do so. Charter schools receive public funding, but they are privately established and controlled schools with minimal regulatory oversight by the government.
Consequently, charter schools are not state actors. And because they are not state actors, a charter school’s endorsement of any particular religion does not constitute a violation of the Establishment Clause.
Success secularism can't match
Charter schools currently exist in 45 states and the District of Columbia. A recent study reveals that charter-school students “show greater academic gains than their peers in traditional public schools.” The study also found that “charter students in poverty had stronger growth, equal to seventeen additional days of learning in math and twenty-three additional days of learning in reading, than their [traditional public school] peers in poverty.”
As for the benefits of a Catholic education, Catholic school students “continue to outpace public schools in math and reading, while public school student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels and reading scores continue to decline following a sobering trend last reported in 2022.”
Denying American families access to the winning combination of a Catholic charter school, then, is not only unconstitutional but also unconscionable.
The split decision affirming the Oklahoma Supreme Court means that families in the Sooner State cannot yet benefit from the stellar Catholic education offered by St. Isidore's as a charter school.
Still, it needs repeating: The order does not set precedent. The question of whether the Constitution allows a state to exclude religious schools from its charter program is not settled.
A call for clarification will likely be before the court soon and, with a full bench, we should expect that principles of fairness and religious freedom will prevail.
Trump keeps endorsing the establishment he vowed to fight
Donald Trump’s endorsement of Karrin Taylor Robson in December marked one of the most baffling moves of his political career. Still riding the momentum of his victory, Trump pre-emptively backed a known RINO for Arizona governor — nearly 19 months ahead of the 2026 primary. The endorsement fit a troubling pattern: early-cycle support for anti-Trump Republicans who hadn’t lifted a finger for the movement, while stronger MAGA candidates waited in the wings.
If Trump wants to deliver on his campaign promises, he needs to reassert deterrence against weak-kneed incumbents and withhold endorsements in open races until candidates prove themselves.
At some point, conservatives must face the hard truth: The swamp isn’t being drained. It’s getting refilled — with Trump’s help.
Arizona illustrates why MAGA must push back hard on Trump’s errant picks. Robson, a classic McCain Republican, publicly criticized Trump as recently as 2022. She ran directly against MAGA favorite Kari Lake in the 2022 gubernatorial primary. Maybe she could merit a reluctant nod in a general election, but nearly two years before the primary? With far better options available?
And indeed, better options emerged. Months later, Rep. Andy Biggs — one of the most conservative voices in Congress and a staunch Trump ally — entered the race. The Arizona drama had a partially satisfying resolution when Trump issued a dual endorsement. But dig deeper, and the story turns sour.
Top Trump political aides reportedly worked for Robson’s campaign, raising serious questions for the MAGA base. Their loyalty seemed to shift only after Robson refused to tout Trump’s endorsement in her campaign ads.
Which brings us to the million-dollar question: Why would Trump endorse candidates so subversive that they feel embarrassed to even mention his support?
The Robson episode is an outlier in one way: Most establishment Republicans eagerly shout Trump’s endorsement from the rooftops. Yet the deeper issue remains. Without MAGA intervention, Trump keeps handing out endorsements to RINOs or to early candidates tied to his political network — often at the expense of better, more loyal alternatives.
A pattern of bad picks
Some defenders claim Trump backs incumbents to push his agenda. That theory falls apart when so many of those same RINOs openly sabotage it.
Take Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.). Both received Trump’s endorsement while actively working against his legislative priorities — pushing green energy subsidies and obsessing over tax breaks for their donor class. These aren’t minor policy differences. These are full-spectrum RINO betrayals.
Trump wouldn’t dare endorse Chip Roy (R-Texas) for dissenting from the right, so why give cover to Republicans who consistently undermine his mandate from the left?
And don’t chalk this up to political necessity in purple districts. Trump routinely gives away the farm in safe red states, too.
Here's a list of Trump’s Senate endorsements this cycle, straight from Ballotpedia — and it’s not comforting.
You’d struggle to find a single conservative in this bunch. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, and Jim Risch of Idaho all represent the globalist mindset that Trump’s base has spent years fighting. So why did Trump hand them early endorsements — before they even faced a challenge? What exactly is he getting in return?
Well, we know what his loyalty bought last cycle.
After Trump endorsed Mississippi’s other swamp creature, Roger Wicker, against a MAGA primary challenger in 2024, Wicker walked into the chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee — and now he’s stalling cuts to USAID. That roadblock has helped keep the DOGE rescissions package from reaching the president’s desk.
Wicker isn’t the only one. Several of Trump’s endorsees have publicly criticized his tariff agenda. Whether or not you agree with those tariffs, the pattern is telling. Trump only seems to call out Republicans who dissent from the right. Meanwhile, the ones who oppose him from the left collect endorsements that wipe out any hope of a MAGA primary.
Ten years into the MAGA movement, grassroots candidates still can’t gain traction — and Trump’s endorsements are a big part of the problem.
Instead of amplifying insurgent conservatives, Trump often plays air support for entrenched incumbents. He clears the field early, blasting apart any challenge before it forms. That’s how we ended up stuck with senators like Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (La.) — both from red states — who routinely block Trump’s nominees and undermine his priorities.
Trump endorsed both Tillis and Cassidy during the 2020 cycle, even as grassroots conservatives geared up to take them on. In fact, almost every red-state RINO in the Senate has received a Trump primary endorsement — some of them twice in just 10 years. That list includes Moore Capito, Graham, Hyde-Smith, and Wicker.
Saving red-state RINOs
What’s worse than endorsing RINOs for Congress in red states? Endorsing RINOs for governor and state legislature.
Yes, Washington is broken. Even in the best years, Republicans struggle to muster anything more than a narrow RINO majority. But the real opportunity lies elsewhere. More than 20 states already lean Republican enough to build permanent conservative power — if we nominate actual conservatives who know how to use it.
The 2026 election cycle will feature governorships in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming, to name just a few. These races offer a chance to reset the Republican Party — state by state — with DeSantis-caliber fighters.
Instead, we’re slipping backward.
RELATED: Reconciliation or capitulation: Trump’s final go-for-broke play
Trump has already endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds for Florida governor — nearly two years before the election. In most red states, Donalds would look like an upgrade. But Florida isn’t most red states. Florida is the citadel of conservatism. It deserves a contested primary, not a coronation. Donalds hasn’t led the way DeSantis has — either nationally or in-state — so why clear the field this early? Why not at least wait and see whether DeSantis backs a candidate?
And don’t forget about the state legislatures.
Freedom Caucuses have made real gains in turning GOP supermajorities into something that matters. But in Texas, House Speaker Dustin Burrows cut a deal with Democrats to grab power — then torched the entire session. Conservative voters are eager to remove Burrows and the cronies who enabled him.
We’ll never drain the swamp this way
This is where Trump should be getting involved — endorsing against the establishment, not propping it up.
Instead, he’s doing the opposite.
Trump recently pledged to back Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows and his entire entourage of RINO loyalists — just because they passed a watered-down school choice bill that also funneled another $10 billion into the state’s broken public-school bureaucracy.
The same pattern holds in Florida.
The House speaker there, Daniel Perez, has consistently blocked Governor Ron DeSantis’ agenda, including efforts to strengthen immigration enforcement — policies that are now a national model. Despite this, Perez cozied up to Byron Donalds. Donalds returned the favor, but refused to take sides in the Perez versus DeSantis clashes. He also ducked the fights against Amendments 3 and 4. So what exactly qualifies Donalds to become Trump’s handpicked candidate in the most important red state in America?
This new paradigm — where candidates secure Trump endorsements just by parroting his name — has allowed RINO governors and legislators to push corporatist policies while staying firmly in Trump’s good graces. They wrap themselves in the MAGA brand without lifting a finger to advance its agenda.
That’s not the movement we were promised.
At some point, conservatives must face the hard truth: The swamp isn’t being drained. It’s getting refilled — with Trump’s help. We can’t keep celebrating Trump’s total control of the GOP while hand-waving away the RINOs, as if they’re some separate, unaccountable force. Trump has the power to shape the party. He could use it to clean house.
Instead, he keeps using it to protect the establishment from grassroots primaries.
At the very least, he should withhold endorsements until candidates prove they can deliver on the campaign’s promises. Don’t hand out golden Trump cards before they’ve earned them.
Mr. President, please don’t be such a cheap date.
Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal leaves religious liberty twisting in the wind
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 4-4 deadlock last week left intact the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling against St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School — a failure of constitutional courage and a setback for educational freedom.
The tie lets stand a decision that discriminates against faith-based institutions by denying them the same public charter school opportunities extended to secular organizations. It rests on a misguided reading of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and ignores the protections guaranteed by the Free Exercise clause.
Families deserve more than crumbling bureaucracies and ideological indoctrination. They need real alternatives — the kind private and parochial schools have offered for generations.
Plaintiffs, including the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board, made a compelling case: Excluding St. Isidore solely because of its Catholic identity violates the Constitution.
In Carson v. Makin (2022), the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot deny religious organizations access to public benefits otherwise available to all. Charter schools, while publicly funded, operate independently and serve as laboratories of innovation. St. Isidore committed to meeting Oklahoma’s curriculum standards and serving any student who applied. Its disqualification stemmed from one reason alone: its religious mission.
That’s religious discrimination, plain and simple.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court misread the Establishment Clause, and the U.S. Supreme Court failed to correct the error. The clause doesn’t forbid religious organizations to participate in public programs. It forbids the state to establish an official religion — not from offering families the freedom to choose a Catholic education within a public framework.
St. Isidore wouldn’t force anyone to adhere to Catholic doctrine. It would simply give parents another option — one grounded in a Judeo-Christian worldview and committed to academic excellence. Banning that option undermines pluralism and silences voices that have historically delivered high standards and moral clarity in American education.
Meanwhile, public education in the United States teeters toward collapse. Students trail their peers globally. In some districts, basic literacy remains out of reach. Families deserve more than crumbling bureaucracies and ideological indoctrination. They need real alternatives — the kind private and parochial schools have offered for generations.
Faith-based schools routinely outperform their government-run counterparts. Instead of blocking them from public charter programs, states should welcome their success and harness their model. Innovation doesn’t threaten the system. It might save it.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, despite claiming to be a Republican, sided with liberal secularists in opposing St. Isidore. His legal brief warned of “chaos” and raised alarm over hypothetical funding for “radical Islamic schools” — a tired slippery-slope argument that ignores the core issue of equal treatment under the law.
RELATED: This red-state attorney general has declared war on the First Amendment
Drummond abandoned conservative principles like school choice and religious liberty. Instead, he backed those who place rigid interpretations of church-state separation above fairness. His stance helped fuel the Supreme Court’s deadlock and undercut Oklahoma families seeking diverse educational options.
The Supreme Court’s failure to resolve this question, due in part to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal, leaves a constitutional gray area: Can states bar religious organizations from public programs that remain open to everyone else?
Parents deserve the right to choose schools that reflect their values — whether religious or secular. By excluding St. Isidore, the state has effectively declared that faith-based institutions are second-class citizens. That’s not just bad policy. It’s a dangerous precedent in a nation founded on religious liberty.
The founders never intended to wall off religion from public life. They saw the Christian faith and Judeo-Christian values as cornerstones of strong, free societies. Most early American schools were church-run. Today, the pendulum has swung too far to the left. Progressive bureaucrats attack the very moral foundations that made America successful in the first place.
If we want to make America great again, we need to reclaim those values and push back against the cultural nonsense that sidelines faith.
If we want to reverse the decline of American education, we need more choices — not fewer. This fight isn’t over. Oklahoma will keep defending parental rights and religious freedom. The St. Isidore case remains unfinished business — and we intend to finish it. Faith-based schools must have the freedom to educate our children without unconstitutional restrictions.
SCOTUS Declines To Nullify Lower Court Blockade On Establishing First Public Religious Charter School
In a stunning Thursday ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to nullify an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision blocking the establishment of the nation’s first public religious charter school. The final vote was deadlocked at 4-4, with Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself from the case. The high court did not offer a written opinion […]The war against child predators in Oklahoma classrooms
Oklahoma might be one of the deepest red states in the country, but that hasn’t stopped woke policies from infiltrating the school system.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is leading the fight against the takeover, and he tells James Poulos on “Zero Hour” just how he plans to win the war for America’s future.
“It’s unreal how bad the problem is,” Walters tells Poulos. “When I first got into office, we banned pornographic material from the classrooms, we banned transgender ideology from the classrooms. I was sued by our own administrators.”
Walters was sued by the administrators to keep the books “Gender Queer” and “Flamer” in grade school classrooms — both of which contain pornographic material depicting homosexual relationships.
“Inclusivity? You want ‘Gender Queer’ and ‘Flamer’ in the classroom? You guys are the same ones that then turned around and sued me to keep the Bible out of the classroom. So it was inclusivity except when it came to the most read book in American history,” Walters says.
But it’s not just the books that has Walters concerned.
“I had two school districts, one of them sent out a handout to a classroom of high school kids asking them about their favorite sexual preferences in graphic detail, about which of these sexual preferences do they have,” he tells Poulos.
“That is completely inappropriate in the classroom,” he continues. “We have pulled over 100 teacher certificates from sending sexually explicit text messages or committing sex acts with kids in the state of Oklahoma.”
“We’ve had to pass all these rules, all these requirements, because of again, people that have crossed the line, people that have indoctrinated kids, and then people who have taken even a step further to engage sexually with kids, and that’s where we have got to protect our young people,” he explains.
And again, this is all happening in Oklahoma, one of, if not, the reddest state in the country.
“If we’re dealing with it in Oklahoma,” Walters warns, “I’m telling you, it’s happening in every state.”
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This red-state attorney general has declared war on the First Amendment
We thought the Supreme Court had finally purged anti-religious discrimination from Establishment Clause jurisprudence. After years of confusion — conflating the ban on state-sponsored religion with an invented mandate to scrub faith from public life — the Court, through a series of rulings on religious schools and public funding, had restored sanity. It returned the law to its pre-Warren era understanding: Equal treatment of religion does not violate the Constitution.
Yet, here we are again.
Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.
In a move that stunned observers, Oklahoma’s own Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond and the state supreme court now argue that states cannot recognize religious charter schools.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. The case centers on St. Isidore, a Catholic online school seeking to join Oklahoma’s charter school system. Drummond contends the school’s religious affiliation disqualifies it. He sued the state charter board — a move usually made by the ACLU or militant secularist groups.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with him. The court claimed that granting charter status to a Catholic school would violate the First Amendment by effectively establishing Catholicism as a state religion. Justices labeled charter schools “state actors” and argued that any religious affiliation disqualifies a school from public recognition.
This logic turns the First Amendment on its head. The Constitution does not require hostility toward religion. It requires neutrality. Denying a religious school access to a public benefit — simply because it is religious — violates precedent.
Oklahoma’s Charter Schools Act permits any “private college or university, private person, or private organization” to apply for state funding to open a charter school. Excluding religious applicants contradicts not one but three major Supreme Court rulings.
In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc v. Comer (2017), the court ruled that excluding a religious school from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified “solely because it is a church” is “odious to our Constitution.” That case involved a grant for playground resurfacing. If states can’t deny rubber mulch, they can’t deny full charter status.
In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), a 5-4 majority held that state constitutions barring aid to religious institutions over secular ones violates the Free Exercise Clause. Public benefits, the Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized, cannot be denied “solely because of the religious character of the schools.”
Then came Carson v. Makin (2022), where Maine tried to distinguish between religious status and religious use, barring religious schools from voucher funds. The court rejected the distinction. Roberts, writing again for the majority, ruled that the program “operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.” He warned that attempts to judge how a religious school carries out its mission invite unconstitutional state entanglement.
So how, after such ironclad precedent, do we find a Republican state attorney general and a court in a state Trump carried in every county ruling that religious schools can’t even apply for public funding?
The answer lies in years of lukewarm Republican control. These are Republicans in name only, who blocked judicial reform and refused to challenge activist courts. Now, Drummond wants a promotion. He’s announced his run for governor after already overruling the state education superintendent’s decision to ban pornography in public libraries.
This case reveals a larger pattern. Courts act as a one-way ratchet. Even after strong Supreme Court rulings, liberal lower courts defy precedent. They delay, split hairs, and distinguish without merit. The high court may reverse Oklahoma, but its rulings rarely secure lasting victories.
And the irony? Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.
During the House debate on the First Amendment in 1789, James Madison explained: “Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience.”
That principle — freedom of conscience without coercion — shaped the American experiment. Far from excluding religion, the founders assumed its influence. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.” He added that politics and religion formed an “alliance which has never been dissolved.”
It’s time for the Supreme Court to reaffirm that alliance — clearly, decisively, and without leaving room for lower courts to ignore. And in Oklahoma, it’s time to elect Republicans who still believe the Bible belongs in the Bible Belt.
Supreme Court Signals Support For Allowing Nation’s First Public Religious Charter School
'When you have a program that's open to all comers except for religion ... that seems like rank discrimination against religion.'Today's top stories
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