Trump announced that he will bring back prayer in the schools. This is a prize for his Christian nationalist base, who want the nation to be a theological, Bible-based state.

Trump recently appeared at the Museum of the Bible (who knew?) where he made clear his plans.

This is alarming but also amusing. Trump is probably the least religious man ever elected President. Sunday mornings, he is on the golf course, not in church. He has violated every one of the Ten Commandments.

Politico reported:

President Donald Trump on Monday said that the Department of Education would soon be instituting new guidelines on the right to prayer in public schools.

Speaking from an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, Trump said there are “grave threats to religious liberty in American schools.”

“For most of our country’s history, the Bible was found in every classroom in the nation, yet in many schools today students are instead indoctrinated with anti-religious propaganda and some are punished for their religious beliefs. Very, very strongly punished,” Trump said. “It is ridiculous.”

Trump did not detail what the new guidance will include, but during the 2024 campaign he promised to “bring back prayer” to public schools.

In a statement to POLITICO, Savannah Newhouse, press secretary for the Education Department said, “The Department of Education looks forward to supporting President Trump’s vision to promote religious liberty in our schools across the country.” 

While religion is not banned in public schools, the Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that state-sponsored prayer in public schools violates the First Amendment.

It’s important these days to remember that public schools were created by communities, districts, and states to serve all children and to contribute to the betterment of society. As a result of demands by parents, activists, the courts, and legislators, public schools must serve all children, not just those they choose to admit.

Sidney Shapiro, a Professor of Law at Wake Forest University, and Joseph P. Romain, a Professor of Law at the University of Cinncinatti, co-authored a paper on the need for and purpose of public schools.

While the White House’s fight with elite universities such as Columbia and Harvard has recently dominated the headlines, the feud overshadows the broader and more far-reaching assault on K-12 public education by the Trump administration and many states.

The Trump administration has gutted the Department of Education, imperiling efforts to protect students’ civil rights, and proposed billions in public education cuts for fiscal year 2026. Meanwhile, the administration is diverting billions of taxpayer funds into K-12 private schools. These moves build upon similar efforts by conservative states to rein in public education going back decades.

But the consequences of withdrawing from public education could be dire for the U.S. In our 2024 book, “How Government Built America,” we explore the history of public education, from Horace Mann’s “common school movement” in the early 19th century to the GI Bill in the 20th that helped millions of veterans go to college and become homeowners after World War II.

We found that public education has been essential for not only creating an educated workforce but for inculcating the United States’ fundamental values of liberty, equality, fairness and the common good.

In the public good

Opponents of public education often refer to public schools as “government schools,” a pejorative that seems intended to associate public education with “big government” – seemingly at odds with the small government preferenceof many Americans.

But, as we have previously explored, government has always been a significant partner with the private market system in achieving the country’s fundamental political values. Public education has been an important part of that partnership.

Education is what economists call a public good, which means it not only benefits students but the country as well.

Mann, an education reformer often dubbed the father of the American public school system, argued that universal, publicly funded, nonsectarian public schools would help sustain American political institutions, expand the economy and fend off social disorder. Horace Mann was a pioneer of free public schools and Massachusetts’ first secretary of education.

In researching Mann’s common schools and other educational history for our book, two lessons stood out to us.

One is that the U.S. investment in public education over the past 150 years has created a well-educated workforce that has fueled innovation and unparalleled prosperity.

As our book documents, for example, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the states expanded public education to include high school to meet the increasing demand for a more educated citizenry as a result of the Industrial Revolution. And the GI Bill made it possible for returning veterans to earn college degrees or train for vocations, support young families and buy homes, farms or businesses, and it encouraged them to become more engaged citizens, making “U.S. democracy more vibrant in the middle of the twentieth century.”

The other, equally significant lesson is that the democratic and republican principals that propelled Mann’s vision of the common school have colored many Americans’ assumptions about public schooling ever since. Mann’s goal was a “virtuous republican citizenry” – that is, a citizenry educated in “good citizenship, democratic participation and societal well-being.”

Mann believed there was nothing more important than “the proper training of the rising generation,” calling it the country’s “highest earthly duty.”

Attacking public education

Today, Mann’s vision and all that’s been accomplished by public education is under threat.

Trump’s second term has supercharged efforts by conservatives over the past 75 years to control what is taught in the public schools and to replace public education with private schools.

Most notably, Trump has begun dismantling the Department of Education to devolve more policymaking to the state level. The department is responsible for, among other things, distributing federal funds to public schools, protecting students’ civil rights and supporting high-quality educational research. It has also been responsible for managing over a trillion dollars in student loans – a function that the administration is moving to the Small Business Administration, which has no experience in loan management.

The president’s March 2025 executive order has slashed the department’s staff in half, with especially deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, which, as noted, protects student from illegal discrimination.

Trump’s efforts to slash education funding has so far hit roadblocks with Congress and the public. The administration is aiming to cut education funding by US$12 billion for fiscal year 2026, which Congress is currently negotiating.

And contradicting its stance on ceding more control to states and local communities, the administration has also been mandating what can’t and must be taught in public schools. For example, it’s threatened funding for school districts that recognize transgender identities or teach about structural racism, white privilege and similar concepts. On the other hand, the White House is pushing the use of “patriotic” education that depicts the founding of the U.S. as “unifying, inspiring and ennobling.”

Promoting private education

As Trump and states have cut funding and resources to public education, they’ve been shifting more money to K-12 private schools.

Most recently, the budget bill passed by Congress in July 2025 gives taxpayers a tax credit for donations to organizations that fund private school scholarships. The credit, which unlike a deduction counts directly against how much tax someone owes, is $1,700 for individuals and double for married couples. The total cost could run into the billions, since it’s unclear how many taxpayers will take advantage.

Meanwhile, 33 states direct public money toward private schools by providing vouchers, tax credits or another form of financial assistance to parents. All together, states allocated $8.2 billion to support private school education in 2024.

Government funding of private schools diverts money away from public education and makes it more difficult for public schools to provide the quality of education that would most benefit students and the public at large. In Arizona, for example, many public schools are closing their doors permanently as a result of the state’s support for charter schools, homeschooling and private school vouchers.

That’s because public schools are funded based on how many students they have. As more students switch to private schools, there’s less money to cover teacher salaries and fixed costs such as building maintenance. Ultimately, that means fewer resources to educate the students who remain in the public school system.

Living up to aspirations

We believe the harm to the country of promoting private schools while rolling back support for public education is about more than dollars and cents.

It would mean abandoning the principle of universal, nonsectarian education for America’s children. And in so doing, Mann’s “virtuous citizenry” will be much harder to build and maintain.

America’s private market system, in which individuals are free to contract with each other with minimal government interference, has been important to building prosperity and opportunity in the U.S., as our book documents. But, as we also establish, relying on private markets to educate America’s youth makes it harder to create equal opportunity for children to learn and be economically successful, leaving the country less prosperous and more divided.

Sidney Shapiro is a Professor of Law at Wake Forest University. He is affiliated with the Center for Progressive Reform.

Joseph P. Tomain is a Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati. He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Private and religious schools, in comparison, choose their students. They choose those who are a “good fit.” They choose their co-religionists. They may reject students for any reason. They may say they have the staff to help students with disabilities or those who don’t speak English or those who struggle with school work. The choice is theirs.

It’s a common complaint that the news media is trying so hard to be neutral that they are failing to warn the public about Trump’s efforts to make himself a fascistic emperor.

Trump has shattered norms and traditions by firing members of independent boards who were appointed to serve for a set term. He has cancelled funding authorized by Congress. He has taken control of Congress’s “power of the purse” by announcing draconian tariffs. He has bullied law firms, universities, tech giants, and the media. He ignores the law and the Constitution because no one will stop him. The Republicans who control Congress are hibernating. And they fear his base.

There is one writer who consistently writes frankly about Trump’s malfeasance: Susan B. Glasser of The New Yorker. In her latest article, she points out that federal courts have consistently rebuffed Trump’s lawlessness. The title: “How Many Court Cases Can Trump Lose in a Single Week?”

She describes “the Trump Doctrine” in blunt terms: “I can do anything I want to do.” A king? A dictator? An emperor? What other President has asserted his unlimited power to do whatever he wants? It remains to be seen, she acknowledges, whether the Supreme Court will reverse all these rulings against Trump’s overreach.

She writes:

Is Donald Trump tired yet of all the losing? During the past week alone, federal judges across the country have rejected some of the most important and far-reaching of Trump’s initiatives—from his efforts to reshape the global economy with tariffs and mobilize the military to act as police in American cities to his refusal to spend billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated funds. The President continues to cite nonexistent emergencies to justify his executive overreach and judges continue to call him out on it, issuing stern rebukes in the tradition of Judge Beryl Howell, who, during a case this spring about the firings of civil servants, observed that “an American President is not a king—not even an ‘elected’ one.”

I’m not sure that this week’s epic losing streak has received the attention that it deserves, no doubt in part because America had other things to worry about, such as whether Trump was actually alive, despite all the internet rumors. It speaks to the present moment that the President is not only very much still with us but has already started fund-raising off the social-media frenzy surrounding his supposed death over Labor Day weekend. (“These rumors are just another desperate attack from the failing left who can’t stand that we’re WINNING and bigly!” the e-mail pitch that arrived in my inbox on Thursday morning said.) But what does it say about the state of things that disputing rumors of his death turns out to be a welcome distraction from underlying political realities for Trump?…

The latest string of defeats began last Friday, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs imposing double-digit duties on key trading partners such as Canada, China, and the European Union were illegal. Over the holiday weekend, a federal district judge intervened to stop migrant children from being deported to Guatemala while some of them were already loaded on planes. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reinstated a Federal Trade Commissioner, saying that Trump did not have the power that he claimed to fire her. Also that day, another federal judge ruled that, in sending hundreds of National Guard personnel to Los Angeles amid protests of Trump’s immigration crackdown, the President had violated a nineteenth-century law prohibiting the use of troops for domestic law-enforcement purposes. On Wednesday, yet another judge, in Boston, rejected billions of dollars in cuts to research funding for Harvard University, part of a broad war on liberal academia that Trump has made an unlikely centerpiece of his second term. And late on Wednesday night, a federal judge in Washington blocked billions of dollars in Trump-ordered cuts to foreign aid, saying that he was usurping Congress’s power of the purse in refusing to spend the money. This, I should add, is an incomplete list. If nothing else, it shows the extraordinary scope and scale of the battles that Trump has chosen to pursue—suggesting not so much a strategic view of the Presidency as an everything-everywhere-all-at-once vision of unchecked Presidential power.

It’s refreshing to read Glasser. She’s not shrill. She’s not ideological. She’s not afraid.

Greg Olear lays out the frightening parallels between the rise of Hitler and the rise of Trump, quoting from a book written by a German author. The article is longer that what I posted here. Please open the link to read it all. There is no paywall.

I. The United States: A Survey

In just a few months, a coarse, artless, criminal strongman has taken control of the entire federal government—including, as of yesterday, the nation’s capital (or “Capital,” as he writes it, capitalizing his nouns like a good German).

Trump owns the Supreme Court, the Republican Party, the Speaker of the House. Congress is powerless to stop him. The wealthiest tech-bros in Silicon Valley and most of the legacy media CEOs have lined up behind him. Colleges and universities have capitulated to his demands, as have white-shoe law firms and venerable broadcasting companies. He’s transformed U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement into his own secret state police. He’s using the FBI and the Justice Department to attack his enemies. He’s building concentration camps. He’s enriching himself on a grand scale. And every word that comes out of his puckered little mouth is a lie.

How did this happen? 

While on vacation in Barcelona, I came across the most cogent explanation I’ve yet encountered. It was written, appropriately, by a German—a brilliant journalist named Sebastian Haffner. Here is an excerpt:

At rally after rally all through the summer and fall of 2024, Trump bellowed that he would win—his supporters didn’t even have to vote, because he had Elon’s help—and then heads would roll. Nothing happened. The white-haired attorney general did not think of changing his strategy, insisting instead on the preservation of “norms.” In the presidential election against Joe Biden, Trump had declared that victory was his, in any case. Nothing happened. When he said it again at his next rally, the audience tittered, as if it had been tickled. The House invested considerable time and energy investigating the coup attempt of January 6th, in which his supporters besieged the Capitol and policemen were killed, and concluded that Trump was responsible. Nothing happened. No, something did happen: the insurrectionists were pardoned.

It was strange to observe how the behavior of each side reinforced that of the other: the savage impudence that gradually made it possible for the unpleasant orange apostle of hate to assume the proportions of a demon; the bafflement of his tamers, who always realized just too late exactly what it was he was up to—namely, when he capped it with something even more outrageous and monstrous; then, also, the hypnotic trance into which his public fell, succumbing with less and less resistance to the glamour of depravity and the ecstasy of evil. 

Besides, he promised everything to everybody, which naturally brought him a vast, loose army of followers and voters from among the ignorant, the disappointed, and the dispossessed.

Spot on, right?

Here’s the twist: Haffner wrote that in 1939—before the Nazis invaded Poland. He was reflecting on how the “unpleasant little apostle of hate”—I swapped “orange” for “little”—had come to power: how Hitler had bamboozled the German people into voting away their freedom, and how the German people had failed to meet the moment.

Obviously I modified the first paragraph to serve my rhetorical purposes, but the spirit of the original is unchanged: a loud, hateful psychopath keeps pushing and pushing and pushing, no one in a position of authority stops him, and the unthinkable comes true. This is what Haffner actually wrote:

Summoned as a witness before the highest German court, Hitler bellowed at the judges that he would one day come to power by strictly constitutional means and then heads would roll. Nothing happened. The white-haired president of the supreme court did not think of ordering the witness to be taken into custody for contempt. In the presidential elections against Hindenburg, Hitler declared that victory was his, in any case. His opponent was eighty-five, he was forty-three; he could wait. Nothing happened. When he said it again at his next meeting, the audience tittered, as if it had been tickled. One night, six storm troopers fell on a “dissident” in his bed and literally trampled him to death, for which they were sentenced to death. Hitler sent them a telegram of praise and acknowledgment. Nothing happened. No, something did happen: the murderers were pardoned.

The parallels are as obvious as they are disturbing.

Haffner—the pen name of Raimund Pretzel—was born in Berlin in 1907, the son of a Prussian government official. As a boy, he thrilled to the exploits of the Kaiser’s army during the Great War, like most of his contemporaries. He was not particularly “political.” He did not care for the Communists; if anything, he was more “right” than “left.” But he loathed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. He realized early on, in the years after the First World War, that political zealotry in Berlin was the province of “the more stupid, coarse, and unpleasant among my schoolfellows”—and all of those young, dumb bullies bought what the creepy watercolorist from Linz was selling. Haffner himself was “Aryan,” but he had a lot of Jewish friends, including his then-girlfriend, and he was morally outraged at the disgusting anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party.

As the situation grew more dire, Haffner fled Berlin, first to Paris, then to London, where, in 1939, he began a memoir—an account of how the Nazis had come to power. Unlike other works of this kind, his book is not an examination of what Hitler did, but rather how the German people, especially the ones who should have known better, reacted and responded to what Hitler did. He makes the case that his experience, as an individual German citizen living through the rise of the Third Reich, reflected the experience of hundreds of thousands of German citizens—the majority of whom, after all, had notvoted for the Nazis. The book is a chronicle of the political zeitgeist. It tracks the evolution of the emotions, the feelings, the vibes of the German nation, and explicates how and why Adolf Hitler, of all people, this nebbishy little weirdo, became not only chancellor but führer.

Published in German as Germany: A Survey, in English, the memoir is called Defying Hitler—a poor title, as it isn’t representative of the contents (there is not much defying of Hitler going on); plus, functionally, having HITLER emblazoned on the cover of a book makes it awkward to read at the airport.

Haffner abandoned the project in 1939, after the war started, “presumably because its theme is the question of how it was possible for the Nazis to come to power,” as his son and (wonderful) translator, Oliver Pretzel, explains in the introduction. “Instead he started another one, whose subject was the more urgent question of how to deal with Nazi Germany.”

The manuscript sat unread in a filing cabinet for decades. It was only published in 2001, two years after Haffner’s death, becoming a best-seller in Germany. While his original plan for A Survey was to chronicle his experiences through his emigration to England in 1938, he doesn’t get nearly that far. The action breaks off in 1933. I would have loved for it to continue—it feels like if Andor hadn’t come back for the second season—but he gives us more than enough insight to make his point.

Nineteen thirty-three was the crucial year in which Hitler and the Nazis established their power. It’s helpful, in the U.S. of 2025, to focus just on the events of that year. Here is a quick timeline:

January 30, 1933
The moribund president, Hindenburg—a “traitor,” Haffner rightly calls him—appoints Hitler as chancellor. Nazis are now in charge of Germany.

February 27, 1933
The Reichstag Fire—a “false flag” act of terrorism blamed on the rival Communists and used as a pretext for Hitler to crack down on his political opponents.

March 5, 1933
In the last free elections, the Nazis garner 43.9 percent of the popular vote—but exploit the parliamentary system and the feckless leaders of the German Nationalist People’s Party to remain in control.

March 22, 1933
The first concentration camp is established at Dachau, where dissidents and political opponents of the Nazis are sent after their arrests.

March 23, 1933
The Enabling Act grants Hitler dictatorial powers.

April 1, 1933
The Nazis impose a national boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. This kicks off an incremental process of barring German Jews from the civil service, the legal profession, the armed forces, the arts, agriculture, journalism, and so on.

April 26, 1933
The Gestapo—a truncation of Geheime Staatspolizei; literally the secret state police—is established.

As you can see—and as any American paying attention to the news these days can attest—it does not take that long for a stubborn and dedicated strongman, however ridiculous he may appear, to acquire fearsome authoritarian powers.

Defying Hitler is jawdroppingly good: as a piece of writing, as a personal memoir, as a social history, as a political analysis. And it is eerily, uncomfortably, shockingly current. I lost track of how many times I gasped out loud as I was reading, noting the unpleasant similarities between Germany in 1933 and the U.S. right now. Insofar as Trump has modeled himself on Hitler, and MAGA on the Nazi Party, the book is instructive—terrifying, to be sure, but not unhopeful.

Because of the ticking-time-bomb urgency, I’m going to quote from the book at length in this two-part piece, and hope that Mr. Pretzel does not object. With that said, I urge everyone to buy Defying Hitler and read it. Haffner’s memoir is beautifully written, short, fascinating, and not as depressing as the subject matter suggests. His disappointment and disgust with his countrymen feels very familiar. Defying Hitler is the single most important work I’ve come across, in terms of understanding the here and now.

There are, to reiterate, an alarming number of parallels between Germany in 1933 and the United States today. But there are also subtle differences, which, I believe, and which I hope, augur a better future here now than there then. The key difference, of course, as I’ve said many times on various broadcasts, is that the Germans of 1933 did not have the benefit of knowing what happened in Germany in 1933. They were caught blindsided. We have no such excuse.

Especially given this historical hindsight, it is both shameful and depressing that Donald Trump was elected a second time. But the historical precedent for such national stupidity still exists, as Haffner shows.