Analysis
Tracking Trump's executive orders: Vouchers
Executive Order 14191: Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families
Date Signed: January 29, 2025
Key Provisions:
- Executive Order 14191 announced that within ninety days, the Secretary of Education will issue guidance on how the federal government can use discretionary grant funding to support K-12 educational choice initiatives
- This includes information about how federal grant programs can support “educational freedom” and offers federal support for families who choose to send their children to alternative institutions, “including private and faith-based options”
Interfaith Alliance Counterpoints:
- Interfaith Alliance strongly supports the right of parents to send children to schools of their choosing, but we reject the idea that the government should divert critical funding away from public schools, sending it instead to private, charter, or faith-based institutions, which educate only a small portion of our country’s young people.
- Instead of funding a private school education system through school vouchers, we believe the government should invest in our public schools, which educate 90% of students across the country.
- Our public education system is the only one which guarantees religious freedom protections to all students, since faith-based and other sectarian private schools are exempt from some nondiscrimination requirements.
Transcript
New Report Sheds Light on the the Growing Threat of Christian Nationalism
A new report by the Public Religion Research Institute finds that support for Christian nationalism is growing in the U.S., with nearly one-third of Americans qualifying as adherents or sympathizers and higher concentrations in parts of the South and Midwest. The study highlights strong links between these beliefs and support for authoritarianism, political violence, and anti-immigrant policies, underscoring concerns about their impact on democracy and religious freedom.
Pluralism is Democracy in Action
On July 4, America will mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That day in 1776, the nation’s founders put forward a bold vision for a new democratic experiment, one rooted in shared values, with power derived from the people rather than imposed by a monarch or religious authority:
