With the nation gearing up for the big event next week, we at the Freedom From Religion Foundation are doing our civic duty.
We’ve put up a billboard in the heart of downtown Denver warning “Keep freedom alive — Stop Project 2025.” The billboard, one of several FFRF has placed nationally with this timely message, will be on display through Sunday. It is part of our campaign against the Christian nationalist-authoritarian scheme to upend democracy.
Want to learn more about Project 2025? For our Facebook Live “Ask an Atheist” feature, FFRF’s Liz Cavell and Ryan Jayne break down just a few of the many horrors within the project.
And on Freethought Radio this week, co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor talk with Alex Aronson, founder and president of Court Accountability, who describes the project’s scary details.
Our campus voting fellows
This voting season, we’re also proudly underwriting campus organizing fellows at key universities in Wisconsin to focus on student voter registration and securing vote pledges.
FFRF Governmental Affairs Coordinator Caitlin Berray spoke with the Eau Claire fellow, Dylan Peck, a junior studying sociology, political science and urban and regional planning, to find out what all he’s been doing. Read on to learn more.
Our request to the IRS
We have issued a formal request to the IRS commissioner urging strict enforcement this election season of the Johnson Amendment, a key legal provision that prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches and other religious entities, from engaging in partisan political activity. “Enforcing the Johnson Amendment is essential to maintaining the integrity of tax regulations,” FFRF legal counsel Chris Line writes, “but the IRS’ failure to consistently enforce the law has given churches and other religious nonprofit organizations the go-ahead to freely violate the law without consequence.”
This is the bodily autonomy election
FFRF Contributing Writer Kat Grant emphasizes in a new blog how this is the bodily autonomy election.
“There is no voting for a candidate opposing bodily autonomy that does not lead this country further down the path towards theocracy,” Kat writes. “There is a very real chance that this could be our last opportunity to set the United States back on a path of progress for a generation, and we all need to ask ourselves now as to which candidates are going to implement policies that protect us all.”
Wisconsin’s school voucher fetish
We are warning our home state voters that they will likely see a public school referendum on the ballot — an outcome of the Legislature’s misplaced funding priorities. Wisconsin has both a massive education funding deficit and a voucher scheme that siphons enormous sums of tax money away from public education. We have long cautioned about the dangers of vouchers, not only constitutionally but also from a cost perspective and a student outcome perspective.
Our person on the Hill gets a top lobbyist award
We have many other things going on, too — some of them cause for celebration.
We are proud to announce that Mark Dann, our D.C.-based governmental affairs director, has been named a top National Institute for Lobbying & Ethics lobbyist for the year. This prestigious award highlights Mark’s ethical leadership, advocacy and commitment to advancing the separation of state and church through strategic lobbying and coalition-building. The award will be bestowed on Mark in person at NILE’s annual dinner on Thursday, Nov. 7, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Congratulations, Mark!
Our law school essay competition is open
We’re excited to announce the 2025 Diane and Stephen Uhl Memorial Essay Competition for Law School Students, with a top prize of $4,000! Law school students will be asked to respond to recent Supreme Court decisions that allow religious organizations to participate in government funding programs. Additionally, students will then analyze how anti-discrimination laws cannot be enforced against religious schools receiving public funds. Please spread the word!
A Lone Star victory
We were happy to obtain a victory that protects Arlington, Texas, students from religious proselytization. “The district made the right call by putting students’ rights before religious indoctrination,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
An evangelist magician is allowed to pull tricks
Despite our warning that a Christian evangelist and illusionist was planning to proselytize students, a South Carolina school district allowed the evangelist to target students at a recent school assembly. We reiterated that the district must enforce its constitutional obligation to remain neutral toward religion — and that it cannot be a venue for evangelists to recruit students for religious events.
Thom Hartmann has us on his show
Media personalities turn to us for our expertise, and to our delight venerable broadcaster and bestselling author Thom Hartmann recently interviewed FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott about Oklahoma’s recent unconstitutional public school bible mandate and about the threat of Christian nationalism.
‘Freethought Matters’ reveals scary religious basis for Jan. 6 attack
Our TV show in its current Halloween week episode lays bare the spookily religious underpinnings of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Matthew D. Taylor is a religious studies scholar and the author of a new, just-released book called “The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement that Is Threatening Our Democracy.” You can already watch the interview on our YouTube channel. Or find out where and when to watch it on television Sunday.
Todd Starnes wails about our victory
Talking about Christian nationalists, a prime example of that lot is lamenting a recent Mississippi victory of ours that removed prayer from commencement ceremonies. Read Todd Starnes’ (almost) hilarious perspective here.
DeSantis’ dirty pool
The Florida state government’s actions to defeat an abortion rights referendum shows what theocracy looks like, our legislative arm (the FFRF Action Fund) emphasizes. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Christian nationalist and devout Catholic, is misusing his executive powers in unethical and unconstitutional ways to try to defeat Amendment 4, which seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. Find out how here.
Please visit here to find out what other things the Action Fund has been recently focused on.
Deion Sanders might be God
FFRF Legal Fellow Kyle Steinberg has a very funny take on Deion Sanders’ God-sized ego.
“Deion Sanders’ actions are not unfamiliar. He plays favorites (his sons both start on his team and command much of the publicity), demands idolization and specific use of his name, and deserts those he claimed to serve after leaving them in dire straits — all while facing zero consequences himself and catering to thousands of adoring fans,” he concludes. “Maybe he is God after all.”
Nobody should have a God complex — neither Deion Sanders nor God itself. With your invaluable support, we’re there to make sure of that.
