Trump's Religious Liberty Commission Wants the Government to Drop 'Separation of Church and State.' Its Draft Report Is Now Open for Comment.

President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission released a 224-page draft report on Friday afternoon that asks the federal government to stop describing the relationship between government and religion as a "separation of church and state" and to treat the two as mutually supporting instead. The chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, presented the draft to Trump at the White House. It is now posted for public comment for 15 days before the commission finalizes it.

The report is advisory. It recommends actions to the president and federal agencies but does not change any law on its own. Its central recommendation is that Trump "instruct the Department of Justice to issue guidance clarifying the proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and separation of church and state."

What the report recommends

The draft lists a set of specific actions. It calls for:

• Repealing the Johnson Amendment, the provision of the tax code that bars tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from endorsing or opposing candidates for office.
• Back pay for service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
• "Know Your Rights" posters from federal agencies and hotlines to take complaints about religious-liberty violations.
• A written explanation requirement for any public official who tells an employee that their religious expression was improper.
• Two new federal honors, a Presidential Medal of Religious Liberty and First Freedom Hero Awards, plus exhibits and markers at historic sites on the role of religion in American history.
• Broader access to public funds for faith-based agencies and wider exemptions for people who cite religious objections to policies on vaccines, pronoun use, and classroom lessons.

The report also says the government should combat antisemitism through legal tools, and it praises recent Supreme Court decisions that expanded religious expression in public settings, including a ruling that let parents opt their children out of lessons they object to on religious grounds.

The argument it makes

The draft frames the "separation of church and state" idea as a misreading rather than a settled rule. It argues for honoring what it calls a "tension between the relevant clauses of the First Amendment," the clause that protects the free exercise of religion and the clause that forbids the government from establishing a religion.

The report says it is not calling for a state religion. "To be clear, this does not involve or require advocating 'theocracy' or even the total elimination of any separation between church and state," it states. Elsewhere it argues that "in reality, the church and state strengthen and support one another." Citing one of its own members, Bishop Robert Barron, the report traces strict-separation thinking to what it describes as a "God is dead" ideology that originated in Europe.

Patrick went further than the document at a news conference. He said the phrase "separation of church and state" had been used for decades to "batter and hammer people of faith," and that Americans "cannot be attacked by that phrase any longer." In April, Patrick called the phrase a "lie." The draft report itself stops short of that, saying instead that the idea has been misapplied.

Where the commission came from

Trump created the Religious Liberty Commission by executive order on May 1, 2025. It sits under the Department of Justice and is authorized to have up to 14 commissioners appointed by the president. Patrick chairs it and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson serves as vice chair. The order directed the commission to report on the foundations of religious liberty, current threats to it, and ways to strengthen it. The commission is set to expire on July 4, 2026, the date of the country's 250th anniversary, unless Trump extends it.

Trump pointed to the report Friday at a Faith & Freedom Coalition gathering in Washington. "We saved religion, it was going down," he said. He said the administration of his predecessor, Joe Biden, had carried out a "reign of persecution."

The opposition

The progressive Interfaith Alliance has a pending lawsuit arguing that the commission lacks the ideological diversity that federal advisory panels are required to have. The administration has asked a federal court to dismiss it.

The Rev. Paul Raushenbush, the alliance's president, said in a statement that the report amounts to "a wishlist of divisive, unpopular ideas far-right religious groups have pushed for years," pointing to its calls to expand vouchers for religious schools and repeal the Johnson Amendment. Raushenbush also said the commission "couldn't bring itself to acknowledge the growing threat of Islamophobia." The Associated Press reported that critics have said the panel spotlighted left-wing antisemitism while paying less attention to comparable right-wing movements, and that the report gave little weight to Americans with no religious affiliation.

The legal backdrop

The phrase "a wall of separation between church and state" does not appear in the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson used it in an 1802 letter to a group of Baptists who opposed official state churches. Twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions cited the phrase as they applied the First Amendment's ban on a federal established church to state and local governments, which produced rulings against official prayers and Ten Commandments displays in public schools.

The current Court has moved in a different direction in recent years. It has allowed a public high school football coach to pray on the field after games and more recently backed a religious opt-out for parents objecting to lessons on gender and sexuality. The draft report points to those rulings as support for its position.

What happens next

The draft is open for public comment for 15 days. After that, the commission can revise it and issue a final version. Any change to federal policy would still require action by the Justice Department, other agencies, Congress, or the courts. The report itself is a recommendation.