 Well, the Supreme Court handed down multiple new decisions today, all of them predictably atrocious, but arguably the most consequential one is the decision of Carson v. Macon. This is a six-to-three ruling where the justices essentially decided that they are going to trample on the U.S. Constitution by gutting the separation of church and state by requiring states to fund religious schools in particular circumstances. As NPR's Nina Tonberg explains, by a six-to-three vote along ideological lines, the court opened the door further for those seeking taxpayer funding for religious schools. In its clearest statement to date, the court said that if a state uses taxpayer money to pay for students attending non-religious private schools, it must, keyword must, also use taxpayer funds to pay for attendance at religious schools. For all practical purposes, the decision thus invalidates provisions in 37 state constitutions that ban the direct or indirect use of taxpayer money in religious schools. The court's ruling came in a case from Maine, a state so rural that half of its school districts have no public high school. The state deals with that problem by contracting with nearby high schools and other districts to take those students. The state pays the average cost of tuition a bit over $11,000. In addition, it pays the same amount for nearly all of the 4,800 students who attend 11 private, non-sectarian academies. Many of them located on the green at the center of the towns where they are located. What the state does not do is pay the tuition for students attending private religious schools. But now the Supreme Court has ruled that Maine's system of excluding tuition for students attending religious schools is unconstitutional. The court said that the First Amendment provision guaranteeing the free exercise of religion requires neutrality toward religion, and Maine's system of paying only for tuition at non-religious schools demonstrates not neutrality, but hostility towards religion. So understand how the court is twisting itself into a pretzel to get around this brazen violation of the Constitution. They're saying if you're going to give money to these secular schools, you must give money to religious schools because that is how you establish neutrality. Excuse me? That logic is so twisted. Now before this was essentially left up to the states, if a state wanted to fund these religious schools with taxpayer money, they could do that. But now the court is saying, well, if you fund secular schools, you must also fund religious schools because it's only fair. So taxpayer money is going to go to schools that are religious that explicitly discriminate on the basis of religion, on the basis of gender identity, sexual orientation. In fact, look at one of the schools involved here. The court is now saying you must fund these types of schools if you're going to fund secular schools. So an article published in Time back in January explains how Banger Christian School, one of the schools involved in this case, they explicitly discriminate against LGBTQ plus teachers and students. So first of all, they refuse to hire anyone who's gay or trans, and they also literally expel students if they come out of the closet. Now this article tells the story of one student named Shyamlion, who was non-binary and bisexual, but knowing the school's policy, they stayed in the closet. However, one of their classmates decided to out them to school administrators back in 2019, which then led to Shyamlion being called into the principal's office, reprimanded a threat and with expulsion. And thankfully, the principal didn't expel them since they were so close to graduating, but they did require counseling specifically to address their sexuality, which Shyamlion interpreted as gay conversion therapy because it's essentially gay conversion therapy. Now the Supreme Court is saying, if you're going to fund secular schools for students in rural areas, you must fund schools like this that openly discriminate against queer teachers, queer students, and do gay conversion therapy, which has been banned in multiple states because it's an abuse of practice. States must fund this. Now it's not like they have the option to, if they want to, you must use taxpayer dollars to fund these openly prejudiced schools. It is truly absurd. Now I want to get to Sotomayor's dissent because she breaks down why this is truly preposterous and obviously unconstitutional. ACLU attorney for queer rights, Josh Block tweeted out arguably the most important part of Sotomayor's dissent, which reads, what a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the court was leading us to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment. Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. If a state cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any state that values its historic anti-establishment interests more than this court does will have to curtail the supported offers to its citizens. With growing concern for where this court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent. And she's right to be concerned. We should all be concerned because despite what the Constitution says, the Supreme Court is trying to lay the groundwork legally speaking and constitutionally speaking for Christian nationalism. What's that? The states can't establish a religion? Well now they're going to be forced to use taxpayer dollars to fund these schools that are explicitly religious and discriminate against LGBTQ plus people, discriminate on the basis of religion, violating federal statutes that other businesses have to comply with. But now the state has to fund this. It's truly ridiculous. We're going down a very dark and dangerous path. But despite what the Constitution says, it doesn't matter because this court will twist themselves into a pretzel to find some way to justify their theocratic view of America. And these conservatives on the Supreme Court, these far-right Supreme Court justices who claim that they rule with this judicial philosophy that they try to interpret what the founders wanted. Well, do you think that this is what the founders wanted? Most of the founders were not religious. Many of them were very anti-religious. Some of them were deists. But do you think this is what they wanted? Of course not. This just confirms what we've all suspected. They don't have real judicial philosophies. They just make shit up as they go along. They rule in a reactionary way and then they apply some bullshit judicial philosophy to their reactionary decision. It's truly ridiculous. And thinking years ahead, 2023, 2024, all of the decisions that this far-right court is going to hand down that will unravel our constitutional rights, civil rights, civil liberties. This is only the beginning. This is year one with the far-right Supreme Court. But this far-right Supreme Court will remain in power presumably for decades. So they're going to change this country fundamentally from top to bottom in a profound way. And there's nothing that we can do. There's no discussion realistically of court packing. There's no conversations about actually trying to impeach Clarence Thomas, who is an insurrectionist and married to somebody who tried to steal democracy. We're just going to live with this. Absolutely not. There should be protests every single day because this cannot be tolerated. They're going to destroy America by bastardizing the Constitution. And I have my criticisms of the Constitution. I don't think it's a perfect document. But what's good? They're trying to gut it. It's just truly remarkable to think about the plethora of ways they're going to fuck this country. And if people don't wake up and take to the streets and start protesting, then I don't know that we're going to have many constitutional protections left by the time this far-right Supreme Court is done with it.