Of all the smallish towns I have stayed in along France’s Rhône Valley, Tournon-sur-Rhône is my least favourite. It’s a loud town with an old expressway, Route Nationale 86, running through it.

French Education Minister Gabriel Attal announced on Sunday that France will ban the Islamic garment known as the abaya in schools.

“The school of the Republic was built around strong values, secularism is one of them. … When you enter a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the religion of pupils,” Attal said in an interview with French TV channel TF1.

“I announce that [pupils] will no longer be able to wear abaya at school,” he said.

Whenever Democrats speak at “prayer breakfasts,” secular nausea ensues. On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams induced queasiness in secularists, be they believers or nonbelievers, when he proclaimed: “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.” 

The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court has chipped away at the wall separating church and state in a series of new rulings, eroding American legal traditions intended to prevent government officials from promoting any particular faith.

In three decisions in the past eight weeks, the court has ruled against government officials whose policies and actions were taken to avoid violating the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on governmental endorsement of religion - known as the “establishment clause.”

Supreme Court justices on Monday readily put themselves in the shoes of a football coach who wanted to pray at midfield after a game, over those of students who might feel pressure to join him, in an expansive decision focused on the “suppression” of religious voices.

The 6-3 ruling against a Washington state school district that suspended coach Joseph Kennedy reinforces a modern court pattern favoring religious conservatives and a greater mingling of church and state.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Maine’s policy of allowing parents to use school vouchers for religious schools was not a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the national government from establishing a state religion. In a rare moment of principle, Chief Justice John Roberts rightly asserted in the majority opinion that excluding religious schools from the voucher program was blatant religious discrimination.

A Kansas lawmaker has introduced a proposed measure requiring every public building in the Sunflower State to display the US national motto, "In God We Trust."

The Wichita Eagle reports House Bill No. 2476 would require all state and municipal buildings, public colleges and universities as well as all public school libraries and classrooms to have the motto displayed.

The bill's lead sponsor is state Rep. Michael Capps from Wichita.

President Donald Trump is unveiling new federal guidelines today to protect the constitutional right to pray in public schools.

The president previewed his idea earlier this month at the Evangelicals for Trump rally at the King Jesus International Ministry in Florida, saying he would take action to safeguard students' and teachers' First Amendment rights to pray in school.

"We will not allow faithful Americans to be bullied by the hard Left," Trump said.

Alabama Congressman Bradley Byrne doesn't like bullies – especially out-of-state bullies.

The Republican lawmaker jumped to the defense of a high school football team under fire from a Wisconsin-based gang of atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation accused Tallapoosa County Schools of violating the law by allowing football players to participate in a baptism event at Reeltown High School.

Officials from the Kingsport, Tennessee City Schools are reviewing the charge by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) that their mentoring program in partnership with a local church is "unconstitutional."