The Justice Department released a memo Thursday directing all federal agencies to institutionalize the Supreme Court’s precedents and protect all aspects of religious freedom, including parental rights, amid activist efforts to force LGBTQ+ activism in schools. “Religious liberty is not merely a right to personal religious beliefs or even to worship in a particular place,” states the memo, provided early to the Daily Signal. “It also encompasses religious observance and practice as displayed in a person’s daily life. Except in the narrowest circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law.” The memo, which revises and expands upon the Religious Liberty Guidelines published in 2017 under President Donald Trump’s first administration, lays out 21 principles that federal agencies must follow on religious freedom. The principles include preventing government from targeting religious conduct or speech, excluding religious groups from grants or contracts due to their faith, and interfering with the autonomy of religious organizations. They also require government to allow religious employers to hire staff “whose beliefs and conduct are consistent with the employers’ religious precepts.” These principles carry implications for religious schools, foster care agencies, and other charities that seek to participate in American society on a level playing field with secular groups. The Parental Rights Section The memo includes a new section that states, “Government may not interfere with parental rights to direct the religious upbringing of their children.” “Parents have the right to direct the religious upbringing and education of their children,” the memo explains. “This right extends beyond a mere right to teach religion in the confines of one’s home and encompasses the choices parents make for their children outside the home. Government policies that substantially interfere with the religious development of children violate this right.” “Government may not choose to condition the availability of public benefits, such as public schooling, upon parents’ willingness to surrender their religious freedom,” the section concludes. Parental Rights Battles LGBTQ+ activism, particularly in schools, has triggered parental rights legal battles across the country. While activists claim that schools should champion LGBTQ+ issues in order to prevent bullying and discrimination, parents of many faiths and no faith oppose parts of the LGBTQ+ agenda, particularly transgender ideology, and object to schools teaching impressionable young children that they may change their sex to match a different gender identity. A Maryland school district mandated that schools use LGBTQ+ books and declined to allow parents to opt their kids out of the instruction. Parents of various faith backgrounds—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim—sued, seeking a temporary injunction to secure an opt-out. Lower courts refused to grant the injunction, but the Supreme Court reversed. “Today, we hold that the parents have shown that they are entitled to a preliminary injunction,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the 6-3 majority opinion. “A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.” The Justice Department memo cites this opinion, Mahmoud v. Taylor. The new guidelines also state that the government may not deny religious schools the right to participate in a voucher or similar program because of their religious teachings. Other Key Religious Freedom Cases The memo cites Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), in which the Supreme Court ruled that coach Joe Kennedy did not violate the First Amendment’s clause prohibiting the establishment of religion by praying on a public high school football field. This case effectively buried the secularizing test in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). The Justice Department notes that while the establishment clause “forbids the government from coercing religious observance” and discrimination against or between religious groups, it “does not compel the government to purge from public life anything an objective observer may think endorses religion.” The memo notes that America’s Founders often promoted religion in general. The memo also cites Fulton v. Philadelphia (2021), in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Philadelphia had violated the First Amendment by canceling its foster care contract with Catholic Social Services due to the Catholic agency’s refusal to place foster children with same-sex couples. The Justice Department also highlights Groff v. DeJoy (2023), in which the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the rights of a Christian postal worker who sought an exemption from working on Sundays. The court clarified that employers must honor religious-freedom requests unless they pose a “substantial” burden to employers under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Rather than merely responding after a violation occurs, the memo directs agencies to proactively consider religious-liberty impacts when drafting regulations, enforcing federal law, and administering government programs, according to a Justice Department press release.

A young man has been sitting in prison in Nigeria for the past six years with the possibility of a death sentence over his head. His name is Yahaya Sharif-Aminu. He is a Sufi musician. The state of Kano in northern Nigeria wants to execute him for the alleged crime of sharing a handful of song lyrics on social media that the state claims are blasphemous to the Prophet Muhammad. After six long years, Yahaya’s case seemed to be finally making its way through the Supreme Court of Nigeria. On Thursday, June 25, the Supreme Court was supposed to decide the date for his oral argument. Instead, just a few days before the hearing, Yahaya received the news that his hearing was abruptly cancelled. No hearing date was rescheduled. Justice would have to wait indefinitely. The delay in Yahaya’s case is a major red flag for whether Nigeria is truly committed to improving religious freedom or if government officials are simply stringing the international community along. This case should be a huge opportunity for Nigeria to change its international image on religious freedom. Yahaya’s case would allow Nigeria to take the historic step of consigning one of the world’s worst blasphemy laws to the dustbin of history. That officials are delaying Yahaya’s case is deeply troubling. Over the past year, concerns over religious freedom and persecution in Nigeria have risen to major international attention. Last October, President Donald Trump designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. While initially hostile to this intervention, the Nigerian government soon pursued cooperation with the United States, particularly regarding security issues. The international attention is well deserved. For years, more Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria than in all other countries combined, and they are disproportionately likely to be targets in the north, where they are a minority. Moderate Muslims are also particularly targeted, as earlier this year, when dozens were killed in Kwara state by jihadists for refusing to reject the Nigerian Constitution and embrace Sharia law. But northern Nigeria’s death penalty blasphemy law has also been a major focus of international attention. Since 2000, 12 northern Nigerian states have adopted Sharia criminal law, which calls for the death penalty for anyone convicted of insulting the Quran or its prophets. Nigeria is one of only seven countries in the world with a similar law. The law has led to deadly bouts of mob violence against Christians, Muslims, and others. Nigeria is also the only secular country with a death penalty blasphemy law. The Nigerian Constitution protects freedom of expression and religious freedom, and it prevents the establishment of any state religion. In 2025, the West African Treaty Court held that Nigeria’s blasphemy laws were illegal and should be repealed, directly relying on Yahaya’s case. Internationally, the U.N. has determined that the detention of Yahaya is in violation of international law and that the blasphemy law should be repealed. The European Parliament has twice called for Yahaya’s release and the repeal of the blasphemy law. The U.S. House Appropriations and Foreign Affairs Committees highlighted the blasphemy laws in their report on Nigeria to President Trump, and the House is now seeking to condition all assistance to Nigeria on religious freedom improvements. There is simply no way to justify sentencing someone to death over song lyrics, even if others find them offensive, and certainly no justification could be found for a country with a secular constitution modeled off international human rights treaties. This is why Yahaya’s case at the Nigerian Supreme Court should be such an important opportunity for the nation to demonstrate its commitment to upholding fundamental rights. The Nigerian government has been at pains to show good faith cooperation with the U.S. In January, the newly established U.S.-Nigeria Joint Working Group stated that the countries would “take joint active, sustained measures to promote and protect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and freedom of religion or belief for all in line with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” But by delaying justice for Yahaya, Nigerian officials are directly violating this commitment made to the U.S. Failing to stop the death penalty blasphemy law—and leaving Yahaya in prison for who knows how many more years—will be a stain on the nation and bring widespread U.S. and international condemnation. Yahaya Sharif-Aminu’s case is about more than one young man’s life. It is one of the clearest opportunities Nigeria has ever had to prove its capacity for protecting the most fundamental of human rights. Instead of delaying and shirking from its obligations, Nigeria should take this opportunity, uphold the rule of law and fundamental rights, and strike down this draconian blasphemy law. Otherwise, talk of Nigeria’s commitments to religious freedom is just that: talk, and no more. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Apple shareholders sent a letter to CEO Tim Cook, raising concerns about the tech company’s commitments to transgender ideology and the potential market downsides of such a stance. “Gender ideology has become an incredibly divisive issue in the United States and around the world, and companies put billions of dollars of shareholder value at risk when they align themselves with that ideology,” representatives of the Heritage Foundation, which owns Apple stock, wrote in the letter. The letter cited a 2023 article noting that investors in Target and Anheuser-Busch lost billions after those companies faced backlash for transgender stances. The letter, sent July 8, asked Apple a series of questions about transgender ideology and requested answers within 14 days of the letter, a time period that ended Wednesday. Apple, the second largest company in the world by market capitalization, has yet to respond, and the company did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment about the letter. “Because of how controversial gender ideology and transgenderism are, the risks of alienating consumers and potential partners are great, and related decisions must be fully informed to protect shareholder value,” Stefan Padfield, a principal at Heritage’s Free Enterprise Initiative and one of the letter’s nine signatories, told the Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. He called on corporations to be “more transparent in this space,” given “the associated risk that these decisions are driven by ideological bias within echo chambers.” “Corporate decisionmakers should not be able to hide their heads in the sand when it comes to all the potential harms associated with promoting this ideology,” Padfield argued. Apple Supporting Pride While many companies dialed back their LGBTQ messaging following pressure campaigns from shareholder activist Robby Starbuck and after President Donald Trump’s executive orders paring back “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Apple launched a Pride collection in May. The letter noted Apple’s standing in three corporate rating systems. The 1792 Exchange Corporate Bias Ratings classify the company as “high risk,” in part due to its support for “transgender issues.” The Human Rights Campaign, a pro-transgender group, gives Apple a 100% score on its Corporate Equality Index. The Corporate Equality Index imposes a stringent list of requirements for companies to score a 100% rating. Companies like Apple must provide “baseline coverage” for “gender-affirming care” including “puberty blockers for youth,” surgical procedures, paid short-term leave, and mental health counseling. In addition to these requirements, companies must offer at least five of 10 other treatments and services, such as voice modification surgery, voice modification therapy, or facial surgeries. Companies can also lose points for “major offenses against the LGBTQ+.” You cannot score 100 unless you provide "baseline coverage" for "gender diverse employees," including:Hormone "treatments"So-called puberty blockersReconstructive surgery related to transgender surgery6/15 pic.twitter.com/DJz2mghrAQ— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 8, 2026 While Apple voluntarily works with HRC, it has reportedly refused to respond to Alliance Defending Freedom’s Viewpoint Diversity Survey, on which it scored a meager 3%. Apple’s leadership has contributed $1.95 million to Democrats and only $55,650 to Republicans, signaling a 35-to-1 bias, according to 1792 Exchange. Polls suggest Americans are souring on transgender ideology. An Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center poll from May 2025 found that 68% of respondents said “whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by their biological characteristics at birth” rather than gender identity. A Gallup poll from June 2025 found that 65% of Americans want athletes who claim a transgender identity to play on teams matching their birth sex, and that support for sorting teams by transgender identity had fallen 10 percentage points in four years (from 34% in 2021 to 24% in 2025). A 2023 Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 68% of adults opposed “puberty blockers” for minors aged 10-14, while 58% opposed access to cross-sex hormones for minors ages 15 to 17. The Department of Health and Human Services conducted a peer-reviewed study last year finding little evidence for positive impacts from sex-rejecting procedures for minors. Studies have suggested these interventions cause harm, from increased cancer risks to a higher risk of suicidal thoughts. A jury awarded a detransitioner $2 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit in February, and psychiatrists reportedly agreed to settle another detransitioner’s medical malpractice claim in January. Hospitals have distanced themselves from the Human Rights Campaign. Transgender Questions The Heritage Foundation letter posed four questions to Apple CEO Tim Cook: 1. Is it Apple’s official position that a child can be born in the wrong body? 2. Is it Apple’s official position that a male can be a woman and, if so, how does Apple define “woman”? 3. Is it Apple’s official position that males should be permitted to invade females’ spaces and sports simply by identifying as a woman or girl? 4. Is it Apple’s official position that minors should be chemically and/or surgically transitioned?

The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—a boom in their boom-and-bust cycle, as my colleague Robert Stilson calls it—has many political observers on the Right and Left analyzing the conditions that led to an embrace of that group’s radicalism. And they are radical. As Stilson points out, “[i]n its newly updated platform, the DSA calls for (among many other things) the wholesale abolition of capitalism — to be replaced by a centrally planned ‘classless society’ wherein government monopolizes socioeconomic life. It seeks to abolish police, prisons, and immigration enforcement, defund the U.S. military, eliminate the Senate, and remove federal checks-and-balances by making the executive and judicial branches explicitly subordinate to the legislative.” As for how a constitutional republic like the United States got here, there’s evidence that training in radicalism begins in earnest with a captured system of education, specifically higher education. As the NY Post reports, “More than 80% [of DSA members] are college educated, with 35% holding at least a master’s or professional degree — which is more than twice the national average.” Which makes the recent publication of a book entitled “Higher Education in America: It’s Worse Than You Think,” edited by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, with a forward and conclusion penned by Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo, a timely and crucial effort. It serves as something of a guidebook on where things stand, where they might be headed, and how to reverse the trend before the desire to tear down the American experiment becomes endemic. It might be tempting to expect a book with that title to wallow in defeatism, and it’s true that Rufo’s introduction wastes no time laying out the seriousness of the problem. “Beneath the façade of storied institutions—with the same Latin mottos, caps and gowns, and legions of experts at the helm—was a profound rot. It’s no longer just conservatives who can see that America’s universities are actively engaged in a massive racket, at best, and an attempt to subvert the working order of the United States, at worst,” he writes. Whoa. However, while the essays—penned by prominent and thoughtful conservative scholars on education such as Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, political scientist and legal scholar Carol Swain, and University of Notre Dame political science professor Patrick Deneen, among many others—are no less than dire warnings, the book still is, at its core, a practical and useful handbook rather than merely an academic work. The final third provides the proof. Featuring sections on the economics, bureaucracy, and dominance of leftism in higher education over the last 40-plus years, the final section serves as a beacon after a very dark night of the soul as it nearly shouts into the wilderness, “Where do we go from here?” And after learning by reading the previous sections just how much universities have embraced antisemitism, activism, economic malfeasance, violence, outrage, indifference to student achievement, wokeism, misandry, and general decline, that final part is a welcome reminder that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Fixing the problems in higher education, however, will not be an easy path. Roberts notes in the final essay that nothing short of a cultural correction will do. And that correction will almost certainly hit universities where they live: in their funding streams. But it will also require a re-embrace of the curricula and values that made higher education in America a force behind her unparalleled growth since her founding. In short, this book is a call to arms for all stakeholders who desire a brighter future for America. “This responsibility falls on university leadership—trustees, presidents, and administrators—who must use every tool available to cultivate the conditions in which students can learn, debate, and grow in virtue. When they fail, policymakers have the rightful authority, and an obligation, to step in. The next generation deserves institutions that work; rebuilding them starts now,” Roberts writes. Perhaps there will again come a day when university students will ponder the work of the great philosopher Edmund Burke and give brain space to the idea that the true statesman seeking change for the betterment of society will find it necessary to strike a balance between preserving the values worth saving and reforming the ones that fall short. “The superior statesman is one who combines with a disposition to preserve an ability to reform,” as social critic and moralist Russell Kirk, summarizing Burke, wrote in 1982. But before that can happen, universities must clear away the dross and noise of activism, critical theory, victimhood, and financial mismanagement long enough for students to quietly encounter these profound ideas and allow themselves to be inspired. This book gives them the allowance—and indeed the justification—to begin. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

As American support for Marxism rises across the country, House Republican leadership held a roundtable with survivors of communism to warn the American public of the true horrors of the communist and socialist ideologies. Chair of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., questioned the new Democratic Socialists of America agenda while emphasizing that American voters should listen to the testimonies of those displaced because of Marxism before deciding to support the ideology. “Look at what the Democrats are doing, they are electing democratic socialism,” she said.
”I don’t know what they call them, they put a pretty little name on it, but they’re electing communism.”  “Sadly, too many people born here in the United States don’t know what it’s like in other countries,” she continued. “They don’t know what it’s like. They don’t appreciate, that we’re here in the United States, with the freedoms it delivers, with the opportunities that they have.” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis added that “nobody can deny that this guy’s [New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani] a communist. I mean, literally, this campaign platform is right out of Karl Marx’s communist playbook.” During the roundtable, Mike Gonzalez, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who fled the Cuban communist regime as a child, opened his remarks by questioning why Marxists aim to seize one’s property. “Because one of the first things the communists did was ask you to hand over your guns,” he said. “Why did communists try to control the schools, and then, like, church? Because they tried to control the message.” 
 Daniel DiMartino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who escaped communist Venezuela at a young age, echoed Gonzalez’s remarks, adding that American voters who trust the DSA think they’re voting for socialist systems like that of Norway, but in reality are voting for the communist disaster that is Venezuela. “What concerns me is that because people buy this lie, think they’re voting for what Norway, Sweden, or Denmark does, when they’re actually voting for Venezuela,” DiMartino said. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., who also escaped communist Cuba during his childhood, went on to add that those who describe themselves as “democratic socialist” instead of communist are only pretending to be anything but a communist. “Democratic socialism is a buzzword for communist,” he said. “I’ve heard this before. If you fall for it, in the end, you will pay for it with one thing. Your freedom.” “Saying democratic socialism is about guaranteeing, guaranteeing housing, healthcare, and transit,” Gimenez added, is wrong. Using his experience watching sympathetic communist rulers, Gimenez then compared modern-day Marxist leaders in the United States to those he witnessed, such as Cuba’s revolutionary communist dictator Fidel Castro. “Listen to the language you use when the national media isn’t pressing in for a modern answer,” he said. “I’ve heard the leaders reject the communist label before. I have heard leaders promise that the government only wants to help working people before. I’ve heard promises of greater equality, more benefits, better future. “ “These promises sound very familiar, especially to me, okay? Castro’s revolution was actually supported by the human people, not because he was a communist, but because he was there to free the people from a dictatorship. And he made a lot of promises,” Gimenez continued. “In the early days of the revolution, Castro framed his movement, not as a radical conscious takeover, but as a uniquely Cuban, populous effort, he famously declared,” the congressman continued. Gimenez then said that communist like Zohran Mamdani love to pretend like they’re not communist. Again, something he’s heard before. “In 1959, just months after taking control over the country, Castro went on ‘Meet the Press’ and told Americans and the world that he was not a communist.”