Earlier this month, Oklahoma created America’s first religious charter school. Two days later, the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sued the charter-school board for violating Oklahoma’s ban on such institutions, which the board—drawing on recent Supreme Court rulings—deems unconstitutional. Nicole Stelle Garnett dissects the attorney general’s logic:

In both the press release announcing his lawsuit and the brief itself, Drummond suggested that his suit would protect the religious liberty of Oklahomans by guaranteeing that taxpayer dollars would not fund religious schools—especially Islamic schools. In a press release, Drummond opined: “Today, Oklahomans are being compelled to fund Catholicism. . . . [T]omorrow we may be forced to fund radical Muslim teachings like sharia law. In fact, Governor Kevin Stitt has already indicated that he would welcome a Muslim charter school funded by our tax dollars.”

[Recent Supreme] Court decisions make two things clear. First, the Establishment Clause does not prevent the government from permitting religious institutions to participate in public programs that extend benefits to private organizations on a religion-neutral basis. Second, when the government extends public benefits to private secular organizations, the Free Exercise Clause requires it to extend these benefits to private religious organizations, too.

[T]he suppression of religious pluralism, . . . as Drummond’s comments lay bare, too often targets religious minorities. That suppression is not only unnecessary but also unconstitutional. The best, and constitutionally required, way to ensure religious pluralism is to embrace it, not to stifle it.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.