HUD chief reflects Trump’s dream to end church-state separation

The Trump administration is looking to take a hacksaw to the constitutional separation of church and state, and there’s arguably no greater cheerleader for this illiberal gambit — no greater epitome of its derangement — than Scott Turner, the secretary of housing and urban development.

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Turner made this abundantly clear Friday with a speech at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual summit, which is basically where Christian nationalist zealots gather to bash liberals and tout their Trump-centered religiosity as the true expression of God’s will (despite all evidence to the contrary).

The speech came on the same day that Trump’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission issued a draft report calling for “building bridges” between church and state. And the remarks came from someone, in Turner, who has brazenly used his position to promote Christian nationalism.

At last year’s summit, Turner defended new work requirements for people to receive housing benefits — requirements that experts have said are unnecessarily burdensome, harmful to people in need of assistance and ultimately ineffective in growing the labor force.

So this was the housing secretary returning to familiar territory to rattle off his Christian nationalist schlock.