Inside One Governor’s Crusade to Tear Down the Wall Between Church and State
JEFF LANDRY AND DONALD TRUMP JR. kept their eyes peeled for a bumpy, thin snout as their guide navigated a silver mudboat. It was a September morning in 2018, and Trump Jr. had brought his new girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, to the Louisiana attorney general’s annual alligator-hunt fundraiser. Trump met Landry back in 2016, when his father was running for president; Landry had been an early supporter of Donald Trump. Days before the hunt, locals had hung rotten raw chicken — the stinkier the better — on fishing line to tempt gators. But so far, no movement. Then someone on the boat joked to the president’s son they’d give him $100 if he jumped into the water. “Not for $100,” responded Trump Jr., “but if you make it $500, I’m in.”
The bet confirmed, Trump Jr. took off his camo Trump hat, stripped off his clothes, and dove straight in. His Secret Service agent looked on nervously as he backstroked around the boat — he’d been trained to take a bullet for the man, but nobody had said anything about alligators.
“Am I going to have to go in and get him?” the agent asked Landry. Landry laughed and said, “Don’t worry, he’s gonna be fine. If I have to, I’ll go in.”
Later that day, Trump Jr.’s swim became the talk of the hunt, joining the event’s lore. Like when Landry’s teenage son, J.T., set the record for biggest alligator, or the one about the Democrat who felt guilty shooting one of the animals in the head until someone told her it was a wildlife serial killer. Satisfied, she pulled the trigger on the .22-caliber rifle.
“It’s one of the rare political events that would be fun to attend even if it weren’t for politics,” Trump Jr. tells me. “It is the most-fun political event I am aware of or have had the privilege to attend. It’s like a great party with a rock concert and incredible people combined into one awesome weekend.”
The fundraiser started out small, with only a dozen people when it began in 2010, the year Landry was elected to Congress. Now, politicians like Gov. Kristi Noem, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy fly in from all over the country to eat Cajun food and dance. The event raises more than $1 million annually for Landry’s campaign and PAC. Tickets range from $10,000 a person to $100,000 for a VIP group package, and there’s liquor, jambalaya, and cigars, along with a helicopter pad available for guests.
In 2021, Landry was criticized for hosting the fundraiser, using desperately in-demand generators days after Hurricane Ida ravaged the state, and left thousands without electricity for weeks. (Landry’s team responded to critics at the time by saying they raised more than $100,000 for Ida victims during the event.) The next year, Landry used the event as a way to unofficially declare he was running for governor. The controversy swirling around that was nothing compared to what Landry has stirred up in less than a year in office.
ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON in July, I sit across from Landry. We’re in his office at the Louisiana Capitol in Baton Rouge, an alligator statue perched nearby on his desk. We’re talking about the role religion should play in government — the topic that’s catapulted him into newspapers across the country this summer.
“The Supreme Court got it wrong about the separation of church and state,” the 53-year-old Landry says in his distinctly Cajun accent. He leans forward and talks quickly, eager to make his point.
According to his interpretation of the First Amendment, the government can’t persecute citizens for failing to worship a specific religion. But that, in his opinion, doesn’t mean the majority is barred from governing as they see fit, including incorporating religion into government. “Democracy doesn’t say the majority has to sit in the back and listen to what the minority says, because the minority have some feelings that have been hurt,” he says.
Landry has been steadily pushing Louisiana to the far right, remaking law for eight years as attorney general. Now as governor, he’s taken it further. In his first seven months in office, he’s signed incredibly controversial and unprecedented legislation like requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every public-school classroom, criminalizing medication used in abortion and pregnancy care, and allowing surgical castration as punishment for certain sex crimes against minors. The state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is more extreme than Florida’s.
As Landry’s star has risen, he’s gotten closer to the Trumps, and nine people in local politics tell me they think he’s a contender for AG if Trump wins a second term. With both House Speaker Mike Johnson and a Project 2025 leader being from Louisiana, the state’s religious right is gaining ground in national politics. No matter what happens in November, Landry is creating a blueprint for bringing religion into government — one that could be replicated across the country, or, one day, in Washington, D.C. And with Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Sen. J.D. Vance stumbling, Landry seems poised to pick up the MAGA flag.
“Jeff has great talent and is a courageous fighter for the America-first movement,” Trump Jr. says in an email. “Jeff has also always turned up when Team Trump needed him.… He did that even when it wasn’t politically expedient for him to do, which I always personally appreciated. That level of loyalty and commitment is rare in politics and was noticed and appreciated very early on by me and others on my father’s team.”
Landry is in the category of “people who in previous times would have been seen as way out there in right field, but now are in the mainstream of what passes for the Republican Party,” says Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and American Enterprise Institute emeritus scholar. “The other damage he could do is simply by example. If Landry gets away with the Ten Commandments, others are going to do it. It’s setting examples as much as anything. [The damage] cascades.”
As our conversation turns to religion, Landry pushes his chair away from the table and leans back, crossing an alligator-leather boot over his knee and lifting his hands emphatically.
“Let’s look at the country that everybody says is the greatest — that’s undisputed — what got us to that point?” he says, then asks me the common theme of America’s foundational documents. He immediately answers his own question. “It was not government, it was God.”
The Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution all mention God, he insists. (The U.S. Constitution does not, in fact, mention a deity.) The first thing George Washington did after being sworn in was take the Congress to Mass, Landry says, and the Ten Commandments are on the doors of the Supreme Court.
The foundations of our government were laid, he tells me, “when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.” They’re universal guidelines for a peaceful community, he says, no matter your religion. “The Ten Commandments are the fabric of civilization, and you’re telling me we can’t hang them in school?” he asks.
As for atheists? “They don’t have to look at the poster,” Landry says, adding he doesn’t understand why people are so offended. If you don’t like the rules majority-elected officials put into place, you can simply leave, Landry tells me: “The government doesn’t keep them from going somewhere else.
“Everybody gets their feelings hurt so much. Back when we grew up, it was like, ‘Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.’”
A FEW WEEKS BEFORE OUR INTERVIEW, I’d spent a few days where Landry grew up. St. Martinville is in rural south Louisiana alongside sugarcane fields and the bayou. It’s a place where Catholicism looms large: The town’s oldest historical documents aren’t stored at City Hall, they’re found in the church.
Landry’s mother taught religion, swimming, and basketball while also managing the community pool. She and her husband, an architect, were devout Catholics. They’d wake up at 4:30 in the morning to pray together by candlelight, often attending Mass before the children woke up.
Landry was the eldest of four biological siblings, though his parents raised several more children, many of whom were cousins whose parents struggled with substance abuse. Neighbors called their modest home Grand Central Station.
In July, Landry’s childhood friend and St. Martinville former mayor Eric Martin gives me a tour of the town’s historical sites. He says as a kid Landry was known for being chatty and full of energy. We run into the current mayor, a Democrat named Jason Willis, who went to school with Landry. “He played football and he was one of the smallest ones, but he would battle the hardest, or the biggest guys,” recounts Willis. He says Landry was known around town for taking bruises, then getting up and still running his mouth. “He knew he was going to lose and he’d still do it because he wanted to prove a point — never quit.”
People either love Landry or hate him, Willis tells me. “He’s going to be one of the strongest governors in the United States because he’s not afraid to take a stand for what he believes in, even if all the odds will be against him. He knows he’s going to be the most popular or the worst — because he’s not afraid to fail.”
Landry took a circuitous route to the governor’s office. He enrolled in the Louisiana National Guard his senior year of high school, and got a job in a local sugarcane field after graduation. Soon after, he worked as a police officer and as a sheriff’s deputy. In 1990, he enrolled part time at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, so he could still work with the sheriff’s department.
In 1992, Landry helped the sheriff’s friend Craig Romero campaign for a state senate seat. Once he won, Romero hired Landry to be his legislative aide, unknowingly launching Landry’s career in politics. “I didn’t have to teach Jeff anything, it’s like buying a duck [hunting] dog,” says Romero, remembering how Landry would “wear out” legislative employees with his persistence. “He had the instinct.”
LANDRY HIT THE NATIONAL STAGE when he won a congressional seat in 2010. As a member of the then-considered-extreme Tea Party, he made headlines for holding up a “drilling = jobs” sign at President Barack Obama’s State of the Union in 2011. He also refused to accept Obama’s invitation to the White House to discuss the debt ceiling. Three years after that, in 2015, he was voted in as state attorney general.
Sheriff Becket Breaux, a childhood friend of Landry’s, says sheriffs and police officers were thrilled when one of their own became attorney general — and to see Landry fly thin-blue-line flags at his inauguration. In the AG role, Landry made national headlines as he pulled the state further to the right. He was close to the Trump family, backed Trump’s controversial travel ban, and fought against Obamacare. He sued the Biden administration, the Department of Justice, and the Envi-ronmental Protection Agency for investigating whether toxic air pollution from industrial manufacturing had disproportionately harmed the predominantly Black communities along the state’s Cancer Alley. Landry wrote in the lawsuit, “EPA officials have lost sight of the agency’s actual environmental mission, and instead decided to moonlight as social justice warriors fixated on race.” In August, after Landry’s lawsuit, a Louisiana federal court permanently blocked the EPA from taking race into account when regulating pollution for the state, devastating civil rights activists.
During the Covid pandemic, Landry sent a form letter to his staff telling them they could use it to fight mask mandates. “I do not consent to forcing a face covering on my child, who is created in the image of God,” read the letter. As book bans swept the nation, and conservative groups requested the removal of public-school and library books that focused on race, sexual orientation, or gender identity, Landry opened up the country’s first book-ban tip line so people could report librarians who stocked books ultraconservatives accused of being inappropriate for children. Four years earlier, when advocates asked Landry to set up a hotline for clergy sexual allegations, Landry refused, saying he didn’t have the authority or resources to do so.
An outspoken abortion opponent, Landry tried to close abortion clinics during Covid, saying they were not an essential medical service. After the Dobbs decision, which ended the federal right to an abortion, he moved quickly to enact Louisiana’s trigger law banning the procedure and sent letters to doctors threatening their medical licenses if they performed abortions. During hurricane season, he urged the state to withhold flood-response funds for the city of New Orleans until officials agreed to enforce the state’s abortion ban. (After two months, he was overruled when other Republicans deemed it too extreme.)
Michelle Erenberg, co-founder of abortion-rights group Lift Louisiana, says his threats created fear, confusion, and uncertainty among the medical community. She says Landry has “this bombastic approach, like ‘I am the law and what I say goes.’ ”
“I get a lot of criticism — governors get criticized for being dictators, for being kings” says Landry when we speak about abortion. “I’ve tried to allow these issues to percolate through the Legislature. I will tell you Louisiana’s laws are pretty solid in respecting women and the decision between their doctor and themselves.” Landry claims the “kerfuffle” that pregnant women aren’t able to get proper medical care because of the state’s strict abortion ban is “absolutely not true.”
Meanwhile, multiple women in Louisiana have voiced issues with obtaining reproductive health care, including Kaitlyn Joshua, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention about being denied emergency care at two Louisiana hospitals during her miscarriage.
Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, tells me: “Gov. Landry is leading a race to the bottom. The results have been catastrophic for women in Louisiana, and there is no doubt in my mind that everything he’s doing in this state will ultimately serve as a model for anti-abortion politicians across the country.”
IN SEPTEMBER 2022, Landry’s annual alligator hunt was in full swing, with Trump Jr. in attendance once again. It had been an open secret in the state that the attorney general would run for governor, but he hadn’t yet announced. Orange “Team Landry Governor” hats and Army-green fishing shirts circulated at the event — Landry had launched his gubernatorial bid.
Word on the street was that establishment Repub-licans didn’t like Landry; he was too extreme, too far-right, too MAGA. But, to the shock of many in the party, the state GOP endorsed Landry as their candidate early. And Trump Sr. threw his weight behind Landry in a short video. (Trump hasn’t attended the alligator hunt, Landry says, because “the president is not a big hunter.”)
“Gov. Landry is leading a race to the bottom. The results have been catastrophic for women in Louisiana.”
Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood
Landry ran on the issue of crime, which had spiked in Louisiana during the pandemic, as it had in many states. He spoke about safety, protecting children, parents’ rights in education.
“He sees almost everything through the lens of preventing and responding to crime,” says Louisiana political consultant Mary Patricia Wray, a Democrat on Landry’s transition team. “That’s why he thinks his position on education is important — he genuinely believes that giving parents more choice will lead [kids to make] better choices. He believes that even though the data shows it’s wrong.”
Then came another surprise — Landry won outright. It was one of Louisiana’s lowest turnouts in years, with only 36 percent of the state voting. Landry locked in more than 52 percent of the vote.
Under Landry’s watch, Louisiana effectively eliminated parole, lowered the age to be tried as an adult to 17, expanded death-penalty methods, and established a law that makes it a crime to stand within 25 feet of a police officer if he asks you to retreat.
“It was not at all based in evidence; it was a move to show he could simply undo [reforms that] took maybe 50 years to do, in two weeks,” says Alanah Odoms, executive director of Louisiana’s ACLU, pointing out that the state already has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
State legislators who’d whispered to local reporters that they didn’t support Landry suddenly fell in line when sessions began. Many sources I reached out to declined to comment on the record, fearing retribution from Landry, who has a reputation for holding a grudge. (Landry once sued a reporter over a public-records request about sexual harassment allegations against his staff member.)
“He’s extremely vindictive, that’s part of his brand,” says a former senior government official who worked with Landry for years. He says GOP legislators are nervous about standing up to him. “It’s similar to how GOP congressmen and women feel about Donald Trump versus [how they] act toward Donald Trump. Fealty is the only power that matters. [The anti-Landry Republicans] do not appreciate his scorched-earth plans; that the state is getting behind these lost-cause fights — like the Ten Commandments — designed to raise his personal national profile at the financial expense of Louisiana.”
Other politicians who are less critical say Landry is transactional, but that they can work with that, making backroom deals and alliances. They point to the win liberals got when Landry signed a new state Supreme Court map, giving Louisiana two majority-Black districts.
But still, efforts to pull Louisiana to the middle often prove futile. Democratic state Rep. Delisha Boyd tried to get rape and incest exceptions for minors added to the state’s strict abortion ban. The committee hearing was grueling; one OB-GYN testified about a child giving birth while clutching a teddy bear, and survivors begged legislators to allow these exceptions for those younger than 17.
In our interview, I asked Landry about the lack of rape and incest exceptions for children in the state’s ban. “We talk about rape and incest — well, we’re going to castrate those folks in Louisiana,” he says.
He’s referring to the surgical-castration bill he signed in June 2024 which went into effect Aug. 1. Louisiana is the first state to give judges the option of sentencing people found guilty of certain sex crimes against minors to undergo surgical castration. In contrast to chemical castration, which is a punishment in other states and involves medication that blocks testosterone production, surgical castration removes testicles or ovaries. It’s extremely rare, and human-rights organizations have called similar laws in the Czech Republic and Madagascar draconian and cruel and unusual punishment.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since I was attorney general,” he tells me proudly. “How about we work to make sure that the punishment for those crimes is such that those crimes are diminished rather than increased. Then when we clean that up, then we can have that discussion.”
LANDRY’S FAR-RIGHT POLICIES kept him in the news during his whirlwind first few months in office. In May, he made national headlines for an entirely different reason. He was eating dinner at the Kentucky Derby when his phone buzzed. Back in New Orleans, Mick Jagger had just called him out onstage at Jazz Fest.
“We’re a very welcoming crowd, aren’t we?” Jagger said. “We’re all very inclusive. I hope Gov. Landry is enjoying the show with us tonight. He’s really inclusive, too. We’d like to include him — even if he wants to take us back to the Stone Age.”
Jagger’s jab was met with claps, cheers, and boos at the festival grounds. Landry responded immediately with a post on X: “You can’t always get what you want. The only person who might remember the Stone Age is Mick Jagger. Love you buddy, you’re always welcome in Louisiana! #LoveMyCountryMusic”
I ask Landry about Jagger’s remarks. “It’s all fun,” he says, shrugging. “If you’re in politics long enough … you just kind of take it in stride.”
A month after Jazz Fest, Landry was back in the news. In June, he signed a bill mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in Louisiana’s classrooms, including K-12 public schools, and any college or university that accepts state dollars. It’s part of a larger overhaul of the state’s education system, which includes public funding for private-school vouchers and a law allowing public schools to employ chaplains (who aren’t required to undergo certification) to counsel students.
The Ten Commandments bill dominated the news cycle. The View co-hosts talked about how concerning it was, with Whoopi Goldberg saying, “If you want your child to have a religious education, send them to a religious school. Get out of my pocket, get out of my body, and get out of my school.”
“They want to post this in schools. I say post it at Mar-a-Lago and put a picture of Stormy Daniels next to it,” Joy Behar said.
The Daily Show mocked the argument that the Ten Commandments are just universal moral principles, saying Louisiana Republicans shouldn’t have a hard time following them. “Pretty cut and dry, don’t kill anybody,” said correspondent Michael Kosta. “Unless you’re standing your ground, you gotta protect yourself, or if a protester is blocking traffic, I got places I got to be.”
The religious right, however, was thrilled, and Trump agreed. “THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Landry insists he was shocked at the national outcry. He’d gone to Nashville to headline the Tennessee Republican Party’s annual fundraiser on June 15, but first he stopped by Mike Huckabee’s live-streaming show. Landry mentioned the Ten Commandments legislation and says the audience went wild.
Then he brought it up again that night at the gala. “I’m going home to sign a bill that places the Ten Commandments in public classrooms,” said Landry. “And I can’t wait to be sued!” A lawsuit did follow. A coalition of civil-liberties groups and parents filed the suit, citing it was unconstitutional and violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits state-sponsored religion.
“This is a flagrant attempt to flout all of what we know are the basic democratic principles of this country, and to essentially establish this ultraconservative, right-wing, evangelical police state,” says Odoms, who leads the ACLU of Louisiana, which is involved in the lawsuit.
Odoms adds that as a person of faith, she also disagrees with the premise of this “very co-opted version of Christianity.” She says Jesus was about openness and inclusivity, not about following a list of rules. “I think it’s crap from a legal perspective, it’s crap from a religious perspective. It’s just crap.”
In August, Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill unveiled samples of classroom Ten Commandment posters, including one with a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg praising the Ten Commandments. Ginsburg’s granddaughter, Clara Spera, tells me using that quote is misleading because Ginsberg wrote it when she was a child. Spera, who is a reproductive-rights attorney, says, “To me, and to others familiar with Justice Ginsburg’s legal writings and philosophy, there is no doubt that my grandmother would find that Louisiana’s effort to require public schools to display the Ten Commandments is a violation of the Constitution.”
THIS FALL, THE NATION will make a decision about the future of the country. No matter what happens with 78-year-old Trump, Landry has shown what a second generation of MAGA could look like.
“The country is in need of a reformation,” he tells me. “You can’t come out of chaos without having some sort of reformation or awakening. And maybe that’s why everybody’s mad, why the country is torn apart, because we have built up all these different minority interests and they believe they get to govern; they don’t get to govern. You don’t get to govern until you reach a majority.”
“The country is in need of a reformation. You can’t come out of chaos without having some sort of reformation or awakening.”
Gov. Jeff Landry
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz brought up the differences between himself and Landry during an appearance on Morning Joe. “You’re seeing the contrast in this when you get a Democratic governor versus a Republican governor,” Walz said. “We don’t have the Ten Commandments posted in our classrooms, but we have free breakfast and lunch.”
The week after the Republican National Convention, where Landry says he was widely praised for signing the Ten Commandments law, I ask him about how he views Trumpism and the direction of the Republican Party.
“I think Americans want a return of the American Dream that inspired J.D. Vance but that only Donald Trump can deliver,” Landry tells me. He praises Vance as an “unbelievable pick.”
“I think for Donald Trump, it just eats at him that, somewhere down the line, America fell from its greatness. And he’s like, ‘I’m not leaving this planet’ – as you can tell — ‘and the Good Lord ain’t ready for me to, until I do the best I can to return to that.’”
I ask if he means Trump was saved from the assassination attempt by divine intervention.
“One hundred percent,” Landry says. “Him and Steve Scalise got the most overworked guardian angels of all time.”
As far as his own future, Landry is keeping it close to the vest. In spite of the local buzz he might be considered as Trump’s AG, Landry tells me he’s committed to serving his full four years in office.
“I would say, ‘Mr. President, I’d be more than happy to find you one of the greatest attorney generals that the country could ever have,’” Landry says. “But I got a lot of work here in Louisiana.”
Several of Landry’s friends tell me they see him becoming president one day. Mayor Willis says when he told Landry that, Landry smirked and said he was just focused on doing his job. But that was the same response Landry had given when Willis had said he’d one day be governor. “And then look, he’s governor.”
When I ask Landry, he shakes his head, “No, no, no, I’ve watched the president of the United States — that’s like going to jail! If you just do your job, if you represent the people, if you hold your word … you go where the good Lord sent you.”
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