“Do not commit the sin of empathy.”

I will never forget the horrible pit in my stomach I felt when I read those evil words for the first time, two days after President Trump’s second inauguration. The phrase, part of a longer tweet, was accompanied by a picture of Bishop Mariann Budde, who immediately became a symbol of everything Christian nationalists hate — and make no mistake, hate is the central motivator of their belief system. Her supposed sin? A plea for mercy on behalf of trans children and immigrants in the United States. An assertion of the inherent dignity of every human being.

When I read those words back in January, I didn’t know that this emphasis on “the sin of empathy” was already firmly established in Christian nationalist ideology. While here it holds a twisted theological meaning, it has become a secular guiding belief for the right wing tech billionaires who share their interests. Because I hadn’t read the phrase before, I did not anticipate that it would be quickly and enthusiastically adopted by those destroying our government.

In my desire to understand how this grotesque organizing belief came about, I came to realize that policies laying the groundwork for a base of future citizens who view empathy as weakness had emerged at least as far back as 2019.

Early care and education is currently perceived as a rare apolitical, bipartisan area of policy. Even as this perception is still widely held, I believe it has instead proven to be a canary in the coal mine for the onset of authoritarian success in state governance. The power authoritarians believe they are entitled to wield over our youngest children is incredibly revealing of their core ideology and goals. Desire to control children’s thoughts, development, safety, and education is a point of intersection for distinct but overlapping right wing ideological factions, including Christian nationalists, tech and finance supremacists, and libertarian deregulation true believers.

Two years ago, I wrote On Potato Heads and Power about the conservative strategy of using nostalgia in order to create conditions that allow Republican lawmakers to enact policies that don’t have the support of the majority. In that piece, I highlighted Idaho and Alabama for their cruel targeting of trans children, families, and educators and for the rejection of equity and inclusion as the buzzword dog whistle of the day — “critical race theory.” I hoped to delve more into the malicious act of tying the deliberate misapplication of “critical race theory” to social-emotional learning, but ultimately cut the exploration for length. Unfortunately, it has only become more relevant with time.

This right wing movement sought to tie the accurate teaching of history and the impacts of racism with the concepts of equity, social justice, and social-emotional learning to demonize them. Over the past decade, it succeeded in embedding grievances in just enough of the country’s population to successfully enact its aims in Republican stronghold states, compel just enough voters in swing states, and expand to what we are seeing unfold from the White House every day in 2025.

Do preschoolers really need to know about different occupations?

In 2019, a pro-charter school think tank in Massachusetts, Pioneer Institute, released a white paper entitled “Social-Emotional Learning: K—12 Education as New Age Nanny State.” It dedicates a section to “Head Start Standards and NAEYC Practices” of social-emotional learning (SEL), arguing that these practices mandate “unnecessary” standards for young children:

For example, the Framework suggests that by the age of two or three, children should be evaluated on expressing “empathy” toward other children, on social interactions with adults and with other children, and on awareness of emotions and ability to self-calm when upset. Other examples of controversial, subjective, and perhaps unnecessary social-emotional standards include these from various iterations of the Framework:

• 2003 - “Progresses in understanding similarities and respecting differences among people, such as genders, race, special needs, culture, language, and family structures.”
• 2010 - “Understands that people can take care of the environment through activities, such as recycling.”
• 2010 - “Recognizes a variety of jobs and the work associated with them.”
• 2015 - “Shows ability to shift focus in order to attend to something else, participate in a new activity or try a new approach to solving a problem.”
• 2015 - “Identifies some physical characteristics of self, such as hair color, age, gender, or size.”

Some of these standards are manifestly unnecessary; do young children really need to be taught what hair color they have? Do preschoolers really need to know about different occupations? (pg 12, emphasis mine)

I struggle to imagine how naive one would have to be to think this white paper was published because the authors are adamant that preschoolers don’t need to be taught their hair color. This ridiculous question is posed as a rhetorical cover for blatant discrimination. Mere paragraphs later, the authors’ emphasis on NAEYC diversity standards makes explicit that the core of the rejection of SEL is about preserving the dominance of whiteness by quite literally highlighting definitions of the word “white.” It further outlines how “even” private child care and pre-k programs are not safe from being assessed based on quality rating and improvement systems that hold similar SEL (and therefore diversity) standards.

There is a straight line from this paper to our current moment. Empathy requires awareness of and the ability to work through uncomfortable emotions. Empathy allows us to understand and embrace difference across gender, race, class, religion, language, culture, and disability. White dominance is desired by right wing Christian nationalists. Therefore, empathy becomes a sin, and the teaching of empathy through social-emotional learning becomes synonymous with demonized diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As leaders in Idaho and Alabama, among many other states, rejected federal funding preschool funding (calling it “indoctrination”), fired nationally renowned leadership over concern for NAEYC’s diversity, equity, and inclusion standards, and villainized trans children and educators, they also attacked the teaching of social-emotional learning in schools and early childhood programs. Idaho conservatives cited this very white paper in their arguments against SEL. Conservative lawmakers referred to it as dystopian while educators emphasized that their only goal was to promote better mental and behavioral well-being. In Alabama, it was referred to as “indoctrination” that would “make a bunch of social justice activists out of our children.” In Iowa, an anti-SEL bill’s sponsor said that it “conflicts with many families’ religious and political beliefs.”

It almost reads as satirical that red state legislatures would work so hard to try to stamp empathy out of early learning. The very idea that we should care about others has become antithetical to their political positions and an existential threat to the future of their party. Young children grow up to be voters, and empathetic people do not vote for politicians that seek to immiserate those who are different from them.

Backlash and the embrace of cruelty

“The sin of empathy,” it turns out, makes no attempt to disguise itself: it is a straightforward backlash to the racial justice reckoning of the Black Lives Matter movement and consequences for male violence stemming from the Me Too movement. It is about asserting dominance and control. Those who evangelize it believe they should get to decide who deserves to live freely — free from the violence of rape, the police, mass incarceration, discrimination, or being unhoused.

To my knowledge, the first essay on the subject (entitled “The Enticing Sin of Empathy”) is an off-putting little in-character letter written for a blog by Joe Rigney. It was published in May 2019, two months after Pioneer Institute released its white paper on social-emotional learning that placed heavy emphasis on the connection between empathy and diversity. Rigney is an ideological leader in the notorious Christian nationalist church that is attempting to take over the town of Moscow, Idaho. The timing is not a coincidence. The convergence of these two ideas in Idaho is not a coincidence. The shared language is not a coincidence. Speaking to Sky News on the motivating political force behind Christian nationalist theology, a former minister summed it up succinctly:

"They want to go back to a time when they understand there to be two genders, a clear patriarchal structure to the family, a restricted approach to immigration, black people and other people of colour knowing their place in the country, socially and politically."

Over the past six years, Rigney has continued to expand on his theological assertion that empathy is a sin. In February of this year, he tweeted that he wrote the book The Sin of Empathy because he resented what he views as “manipulative” appeals for Christians to care about the oppression of people of color, immigrants, disabled people, and LGBTQ+ people. He admits he worked backwards from bigoted resentment to develop an entire theological justification for callousness.

Believing empathy is a sin is not limited to Christian nationalists, however. Tech billionaires and investors have embraced it to justify their dangerous actions. Chief among them, Elon Musk stated that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of western civilization” mere days after Grimes begged him to care about their sick child on Twitter as he was about to go on stage with a chainsaw. Vice President JD Vance, a former venture capitalist who rose to prominence with the support of billionaire Peter Thiel, was chastised by Pope Francis for asserting that Catholics have a religious obligation to hold a moral hierarchy for caring about others.

In our hyperconnected era, there is so much to feel empathy for. And that empathy can be a source of deep pain. It can be tremendously difficult to sit in the feeling of helplessness in our own individual inability to lessen the suffering of others, feeling the pain of neighbors as acutely as the pain of people on the other side of the world. Watching genocide and climate disasters on your phone can become a consuming nightmare. For those who feel burnt out by experiencing these feelings without a productive, collective outlet, or frankly, those who are tired of hearing about it from others, cementing empathy as a sin justifies taking the easy way out by hardening hearts. It is not much of a leap from looking away to believing deliberate cruelty is both necessary and desirable. From there, it is easy to see that the Trump voters who held signs that said “Make America Strong Again” and “Mass Deportation Now” were not motivated by cost of living as they may have claimed, but rather by the catharsis of cruelty.

The only way any of the cruelty of this administration can be maintained is by turning enough of our population against the very concept of caring about others. Christian nationalists and tech billionaires demand a populace that lacks empathy. Their political future requires a voting base that demands violence against their perceived enemies. Their needs are toxic and antithetical to human life.

The dismantling of empathetic education

This month, William Wolfe, a Christian nationalist leader and former Trump appointee, tweeted “Toxic empathy will destroy our nation if men don’t stop it” with a picture of the four women Supreme Court Justices. Wolfe, who once worked for current Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, co-edited The Statement on Christian Nationalism & the Gospel. Unsurprisingly, this statement stakes the following position on public education:1

WE DENY that civil authorities are tasked with being the caretakers of citizens or educators of children, as these duties belong primarily to the Church and to families, respectively. We deny that the civil government should endeavor to take on these responsibilities, and we deny that they do so to the benefit of society. Rather, such “charity” displaces families by creating a culture of dependence upon the state whose education often tends to debauch children with godless philosophies and perverse instruction.

Vought’s actions as OMB Director align with someone who shares this position emphatically, and his recent budget documents use the language to prove it. He has largely escaped the spotlight as DOGE takes a chainsaw to the government, allowing him the past three months to quietly craft a Presidential budget that urges Congress to fulfill the Project 2025 blueprint, including the full elimination of Head Start.

Vought and Musk’s work to destroy Head Start began in week one of the administration. First, through broken portals, then the shuttering of five regional offices that oversee operations, payments, and regulatory compliance. Now, Jackie Mader reports, programs are required to submit “justifications” to DOGE in order to receive payment for services already rendered. House Republicans may seek to codify these illegal cuts through rescission. Vought does not control DOGE — what he does control is the President’s budget proposal, which (according to a leaked document) completely zeroes out all Head Start funding using language that parallels both the Pioneer Institute white paper and the Statement on Christian Nationalism. This leaked document reads (emphasis mine):

The Budget does not fund Head Start. HHS/ACF should work with OMB to ensure to the extent allowable FY 2025 funds are made available to close out the program. This elimination is consistent with the Administration's goals of returning education to the States and increasing parental choice. The Federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education.

A further document, reported on by the New York Times, refers to Head Start’s “radical” curriculum, states that it “gives preference to illegal immigrants,” and “criticizes it for diversity, equity and inclusion programming and the use of resources that encourage toddlers to welcome children and families with different sexual orientations.”

This is a targeted attack on low-income children of color, disabled children, and children in immigrant and LGBTQ+ families. Republicans are no longer attempting to obscure it. It is a concentrated effort to ensure white children grow up believing that their lives are made better by hurting people who are different from them. If you believe purely logical, evidence-based arguments in defense of Head Start meet the moment or will change the minds of anyone who matters right now, I invite you to join us in 2025.

Empathy and our future

To save early childhood education and care, there will be pressure to turn on what makes it so important. Much has been written outlining the evidence for social-emotional learning as a good faith attempt to sidestep its connection with diversity, equity, and inclusion — focusing on neuroscience, uplifting its crucial role in addressing trauma, and emphasizing the ways it supports childrens’ mental health and academic success. There are those who think we should change the way we work and talk to downplay diversity, equity, and inclusion and hope these concessions staunch the bleeding. The performance of evidence-based objectivity will never be enough in the face of a fascistic, ideologically-driven movement. While this movement sometimes covers itself in the veneer of evidence, it increasingly views intellectual defense as a waste of time, opting for raw, destructive power instead. We need to be clear-eyed about that. Only strong moral commitment will see us through to the other side, to build the better, more equitable future that children deserve.

To save our democracy, there will be some politicians who pressure us in the same way. They will urge us, in so many words, to accept that some people must have less than others for the greater good, and all we can do is try to save scraps where we can. Accept that we must become inoculated to suffering to preserve what we have left. Change the way we talk, don’t be too mean about private equity, and we’ll squeak out just enough voters to turn this around.

We are in a moment where it is far easier to imagine the worst than imagine a better world, and it often feels like our leaders have given up trying. This failure of imagination and of strong moral conviction created a gap that is filled by the authoritarian message “your life will be better if others suffer.” It is also why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’ fighting oligarchy tour has resonated so profoundly across the country. People are overwhelmed and long to believe in a force for collective good.

Empathy is the enemy of authoritarians. Solidarity and finding strength in difference are needed more than anything to overcome these dangerous ideologies.

Empathy is not a passive, surface level niceness. Empathy is active, participatory, and radicalizing. Empathy is belonging, community, beauty, art, and culture for all of us. Empathy is fighting for policy that recognizes the full humanity of children as their own people who have rights — not extensions of their parents’ beliefs and politics, or deserving of less because of where they were born or what their parents earn. Empathy is the antidote to toxic individualism. We have to hold onto it, nurture it in ourselves and our children, even — especially — when it feels easier to harden our hearts to get through our hardest days.

From climate to housing to immigration to healthcare, the fight for an empathetic future is the key to our collective survival.

1 Wolfe citations are thanks to the outstanding, urgent reporting on Christian nationalism and its ties to tech investors and the Network State by Jenny Cohn.