President Donald Trump on Thursday told a prayer breakfast in Washington that he will create a task force to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI and other agencies.”
Trump promised that Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday, would “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.”
Trump went on to sign an executive order creating the Department of Justice (DOJ) Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias on Thursday.
“You’ve never had that before, but this is a very powerful document I’m signing,” he said. “You got it now — first time you’ve had it. If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country. We probably don’t even have a country.”
Chaired by the Attorney General, the new task force has seats for almost the entire Cabinet, plus the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the director of the FBI, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other top officials. The executive order provides for inviting the heads of even more departments and agencies to participate at the Attorney General’s discretion.
Trump’s executive order trenchantly blamed the Biden administration for engaging in “an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.”
“The Biden Department of Justice sought to squelch faith in the public square by bringing Federal criminal charges and obtaining in numerous cases multi-year prison sentences against nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities,” the order noted.
Trump pardoned over 20 pro-life activists in late January to rectify Biden’s “injustice,” but the president said his work was not done. His executive order castigated the Biden DOJ for ignoring “violence, theft, and arson” perpetrated against churches and pro-life centers, the Biden FBI for treating churches like terrorist threats, and the Biden Department of Education for attempting to “repeal religious-liberty protections for faith-based organizations on college campuses.”
Furthermore, President Trump said the Biden Department of Health and Human Services “sought to drive Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the foster-care system,” culminating in the deliberate insult of designating Easter Sunday 2024 as a “Transgender Day of Visibility.”
Trump blamed the climate of loathing and disrespect for Christians fostered by the Biden administration for the surge in vandalism against Christian institutions and places of worship.
“My Administration will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians. The law protects the freedom of Americans and groups of Americans to practice their faith in peace, and my Administration will enforce the law and protect these freedoms,” Trump’s order declared.
The first objective of the new task force is to ensure no Biden-style campaign of systemic discrimination against Christians is waged by the same agencies under President Trump and to clean up any remaining shred of Biden’s policies.
The task force will then “identify deficiencies in existing laws and enforcement and regulatory practices that have contributed to unlawful anti-Christian governmental or private conduct,” and recommend remedial action to the president. The work of the task force is scheduled to conclude in two years, unless President Trump exercises his option to extend it.
Trump also said on Thursday he will create a White House Faith Office to be led by his religious adviser, Rev. Paula White. Trump maintained a similar office during his first presidential term.
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed outrage at revelations that the vast sums of taxpayer money wasted by the U.S. government, including funding to promote atheism in developing nations.
“In recent years, too often has our nation’s international engagement on religious liberty issues been corrupted and distorted to the point of absurdity,” Vance told the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington.
“Think about it: How did America get to a point where we’re sending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars abroad to NGOs that are dedicated to spreading atheism all over the globe?” he asked.
“That is not what leadership on protecting the rights of the faithful looks like,” Vance declared.
The program Vance referred to was a $500,000 grant solicited by the Biden State Department in 2021 to promote atheist beliefs around the world.
The grant became a public scandal in the spring of 2024 after it was exposed by House Republicans, who were angry that the Biden State Department misled Congress to conceal the scope of the program.
“Our administration believes we must stand for religious freedom, not just as a legal principle, as important as that is, but as a lived reality both within our own borders and especially outside,” Vance said.
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