By AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to root out “anti-Christian bias” in the U.S., announcing that he was forming a task force led by Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the “targeting” of Christians.
Speaking at a pair of events in Washington surrounding the the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump said the task force would be directed 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 — terrible — and other agencies.”
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Trump said Bondi would also work to “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.”
The president’s comments came after he joined the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol, a more than 70-year-old Washington tradition that brings together a bipartisan group of lawmakers for fellowship, and told lawmakers there that his relationship with religion had “changed” after a pair of failed assassination attempts last year and urged Americans to “bring God back” into their lives.
An hour after calling for “unity” on Capitol Hill, though, Trump struck a more partisan tone at the second event across town, announcing that, in addition to the task force, he was forming a commission on religious liberty, criticizing the Biden administration for “persecution” of believers for prosecuting anti-abortion advocates.
And Trump took a victory lap over his early administration efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to limit transgender participation in women’s sports.
“I don’t know if you’ve been watching, but we got rid of woke over the last two weeks,” he said. “Woke is gone-zo.”
Trump’s new task force drew criticism from Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The group’s president and CEO, Rachel Laser, said “rather than protecting religious beliefs, this task force will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination, and the subversion of our civil rights laws.”
Trump said at the Capitol that he believes people “can’t be happy without religion, without that belief. Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”
The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and head of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, accused Trump of hypocrisy in claiming to champion religion by creating the task force.
“From allowing immigration raids in churches, to targeting faith-based charities, to suppressing religious diversity, the Trump Administration’s aggressive government overreach is infringing on religious freedom in a way we haven’t seen for generations,” Raushenbush said in a statement.
Kelly Shackelford, head of First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian legal organization, disagreed, praising the creation of the task force and religious liberty commission.
“All Americans should be free to exercise their faith without government intrusion in school, in the military, in the workplace, and in the public square. We are ready to stand with President Trump to ensure that the religious liberty of every American is safe and secure,” Shackelford said in a statement.
Trump also announced the creation of a White House faith office led by Paula White-Cain, a longtime pastor in the independent charismatic world. An early supporter of Trump’s 2016 presidency bid, she led Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative in 2019, advising faith-based organizations on ways to partner with the federal government.
At Thursday’s prayer breakfast, she praised him as “the greatest champion” any president has been “of religion, of faith and of God.”
In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast split into two dueling events, the one on Capitol Hill largely attended by lawmakers and government officials and a larger private event for thousands at a hotel ballroom. The split occurred when lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the private religious group that for decades had overseen the bigger event, due to questions about its organization and how it was funded.
Trump, at both venues, reflected on having a bullet coming within a hair’s breadth of killing him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, telling lawmakers and attendees, “It changed something in me, I feel.”
“I feel even stronger,” he continued. “I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.” Speaking later at the prayer breakfast sponsored by a private group at a hotel, he remarked, “it was God that saved me.’
He drew laughs at the Capitol event when he expressed gratitude that the episode “didn’t affect my hair.”
The Republican president, who’s a nondenominational Christian, called religious liberty “part of the bedrock of American life” and called for protecting it with “absolute devotion.”
Trump and his administration have already clashed with religious leaders, including him disagreeing with the Rev. Mariann Budde’s sermon the day after his inauguration, when she called for mercy for members of the LGBTQ+ community and migrants who are in the country illegally.
Vice President JD Vance, who’s Catholic, has sparred with top U.S. leaders of his own church over immigration issues. And many clergy members across the country are worried about the removal of churches from the sensitive-areas list, allowing federal officials to conduct immigration actions at places of worship.
The president made waves at the final prayer breakfast during his first term. That year the gathering came the day after the Senate acquitted him in his first impeachment trial.
Trump in his remarks then threw not-so-subtle barbs at Democratic then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who publicly said she prayed for Trump, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who had cited his faith in his decision to vote to convict Trump.
“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Trump said then in his winding speech, in which he also held up two newspapers with banner headlines about his acquittal. “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to attend the prayer breakfast, in February 1953, and every president since has spoken at the gathering.
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas are the honorary co-chairs of this year’s prayer breakfast.
In 2023 and 2024, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, spoke at the Capitol Hill event, and his remarks were livestreamed to the other gathering.
AP writers Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tennessee, Peter Smith in Pittsburgh, and Zeke Miller and Tiffany Stanley in Washington contributed to this report.
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