[ad_1]
Sign up for the every day Inside Washington e-mail for unique US protection and evaluation despatched to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington e-mail
Get our free Inside Washington e-mail
President Donald Trump on Thursday mentioned he’s ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to kind a “task force” to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” throughout the United States and prosecute situations of “anti-Christian violence and vandalism.”
Speaking at a bipartisan National Prayer Breakfast on the Washington, D.C., Hilton resort, Trump mentioned the duty power will probably be ordered to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government,” together with on the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“In addition, the task force will 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,” mentioned Trump, who highlighted the instance of Paulette Harlow, an anti-abortion activist who was convicted for blocking the doorway of a reproductive well being middle.
open picture in gallery
U.S. President Donald Trump participates in prayer on the National Prayer Breakfast sponsored by the The Fellowship Foundation on the Washington Hilton on February 06, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
Harlow, whom Trump erroneously claimed had been handed a two-year jail sentence for merely praying in entrance of the clinic, was one of many many anti-abortion activists he pardoned upon returning to the presidency final month.
The president justified the pardon by claiming that Harlow and her co-conspirators had seen federal regulation enforcement “selectively weaponized” in opposition to them for his or her Christian religion.
He informed prayer breakfast attendees that his administration would additionally work to “protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares” and “bring our country back together as one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.”
Under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Americans are assured freedom of worship and the federal government is prohibited from creating any method of established faith alongside the traces of the Church of England within the United Kingdom.
But Trump and his supporters have lengthy pushed for Christianity — particularly evangelical and fundamentalist strains of Christianity — to occupy a privileged place in American society.
His administration is anticipated to throw assist behind efforts to allow public funding of non secular faculties and has already given social conservatives a victory by signing an order to ban the authorized recognition of transgender folks by the US authorities.
[ad_2]
