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Reuters

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would create a White House faith office and direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead a task force on eradicating what he called anti-Christian bias within the federal government.
“The mission of this task force will be to immediately hold 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 said in remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.
He said he would sign an executive order later on Thursday appointing Bondi to be “the head of a task force – brand new – to eradicate anti-Christian bias”. He did not give examples of anti-Christian bias.
The actions could pose constitutional questions about the separation of church and state, with the US Constitution’s First Amendment limiting government endorsement of religion.
Trump also said he would create a new commission on religious liberty.
“If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country,” he said.
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, criticising 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 programmes 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”.
In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast split into two duelling 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 took place when lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the private religious group that for decades had overseen the bigger event, over questions about its organisation 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 a separate 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 non-denominational 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 Reverend 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 J.D. Vance, who is Catholic, has sparred with top US 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.
Trump 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 Utah Senator Mitt Romney, 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 Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas are the honorary co-chairs of this year’s prayer breakfast.
In 2023 and 2024, then-president Joe Biden, a Democrat, spoke at the Capitol Hill event, and his remarks were live-streamed to the other gathering.


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Actions could pose constitutional questions about separation of church and state; US Constitution limits government endorsement of religion


Actions could pose constitutional questions about separation of church and state; US Constitution limits government endorsement of religion.
