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.”
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.
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
72 Comments
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TaiwanIsNotChina
That's great but any introduction of Christian anything into a government program needs to be accompanied by something from the Church of Satan.
Tokyo Guy
I wonder how you can have a bias against a religion which is professed by some 70 per cent of the population. Does that mean most Christians hate themselves? (I mean, I can see the logic in that...)
The fact that he is a living breathing example of broken commandments seems to be lost on most people...
Jay
Finally, a leader who's willing to stand up against the BLATANT, systemic attack on Christianity that the Uber "Liberal"/"Progressive" mob and their globalist overlords have been pushing for decades. You just have to look at Hollywood today - Christianity is mocked, smeared, and erased, while every OTHER belief system, no matter how fringe or degenerate, is celebrated.
And isn't it telling that the same people who scream about "tolerance" are the first to cheer when Christian business owners are sued into oblivion, when churches are vandalized, or when Hollywood churns out YET ANOTHER anti-Christian propaganda piece.
The WOKE government has bent over backward for the last 4 years to protect every group except the people who built the US, and it's ABOUT TIME someone did something about it.
This is an awesome first step in calling out the hypocrisy, rooting out anti-Christian bias, and putting an end to the relentless assault on GOD, tradition, and the very foundation of Western values.
The future is indeed bright! PTL
Jay
Hardly surprising TINC that you would demanding equal government recognition for a group that exists purely to promote evil.
If the best argument you have is “Well, if Christianity gets a seat at the table, then my edgy, goat-sacrificing Devil-worshipping cosplay club should too," you might want to rethink your entire worldview.
TaiwanIsNotChina
They do not promote evil: they promote ending christian evil.
Jimizo
That should stop the hysterical types getting upset and wetting themselves because everything has been ruined by wokeness.
Thank Jupiter for that
Trump has sorted it.
Yrral
Christian who believe Trump is a person of faith,are just as gullible as Trump call Christian then gullible
TaiwanIsNotChina
christianity didn't build anything representing the US. In fact the founders wanted to protect the country from state religion.
ZENJI
FAKE NEWS ladies & gentleman, this is what the Prime Minister should expect on his visit.
bass4funk
Attempt at failed humor? I don’t think this is a bad idea. Give people the option, no need for demonizing religion, if you want to believe in God, that’d your choice, if you want to be an atheist, then that’s your choice as well. Let people have a choice. Having choices in a democracy is a good thing.
Yrral
Jay name one thing redemning about Trump, Trump say he has not to repent about
bass4funk
Naw, let all people believe in what they want.
I'veSeenFootage
Is God going to reduce the price of eggs, maybe? Because apparently that's why Trump was elected. To reduce prices. Not implement a radical theocracy.
I'veSeenFootage
The only "demonized" religion in the US is Islam. All the other ones are respected and/or celebrated, especially christianity, in spite of what Fox news tells you to make you scared and angry.
Yrral
You create you own heaven or hell on this earthly plain,no where else by you own devices
Jay
@TINC
Alright, let's pretend all that garbage is true... so they're "fighting evil" by cosplaying as cartoon villains, throwing tantrums over Nativity scenes, and desperately trying to get attention from people they claim to hate. Yeah, nothing says "totally not evil" like naming your entire movement after Satan, the literal symbol of deception and destruction.
Clown-level idiocy.
bass4funk
OK, that has nothing to do with my previous statement.
Yes, considering their history towards the West over the last 25 years
Sorry, it has nothing to do with FOX no matter how you try and link it, it has everything to do with allowing people to believe whatever they want without being persecuted
Peter Neil
what the hell is he talking about?
the correlation between religion and maga is interesting. both are based on belief without any shred of evidence, which is what belief is. belief in tall tales of virgin births, stories of magic, omniscient gods and angels, etc. all are the same in only their religion is right.
maga is like that — believers in tall tales, no matter what.
there are believers and there are thinkers.
raincloud
Ironic, isn’t it, that the most anti-Christlike president you could think of wants to “bring God back.”
bass4funk
Liberals believe they still are in power, they can believe that, they have every right to believe it.
True, very true.
Jimizo
Very good.
Freedom of and from religion is key in any country worth living in.
I’m sure that all who believe in this wouldn’t object to a say a Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist president.
Hopefully people have moved on from the days when some believed Obama was a closet Muslim and attacked him on those grounds.
I’m sure that bigotry has long gone.
I'veSeenFootage
Yeah. Because I wasn't talking to you. I was quoting the article.
And, pray tell, why does Islam have a bad history with "the West"? Did "the West" do anything to spur that, maybe? (Not saying that's an excuse, just that nothing comes out of a vacuum)
Ok, give me 5 examples of christians being actively persecuted in the US.
And please, not something inane like "They forced someone to bake a cake for a gay wedding!", because that's not persecution.
BB
Typical Trump - creating a bogeyman to keep his cult cowering. If it's not the scary immigrants, it's the hordes of Christian-haters who are ... doing what? Throwing bombs at churches? ...Or it's the woke crowd that makes you feel bad for being a racist.
wallace
No separation of Church and State. How many Americans are not Christians? 30%. And 60% do not attend churches.
31% of Americans have no religious affiliation.
"First Amendment specifically denied the federal government any power to enact any law respecting either an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, thus protecting any religious organization, institution, or denomination from government interference."
How many non-Christians voted for Trump?
Tokyo Guy
On a more practical level, how exactly does he intend to find this "bias" of which he speaks? Send his goons to your average small midwest town and arrest anyone who's not in church on Sunday morning?
wallace
Trump is expecting a run on his Bible sales.
owzer
Agreed. It is lamentable that people would do that.
Some dude
Isn't this the guy who couldn't name a single passage from the bible when asked?
Yrral
Trump has not one ounce of mortality
BB
As a proud American, I concur. The nation has never been dumber.
Politik Kills
He’s just using you Christians as useful idiots.
He is the antichrist.
Desert Tortoise
Not being a christian it strikes me that in the US it is christians discriminating against all other religions that is the problem. It also strikes me that too many christians believe that they have some sort of right to impose the obligations and restrictions of their religion on non-believers. They call that "religious freedom" but to this non-christian it looks a lot more like religious tyranny. I should be able to live my life and enjoy all the rights of citizenship without my liberties being restricted by the tenants of a religion I do not believe in. Freedom to worship the religion of your choice also means the freedom not to worship or be bound by a religion not of your choice.
Peter Neil
Yrral Today 08:04 am JST Trump has not one ounce of mortality
or morality, but i understood.
jt changed the coding so i can’t see any modifications to text, like quotes, italic, etc. not that anyone used an ipad…
Jay
https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/chief-who-was-fired-marriage-views-wins-major-first-amendment
https://adflegal.org/case/arlenes-flowers-v-state-washington/
https://www.frc.org/newsroom/frc-publishes-new-edition-of-hostility-against-churches-report-indicating-a-doubling-of-attacks
https://www.napalegalinstitute.org/post/how-big-tech-targets-faith-groups-for-censorship
https://www.usccb.org/committees/religious-liberty/Backgrounder-Attacks-on-Catholic-Churches-in-US
So no CHAMP, this isn't about "baking a cake." This is about a full-scale, systemic effort to silence, punish, and erase Christianity from public life.
Next.
maxjapank
Trump has hardly ever been to church, barely knows the bible or songs, and probably doesn't believe in a higher power like God at all. The fact that some Christians want to treat him as a savior is baffling. He literally doesn't care about you or your beliefs. He pretends to do so to have his followers blindly worship him.
Some dude
*So no CHAMP, this isn't about "baking a cake." This is about a full-scale, systemic effort to silence, punish, and erase Christianity from public life.*
So here's a thing.
Is there also an effort to "silence, punish, and erase" Islam from public life? There are around 4.5 million Muslims in the US, representing about 1.3% of the population. I don't hear anything about attempts to "silence, punish and erase" Islam. Or Buddhism. Or Hinduism. Or Judaism. Or Scientology, and that's a super-scam even by the standards of other religions.
Yet a religion which is claimed by 70 per cent of the country is "being persecuted"? Cry me a river.
factchecker
Says the convicted felon.
Desert Tortoise
And as James Madison observed knowledge will forever rule ignorance. Do you want to be the educated thinker or the uneducated simpleton believing whatever because of social pressure to conform and belong?
Tokyo Guy
What you have here is "Argument from incredulity".
I think it's nearer to "argument from fear that religion is becoming less and less relevant and that scares me because I won't have anything to hold onto".
Peter Neil
and by the way, the constitution says this:
“ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
the founding fathers were not theists. the word god does not appear in the constitution.
one of the major reasons for independence was the british requiring everyone to be members of a religion, the church of england.
here is where pup
I'veSeenFootage
All sourced from very christian websites and organizations, of course, so devoid of any form of impartiality. One thing is for sure: Christians in America have a deep-seated persecution complex.
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/are-american-christians-persecuted/
Bob Fosse
“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.”
So DEI for christians.
If you want to believe in it go for it. But keep it out of schools and government policy.
Ken
Making your own twisted bibles to sell, being afraid to swear on the bible in court and lying to the whole world is very anti-Christian
Peter Neil
this is where purposive interpretation is important - what was the purpose or remedy of the text?
the remedy was to keep goverment out of religion. and that includes the executive branch.
bass4funk
I was responding to the article
Or maybe Islam thinks that Christianity like Judaism is a gutter religion that needs to be snuffed out?
Now you’re responding to me?
Yeah, you don’t get to decide what is and what not is persecution based on your personal opinion and approval. But yes, being forced to back a cake and to be doxxed and sued for refusing is religious prosecution without a doubt.
https://www.christianpost.com/voices/10-persecution-stories-that-gained-global-attention-in-the-last-decade.html
Bob Fosse
Remember when Christmas was banned and you weren’t allowed to say ‘merry Xmas’ anymore?
No, me neither despite hearing it from screeching fear mongers for years.
Tokyo Guy
Says the convicted felon.
I think it's this which really makes the whole scene such a farce.
It's evident that you have to at least pretend to be religious if you're going to run for high public office in the US. You have to win the simpletons over, and there's no better way (besides wrapping yourself in the flag) than pulling the god card.
Now if, for instance, the late President Carter had come out with this statement, it would have at least had some level of integrity to it because, putting the Trump Evangelicals aside, most people seem to agree that Carter lived his faith and gave a very positive impression of Christianity.
After him, the most ethical president in terms of absence of political scandal, indictments, etc. was Obama, and a fair percentage of utter morons were convinced he was Muslim because of his middle name.
If we assume the tenets of Christianity include such things as humility, charity, empathy, morality, etc., then Trump is about as far from that as you could get. He makes Nixon look merely like a crook, and Clinton like a saint.
And the fact that the evangelicals would probably sacrifice their first born to him if he demanded it, tells us exactly what American "christianity" stands for.
Ah_so
Perhaps we're going off on a tangent, because while there likely was an itinerant preacher by the name of Jeshua in 1st century Palestine, there are no extra-Biblical accounts from the era. All are later and refer to Christianity, except the Josephus reference which is regarded as a forged insertion.
But the key thing for debate is whether Christianity should be playing an increased role in a constitionally secular society. The answer must be no, please no. The country was established as secular for a reason - puritan extremists were trying to create a theocracy and dictate their values onto others.
But in various ways, Christian extremists have been inserting their values back into the civic life, through abortion bans, school book bans etc. This campaign against secularism needs to be resisted.
ThePunisher
Trump is the worst advertisement for Christianity that has ever existed.
Rapist, endless divorces, sordid affairs, complete lack of humility, chronic liar.
Even Christian Ministers call him out in church services.
wallace
Make America God Again. MAGA.
funkymofo
More performative nonsense.
Kurisu
Well it's about time. People should devote their lives to evangelical proselytizing, the Ten Commandments and Intelligent Design/Creationism, NOT science-based silliness like evolution.
America has been bamboozled by logic and reason for far too long.
Wasabi
Buy the made-in-China trump bible!!!!
VoiceOfReason
Says the convicted felon.
That sham trial happened last year so the left could say "but! but! he's a felon!"
How's that tactic working out for you? Did it work last election? No? Then why do you continue to think now is any different?
Jay
@Footage/Dagon 2.0
LOL @ "your sources don’t count because they come from people who ACTUALLY know what they're talking about." Classic.
Funny how that logic never applies when woke activists cite their own echo chambers as gospel truth. Well, if Christians in America supposedly have a "persecution complex," maybe it's because they're CONSTANTLY being sued, censored, fired, and ridiculed for daring be Christian - meanwhile, you play the victim because someone disagreed with you on JT.
Unfortunately, the REAL "deep-seated complex" here is the one that makes you incapable of addressing facts without immediately dismissing them based on who said them rather than what they said!
deanzaZZR
According to Wikipedia China has the 7th most Christians of any nation in the world.
itsonlyrocknroll
It is the toxicity, the poisonous scourge, a caldron of religion and political meddlesomeness, the insistence that pious pulpit politics, associated with that horror show from Evangelical busybody Right Rev Mariann Budde is reason enough why politic/hideous religious fervour must be separated from Church and State.
Religious freedom must, always be a matter of personal beliefs, to if desired, for Sunday worship and parental choices.
Never mix politics and religion/ Church and state.
The middle east, the atrocities perpetrated from Islamic fundamentalism, sharia law, the repression of basic human rights is proof beyond any reasonable doubt of the dangers.
JT please allow me to post this full interview, totally uncut, gives an insight as to why US people have placed there trust in Donald Trump so convincingly
60 Minutes FCC Response: Unedited Video, Whitaker/Harris at the vice president’s residence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIxA8MF5r5Y&t=1s
Because this Donald Trump presidency, the subsequent dramatic change of direction of government, is due to a failure of the Biden/Harris 4 years in office refusal to listen to ordinary US working people.
Megan Thee Stallion
TaiwanIsNotChinaToday 06:51 am any introduction of Christian anything into a government program needs to be accompanied by something from the Church of Satan &They do not promote evil: they promote ending christian evil.
I'veSeenFootageToday 07:20 am JST Is God going to reduce the price of eggs, maybe?
Yo, anti Christian bigots out today, how do you JT moderators let this offensive bigot speech posts to stay here? Whats this? you got no standards?
Ken
How does the saying go? The devil is dangerous because of his ability to lie. The biggest lie is tricking you to thinking he's working for Christianity when he's working against it
I'veSeenFootage
Yup. Sources about "christian persecution" from The Heritage Foundation website are not credible in the least.
I'm not woke, nor an activist, so I can't help you there.
"CONSTANTLY"? In all caps? Wow. How many cases of unwarranted firings and wanton trials per year, then? Must be several hundred thousand at least. Or maybe, just maybe, it's a minuscule occurence that your right-wing media bubble regularly blows out of proportions to make it seem like it's a generalized phenomenon?
I personally find it very hard to believe, from a purely mathematical standpoint, that a group that represents 65% of the US population, so a very strong majority, could somehow be "persecuted".
Tokyo Guy
I'll make one observation here: the most openly religious people on this board do seem to be, by far, the angriest, the most provocative, and the most insecure in their beliefs...
I'veSeenFootage
Yeah. Apparently some very devout christians have never read Colossians 3:8:
"But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips."
Jay
Do you listen to yourself? "I don't think it's happening ENOUGH to matter." So apparently, discrimination is only real if it reaches some arbitrary six-figure threshold!
FACTS: Christians face far too many documented cases of workplace discrimination, lawsuits, censorship, and government overreach every year. The fact that it's not hundreds of thousands doesn't magically make it "minuscule" buddy - by that logic, hate crimes against any group would be irrelevant unless they reached pandemic levels. LOL!
You don't hear about mass firings of Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus for their beliefs, do you? You don't see endless lawsuits forcing them to violate their religious convictions.
Nope. It's Christianity. Why? Because it's the one faith standing in the way of their (your) radical secular agenda. Sorry, but if you need "mathematical" proof to accept reality, maybe start by counting the times Christianity is openly attacked versus how other religions are handled. Spoiler alert: it ain't even close.
stormcrow
Rapist, liar & thief.
Comical, isn’t he?
Burgerland
TaiwanIsNotChinaToday 07:07 am JST - They do not promote evil: they promote ending christian evil..."
Well now it all makes sense, talking heads pushing for more weapons & prolonging the war in Ukraine are goat worshippers. It figures.
Underworld
itsonlyrocknroll
Nah, it was the price of eggs...
WoodyLee
There is NOOOO such thing as "anti-Christian" in America, Never was Never will be.
Mr. Trump must be Hallucinating.
I'veSeenFootage
No, because I don't read what I write out loud.
No. And you don't read about mass firings of christians either. So we agree then!
Islamophobia is provably vastly more prevalent in American culture and society. Antisemitism is equally rising.
There was never any moral panic about a president being "secretly christian" in the US. And no protest anywhere with people chanting "Christians will not replace us".
Underworld
Jay
Well Trump enacted a Muslim-ban in his last presidency. Just one example of other religions being persecuted.
Burgerland
Tokyo GuyToday 09:13 am JST
I'll make one observation here: the most openly religious people on this board do seem to be, by far, the angriest, the most provocative, and the most insecure in their beliefs..
Nah, factually incorrect as anyone who has been on JT for a while knows well. The most hateful, angry and vitriol spewing posters by far are in the anti Trump camp. Yet they wanted everyone to believe they were about "joy"...yeaaah right.
Burgerland
Nah, it was the price of eggs..."
That too, lol. No need to worry too much daddy Trump will make the breakfast staple affordable again soon :) He is just a little busy atm draining the USAID & co swamp.
Bob Fosse
You cannot be fired from your job because of your religion. You can be fired from your job if you use your religion as an excuse to express bigotry and racism.
plasticmonkey
Trump is so godly. So Christian. He may be even more Christ-like than Christ.
Jesus taught us to hate those who don’t kiss your backside, cut off aid to starving children, and force people off their homeland so that your son-in-law can build beachfront properties for the wealthy.
I'veSeenFootage
There are few things more cringy in our contemporary world than actuals adults calling a politician... "daddy". Not even mentioning the Freudian implications.
Burgerland
You are right. Daddy Trump is sorting it out. Draining the USAID fraud and banning men from unfairly competing against women in sports kept him busy last couple of days. US public is winning.
https://x.com/AutismCapital/status/1887248911729107454