Trump tells prayer breakfast he wants to root out ‘anti-Christian bias’ and urges ‘bring God back’
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WASHINGTON — President 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 Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to investigate the “targeting” of Christians.
Speaking at a pair of events in Washington surrounding 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 [Department of Justice], 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.
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An hour after calling for “unity” on Capitol Hill, 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 what he called “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.
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“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 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, Pa., 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.” Speaking later at the separate prayer breakfast sponsored by a private group at a hotel, he said, “it was God that saved me.”
The Republican president, who’s a nondenominational Christian, called religious liberty “part of the bedrock of American life.”
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 is 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.
Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Holly Meyer in Nashville and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
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