(Daily Signal)—A new task force within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) convened Tuesday to rectify the “anti-Christian bias” perpetrated by the federal government under President Joe Biden. Attorney General Pam Bondi created the task force with President Donald Trump’s Feb. 6 executive order, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.”
“My Administration will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians,” Trump’s order stated. “The law protects the freedom of Americans and groups of Americans to practice their faith in peace, and my Administration will enforce the law and protect these freedoms. My Administration will ensure that any unlawful and improper conduct, policies, or practices that target Christians are identified, terminated, and rectified.”
At its inaugural meeting Tuesday, the task force heard from “peaceful Christian Americans who were unfairly targeted by the Biden Administration for their religious beliefs,” the DOJ stated.
This included Michael Farris, former head of Alliance Defending Freedom and an elder at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia, which Biden’s IRS investigated over alleged violations of the Johnson Amendment by its senior pastor, Gary Hamrick. The second witness was Liberty University Provost Scott Hicks, who described how the Biden administration singled out his university and Grand Canyon University—the two largest Christian colleges in the nation—for crippling fines. The task force also heard from Phil Mendes, a Navy Seal who was “relieved of duty during Biden Administration for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine due to religious exemption requests that were denied by the Department of Defense.”
Trump’s executive order tasked this force with reviewing “the activities of all executive departments and agencies … over the previous Administration” to “identify any unlawful anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct” and recommend relevant steps to reverse those injustices, either through executive or legislative action. Pursuant to this end, Trump ordered the task force to “solicit information and ideas from a broad range of individuals and groups” and “share information and develop strategies to protect the religious liberties of Americans.”
The task force is supposed to issue three reports at intervals of 120 days, one year, and the dissolution of the group (scheduled to come after two years unless its mandate is extended).
Trump assigned at least 17 different departments and agencies to the task force. In addition to the attorney general, it also consists of the secretaries of State, the Treasury, Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development, Education, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security. It also includes the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Representatives to the U.N., the administrator of the Small Business Administration, the FBI director, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, the FEMA administrator, the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and other officials at the attorney general’s discretion.
The executive order had already cataloged numerous examples of the Biden administration’s religious persecution against Christians. This included its lopsided FACE Act prosecutions of peaceful, pro-life activists, while largely ignoring violent attacks made against places of worship and pregnancy resources centers. An FRC publication documented at least 915 acts of hostility against churches between January 2018 and November 2023.
The executive order also acknowledged an FBI memorandum which “asserted that ‘radical-traditionalist’ Catholics were domestic-terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as ‘threat mitigation,’” citing “as support evidence propaganda from highly partisan sources.” It also listed Biden’s Department of Education targeting Christian groups on college campuses, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission trying to force transgender ideology on Christian employers, and Health and Human Services seeking to drive Christians out of the foster care system.
Yet the officials who gathered on Tuesday shared more concerning examples of discrimination from the Biden administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described how the Biden administration had discriminated against Christian foreign service officers, threatening those who wanted to homeschool their children, stigmatizing those who objected to the COVID-19 vaccine, and retaliating against those who declined to push LGBT ideology in countries where it was unwelcome.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender described how the Biden administration surveilled the finances of Christian organizations, removed their tax-exempt status, and refused to protect them from debanking.
Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley described how his predecessor, Neera Tanden, who previously worked as the president of the Center for American Progress, helped “lead and coordinate the Biden Administration’s efforts to push radical and anti-Christian gender ideology on kids in classrooms, foster care, sports, and health care.”
Tanden’s involvement underscores the Biden administration’s cozy relationship with an ecosystem of left-wing activist groups that make targeting Christian organizations part of their mission. For example, the infamous FBI memo targeting Catholics cited as a source the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) hate map, identifying nine Catholic organizations as “hate groups.”
The SPLC habitually harasses mainstream conservative groups, doxing their staff, endorsing their debanking, and urging the government to brand them as dangerous extremists. Ironically, the SPLC has inspired more terror attacks than most of the organizations it brands as “extremist.” In 2012, a gunman inspired by the SPLC “hate map” attempted to commit a politically-motivated mass shooting at FRC’s D.C. headquarters but was stopped by the heroic building manager, Leo Johnson.
Family Research Council has launched a petition urging the federal government to discredit the SPLC as a reliable source, due to its scandal-plagued track record and ongoing involvement in extremist activity. Launching a task force to review instances of anti-Christian bias is a good first step. But shutting the door of the government’s counsel-chambers against one fount of that anti-Christian bias is a necessary step to ensure that Christians are left free, as President Trump said, “to practice their faith in peace.”
