The final report from Trump’s "Anti-Christian Bias" task force reveals... nothing
The supposed evidence of Christian persecution by Democrats is nothing but a pile of petty grievances
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The White House’s ridiculously named “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” has just released its final report summarizing all the ways Christians are persecuted in America and how we can fix it.
It’s as absurd as you’d imagine.
A quick history here: Last year, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing this group and the commission really only had one job: Putting out a report highlighting any “unlawful anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct by an agency” and suggesting how to fix them.
The Task Force was filled with the brightest minds in the Administration. Which is to say they had one brain cell that was passed back and forth between each other.
Was it all symbolic? Perhaps. But it could be useful if experts on the subject were coming together to offer the administration a guide on how to overcome serious obstacles to religious liberty.
Unfortunately, this commission wasn’t filled with religious liberty experts. It was filled with right-wing Christian crusaders who treat religious neutrality as anti-Christian persecution. And who quote Pulp Fiction when they mean to quote the Bible.
You would think the people who make up the most popular religion in the country, and 87% of Congress, and 98% of elected Republicans are doing just fine. Complaining that Christians have it rough is like saying the problem with racism in America is that it really hurts white people. But as we’ve seen with the recent Supreme Court ruling eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, that’s very much what these people believe.
When the Task Force held its first meeting last April, it was obvious where this was going. Attendees included several notable right-wing Christians, including Pastor Paula White-Cain, homeschooling advocate Michael Farris, and the provost of Liberty University. You just knew they were going to compile a list of conservative Christian grievances—How dare anyone say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”?—not an actual list of federal biases that exist against Christians, much less ways to fix anything, because no such thing exists.
Their preliminary report, issued last September, was nothing more than a collection of complaints from various Cabinet departments along with a preamble that laughably claimed there was “a consistent and systematic pattern of discrimination against Christians during the Biden Administration.”
But now their final report has been released. It’s 565 pages aimed at an audience of Christian extremists who have no idea how religious pluralism ought to work. It’s also full of lies and exaggerations about how Christians are supposedly persecuted in the country. (The substance of the report is under 200 pages.)
The executive summary sums up just how pointless this whole exercise was by repeating the lies underlying Christian Nationalism: “Our Nation’s origin and system of government bear the imprint of a Christian worldview and ethic, even as its laws protect religious pluralism.” Hilariously, they admit the Biden Administration “generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held” but insist that Christians got in trouble when they demanded the ability to “act in accordance with their faith.”
Well… yeah. If your religion tells you to do something discriminatory or ignore generally applicable rules (like vaccine mandates), and you work for the government, too damn bad.
But what examples do they actually give of this discrimination?
There are 14 “Key Findings” and each one is dumber than the last.
Key Finding 1: The Biden DOJ pursued aggressive prosecutions against non-violent, prolife, Christian demonstrators under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act but responded less aggressively to violent attacks against pregnancy resource centers.
They’re upset that the Department of Justice under Biden targeted Christian protesters who blocked access to abortion clinics. Not because they opposed abortion but because they blocked access to abortion clinics.
That’s not anti-Christian discrimination at all.
Key Finding 2: The Biden Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated, monitored, tracked, and scrutinized traditional Catholics who had engaged in no criminal misconduct.
I’ve written before about how this story is bullshit. Basically, an internal FBI memo pointed out that a guy they were looking at as a potential terror threat hung out at a church that described itself as Catholic but wasn’t formally affiliated with the Catholic Church. He also appeared to be recruiting members for a possible attack. When a couple of FBI analysts wrote up their report on this guy, they noted the link between his extremism and his faith, though they pointed out this guy was on their radar before he ever joined that church.
Those analysts later found that there were other men on the FBI’s radar that had similar extremist ideologies and belonged to a similar church. So they noted there might be a link there worth investigating. But higher-ups in the FBI rescinded that report saying it “failed to adhere to FBI standards” because of a number of other errors in it and that the agency did not conduct investigations “based on religious affiliation.” (It should be noted that the draft report was never even made public, but it was leaked to a right-wing outlet before it could even be scrutinized.)
That’s not anti-Christian bias. It was a valid documentation of a potentially dangerous phenomenon. (It wasn’t even against the Catholic Church, but rather a potentially extremist sect calling itself Catholic!) Yet the DoJ cited it as an example of the Biden administration targeting people of faith while leaving out the details that would have justified those actions.
Key Finding 3: The Biden Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigated churches because of what their pastors preached and Christian organizations because they applied biblical teachings to daily life.
This never happened. By this point, it’s well-documented how right-wing pastors constantly violate the Johnson Amendment—by promoting political candidates from the pulpit—but face no consequences because of it. There’s no evidence of the IRS targeting churches because of what pastors preach. (Notice also that they say “investigated” and not “punished.” There’s nothing wrong with looking into potential violations of the law.)
And the word-salad description of how Christian groups were targeted “because they applied biblical teachings to daily life” is nonsense. The report says the IRS denied a non-profit tax exemption to one (just one) political group that justified its planned campaign interventions by invoking biblical language. Even if you believe that’s the wrong decision—it’s not—it’s literally one example. Not evidence of an anti-Christian trend.
Key Finding 4: The Biden Department of Education (ED) focused its enforcement actions against Christian universities, levying enormous fines that dwarfed the penalties for Larry Nassar’s and Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assaults.
Neither penalty was an example of “anti-Christian bias.”
In 2023, Biden’s DoE levied a $37.7 million fine against Grand Canyon University because there was ample evidence that the school lowballed its tuition fees to reel students in… before hitting them with larger fees once they were already taking classes (and it was therefore harder to leave).
The government laid out, with plenty of detail, how the school lied about tuition on its website, its enrollment agreement, the “Net Price Calculator” that students could use online to figure out how much they would owe, and other marketing materials. This wasn’t, in other words, some accident on one page of GCU’s website; it was clearly a purposeful move to attract students before gouging them later.
But the Trump administration rescinded that penalty because it doesn’t give a shit about students who were defrauded by the school.
What about Liberty University? They were fined $14 million for violating the Clery Act, meaning the school created a culture where students were afraid to report sexual violence and didn’t do nearly enough to let students know about threats on campus. A consultant who spoke to the Washington Post said it was “the single most blistering Clery report I have ever read. Ever.” (For the sake of comparison, the largest-ever Clery fine issued before that was $4.5 million to Michigan State for failing to address Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse.)
Punishing schools for not taking sexual assault seriously and for jacking up tuition costs after students have enrolled was never ideological. Biden wasn’t weaponizing the government to go after Christian schools. His administration did the kind of oversight it’s required to do of any school that receives taxpayer money—and both Liberty and GCU benefit from government-funded student loans.
In other words, the Biden administration didn’t target Christian schools. They went after schools that were screwing over their own students, and two of those schools happened to be Christian.
Key Finding 5: The Biden Health and Human Services (HHS) and DOJ scaled back ongoing enforcement efforts to vindicate conscience rights, withdrawing a notice of violation against the University of Vermont Medical Center after it coerced a Christian nurse into participating in an abortion despite her religious objections.
In this case, in 2017, the University of Vermont Medical Center began offering elective abortions but said staff members who objected didn’t have to participate. They just needed to let the school know if they objected to “medically necessary” abortions, elective abortions, or all abortions. But if the school couldn’t arrange for someone else to take your place, then the expectation was that you would help out to make sure patients were taken care of. A Catholic nurse was later put in a situation where she had to help out with an abortion procedure against her objections.
The Biden Administration later helped the school develop a policy that protected patients and allowed staffers to refrain from those procedures. That’s good, right? Not to the Task Force, which said the Biden people weren’t as deferential to religious staffers as they could have been because they “resolved active enforcement matters through administrative means, if possible, rather than litigation.” Right… because not everything has to go through the courts. Sometimes, you can just take care of things yourself. That’s not anti-Christian bias.
Other items on the list of Key Findings point to policy positions taken by the Biden Administration that basically boil down to laws that conservatives don’t like. If taxpayer dollars went to foster care agencies, for example, Biden’s people wanted to make sure potential parents weren’t making life worse for LGBTQ children. But the Task Force calls this anti-Christian.
There’s also this:
Key Finding 10: The Biden Administration sidelined Christians in favor of their preferred constituencies.
They seriously cite the example of Biden issuing a proclamation in 2024 celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, just as he did in 2021 and 2022 and 2023, saying that trans people were “part of the fabric of our Nation” and that we need to “work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.”
In 2024, however, March 31 coincidentally overlapped with Easter. So conservatives pretended that the Transgender Day of Visibility proclamation was anti-Christian… as if Biden picked the date as a middle finger to his own religion.
Key Finding 13: Biden agencies’ religious accommodation process often functionally penalized Christians who sought to exercise their religious rights.
This one claims the Biden Administration targeted Christians who were just practicing their faith… when the reality is that, when COVID vaccines were finally available, the government wanted federal employees to get vaccinated and they didn’t offer blanket exceptions for Christians who believed anti-vax conspiracy theories. Which was the right move because vaccines work and not getting vaccinated puts everyone in harm’s way.
You get the idea.
Some of the biggest examples of “anti-Christian bias” in this report aren’t systemic attacks on religion at all, but just examples of Christians behaving badly and getting punished for it. Apparently, Christians should be allowed to get away with anything they want under the Trump Administration.
The report concludes:
The Task Force found that, in its zealous pursuit of its preferred policies and constituents, the Biden Administration engaged in anti-Christian bias, seeking to limit Christians’ ability to act in concert with their sincerely held beliefs in their homes, in the workplace, and in the public square. At times, it went still further, leading Christians to reportedly choose between their beliefs and compliance with federal law. And, most troublingly, the Biden Administration is alleged to have prosecuted and jailed peaceful Christian pro-life demonstrators, terminated or harassed Christian workers who did not comply with the vaccine mandates, targeted Christian organizations with IRS inquiries, and subjected Christian schools to excessive fines. Taken together, the findings presented by the Task Force raise serious concerns about whether certain Biden-era policies and practices were administered in a manner consistent with the Constitution and applicable federal law. These concerns implicate core American commitments—religious liberty, equal treatment, and the rule of law—that protect all Americans of faith and conscience.
It’s all bullshit. This entire idiotic charade just shows how the Biden Administration wasn’t waging war on Christianity at all, but rather treating Christians the same way they did everyone else and not allowing claims of “But Mah Religion” to override health and safety and generally applicable laws.
Unfortunately, we now live under a regime full of powerful conservative Christians who want to weaponize victimhood to shield themselves from accountability.
To call any of this persecution is an insult to the very concept of oppression.
This report is not evidence of discrimination; it is evidence of entitlement. These Republicans don’t give a damn about freedom of religion. All they want is freedom from consequence. They want right-wing Christians to be allowed to operate above the law, unchallenged and unaccountable.
To state the obvious, ”anti-Christian bias” shouldn’t be ignored. Neither should bias against any other group. If it happens in a government agency, it should be punished. The problem here is the underlying theory that Christians suffer more discrimination than other religious groups.
If these are the best examples of anti-Christian discrimination they have, they’ve got nothing. They’re just proving what many of us have been arguing for years: Cries of anti-Christian persecution in America are not about protecting faith, but about protecting power.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State called out the uselessness of this report:
“The Executive Summary alone confirms what we have been saying all along: The administration’s claims that it has uncovered extensive evidence of anti-Christian bias within the federal government are unfounded. Instead, the report just repeats the misleading examples the Trump administration has been using since Day 1. The task force is doing exactly what we expected: imposing its narrow view of Christianity on the country and attacking freedom and equality, especially for women and LGBTQ+ Americans.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation said this was a “political document masquerading as a civil rights analysis.”
“The bogus findings of the ‘Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias’ were always a foregone conclusion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor, “since the purpose of the task force was to presume and look for bias against only one class, conservative Christians, and seek to expand protections only for them.”
The Interfaith Alliance’s Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush said the Trump Administration ought to look in a mirror:
“Trump’s radical DOJ’s new report is abominably hypocritical. To find anti-Christian bias, the Trump administration should look in the mirror at its own targeting of Christian communities and leaders who dare to oppose its extreme agenda. From attacking Pope Leo to Bishop Budde to so many others, this president has repeatedly threatened and clashed with many of the most prominent Christian denominations in our country.
…
Given President Trump’s own very public disrespect for Easter – and shocking portrayal of himself as a Christ-like figure in social media posts – the idea that his administration is somehow prioritizing the traditions and values of the Christian faith is absurd. Reports and stunts like this are meant to distract from the admin’s persecution of millions of Americans – including the many Black Christians across the South whose civil rights and political freedoms are directly targeted by yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling.
They make solid points. If you want real examples of Christians getting harassed for their beliefs, you won’t find them in this report. In January, just after Trump was inaugurated, a religious leader politely asked Trump to follow Jesus and have mercy on the marginalized. Republicans responded to Bishop Mariann Budde by saying she should be “added to the deportation list” (she was born in New Jersey), implied that she was an idiot, and insisted that she was bad at her job.
More recently, Trump has threatened to deport millions of Christian immigrants.
Those are far more direct examples of anti-Christian bias than anything you’ll find in this report. If you want to protect Christianity, you’d be better off ridding the administration of all the people who make Christianity look bad… which is damn near everyone.
And if you think the Trump Administration is interested in leveling the playing field for Christians, you’ve been lied to. They want to make sure “I’m Christian” is always an acceptable excuse for certain people to get away with anything they want, whether it’s ignoring civil rights laws, putting patients in danger, or promoting bigotry with taxpayer dollars. That’s the only kind of Christianity they care about.
It’s not like they have examples of Christians wanting to help the poor only to be stymied by Democrats.
This Task Force was always a sham and this report proves it.
For what it’s worth, the Task Force says one more report will be published next year outlining policy recommendations for the future.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Yes these are the VERY same people who claim that efforts to eradicate racism in our society are tantamount to anti-white bias. They do NOT want equality. They want SUPREMACY.
The underlying assertion seems to be that Christians are entitled to privilege, and have more rights than other people. If you want to see what genuine persecution looks like, hand the power of life and death to the evangelical preachers. I've contended for a long time that, at least up to a point, religion thrives on persecution, real and imaginary.