President Trump’s executive order of February 6, 2024, ostensibly aims at cancelling discriminations and persecutions toward American Christians under the First Amendment to the Constitution.
February 14, 2025
Under Amendment 1 to the federal Constitution, the US establishes freedom of religion, creed, or belief (FoRB) as the first political human right. Liberty of religion is in fact not only freedom to a private faith, but also—and with no mediation—the right to its public expression in all forms that do not violate positive and natural law. For this reason, the federal state cannot interfere in any form with religion. It cannot establish a federal state religion, it cannot favor one religious group (or a few) at the expense of others, it cannot curtail or deny the personal and public religious liberty of any member and any group, and it cannot violate its equidistance to all faiths.
As it has been established several times by different legal actions in US courts of law upholding the provisions of the First Amendment, the federal state cannot even construct secularism, atheism and/or religious indifference in ways that violate the First Amendment by establishing and/or favoring secularism as the official policy, i.e., the secular religion, of the state, curtailing or denying the personal and public religious liberty of any individual or group in the US. Thus, the First Amendment establishes the first political right of every American citizen as a quite extensive no-flight zone of freedom, interfering with which is strictly forbidden to the federal state. Such a large no-flight zone of freedom starts with the liberty of believing or non-believing and live accordingly as individuals and groups in society, continuing with the practical liberties granting which the provision becomes real and historical, i.e., “freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
At the very beginning of his second mandate, President Donald J. Trump issued executive order “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” on February 6, 2025. The text of the order makes it clear that the Trump Administration considers many actions promoted and enacted by the preceding US Administration, led by President Joseph Biden, as essentially curtailing and/or denying the personal and public religious liberty of an identifiable and organized group of individuals, i.e., Christians, thus violating the First Amendment to the US federal Constitution.
“Bitter Winter” takes no side in politics, and it is not a political magazine. Its unique concern is informing its readers of violations of ForB worldwide and by this way advocating for the persecuted. It does it systematically and unabashedly for every religious group or individual, privileging individuals, groups and situations that, for different reasons, are less known and less covered by other media outlets, leading us to cover the highest number of violations in the world we manage to know and address. “Bitter Winter” is then particularly concerned when violations of FoRB are perpetrated by governments and states, because governments and states can count on a repressive machinery incomparable to that of any non-governmental and non-state organization. For the same, and specular, reasons, “Bitter Winter” highlights occasions when governments and states act in protections of FoRB.
Reminding that “[t]he law protects the freedom of Americans and groups of Americans to practice their faith in peace,” in his February 6 executive order, President Trump states that “[…] the policy of the United States, and the purpose of this order,” is “to protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government.
The Founders established a Nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government. For that reason, the United States Constitution enshrines the fundamental right to religious liberty in the First Amendment. Federal laws like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq.), further prohibit government interference with Americans’ rights to exercise their religion. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.), prohibits religious discrimination in employment while Federal hate-crime laws prohibit offenses committed due to religious animus.”
Yet, in Trump’s opinion, “[…] the previous Administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses. At the same time, Catholic churches, charities, and pro-life centers sought justice for violence, theft, and arson perpetrated against them, which the Biden Department of Justice largely ignored. After more than 100 attacks, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning this violence and calling on the Biden Administration to enforce the law. Then, in 2023, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) memorandum asserted that ‘radical-traditionalist’ Catholics were domestic-terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as ‘threat mitigation.’”
Also, it has been “[…] sought to repeal religious-liberty protections for faith-based organizations on college campuses. The Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith. And the Biden Department of Health and Human Services sought to drive Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the foster-care system. The Biden Administration declared March 31, 2024 — Easter Sunday — as ‘Transgender Day of Visibility.’”
This, the US President says, created an “[…] atmosphere of anti-Christian government” in which “hostility and vandalism against Christian churches and places of worship surged, with the number of such identified acts in 2023 exceeding by more than eight times the number from 2018. Catholic churches and institutions have been aggressively targeted with hundreds of acts of hostility, violence, and vandalism.”
To address the situation, within the Department of Justice the presidential executive orders establishes a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” chaired by the Attorney General and formed by 9 secretaries beginning with the Secretary of State and including the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, plus 7 Administrators or Directors of relevant government agencies including the FBI, and a variable number of “other executive departments, agencies, and offices that the Chair may, from time to time, invite to participate.”
The duties of the Task Force is to “review the activities of all executive departments and agencies to “identify any unlawful anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct by an agency contrary to the purpose and policy of this order,” recommending “to the head of the relevant agency steps to revoke or terminate any violative policies, practices,” and performing “remedial actions to fulfill the purpose and policy of this order.”
This includes the intention to “share information and develop strategies to protect the religious liberties of Americans and advance the purpose and policy of this order,” also deriving “ideas from a broad range of individuals and groups, including Americans affected by anti-Christian conduct, faith-based organizations, and State, local, and Tribal governments, in order to ensure that its work is informed by a broad spectrum of ideas and experiences.”
A key point is the identification of the “deficiencies in existing laws and enforcement and regulatory practices that have contributed to unlawful anti-Christian governmental or private conduct and recommend to the relevant agency head, or recommend to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, as applicable, appropriate actions that agencies may take to remedy failures to fully enforce the law against acts of anti-Christian hostility, vandalism, and violence,” also proposing “legislative action necessary to rectify past improper anti-Christian conduct, protect religious liberty, or otherwise fulfill the purpose and policy of this order.”
The executive order mandates then the Task Force to submit to the President “a report within 120 days from the date of this order regarding the Task Force’s initial work, a report within 1 year from the date of this order that summarizes the Task Force’s work; and a final report upon the dissolution of the Task Force.”
Funded as well as administratively and technically supported by the Department of Justice, “[t]he Task Force shall terminate 2 years from the date of this order unless extended by the President.”
On one point, we should be very clear. If this Task Force favors Christianity over any other religious faith in the US, it violates the American Constitution. All religions should be equally protected. If it redresses wrongdoings that affect one religious group, i.e. Christians, or amount to a persecuting attitude by the state, it upholds the Constitution, binding the federal state to its proper constitutional role, and paving the way for the protection of other religions that may suffer similar discrimination and persecution in the future.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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