(AFP) – US President Donald Trump announced Thursday the creation of a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in government, intensifying a right-wing crackdown since returning to power. The Republican billionaire said he was putting new Attorney General Pam Bondi at the head of the force to end “persecution” of the majority religion of the United States.
Trump said its mission would be to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination” in the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, and other government agencies. He also said it would prosecute “anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society.”
“We will protect Christians in our schools, in our military and our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares,” Trump told a national prayer breakfast at a Washington hotel. He also announced the creation of a “White House faith office” led by his spiritual advisor, the televangelist Paula White.
The announcements came amid a wider purge of the federal government at the start of Trump’s second term. Trump has unveiled a slew of orders backing a conservative agenda, including several targeting diversity programs and transgender people. Despite a criminal conviction for hush money payments in a porn star scandal and sexual assault allegations, Trump has long made himself a champion of right-wing Christians.
Trump’s cabinet contains several members with links to Christian nationalists, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. And while Trump is not seen as particularly religious, he said he had become more so after surviving an assassination attempt at an election rally in June 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“It changed something in me, I feel even stronger. I believed in God, but I feel much more strongly about it,” Trump told a separate prayer breakfast at the US Capitol on Thursday. “We have to bring religion back.” Trump said in his inauguration speech on January 20, referring to the assassination attempt, that he had been “saved by God to Make America Great Again.”
© 2024 AFP
