Two more Democrats have joined the Congressional Freethought Caucus

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The Congressional Freethought Caucus has added two more members: Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR) and Gil Cisneros (D-CA).

Hoyle first entered Congress in 2023, but she’s been in politics for much longer. She served as commissioner of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries in the four years prior to that. And from 2009 to 2017, she was in the State House, where she spent two of those years as Majority Leader. She is now a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure as well as the Committee on Natural Resources. She’s also part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus.

She hasn’t always voted on the side of science, though; in 2023, she voted with Republicans to lift COVID vaccine mandates for health care workers, a move that put vulnerable people’s lives in jeopardy. She also initially voted for a racist immigration bill that the New Republic described as one that would allow “for the deportation and detention of any undocumented immigrant merely suspected of a nonviolent crime,” though she switched to a no vote for the final passage.

Cisneros is currently in his second (non-consecutive) term in Congress, and in between his terms, he served in the Department of Defense under the Biden administration. (Incredibly, this phase of his life began after winning the Mega Millions lottery in 2010.) He serves on the Armed Services and Small Business committees and is also a member of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus.

Like most of their colleagues in the CFC, neither Hoyle nor Cisneros is non-religious. The Pew Research Center, in their 2025 roundup, listed both as Catholic. Still, they support church/state separation and pledge to protect freedom of religion for everyone (including the non-religious).

The caucus now includes a record 35 members, all of whom are Democrats. As of this writing, the two have not made any public announcement about their CFC affiliation.

In case you need a refresher, the CFC was first announced in 2018 by Rep. Jared Huffman, currently the only openly Humanist member of Congress.

The 35 members now include:

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) (Co-cha)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (Co-chair)
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL)
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.)
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA)
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA)
Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA)
Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX)
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA)
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)
Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT)
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX)
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA)
Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-OR)
Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA)
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ)
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA)
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL)
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA)
Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-MN)
Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE)
Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA)
Rep. Herb Conaway (D-NJ)
Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR)
Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-CA)

(Eric Swalwell was a member of the CFC until his recent resignation.)

To be clear, this isn’t an “atheist club” for Congress, as some critics have suggested. This is just a group of lawmakers dedicated to promoting reason-based public policy, keeping church and state separate, opposing discrimination against non-religious people, and championing freedom of thought around the world. There’s really no reason anyone should be against this. That’s why there’s nothing hypocritical about the fact that nearly every member of the Caucus is religious.

The hope is that the membership continues growing—making the Caucus more influential—while the stigma of being an atheist (or even being associated with non-religiosity) decreases across the country. Those two things are more closely linked than we might imagine. Keep in mind that the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which typically promotes a version of conservative Christianity, is much larger and has members from both major parties. By that metric, the Freethought Caucus has a long way to go.

As I’ve said before, perhaps the most shocking thing about the Caucus is that, based on the relative lack of media interest, people don’t seem to care who the members are… which is to say, no one—not even in right-wing media—thinks it’s a big deal for sitting House members to align with a group defending atheists.

That also means none of these lawmakers believes the Caucus will be a concern for them during the second Trump administration. That may come as a shock to anyone who remembers a time when aligning (even remotely) with atheism was considered one of the biggest taboos in politics.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

American Atheists Slams Trump Task Force Findings on “Anti-Christian Bias”

Washington, D.C. — On Thursday, the Department of Justice released a report from President Trump’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.” The publication claims, “The Biden administration’s policies regularly clashed with a Christian worldview,” citing abortion, gender identity, and sexual orientation as areas of conflict and framing civil rights protections as violations of religious liberty. But the report relies heavily on Christian Nationalist groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Principles Project, and the First Liberty Institute. The 197-page report mentions atheists only twice in footnotes, effectively excluding the 29% of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated. It also overlooks the widespread stigmatization and discrimination faced by atheists under every presidential administration, as documented by American Atheists’ groundbreaking U.S. Secular Survey. American Atheists president Nick Fish said, “True religious freedom — the kind our nation’s founders enshrined in the Constitution — protects and treats equally people of all faiths and of none. It’s very clear this administration is only concerned about Americans of a certain faith.” Nearly a third of respondents to the Secular Survey reported negative experiences in education due to their nonreligious identity, and more than 20% reported discrimination in the workplace. These experiences are especially profound in areas where religious conformity is expected. American Atheists warns that the current administration is increasingly invoking “anti-Christian bias” as a way to reinforce the false narrative that the United States is a Christian nation; to reframe civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ Americans as discriminatory; and to recast any disagreement with the White Christian Nationalist worldview as improper or even criminal. Fish added, “The Trump Administration’s deliberate distortion of our American laws and values will have devastating consequences on pluralism, freedom, and democracy — all foundational pillars of our nation that distinguish us from the theocracies and autocracies abroad.” The 2025 Freedom of Thought Report, released by Humanists International in February, found that the United States, which historically received a more favorable rating, is currently undergoing “an unprecedented backsliding of democratic rights and fundamental freedoms.’” The “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” is expected to issue an additional report in 2027 outlining policy recommendations, which are likely to include proposals to roll back civil rights protections, expand religious exemptions, weaken the Johnson Amendment, and direct public funding toward religious institutions. “American Atheists will continue opposing any such measures,” Fish said. “We remain committed to defending religious pluralism, ending discrimination against atheists and the nonreligious, and ensuring equality for all Americans.”

The post American Atheists Slams Trump Task Force Findings on “Anti-Christian Bias” appeared first on American Atheists.

FFRF slams DOJ ‘Anti-Christian Bias’ report as politicized sham

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is blasting the Justice Department’s just-released “anti-Christian bias” report — 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. ”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has chaired the task force, with 17 senior officials from federal departments and agencies. In the DOJ’s release, Blanche repeats the report’s central falsehoods, claiming: “No American should live in fear that the federal government will punish them for their faith. As our report explains, the Biden administration’s actions devastated the lives of many Christian Americans. That devastation ended with President Trump. The Department of Justice will continue to expose bad actors who targeted Christians and work tirelessly to restore religious liberty for all Americans of faith.”

The report advances Christian nationalist rhetoric, claiming that “our nation’s origin and system of government bear the imprint of a Christian worldview and ethic” and asserting that Christian beliefs drove the decision to seek independence and later shaped the Constitution and state charters: “After the Revolutionary War, Christians then informed the structure and contents of the United States Constitution, its amendments, and contemporaneous state constitutions.” This framing misrepresents the historical record by elevating one perspective above the pluralistic and secular foundations reflected in the nation’s governing documents.

The report absurdly suggests that its Christian nationalist agenda will somehow protect non-Christians, claiming: “By addressing anti-Christian bias and religious discrimination directly, Americans can make religious discrimination unthinkable for all faiths.”

The report focuses much of its ire on President Biden, a devout Roman Catholic in his personal life, who is being absurdly charged with devastating “the lives of many Christian Americans.” Efforts by the Biden administration to uphold nondiscrimination laws, protect LGBTQ+ Americans, and ensure that public institutions serve all citizens equally weren’t “anti-Christian”; they’re pro-Constitution, which promises equal justice for all.

Trump’s executive order creating the task force said that its purpose was to “end the anti-Christian weaponization of government.” It’s no surprise then that the report distorts the fundamental principle of religious freedom by reframing neutrality toward religion, as our Constitution requires, as hostility to Christianity. The report seeks to turn “religious liberty” into a license to discriminate. Claims that Christians were “targeted” for the enforcement of laws governing public health, civil rights and education invert reality. No one has the right to impose their religious beliefs on others, especially through government power.

The report’s attacks on policies addressing gender identity, public education and public health reveal its true agenda: elevating certain religious viewpoints above the rights and dignity of others — precisely what the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment forbids. Equally troubling is the report’s framing of routine legal and regulatory actions as persecution. The suggestion that enforcing the law against harassment at school board meetings or applying civil rights protections constitutes anti-religious bias is both misleading and dangerous.

FFRF warns that this report signals an escalation in the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to erode the separation between religion and government. It will continue to vigorously oppose efforts to misuse “religious liberty” to undermine true religious freedom, which protects civil rights for everyone and depends on secular governance.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 41,0000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

The post FFRF slams DOJ ‘Anti-Christian Bias’ report as politicized sham appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Freethought Radio – April 30, 2026

We hear excerpts of some of our favorite shows from the past two decades, including Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Ron Reagan, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sara Paretsky, Julia Sweeney, Daniel C. Dennett, Anne Gaylor, Cecile Richards, Ernie Chambers, Steve Benson, Anthony Pinn, Brent Michael Davids, Janeane Garofalo, Leighann Lord, Ann Druyan and Donald C. Johanson.

The post Freethought Radio – April 30, 2026 appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Don’t work tomorrow – stay home and enjoy the Freethought TV May Day Marathon!

If you’re staying home on May 1 in support of the May Day “No Kings, No Billionaires” economic blackout, Freethought TV has a special treat for you!

We’re bringing you 14 hours of irreverent, powerful, funny and heartwarming secular content! It’s all here – celebrity interviews, delightful animations, great speeches and toe-tapping musical events — all from a godless point of view. So don’t work and don’t shop. Just sit back and enjoy the best of Freethought TV, on the Freethought TV May Day Marathon!

The Freethought TV app is free, easy to install and includes user-friendly features such as closed captioning and customizable watchlists. For more information or to download the app, visit: freethoughttv.ffrf.org/

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

The post Don’t work tomorrow – stay home and enjoy the Freethought TV May Day Marathon! appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Ex-Spokane mayor demands $10M from city after backlash over extremist prayer rally

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The former mayor of Spokane, Washington is suing her own city for $10 million because people had the audacity to criticize her for sharing a stage with a Christian Nationalist and a domestic terrorist (two different people, in this case).

It’s all part of a complaint that’s been dragging on for nearly three years.

Back in August of 2023, Christian Nationalist and COVID super-spreader Sean Feucht staged a worship event in Spokane, Washington that was attended by city council candidate Jessica Yaeger, failed candidate Natalie Poulson, and then-Mayor Nadine Woodward. All three women received prayers on stage from Feucht and former state lawmaker Matt Shea.

“We’ve got an enemy we need to fight. His name is Satan,” Shea proclaimed. “Father God, we pray a blessing over the leaders you have chosen for this time. … Give them courage, your courage, to stand on the foundation—the rock of Jesus Christ. Give them, right now Lord, unwavering ability to speak the truth into the darkness, and no matter what anybody says around them, they will glorify, honor, and praise you in every single thing they do.”

“I’ve had the privilege to pray over many mayors and many governors and even the president,” Feucht then declared. “But not every city in the world has a prophetic history like Spokane. … I pray God that you would give this mayor and her family and her team and the pastors in this region, God, that you give them revelatory wisdom and insight on how to steward what you want to do in this region.”

Right Wing Watch pointed out that Feucht and Shea have a working relationship. Earlier that year, Feucht accepted an award from Shea on behalf of his On Fire Ministries. This particular event was a reunion of sorts.

But since Shea’s name was invoked, it’s worth mentioning why he was no longer a politician.

In 2018, after nearly a decade in office, the Spokesman-Review published a four-page document in which Shea discussed the “Biblical Basis for War.” One section listed a penalty for men guilty of breaking “biblical law”: “If they do not yield — kill all males.”

Shea quickly insisted the line was being taken out of context. Somehow. Still, the document led to him losing his role as chair of the state’s Republican caucus. In 2019, he was exposed for being part of a chat room in which he and his buddies discussed violently attacking their political enemies. He was also found to be part of a group that planned and participated in acts of domestic terrorism. He also proposed the creation of a 51st state just for Christians. And he was fined nearly $4,700 for dumping oil at the State Capitol, effectively vandalizing historic masonry, because he didn’t like how The Satanic Temple was protesting outside. Oh, and he’s a fan of white nationalists.

Republicans pushed for Shea to resign, but he never did. Instead, in mid-2020, he simply chose not to run for re-election. Perhaps he saw the writing on the wall that he would’ve been voted out and decided to quit instead.

But by 2023, like clockwork, he was running a ministry and wrapping himself in even more Jesus so he could keep pretending he’s a martyr for the cause.

That’s the guy Mayor Woodward decided to cozy up to on stage. As if Feucht wasn’t bad enough.

Hours after the event, facing immediate criticism, Mayor Woodward claimed the event had been “politicized” in a statement that deflected from her own actions. (This portion of her statement was buried underneath a larger statement about wildfires.)

… I am deeply disturbed that Matt Shea chose to politicize a gathering of thousands of citizens who joined together yesterday to pray for fire victims and first responders. I attended the event with one purpose only and that was to join with fellow citizens to begin the healing process.

Shea didn’t politicize the event. The event, like everything Feucht did, was political. It was a celebration of Christian Nationalism, and the mayor was all too happy to join in. How could you possibly go to any event with either of those two guys, then act surprised when they both did they very things they’re famous for?

The Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party only ever has one item on the agenda.

A second statement came out hours later:

“I did not seek, nor do I accept any support from Matt Shea. I am opposed to his political views as they are a threat to our democracy, and I regret my public appearance with him. I was invited to share in prayer with several thousand citizens out of heartfelt concern for fire victims, first responders and our whole community. I was not aware that he would be at the event last night and it only became apparent as I was walking on stage that he would be leading the prayer. I should have made better efforts to learn who would be speaking at the event.

There will be plenty of time to discuss political positions during the rest of this campaign. Now, as our region is hurting and our focus is on friends, neighbors, loved ones and the response effort, is not the time. All day yesterday not one fire victim or first responder asked me about my political views. But they did ask us to pray for them.”

If she saw him on stage, why didn’t she have the courage to condemn him there? Why not just leave? How do you show up to an event hosted by Shea’s ministry and not realize he might be there? Why was she okay with Sean Feucht being there?!

Her statements never answered any of those obvious questions and they were just the culmination of a slew of idiotic decisions that any politician of a big city could have avoided with an ounce of common sense. Furthermore, for someone who insisted she was deeply concerned about wildfires, the last thing that would help the people in her community was a prayer rally. If she wanted to thank first responders, she could have visited a fire department. She chose not to.

It didn’t help that the one person who insisted Woodward knew exactly what she was doing was Matt Shea himself:

This is an annual event planned months ago to worship Jesus. letusworship.us It wasn’t for “fire victims.” She was invited and she accepted BEFORE the fires started on Friday. However, we of course wanted to pray last night for all those who have lost everything and be there for them and also pray for our leaders. Praying for leaders, especially during a crisis, isn’t political it is Biblical. She is the one that politicized what everyone knows was a worship event. We are praying for Nadine.

I don’t say this often, but the Christian terrorist was right.

Woodward was lying. Which became a problem for her since she was running for re-election.

Ben Stuckart, a former Spokane City Council President who lost the 2019 mayoral race against Woodward, rightly pounced on her flimsy excuse:

“It’s just so disgusting,” Stuckart said. “If a Christian white nationalist asks you to stand up on stage and be prayed for, you say … ‘No,’ and you leave the room the moment you figure out that person is there.”

“You don’t go to white Christian nationalist events, put on by Christian nationalists and not expect the Christian nationalists to be there,” he said.

Stuckart called on Woodward to resign, saying she had irreparably damaged her legitimacy and sent a dangerous message to vulnerable and marginalized residents.

Woodward’s main opponent in the mayoral race, Lisa Brown, didn’t call on her to resign, but shared in the condemnation, saying Woodward “should be disavowing Matt Shea, an anti-woman anti-LGBTQ extremist, associated w political violence.”

They had a point. If you don’t have the courage to denounce white Christian Nationalism and two of the harmful movement’s leading proponents, then you have no business running a big city. The best-case situation for Woodward was that she prioritized public prayer over the people praying alongside her, but even that decision would be utterly pointless during an emergency. A better leader would’ve left the God-talk to everyone else while she took action. Instead, Woodward chose to pray with people who have spent their careers physically hurting or threatening the people around them. That’s where Jesus led her.

It created a problem for the elected officials closest to her, because they sure as hell didn’t want to be associated with any of this. So that September, the City Council passed a resolution denouncing Woodward’s actions that “associated her with former Washington State Representative and alleged domestic terrorist, Matt Shea, and known anti-LGBTQ extremist Sean Feucht.” It was a 4-3 vote. (You can read the full resolution on page 429 here.)

When the mayoral election took place that November, Woodward lost to Lisa Brown 48% to 37% (with other candidates picking up the rest of the votes). Brown remains the mayor of Spokane to this day while Woodward has spent the past few years on a vengeance tour (when she’s not selling real estate).

What does that look like in practice? Well, in mid-2024, she filed a claim—a predecessor to a lawsuit—against the city over that resolution, insisting it was an illegal attack on her free speech and an attempt to interfere with the election she eventually lost. She demanded they (a.k.a. the taxpayers) hand over $1.4 million to make up for it.

“A four member majority of the Spokane City Council, in violation of the state and federal constitution, ‘condemned’ speech by Woodward which speech is protected by the state and federal constitutions. The City Council did so with the intent of interfering with the then-upcoming mayoral election and promoting the candidacy of Woodward’s opponent,” she wrote in the claim. “The council’s violations of speech and association rights and election interference.”

According to the document, Woodward is prepared to settle with the city for $1.4 million.

The city never responded to that claim. So now Woodward is trying to wring even more cash from Spokane. (Or, as her lawyer explained to me, “I reviewed her earlier effort, and I revised her claims to what they should be, with proper damages given the number and the nature of the violations.”)

To that end, they just filed an amended claim demanding $10 million from the city because those council members supposedly destroyed her reputation:

Woodward says the city and the council members violated her constitutional rights with that resolution that that the actions “irreparably damaged and continues to damage Woodward in her professional and personal reputation.”

The claim says the city’s action “resulted in harassment..by the media, estrangement from her social group, supporters and neighbors, and loss of business and professional opportunities.”

It never seems to have occurred to her that, maybe, no one wants to be her friend or colleague because she’s going to prayer rallies hosted by the worst people, and that’s not the fault of anyone who points it out and condemns her for it. Anyone who willingly attends a Sean Feucht event, and anyone who receives prayers from a domestic terrorist, is already setting themselves up for criticism. The resolution simply put a city stamp on what many people in the community were already saying.

(For what it’s worth, Sean Feucht filed a lawsuit against the city for the same basic reasons, and a judge dismissed the case in 2025, saying there was no legal merit to it. Because of course there isn’t.)

Woodward says in the claim that she wants the resolution to be declared unconstitutional and vacated. As if anyone would even remember it if she didn’t keep drawing attention to it herself.

In the claim, Woodward asserts that the city’s actions “imposed a scarlet letter on [her], which took over the election cycle.”

“The legislative action required [Woodward] to divert all available resources and time to defending and defusing character assassination.”

The claim says Woodward “continues to suffer ongoing injury, including vitriol, backlash and threats, all of which has caused [Woodward] fear of physical harm.”

If Woodward didn’t want to be associated with Christian extremists, all she had to do was denounce Christian extremism, and Sean Feucht, and Matt Shea, and everything they stand for, and admit she was completely delusional to think her prayers were going to make a damn bit of difference in response to wildfires. And she should have done it all in real time instead of issuing a half-hearted apology to some of that only after she got caught.

Demanding millions of dollars because she doesn’t know how the Streisand effect works—and keeping this story front and center instead of moving on after her election loss—is like blaming your camera for an ugly selfie. Your anger is aimed in the wrong direction.

Woodward says the resolution violated her free speech rights, but no one was ever stopping her from attending the rally or participating in it. She’s mad because people didn’t like what she was doing and called her out on it. She’s upset that there are consequences to her actions. The Constitution doesn’t owe her praise no matter what ridiculous things she does. She fucked around; now she’s finding out.

Her lawyer didn’t make things any better by trying to equate free speech with consequences for that speech:

Neither federal nor state constitutions allow the legislature to punish its mayor for showing up and listening to whatever political or religious views are being discussed in our community, whether the mayor agrees with those views or not. That is the mayor’s job,” [Mary] Schultz told KREM 2. “Legislative bodies simply cannot legislate speech, and that is exactly what the City Council did.”

Again, they didn’t “legislate speech.” They didn’t even punish her. More importantly, she didn’t merely show up and listen. That makes it sound like she was randomly inside the building when a prayer circle just arose out of nowhere. The truth is she actively participated in an event run by extremists. The council members said they didn’t stand by what their mayor did, and they wanted the city to know she wasn’t speaking on their behalf. They didn’t prevent her from doing anything. She just mad because it turns out the people of Spokane aren’t fond of religious extremism and don’t want leaders who are.

For now, while a draft lawsuit has been written up, it hasn’t been formally filed. And if she wants to avoid further embarrassment, she’d be wise to just let this thing die instead of drawing more attention to her poor decision-making.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

Red Pen Logic Called This Atheist Argument Incoherent… He Was Wrong

The final report from Trump’s “Anti-Christian Bias” task force reveals… nothing

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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)

FFRF gets prayer box removed from Maryland high school

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s efforts persuaded Maryland’s Calvert County Public Schools to remove a box for religious prayers from one of its schools.

A concerned community member informed the state/church watchdog that Patuxent High School had a prayer box in the front office. The box had the verse from Matthew 11:28 written on top, along with a Latin cross.

FFRF took action to align the district with the Constitution.

“The district has a duty to ensure that its teachers and administrators are not using their positions to promote their personal religious beliefs to students,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Fellow Charlotte R. Gude wrote to the district.

FFRF pointed out that public schools may not show favoritism toward or coerce belief or participation in religion. Parents, not public school staff, have the constitutional right to guide their children’s religious or nonreligious upbringing. Teachers and administrators may not encourage students to pray. By having an official, school-sponsored prayer box, Patuxent High School, and thus the district, abridged that duty and needlessly marginalized those students and community members among the 38 percent of Americans who are non-Christian, including the 43 percent of Generation Z that is nonreligious.

FFRF is happy to report that the district did the right thing. Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome emailed FFRF after receiving the letter to confirm that the prayer box has been removed.

Whenever a school district makes the mistake of proselytizing students, FFRF will be sure to stand up for students’ right to freedom of conscience.

“Public high schools are not churches where ‘prayer boxes’ belong,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Our public schools exist to educate, not to indoctrinate in religion or to promote religious rituals such as prayer. We’re glad this school has taken corrective action to make it an inclusive and welcoming place for all students, regardless of their views on religion.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members across the country, including more than 800 members in Maryland. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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FFRF calls out Trump’s lies about shooter being ‘anti-Christian’

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is denouncing President Trump’s lie that the suspect in custody for attacking the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is “anti-Christian.”

“He had a lot of hatred in his heart for quite a while,” the president said during an appearance on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing.” “And he just, I don’t know. He just, it was a religious thing. It was strongly anti, anti-Christian.”

Au contraire, notes the largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics) in North America. Cole Allen is Christian, was active in a Christian campus organization and even cites his Christian beliefs in a manifesto that Trump also falsely mischaracterizes, saying, “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians.” Yet Allen even thanked his church and cited the bible in the writing.

CNN states, “Allen attended the California Institute of Technology from 2013-17, according to his LinkedIn profile, where he participated in the school’s Christian Fellowship organization and its Nerf Club, in which members armed with foam toys organized campus battles. Facebook photos from 2016 also show Allen at Christian Fellowship events at the school.”

The New York Times says, “Another fellowship member recalled that while Mr. Allen was generally quiet and studious, he was not shy about defending his own interpretation of his faith.” The Times quotes fellowship member Elizabeth Terlinden: “He was definitely a strong believer in evangelical Christianity at the time that I knew him.”

Newsweek reports that Allen “had deep roots in the Christian community,” was active in the Caltech Christian fellowships and even served as a large-group coordinator of discussions on the Apostles’ Creed. “His father, Thomas Allen, is a ruling elder at Grace United Reformed Church in Torrance, a congregation in the United Reformed Churches of North America,” the magazine adds.

We also know already that in his manifesto of more than 1,000 words, Allen gave what Newsweek calls “religious reasoning.” Newsweek writes, “He cited Scripture throughout and argued that Christians have a moral obligation to resist unjust authority through force.” Newsweek cites a theologian quick to deny there are any germs of violence in Christian teaching, but quotes Drew University Ethics Professor Darrell Cole saying that Allen’s interpretation, in asserting that one doesn’t have to “turn the other cheek” in the face of injustice, contains a kernel of legitimate Christian teaching. Allen also contends in his manifesto that the counsel to “render unto Caesar” applies to obeying legitimate civil authority rather than unlawful orders. Theological debates aside, as Newsweek writer Jesus Mesa notes, “What remains clear to the theologians interviewed is that Allen was not foreign to Christianity. He drew on real Christian traditions, misapplied them, and acted in isolation from the very communities those traditions require.”

Unfortunately, some media are casually repeating Trump’s assertions as gospel truth, such as this news story out of Utah reporting as a “key takeaway” that “suspect Cole Tomas Allen … wrote anti-Christian manifesto.” It’s now all over the internet and social media that an “anti-Christian manifesto” was found, when, in fact, the suspect explicitly cited his Christian beliefs as a rationale for his attack.

“Trump isn’t just distorting the facts, he’s lying about them,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Given the White House’s national security directive from last year falsely blaming terrorism on ‘anti-Christianity’ and ‘hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality,’ such a perversion of the truth seems calculated to scapegoat nonbelievers and non-Christians.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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