WASHINGTON (OSV News) — President Donald Trump said in remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 6 that he would create a task force, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, to investigate “anti-Christian” bias in the federal government.
In dual remarks at the event, first at the U.S. Capitol and then across town at the Washington Hilton, Trump said he would establish a presidential commission on religious liberty that “will work tirelessly to uphold this most fundamental right.”
The president also said he would sign an executive order to make Bondi head of a task force “to immediately hold all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ — which was absolutely terrible — the IRS, the FBI and other agencies.”
Trump has long taken aim at some Biden administration policies he argued “weaponized” the Department of Justice, including Trump’s own prosecution on charges related to his alleged conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and other alleged misconduct.
Among his first actions in office, Trump issued pardons for 23 pro-life activists he said were improperly prosecuted by the Biden administration under the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The FACE Act prohibits actions including obstructing the entrance to an abortion clinic. Trump cited those convictions as examples of such bias.
The president’s comments came as his administration has openly feuded with the Catholic Church’s bishops and ministries, as well as other Christian groups, over immigration policy and the church’s ministry to unauthorized immigrants, and U.S. foreign aid work.
World Relief, an evangelical charity organization, called itself “heartbroken” by stop-work orders on its federally-funded partnerships with the U.S. government, including one it received following the potential closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID.
Other faith-based groups impacted by a freeze on foreign assistance funding include Samaritan’s Purse and Catholic Relief Services, the overseas charitable arm of the Catholic Church in the U.S.
Assassination attempt ‘changed something in me’
At the prayer breakfast, Trump shared that his own views on religion had changed in the wake of the July assassination attempt against him.
“It changed something in me, I feel,” Trump said of the nearly fatal incident on the campaign trail in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I feel even stronger,” he said. “I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.”
In other comments, Trump suggested he has plans to overhaul the air traffic control system following a deadly plane collision in the nation’s capital Jan. 29.
For many years, the National Prayer Breakfast was organized by the International Foundation, a Christian group that also used the name the Fellowship Foundation, sometimes the nickname “The Family.”
In 2023, the event was reorganized following concerns from some lawmakers that the event was becoming too divisive after several controversial moments at the annual gathering. One such moment took place in 2013 when Dr. Ben Carson delivered remarks criticizing then-President Barack Obama’s health care policies while he was sitting nearby.
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
