A Trump administration task force report accuses the Biden administration of systematically targeting traditional Christians and cites what it describes as hundreds of cases as evidence.
The 200-page document published Thursday bolsters complaints by faith groups that the Biden team weaponized the levers of power against those it labeled “Christian nationalists” and “domestic terrorists” for protesting abortion and transgender identity.
Although the Biden team tolerated private religious expression, the report found that it “zealously” worked to keep Christians out of the public square and even surveilled traditionalist Catholic priests.
“No American should live in fear that the federal government will punish them for their faith,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the task force’s chair, said in a statement. “As our report lays out, the Biden Administration’s actions devastated the lives of many Christian Americans.”
Mr. Blanche insisted that the Trump administration ended those policies. He promised that the Justice Department would “continue to expose bad actors who targeted Christians and work tirelessly to restore religious liberty for all Americans of faith.”
The Justice Department worked with the Education Department to coordinate the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. The Education Department cited “excessive fines levied against Christian universities, intrusions by men into girls’ sports and locker rooms, vaccine mandates, and the exclusion of Christians from public programs.”
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President Trump established the task force in a February 2025 executive order that tasked it with documenting anti-Christian policies and recommending ways to reverse them.
“Every American deserves equal treatment under the law, but we continue to discover the magnitude of the Biden Administration’s gross iniquities and flagrant violations of religious liberty, particularly targeting Christians,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.
The task force included representatives from 17 federal agencies who worked with state agencies and faith leaders to compile documents. The final product included more than 300 pages of exhibits and 1,100 footnotes.
The report did not include policy recommendations, deferring those to a planned 2027 follow-up.
Echoing Mr. Blanche, Ms. McMahon praised the Trump team for taking ’historic steps’ to ’reaffirm the rights of parents’ and push back against Biden-era enforcement.
For example, the Trump Education Department lifted a record $37.7 million fine that the Biden team levied against Grand Canyon University for acting as a “predatory for-profit institution,” despite several agencies recognizing the Arizona Christian school’s nonprofit status.
Other cases cited in the report include the Trump team’s abolition of the Biden Education Department’s “book ban coordinator.” This role targeted parents who sought to remove sexually explicit books from school libraries. The Trump team also ended pressure on schools to let children switch genders without informing their parents.
Several Christian advocacy groups praised the report as a validation of the religious liberty concerns they had tracked and fought in lawsuits during President Biden’s four years in office.
“It proves that the Biden team was out to punish Catholics whom they differed with,” said Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who said he provided “a trove of documents” to the task force.
’Refreshing to see’
The Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Judeo-Christian think tank, also welcomed the report.
Responding to the task force’s call for documentation, the center criticized Mr. Biden in an October report as a Catholic who deliberately flouted church teachings on abortion and gender identity.
“It’s refreshing to see the Trump administration take seriously the harms caused by the Biden administration and reaffirm America’s foundational promise to religious liberty,” Rachel Morrison, a fellow at the center, said in an email.
The report cited several cases from the First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based Christian law firm that often clashed with the Biden administration in court over religious liberty issues.
The group praised Mr. Trump for pardoning 23 pro-life activists whom the Biden Department of Justice had convicted of obstructing access to abortion clinics under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits physical obstruction and force at reproductive health and religious facilities.
“The Biden administration’s record of hostility toward Christian Americans is despicable and should serve as a warning,” Kelly Shackelford, First Liberty’s CEO and chief counsel, said in a statement. “We can never let this happen again.”
Some Christian groups pushed back against the report’s failure to include policy recommendations that could prevent the same issues from recurring.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, noted in a statement that his evangelical group “tracked hundreds of incidents of churches being firebombed, attacked, and vandalized” as the Biden administration focused on “imprisoning grandmothers praying outside of abortion centers.”
“Now is the time to take this insight and put in safeguards at the federal, state, and local levels that will prevent future Democrat administrations from hollowing out the First Amendment, making it difficult for them to pervert America,” said Mr. Perkins, a Southern Baptist pastor and former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
’Politicized grandstanding’
Some religious analysts went further. They accused the task force report of posturing for political advantage rather than proposing policy solutions.
“I have no doubt there is some truth in some of these claims, but mostly it feels like over-the-top politicized grandstanding,” said Christian Smith, a sociologist emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. “Nothing about the Trump administration reflects careful, balanced corrections of past problems.”
Others emphasized the report’s use of broad strokes and its failure to offer remedies for specific concerns.
“While the Biden administration did some stupid things, the Trump administration responds with a sledgehammer when a scalpel would be appropriate,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit priest and analyst at Religion News Service.
Tricia Bruce, a Catholic sociologist affiliated with multiple institutions, said the report seems primarily aimed at reassuring traditional believers that the Trump team is on their side.
She pointed to a Pew Research Center estimate that 62% of Americans identified as Christian in 2023-2024, down significantly from 78% in 2007.
“As Christians comprise a decreasing proportion of the U.S. religious landscape, this positions some on the defensive to protect what feels most valuable,” Ms. Bruce said. “Their actions are as much about upholding religious freedom as they are about fears and uncertainty as to how to coexist in an increasingly religiously plural nation.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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