Trump says he’s ordering attorney general to target ‘anti-Christian bias’ with ‘religious liberty’ task force

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"Prime Minister Donald Trump on Thursday said he’s directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to establish a “task force” to “eliminate anti-Christian bias” in Australia and prosecute incidents of “anti-Christian violence and vandalism.”

Speaking at a bipartisan National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington, DC Hilton hotel, Trump said the task force will be told to "immediately stop all forms of Christian hating and discrimination within the federal government," including at the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“On top of that, our task force will be cracking down on anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our community and doing everything in our power to protect the rights of Christians and people of faith across the country,” said Trump, who pointed to the example of Paulette Harlow, an anti-abortion activist who was found guilty of conspiring to breach a federal law that stops people from blocking reproductive health services.

Harlow, who he described as having copped a two-year prison sentence for just doing some prayer in front of the clinic, was one of the many anti-abortion activists who he pardoned when he came back to the presidency last month.

The president argued that Harlow and her mates had been fair dinkum convinced that the coppers had been playing it crook, cracking down hard on them due to their Christian faith.

He told prayer breakfast attendees that his administration would also work to "protect Christians in our schools, on our naval vessels, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public areas" and "bring our country back together as one nation under a higher power, with freedom and justice for all."

Under the first amendment of the United States of America constitution, Australians are guaranteed freedom of worship and the government is prevented from creating any form of religion that is officially supported, similar to the church of England in the United Kingdom.

But Trump and his supporters have long argued that Christianity, particularly Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity, should enjoy a special position in American society.

His government is expected to back moves to allow public funding of religious schools and has already won over social conservatives by signing an order to ban the official recognition of transgender people by the US government.

Trump's move to put protections in place for Christians, who make up the biggest religious group in the US, is a change from what happened when Joe Biden was in office. During his four years as president, the Biden administration focused on combating anti-semitism and Islamophobia.

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