US President Donald Trump on Thursday vowed to free churches and other tax-exempt institutions of a 1954 US law banning political activity, drawing fire from critics who accused him of rewarding his evangelical Christian supporters and turning houses of worship into political machines.
As Trump used a prayer breakfast to take aim at a long-standing statutory barrier between politics and religion called the Johnson Amendment, civil liberties and gay rights groups expressed concern that he might consider an executive order to allow government agencies and businesses to deny services to gay people in the name of religious freedom.
TAX-EXEMPT
Trump did not reference such an order in his remarks, but he lambasted the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations such as churches and other places of worship, charities and educational institutions from directly or indirectly participating in any political campaign in favor or against a political candidate.
“I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember,” Trump told US politicians, religious leaders and guests, including Jordanian King Abdullah, at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Trump wanted to find ways to make sure people were not penalized for following through on their religious beliefs.
A draft executive order on “religious freedom” circulating among advocacy groups would allow government officials to deny marriage licenses to gay couples and let businesses withhold services from gay people, activists said.
The White House said it was not working on such an order.
Trump previously spoke out against the Johnson Amendment during the campaign and won the support of evangelical Christian leaders, including Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr.
A change in the law would require action in the Republican-led US Congress, and Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would reverse the policy.
After Trump’s remarks, US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters he has “always supported” eliminating the Johnson Amendment.
Critics — including the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State — voiced alarm.
“President Donald Trump and his allies in the religious right seek to turn America’s houses of worship into miniature political action committees,” group executive director Barry Lynn said.
“It would also lead some houses of worship to focus on supporting candidates in exchange for financial and other aid. That would be a disaster for both churches and politics in America,” Lynn said.
Peter Montgomery of the liberal advocacy group People For the American Way said Trump wants to pay back religious conservatives who helped get him elected “by letting them turn their churches into political machines with tax-exempt charitable dollars.”
Scrapping the Johnson Amendment has been a goal of Christian conservatives, who contend it violates free speech and religious freedom rights. The US Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion and bars the government from establishing an official religion.
“We are encouraged to see that President Trump understands the very real constitutional violation posed by the Johnson Amendment and that he is committed to restoring a pastor’s right to speak freely from the pulpit without fearing government retribution,” said Erik Stanley, senior counsel for the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
THE FIXER
Trump a week ago put a 120-day halt on the US refugee program, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Trump on Thursday defended his directive as crucial to ensuring religious freedom and tolerance in the US, and said he wanted to prevent a “beachhead of intolerance” from spreading in the nation.
He also called terrorism a fundamental threat to religious freedom.
“The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out. OK? That’s what I do. I fix things,” he said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.