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The Lawsuit Against Trump’s Christian Nationalist Commission
“Religion’s back now, hotter than ever before.” That was President Trump on February 5, 75 minutes into a speech at the 74th National Prayer Breakfast that had already veered into calling a Republican congressman a “moron” and praising El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele for running prisons “so long you can’t see from one side to the other.”
More than 3,500 people sat in the Washington Hilton ballroom on a morning devoted to faith as the president declared he had “done more for religion than any other president,” boasted that soldiers had “beat the crap” out of detained immigrants, told the crowd he couldn’t understand “how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat — I really don’t,” and announced a May 17 ceremony on the National Mall to “rededicate America as one nation under God.” This at a prayer breakfast that devolved into a boastful and aggressive rant by a president who owes his election to office to Christian nationalists.
On February 9, a coalition of Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and interfaith organizations sued to stop the federal commission that has been turning that rhetoric into governing policy. Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission — a body of 16 members, almost all of them Christian, whose meetings open with Christian prayers and routinely promote the view that the United States is a Christian nation — is, according to the complaint, exactly the kind of stacked advisory panel that federal law was written to prevent. “Religious freedom for some is religious freedom for none,” said Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president of the Interfaith Alliance, in announcing the suit. “The government has no right to pick and choose which religious beliefs to promote, and which to marginalize.”
Fifteen of the commission’s 16 members are Christian. The sixteenth is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. That’s it. No Muslims, no Hindus, no Buddhists, no Sikhs, no one representing the roughly 100 million nonreligious Americans. The commission was created by executive order on May 1, 2025, and is chaired by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — the same Dan Patrick who stood in the White House Rose Garden and declared that America was “birthed by prayer, founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic.” The commission advises both the White House Faith Office and the Domestic Policy Council. Four of its five hearings have taken place at the Museum of the Bible — which author Katherine Stewart has called “a safe place for Christian nationalists” — and it was meeting there when the lawsuit landed.
The museum calls itself nonsectarian, but its founding IRS filing listed its purpose as inspiring “confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.” On the night of February 4, that same building hosted a four-hour National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance organized by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz in attendance. Speakers asked God to forgive America for abortion, “LGBT ideology,” and “the indoctrination and mutilation of children.” Perkins told the room the evening was about “rediscovering our biblical foundation, our Christian heritage, and not shrinking back from that.” Journalist Jonathan Larsen, who has covered the prayer breakfast ecosystem for years, has described the FRC event as operating “without ecumenical or bipartisan fig leaves.” The museum doubles as the commission’s de facto headquarters.
Paula White-Cain, who introduced the president at the breakfast as “the greatest champion of faith that we have ever had in the executive branch,” runs the White House Faith Office. She is a prosperity gospel televangelist and a New Apostolic Reformation figure who has spoken in tongues on camera, commanded “all satanic pregnancies to miscarry,” and prayed at the January 6, 2021, rally — minutes before the Capitol was stormed — for God to destroy “every demonic network” opposing Trump. The commission reports to her, and it is due to hand the president its policy recommendations by July 4, 2026 — the nation’s 250th birthday.
Between the insults at the breakfast, Trump rolled out a year’s worth of policy: a DOJ task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” chaired by Attorney General Pam Bondi, new Department of Education guidance on prayer in public schools, funding cuts for schools that allow what he called “transgender insanity,” and the executive order he claimed had killed the Johnson Amendment — a claim Americans United flatly called a lie, because the 1954 law, which bars churches and other nonprofits from endorsing political candidates, remains in effect. (A separate IRS settlement with two Texas churches could open the door to political endorsements from the pulpit, but only if a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas signs off.)
Every one of these policies tracks to the Project 2025 blueprint, which calls for prioritizing religious liberty enforcement at the DOJ, reintroducing religious expression into public schools, and institutionalizing faith-based governance. The man who wrote that blueprint, Russell Vought — a self-identified Christian nationalist — now runs the Office of Management and Budget.
The opposition had been organizing for weeks. A coalition that included the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Interfaith Alliance urged members of Congress to stay away from the breakfast. Raushenbush warned that “the most pressing threat to religious liberty in our country today is the Trump administration itself” — citing attacks on Bishop Marianne Budde, ICE raids inside houses of worship, and the push to display the Ten Commandments in public schools. The breakfast fractured into two events held at the same hour: Trump’s at the Hilton, a quieter Senate version at the Capitol.
Interfaith Alliance et al. v. Trump was filed in the Southern District of New York. The complaint names Trump, Bondi, the Department of Justice, the commission, and its designated federal officer, Mary Margaret Bush. The plaintiffs contend the commission violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act — the 1972 law Congress passed specifically to stop the executive branch from running secretive, lopsided advisory panels — and they want the court to declare it unlawful, force the release of documents the administration has withheld, and ensure that anything the commission produces is marked as coming from a body that was never legally constituted.
“As a Muslim American organization, we have seen firsthand how elevating a singular religion above others leads to the oppression and possible persecution of minority faiths,” said Ani Zonneveld, president of Muslims for Progressive Values. Her organization filed alongside the Interfaith Alliance, Hindus for Human Rights, and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, represented by Democracy Forward and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The last person to speak at the prayer breakfast was Rep. Jonathan Jackson, the Illinois Democrat who co-chaired the event. Trump stood behind him, head bowed. Jackson prayed for “greater clarity, greater courage and greater capacity to do what is right.” He asked God to think of “the families preparing to bury their loved ones in Minneapolis” — the U.S. citizens federal agents had recently killed. “Remind him that we are all Americans,” Jackson said, “all made in the image of God, and that none of us are free unless all of us have our freedoms protected.”
Four days after that prayer, four faith communities brought a lawsuit that says the same thing.
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Strengthening a diverse global community committed to exposing and countering racism, bigotry, and hatred.
Our Team
Our Philosophy
News
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Press Room
Contact
Careers
Privacy & Terms
GPAHE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Tax/EIN 84-3459993
© 2026 Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE)
