Federal Register Vol. 90, No. 28 Wednesday, Feburary 12, 2025 |
Presidential Documents |
|
Title 3— The President
|
Executive Order 14202 of February 6, 2025 Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose and Policy. It is the policy of the United States, and the purpose of this order, to protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government. The Founders established a Nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government. For that reason, the United States Constitution enshrines the fundamental right to religious liberty in the First Amendment. Federal laws like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq.), further prohibit government interference with Americans’ rights to exercise their religion. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.), prohibits religious discrimination in employment while Federal hate-crime laws prohibit offenses committed due to religious animus. Yet the previous Administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses. The Biden Department of Justice sought to squelch faith in the public square by bringing Federal criminal charges and obtaining in numerous cases multi-year prison sentences against nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities. Those convicted included a Catholic priest and 75-year-old grandmother, as well as an 87-year-old woman and a father of 11 children who were arrested 18 months after praying and singing hymns outside an abortion facility in Tennessee as a part of a politically motivated prosecution campaign by the Biden Administration. I rectified this injustice on January 23, 2025, by issuing pardons in these cases. At the same time, Catholic churches, charities, and pro-life centers sought justice for violence, theft, and arson perpetrated against them, which the Biden Department of Justice largely ignored. After more than 100 attacks, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning this violence and calling on the Biden Administration to enforce the law. Then, in 2023, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) memorandum asserted that "radical-traditionalist" Catholics were domestic-terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as "threat mitigation." This laterretracted FBI memorandum cited as support evidence propaganda from highly partisan sources. The Biden Department of Education sought to repeal religious-liberty protections for faith-based organizations on college campuses. The Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith. And the Biden Department of Health and Human Services sought to drive Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the fostercare system. The Biden Administration declared March 31, 2024—Easter Sunday—as "Transgender Day of Visibility." In this atmosphere of anti-Christian government, hostility and vandalism against Christian churches and places of worship surged, with the number of such identified acts in 2023 exceeding by more than eight times the |
