Trump Attacks on Faith Communities Tracker

Interfaith Alliance issued a memo on February 5, 2025, detailing the Trump administration’s attacks on faith communities in the first days of the administration. We continue to add to the list, as thousands of people of faith sign our petition to call on the Trump administration to end the attacks.

The religious right has cried wolf for decades about “government overreach” and “the Left” attacking religious institutions. We are now actually witnessing the federal government marshaling resources to attack individual faith leaders and major religious institutions. The Trump administration is quickly becoming the most harmful to religious freedom in modern American history.

January 20, 2025

• On the first day in office, the Trump administration announced a 90 pause on foreign assistance, which would hinder the life-saving efforts of faith-based relief agencies. USAID’s top NGO nonmilitary foreign assistance grant recipient over fiscal years 2013-2022 was Catholic Relief Services ($4.6 billion), while the Christian relief group World Vision received $1.2 billion.

• Starting on January 20, the Trump administration issued executive orders attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. This will have a far-reaching impact on religious communities. For example, a Christian affinity group formed during the first Trump administration at the U.S. Department of State has suspended its operations in response to the anti-DEI executive order.

January 21, 2025

• The Trump administration rescinded ICE and CBP guidance that prevented armed government agents from entering houses of worship without prior authorization. Desecrating houses of worship with immigration raids is a direct affront to the values of diverse religious communities. A group of Quakers, Baptists, and Sikhs are suing the administration on religious freedom grounds, as are a separate group of more than two dozen religious groups. The top Southern Baptist public policy official warned that the policy change will also cause immigrants to “be fearful to attend our churches, and our central mission of Gospel proclamation and biblical formation will be inhibited.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints issued a rare public policy statement declaring that “We follow Jesus Christ by loving our neighbors. The Savior taught that the meaning of ‘neighbor’ includes all of God’s children.”

• The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of Washington for The Episcopal Church, included a plea for mercy for immigrants and the LGBTQ community in her sermon at the Washington National Cathedral’s inaugural prayer service on January 21, 2025. President Trump used the immense force of the presidency to single out Bishop Budde on social media and his allies in Congress drafted a resolution to condemn her. These attacks have predictably led to an onslaught of harassment, and even death threats, from members of the public.

January 26, 2025

• Vice President J.D. Vance delivered one of the ugliest attacks on the Catholic Church by a political leader in modern American history. He suggested that Catholic bishops are out for financial gain rather than serving the vulnerable. In an extremely rare move, Pope Francis appeared to specifically rebuke Vance.

January 27, 2025

• OMB issued a memo freezing funds across the federal government, whichwould have terrible consequences for religious institutions, including those that depend on funds from the Department of Homeland Security’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program. It was later blocked by a federal judge and rescinded by the administration.

January 29, 2025

• President Trump issued an executive action allegedly aimed at addressing antisemitism, with an accompanying fact sheet filled with Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. He describes college students who engaged in pro-Palestinian activism as “jihadists” who have “infested” college campuses and as “terrorists,” and the immigrants among them are referred to as “aliens.” Multiple Jewish organizations issued statements voicing alarm at Trump’s “dehumanizing anti-immigrant policies,” stoking a “climate of fear,” and cautioning that “antisemitism should never be weaponized.”

February 2, 2025

• Elon Musk, whose own companies receive billions of taxpayer dollars, singled out Lutheran-affiliated social service agencies and falsely accused them of illegality. Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, issued a strong denunciation of the attacks and referenced a Roman Empire persecution of Christians in 258. Musk’s attacks on the Lutheran-affiliated social service agencies followed what appeared to be a Nazi salute, followed by Holocaust jokes intimidating the Jewish community. Musk also appeared virtually at an event for a far-right German party and urged them to “move beyond” guilt over the Holocaust.

February 3, 2025

• The Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs will have a far-reaching impact on religious communities. For example, a Christian affinity group formed during the first Trump administration at the U.S. Department of State has suspended its operations in response to the anti-DEI executive order.

February 10, 2025

• Three faith-based, refugee-serving organizations (Church World Service, HIAS, and Lutheran Community Services Northwest) filed the first lawsuit challenging Trump’s suspension of the Congressionally-mandated U.S. refugee resettlement program.

These attacks on religious institutions are meant to have a chilling effect on faith leaders' religious freedom to hold governments accountable. Authoritarians around the world and throughout history have attempted to force faith communities to serve their regimes. Yet we also know that faith-based activism is a powerful counterforce to extremism, and acts of religious resistance to the Trump administration are inspiring others to speak out and denounce these measures.

This list was last updated on February 13, 2025.