On the National Mall, Trump Admin Attempts to Erase Distinction Between Church and State
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration will host an all-day Christian prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday, dispatching cabinet secretaries and far-right evangelicals to
“Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” on the National Mall. Nearly all of the speakers at the event are evangelical Christians, and all appear to be in line with Trump’s political views.
The event is scheduled to feature speeches by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. The event was announced by President Trump in February, and is included in a White House-endorsed celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Several cabinet secretaries, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have endorsed this event on their Instagram pages.
Speakers include far-right preachers who have expressed extreme anti LGBTQ+ views and disdain for other religious traditions, including Lou Engle, Robert Jeffress, and Paula White-Cain, a Christian nationalist who runs the White House Faith Office and recently compared Trump to Jesus.
The event is sponsored by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership that amounts to a Trump-approved, MAGA convenor of events to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Corporate sponsors of Freedom 250 include: Deloitte, ExxonMobil, John Deere, Lockheed Martin, MasterCard, Oracle and Palantir.
“This outrageous event makes a mockery of a core constitutional tenet of American life, the separation of church and state, essentially promoting a particular flavor of white evangelical protestantism as state-sponsored religion,” said Public Citizen Co-President Robert Weissman. “This self-proclaimed day of thanksgiving torpedoes the best of American traditions – inclusivity and diversity – and has no place being connected to the U.S. government.
“The corporate sponsors of Freedom 250 may want to curry favor with the Trump administration,but they should be forced to answer whether they support the extreme agenda they are celebrating,” Weissman added.