“Pro-family” groups are praising President Donald Trump for issuing executive orders that support their conservative agenda:
- Recognizing only “two sexes: male and female”
- Terminating DEI programs in the federal government
- Withdrawing from international organizations that allegedly threaten U.S. sovereignty (the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement on climate)
- Freeing January 6 “patriots” and “hostages” who attacked the Capitol after Trump refused to admit he lost the 2020 election
- Using the military to limit immigration
- And “drill, baby drill”
Gary Bauer
Trump’s inauguration was “more than just the legal transfer of power that occurs with every new president,” said Gary Bauer of the James Dobson Family Institute. “This was a shift of fundamental values — away from the secular globalism of the last four years to Christian reform and rebuilding.”
“Your country, your convictions and your ability to live — unapologetically — by common sense and biological facts, have been given back to you this week,” said Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen. “Redemption does not come through elections, but renewal can be expressed through them.”
“Now is the time to once again start living in unapologetic confidence in truth and reality,” Focus said. “None of us should ever be bullied for our deepest convictions just because some authority tells us it’s mis- or disinformation.”
Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins sees good times ahead but says Christian activists must remain vigilant.
“We won this battle, but the war is still raging.”
“After years of seeing the erosion of our freedoms, the sanctity of life, and the foundation of the family, this moment brings renewed hope,” he said. “We won this battle, but the war is still raging.”
God saves Trump again
Focus on the Family claims the God who saved Trump from assassination attempts may have saved him again on Monday by sending cold weather to D.C. on inauguration day:
“Given the two previous attempts on President-elect Trump’s life, as well as the ongoing tension swirling around the world, could the Lord be using this brutal, anticipated below-freezing weather, to change the venue, thwart evil plans, and save the incoming president’s life? Could he be orchestrating the circumstances to spare someone or various people in the crowd?”
January 6 pardons
John Thune
Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson — two Focus-aligned Republicans — said they were opposed to Trump pardoning people who had used violence during the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Both quickly fell in line, however, after Trump did just that with an executive order.
“I think what was made clear all along is that peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished,” Johnson said. “We move forward. … We’re not looking backward.”
Thune agreed, saying he was not “looking backward.”
On Wednesday, Johnson announced a new select subcommittee to investigate the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Subcommittee chairman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia has previously questioned “false narratives” of last term’s January 6 subcommittee.
Freshman Sen. Jim Banks, who previously worked for Focus on the Family’s in-house Public Policy Department, said on X, “It’s a disgrace how all of these people were treated and the outcome of the election was the American people saying loud and clear that that was wrong.”
Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus
Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., and 19 congressional Christians and Jews launched the Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus last week.
Tenney is known for her unsuccessful 2024 bill, the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” which would require the U.S. to use the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of the currently used West Bank. She says the term “West Bank” delegitimizes Israel’s historical claim to that land.
“Names matter,” said the Family Research Council, which supports the effort. “‘West Bank’ sounds nice and clinical — straight out of the geography department. But it’s the shapeless lack of content that allows it to be molded into an ahistorical political weapon against the history of the Jewish people in their (and our) Holy Land.”
Evangelical Christian celebrity Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick as his Ambassador to Israel, is expected to support the caucus’ efforts to rename key features of the Middle East. Huckabee previously claimed that there’s “no such thing as a Palestinian.”
Not real Christians
Family Research Council says no one should believe it when Democrats in Congress say they are Christians.
Joseph Backholm
“The fact that most Democrats identify as Christians shouldn’t be surprising, said Joseph Backholm, FRC’s senior fellow for biblical worldview and strategic engagement. “Claiming to be an atheist or agnostic has long been a political liability, so politicians are generally advised to claim some kind of religious affiliation. … It’s almost like virtue signaling in a way.”
He added: “But the greater concern is those who honor God with their lips, but their heart is far from him.”
A second FRC spokesman agreed that Democratic leaders claiming faith are only cultural Christians, not true believers.
“For many, it is also undoubtedly true that ‘Christian’ now refers to more of a cultural or social identity, rather than any meaningful moral or theological commitments or conviction,” said David Closson, FRC’s director of the Center for Biblical Worldview.
Abortion
“Pro-family” groups initially opposed Donald Trump in 2016 before helping him win that election. In 2020, they hailed him as America’s “most pro-life president” and continued to support him even after he pushed the GOP to abandon its decades-long commitment to a “pro-life” platform.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has embraced a variety of stances on abortion, but anti-abortion groups now say he has pledged to enact the Trump administration’s anti-abortion policies.
Some pro-family groups now focus on transgender issues more than abortion.
Teen porn use leads to ‘transgenderism’
In addition to Trump’s executive order on “two sexes,” he issued orders that revoke transgender people’s ability to serve in the military and remove protections for trans people incarcerated in federal prisons.
Pro-family groups have promoted legislation limiting transgender freedoms as well as legislation limiting access to pornography. Now they say porn and “transgenderism” are linked, according to the Family Research Council article, “Rising Porn Use among Teens Contributes to Increasing Transgenderism, Say Experts.”
The article failed to cite a single expert who supported this claim.
FRC reported: “A growing number of experts and parents are pointing out that the increasingly deviant, violent and traumatizing content depicted in pornography is likely contributing to the rise in minors identifying as transgender.”
But the article failed to cite a single expert who supported this claim. It did cite “one personal testimony written by an anonymous parent of a 13-year-old girl.”
‘God save the king’
Perhaps the most ardent praise for Trump 2.0 came from The Stream, Texas televangelist James Robison’s “source for breaking news, analysis and inspiration.” Senior Editor John Zmirak greeted Trump’s inauguration with cries of “God save the king!”
He wrote: “The second inauguration of President Donald Trump, after he won a total of three U.S. elections, was not quite what I might dream of. But that’s because my dreams entail the coronation of a Habsburg to reign over a tolerant but decisively Christian empire.”
Zmirak believes Trump will be a vast improvement from “what we’ve been subjected to over the last four years: the squalor, lies, perversion and tyranny that have been forcibly injected into our every national orifice since the Democrats and the Deep State seized power in 2020 and effected the closest thing to a fascist dictatorship our country has ever seen.”
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