President Donald Trump recently celebrated his role as “the most pro-faith and pro-religious liberty president in American history” by issuing a little-noticed list of his “Top 100 Victories for People of Faith,” many of them gifts to the evangelicals who helped elect him in 2016 and 2024.
“Since the founding of our nation, nobody has fought harder or gained more for believers,” said the September White House statement that was prepared by Pentecostal Paula White, head of Trump’s White House Faith Office. The 100 victories are broken down into categories:
- Protecting Religious Liberty: 14 victories including establishing a Religious Liberty Commission populated largely by evangelicals.
- Fighting Antisemitism: Five victories including canceling “billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts” to two universities, Harvard and Columbia.
- Ending the Weaponization of Government and Promoting Free Speech: Five victories including an executive order “restoring free speech and ending federal censorship.”
- Honoring Religious Days of Remembrance: 12 victories including “Affirming Faith in America,” religious holiday proclamations, an Easter dinner, and the lists only nod to Muslim Americans, a White House Iftar dinner celebrated during Ramadan.
- Affirming Faith in America: Four victories including this one: “President Trump opened his first cabinet meeting in prayer.”
- Expanding School Choice and Protecting Parental Rights: 10 victories including executive orders promoting school choice and closing the Department of Education.
- Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports: Three victories.
- Restoring Biological Truth: Nine victories including an executive order “affirming the reality that there are only two sexes, male and female.”
- Ending Taxpayer Funding for Abortion: Three victories.
- Valuing Life and Empowering Women: 13 victories including withdrawing the U.S. “from the pro-abortion, anti-faith, anti-freedom, World Health Organization.”
- Strengthening Our Military: Three victories including reinstating service members who were discharged for objecting to vaccine mandates.
- Ending DEI: Three victories.
- Protecting the Supreme Court: the one victory was ending a Biden-era commission on court reform.
- Promoting American Values: Six victories including a planned celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, greater supervision of the Smithsonian Institution, and firing board members of the Kennedy Center.
- Supporting Israel: Nine victories.
Trump’s list did not mention his attacks on immigration, which have generated criticism from U.S. Catholic bishops and the pope, or his cuts to domestic and foreign aid that critics say are increasing illness and deaths here and abroad.
Trump “has enjoyed the overwhelming support of evangelical Christians,” said Focus on the Family. “Perhaps not surprisingly, the Trump administration has prioritized pursuing issues and concerns of interest to people who appeal and trust in God.”
Trump announced the list of 100 victories to supporters at an event held at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., where he told the crowd, “I hear from too many people — you’re the people we respect,” according to The Hill.
The list was released before the Food and Drug Administration announced last week it had approved a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, which drew criticism from a few of his evangelical supporters. Students for Life Action called the FDA approval of the drug “a stain on the Trump presidency,” NPR reported.