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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
BONUS | EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Releases a New Report on Anti-Christian Bias | Camille Varone
00:27:24
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- [00:01]
A
Today we've got a special bonus episode for you with senior counsel for the Department of Justice, Camille Veroni. She is giving us an exclusive look at a new report out by the doj, by the Task Force Against Anti Christian Bias that reveals so many disturbing aspects of the Biden administration and his DOJ's target on the backs of Christians. Specifically, how the Biden administration used transgenderism as an excuse as a justification for discriminating against Christian doctors, medical facilities, against churches, against Catholic schools specifically. And then, of course, there was the targeting of the pro lifers. Even within the doj, there was an attitude of anti Christian discrimination and the feeling that Christians really didn't count as a protected class. And that manifested itself in very real illegal prejudice against Christians. And now the Trump administration is doing everything they can to shine a light on that and to reverse that, to make sure that there is equal protection under the law for people of all different backgrounds, including Christians. Here's a report's explanation of why and how American current moral values and Christianity come in conflict. And then, of course, what is the government's job when those two belief systems conflict? When acted upon, traditional Christian morals beliefs can fall into significant conflict with modern American culture and generate significant policy and political disagreements. In many respects, the current debates within American culture wars reveal that the disparate views hold incompatible understandings of the source and nature of truth, the nature of human life and personal autonomy, identity and human relationships. And actually, the citation for that quote as an example on page 29 of the report is my book, you're not enough. And that's okay. And that is one of the most important tasks I think I have is to help criticism Christians. See, what does the Bible actually say, not modern American politics or culture, about these moral issues of our day? How do we stand firm in them? And I'm so thankful we have lawyers in this DOJ who are willing to protect our rights as Americans to exercise those Christian beliefs fully. Without further ado, here is our friend, Camille Veroni. Camille, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. There's a new report out by the task force to eradicate anti Christian bias. And I have to say, as a Christian, I did not know that this task force existed in the doj. So can you tell us about that first?
- [02:51]
B
Absolutely. And Ali, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So the task force is a part of the Department of Justice, but actually it was created by an executive order. So President Trump established it back in February of 2025. And it has 17 different departments and agencies on it. So the task force members are the cabinet members and the heads of the agencies themselves.
- [03:15]
A
Okay, and what exactly does this task force do?
- [03:19]
B
So we've been asked by President Trump to look into allegations and concerns of anti Christian bias that he had read about, things that he had seen happen during the Biden administration, things that caused him great concern. And he wanted us across the federal government to take the time to spend however much effort and time it took to look into what happened, figure out what the truth is, and then answer to him on that and not just identify where things went wrong, but make sure that we're able to lay out how our departments are correcting those issues. At the end of the day, it's about fairness, making sure that Christians are treated fairly, just the same as any other religious group.
- [04:00]
A
And what exactly did this report find when it came to anti Christian bias in the Biden administration?
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B
Well, Ali, it's almost what you would expect. I think a lot of Christians who were watching what happened during the Biden administration had concerns about the policies that were impacting them and their families, the ways that they were living out their day to day faith in their lives. But what we found is that across the board, the Biden administration was willing to tolerate Christians up to a point, and that was when they held their views privately or in the four walls of their churches. But what we found was that when Christians were trying to live out their faith, to see where the Bible, where religious tradition should inform, how they actually went to school, went to work, that's where they ran into policy issues that the Biden administration put their policy priorities above Christians Constitutional rights.
- [04:57]
A
Right. Can you give us an example of that?
- [05:00]
B
Absolutely. So one that I think hasn't been covered very much in reporting yet is Bostock decision from the Supreme Court. So that came out from the Supreme Court at the end of the first Trump administration in 2020. And what we found from the task force side is that it was not the Biden administration couldn't come fast enough for a lot of career employees of the federal government. So at the end of the first Trump administration, the political leadership there looked at what the Supreme Court said, and there was very clear language that the Religious Freedom Restoration act was not gone. It still provided strong protections. I think the opinion refers to it as a super statute that still protects Christians and other religious people who hold traditional, sincere views on marriage and family. The Biden administration, when it came in, went in a totally different direction. They took the Bostock opinion and created all sorts of new memorandums, guidance materials, and threatened across the board, doctors, schools, school lunch programs, and girls sports with compliance with their views of gender ideology, at risk of losing federal funding.
- [06:18]
A
Wow. Yeah. This is from the report. So the Bo. The Bostock opinion, and people might remember that Gorsuch for conservatives, in our opinion, was a disappointment there because he agreed with the kind of redefinition of what sex means and gender discrimination to include transgender identification. And so that kind of led to this rewrite of Title nine, which it sounds like you're saying the Biden administration really weaponized against Christian institutions, individuals and schools. You mentioned how they. And I guess this is because of Bostock. The Biden administration used the Department of Agriculture to tell these public schools that you can't get SNAP funds, you can't get free breakfast and lunches for poor kids if you do not abide by this new rewrite and allow boys into girls bathrooms. So it seems like that would be one example of that from the report. It says after the BOSS stock opinion was issued, but while President Trump was still in office, DOJ put out a memorandum explaining that Bostock still required DOJ to respect employees religious rights. Career attorneys balked and requested that the incoming Biden DOJ rescind the memorandum immediately to boost employees employee morale. The Biden DOJ quickly replaced the memorandum with an incorrect and expansive application of Bostock that applied the ruling to sex based discrimination in federally funded schools and Sports under Title 9. The Biden DOJ also considered requests for religious exemptions as harmful conduct to be regulated and pushed its incorrect BOSS stock interpretation and amicus briefs, even though federal courts repeatedly rejected it. So they really wanted to use this REWRITE of Title 9, this transgender issue, specifically to push back on Christians and Christian institutions exercising our beliefs about biology and gender. Is that right?
- [08:20]
B
No, that's exactly right. And thank you for reading so much of the report. That is exactly what we found. And when it comes to the school lunch program that we were discussing, it actually was worse than. Than what you said. It was religious schools that were most impacted here, not public schools. So the report talks about Catholic schools that were trying to participate, had participated actually in some of these instances in school lunch programs for 20 years. And many of them were serving all children who came into their schools without caring who they were, what their backgrounds were. But because the schools, the archdiocese that ran them were unable to sign statements committing to gender ideology, they. They lost their ability to participate in those programs. And some of them did sue and ultimately prevailed. So we're thankful that the Constitution stood strong. But you can see where the policy impulse was that was driving this.
- [09:15]
A
Absolutely. And I didn't know that, that it was in particular Catholic schools that were hit by that. And it seems, according to this report, that maybe that was intentional. And we also see that they embedded the Biden administration embedded the expansive reading of Bostock into guidance memoranda regarding gender affirming care for minors. The Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission likewise dismissed sincerely held religious beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity as discrimination and hiring cloaked as religious practice.
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B
Yes.
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A
And that's. Go ahead.
- [09:52]
B
That's so disturbing. And you know, the chair of the chair EEOC under President Trump has talked often as part of this task force about how Christians are not second class citizens here. And the way that the EEOC handled these cases was deeply troubling to her and to the task force.
- [10:09]
A
Yeah. What exactly did that look like? How did the Biden administration kind of weaponize the EEOC to go after these religious institutions?
- [10:18]
B
Well, so there were a number of ways, but one of them was the COVID 19 vaccines that was in the news substantially during the time. But the EEOC was the one who should have been leading the way in setting policy that was protective of objections for religious objectors, but also, you know, people who had other types of sincere health objections. The EEOC did not do that. So instead, the Biden administration created a new, different type of task force to take the EEOC's place and run roughshod over sincere religious objections.
- [10:55]
A
Wow. And it really seems like this, especially with Bostock and the redefinition of gender, that that was really used as the way that the Biden administration forced its will upon a lot of these institutions. I mean, public housing, the Department of Labor was a part of this. Even the Biden Health and Human Services Department pushed providing gender affirming care for minors into their guidance memoranda, little provision for religious exemptions. Do we know how many Christian medical professionals specifically lost funding or licenses or faced investigations because they refused to go along with this?
- [11:34]
B
Now that's a great question. Unfortunately, I don't know yet the full extent of how many people were impacted by it. Yeah, but there were many. And it's something that hhs, the secretary there and his team, they've been taking this incredibly seriously. You know, if you look at that part of the report, and I hope that your listeners will read it, they talk about how this was a combination of efforts by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to compel Christians faith providers especially to toe the line and do their preferred policies on gender affirming care. And they threatened to withhold federal funds. A similar theme that you see across all of these examples if these providers were unwilling to do what they asked. Yeah.
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A
Can you explain a little bit further what this means in the report? When courts made clear that the HHS must offer religious accommodations for what we're talking about, HHS pivoted to a burdensome case by case analysis in which it could consider any perceived harm inflicted by religious exemptions on third parties, a process that could appear to offer illusory protection to those seeking to act in accordance with their faith. But I guess actually didn't offer that protection.
- [12:47]
B
Yeah, and you know, that's a procedural question, but it's a very important one. So in the way that the federal government and some of the regulatory structures are assembled, there's often a presumption that people have sincere religious beliefs. Actually, the way that HHS used to operate with some of the conscience objections over contraceptive care was that religious organizations could sign a one page form explaining that they do have a sincerely held religious belief, and then HHS would take them at their word, they wouldn't push back further. But what we found under the Biden administration is that they changed that practice. So now it was much harder for Christians faith organizations to prove that they actually were Christian and that their beliefs on marriage, on the types of care that they wanted to offer to patients, that that actually was not harming people. So it put the burden on Christians to be able to keep their constitutionally protected rights.
- [13:47]
A
Right, right. That reminds me a lot of Jack Phillips in Colorado when, you know, he was facing all kinds of persecution prosecution for refusing to bake the cake to celebrate a gay wedding. And the attorneys there were basically trying to make him prove the sincere sincerity of his beliefs, which the Supreme Court ended up ruling that you can't do. That's, you know, treating Christians with hostility. And it seems like the Biden administration was getting away with that. Not only with that, but also when it comes to the FACE act, using the FACE act to target pro lifers, a lot of them Christian pro lifers. Can you talk more about what you found?
- [14:29]
B
Absolutely. And thank you for, for asking about that. So the FACE act was one of our most troubling findings. So much so that actually the task force agreed to separate those out into the recent report that the Department of Justice published on the FACE Act. So when you look at the one, the report that we've been discussing here today is just a summary of that. But what we found falls into three main categories. So the first was the way that the Biden DOJ was outsourcing its enforcement. A federal criminal law, two pro abortion groups, so the National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood, and the Feminist Majority Foundation. There are parts of the report where the documents that we found indicate that prosecutors knew that they were constrained by certain constitutional restrictions, procedural restrictions, and they relied on those outside groups to do what they could not do for them to monitor pro life Americans. The second category were areas where we found specific prosecutors in their cases violating what they should have been doing, the way that they should fairly, even handedly, methodically pursue their cases and only to the detriment of pro life Americans. So specifically, that looked like withholding evidence when it was requested by defense counsel, complaining about being assigned to Catholic judges and complaining about the beliefs of individual Christian defendants. And then the last category that I wanted to flag were the sentencing disparities. So what we found was that even though these were for the most part peaceful pro life Christians who were outside of abortion clinics because they wanted to save children from being aborted, they were receiving significantly harsher sentences than the vandals with Jane's Revenge. You may remember that these were people going after pregnancy resource centers and houses of worship after the leak of the opinion from the Supreme Court that was overtone overturning Roe versus Wade. And this, what was so troubling to us here was that it wasn't the judges who were intervening to give harsher penalties. It was actually the Department of Justice.
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A
Wow.
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B
As a department, we requested twice as harsh penalties against those pro life Christians than the vandals in those cases.
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A
Wow. And by we obviously not talking about you, but just talking about the DOJ under Biden. And you know, as, as you said, we're talking about violent vandals who are firebombing some of these pregnancy centers, getting in some cases half of the sentencing length. As a peaceful pro lifer who is standing in front of an abortion clinic. Can you talk a little bit about the Johnson Amendment and if there's any evidence that the IRS under Biden was misusing that or ignoring it.
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B
So we have significant concerns about that. And I will start with the caveat that there are really strong and important protections for taxpayer information that are reasons that we can't get into much detail at this point in time in the reports that we've focused on a couple of cases where taxpayers have come forward with their own information. And volunteered it to the public. So it's important to say that up front. But what we found were there were a number of churches and Christian organizations who interacted with politics. They tried to look at how Christian beliefs should impact how they vote or how they should approach local referendums. So one of those that we talk about in the report was a church that simply had a candidate come speak on the stage about her testimony and prayed for her. The Biden IRS issued inquiries going after them. Because of that, what we flag in the reporter. There are also a significant number of incidents across the country where Democratic politicians showed up at churches as well. And to our findings to date, there were no inquiries in the same way after them. So it does appear to be an area where the Biden administration was at least applying this in a political way only against particular Christians because of their political views.
- [18:45]
A
Camille, something that's really unique about this is a government report, or at least I think that this is unique. I haven't seen this before, is that at the beginning, it's not just about the results. It's an explanation of basic Christian theology. What do Christians believe? Why does it matter? Can you tell us more about what it actually says and why y' all chose to set up this report that way?
- [19:07]
B
Absolutely, and thank you so much for that question. I think it's important when we're talking about religious liberty that we start from defining what it is we're talking about. There's a quote from GK Chesterton that says, what is religious liberty? Without first knowing what is religion and what is liberty? And so that's what we do in this report. We start with an overview of the role that Christianity has played in American history. In the American governmental system, we go through the rules that govern how religion can interact with both the government and the people. But then we spend a lot of time going through, on average, what is it that Christians believe? And I think that that's important in this context because a lot of these issues, when you're. You're running against these conflicting worldviews, between policy preferences and Christian doctrine, they get to incredibly personal issues that touch people in the most personal parts of their lives, their families, the way that they view themselves, who they marry. And Christian theology is important to understand when we talk about those. So the report runs through, you know, what do Christians believe about God creating men and women? What do Christians believe about sin? What do Christians believe about God's forgiveness and redemption? And why sin is an important part of that theology. Right. And I think that that is an essential context before we dive into the areas where Christians start to differ from American culture. Yeah.
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A
Gosh, that's so brilliant for so many reasons, because in any discussion, you have to define your terms, like, what do we actually mean by this? But also, it seems that in this report, we're talking about the Biden administration really dismissing the convictions of Christians as something that are just, like, arbitrary or even rooted in hate, and so giving a theological framing for where we're coming from, that it's not coming from a place of hate, it's coming from a sincere belief in God and the Bible. It just makes so much sense and gives us so much context. And also, it's like a comfort for me as a Christian that there are people in the government that understand where we're coming from and why. So that's amazing.
- [21:13]
B
Yeah. And I will say it's certainly not an exhaustive overview, nor should it be. You know, it's not for the government to say what Christian theology should be or what people should believe. But like you said, it's a central context here. We've had a lot of people give it some close thought to make sure that we're really trying to hit on those key points of what it is that Christians believe. I think that they're hopefully verses that are encouraging to many of your listeners who, I think, share those views that are described in the report.
- [21:41]
A
And just to close this out, can you talk about the other ways that you found disturbing that the Biden administration seemed to be discriminating against Christians specifically?
- [21:52]
B
So the report is 210 pages. There's, I think, nearly 1200 footnotes. So I would love to go through them all. Yeah, I know you don't have that kind of time, but one of the things that, from a Department of justice perspective, that I think is worthwhile to note as we wrap up is just the type of outreach that we normally see the federal government do that was handled in a very different way. So normally, when we're trying to inform the public about what civil rights protections they have in place, the constitutional rights that protect them, many of the federal agencies will put together informational packets or information to dispense to constituents, to the American people, so they know what rights they have and when they should reach out because they're concerned about some sort of criminal violation or civil rights violation. So with that context, what happened under the Biden DOJ is they created a new brochure to try to explain what religious discrimination might look like, and that compiled about 20 pages of examples ranging from all sorts of different religions, different types of discrimination. But there was one that was not included, and that was Christians. And the message that that sent was that the Biden DOJ didn't think that Christians could be the victims of discrimination. And I think that that really gets to the heart of the issue here, that because Christians were the majority faith in the country, the Biden administration seemed to view them as really not eligible to be considered under these constitutional and statutory protections.
- [23:27]
A
Wow. Which is and should be illegal. Which is, you know.
- [23:32]
B
Yes, well, it's contrary to what the law requires, which is even fair handed application of justice for all people.
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A
Right. And we don't really have a justice system if we don't have blind justice that way. So this should really disturb everyone, right? Whether you're a Christian or not.
- [23:48]
B
Yes. Yeah. And that's what we've been saying since day one, is that even if our findings are tailored to what happened to Christians, what we found here really should disturb everyone who holds religious beliefs. Because if the government can do that against a majority group, nobody's rights are safe under that kind of system.
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A
True. Absolutely. So what does the Trump administration, after all of these findings are uncovered? What exactly happens? How do we right the ship?
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B
Thank you for asking. And I hope people will take a look at chapter five of our report, because we have about 30 pages just running through example after example, not just of proposals, what we've assembled. There are things that have already been done since day one of the administration to protect religious liberty. So we have in their policy decisions that were from the Biden era that have been rescinded right from the get go. Those include things like the Garland memorandum, you know, pursuing parents at school board meetings, targeting of traditional Catholics. All of that was taken off the books from the very beginning of the administration. And then we also have in there, from across these different agencies, examples of new proposed regulatory changes that they've announced. There are examples of types of cases and enforcement actions that different agencies have brought on behalf of Christian institutions, Christian individuals. It's a really wonderful list that we've compiled. The task force is really proud of the work that we've done, and I think we hope the American people will take heart. Because even if the findings that we have in the report are troubling, it really is an opportunity to get back to first principles. And that's what we've tried to show there is. Even if our hearts are sometimes troubled, that the Constitution is strong, its principles are enduring, and it's pretty easy to write the ship, hopefully back to where they should be.
- [25:40]
A
Yes. Amen. Well, praise God for that. I'm just very thankful. And even just people being aware that things like this are happening, it makes us all more vigilant, more grateful for the Constitution. It encourages. It encourages us to know our constitutional rights, and that can only be a win. Camille, thank you so much. Remind us again where people can read the full report.
- [26:00]
B
Yes. So it'll be on the Department of Justice website. It's dropping Tomorrow morning at 7am you can find it on our social media and on the website with the press release as well.
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A
Okay. And when this comes out, this is Thursday morning, so Thursday morning it comes out. Awesome. Thank you so much.
- [26:18]
B
Okay. Thank you so much for having me. Allie.
- [26:20]
A
Yes, Sam.