JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to take a closer
look at two moves being considered by Donald
Trump that place the administration squarely
between the LGBT community and the religious
right.
Speaking at a National Prayer Breakfast on
Thursday, Trump vowed to, quote, "destroy"
the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision that
prohibits tax-exempt religious or charitable
organizations from, quote, "directly or indirectly
participating in, or intervening in, any political
campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to)
any candidate for elective [public] office."
White evangelical Protestants have long pushed
for the amendment to be repealed.
This is President Trump.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Among those freedoms
is the right to worship according to our own
beliefs.
That is why I will get rid of and totally
destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our
representatives of faith to speak freely and
without fear of retribution.
I will do that, remember.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The provision does not prohibit
political activity by churches or religious
organizations overall, but it does place some
limits on the role of religious institutions
in U.S. elections.
AMY GOODMAN: Another move reportedly being
considered by President Trump is a sweeping
religious freedom executive order that would
create wholesale exemptions for people and
organizations who claim religious objections
to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion,
trans identity.
A draft of the order was leaked last week.
Afterwards, several media outlets reported
Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband,
Jared Kushner, who are considered supporters
of LGBT rights, pressured Trump to kill the
order.
For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where
we’re joined by Sarah Posner, an Investigative
Fund reporter with The Nation Institute.
Her most recent piece published in The Nation
is headlined "Leaked Draft of Trump’s Religious
Freedom Order Reveals Sweeping Plans to Legalize
Discrimination."
She’s the author of the book God’s Profits:
Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for
Values Voters.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Sarah.
So talk about these two separate initiatives,
executive orders, proposals.
SARAH POSNER: Well, the executive order, as
you said, would provide sweeping religious
exemptions so that anybody—a business owner,
a government employee, an individual, somebody
you work with—could claim a religious objection
to you, to your sexual orientation, to your
private sexual activity even, and refuse you
service or refuse to rent an apartment to
you or refuse to comply with a federal law
that requires the employer to provide health
insurance for a particular thing, like perhaps
contraception.
So, that is the main part of this draft executive
order.
But it also has other provisions in it, including
an effort to repeal the Johnson Amendment.
Even if Trump doesn’t sign that executive
order that I reported on last week, he still
is, I think, fairly likely to join Republicans
in Congress in repealing the Johnson Amendment.
It’s not legally clear that he could do
it via executive order, but the same week
that all of this happened, members of the
Congressional Prayer Caucus introduced legislation
to repeal the Johnson Amendment.
If that bill passes the House and the Senate,
Trump is very likely to sign it.
And that would sweep away this restriction
on tax-exempt—the use of tax-exempt resources
to get involved in political campaigns.
That would open the door not only for pastors
to endorse political candidates openly and
use their church resources to do so, but it
would also open the floodgates of dark money,
to funnel that money through churches, because
it’s not transparent, it’s not reportable
like money would be, donated to a political
campaign or to a political action committee.
If somebody wanted to pour unlimited money
into a political campaign without having to
disclose their identity, doing it through
a church, who could now, with the repeal of
the Johnson Amendment, engage in unlimited
activity, that would be one way of somebody
being able to do that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sarah, through your reporting,
were you able to determine who was—within
the Trump administration, was pushing the
executive order for him to pass or to sign?
And also, this whole issue of his daughter
and Jared Kushner having a different perspective
on some of these issues?
SARAH POSNER: Well, you’ll note that the
reporting on the Kushners’ intervention
here was limited to one particular issue,
and that was the question of whether Trump
was going to keep in place executive orders
from the Obama administration that prohibit
the federal government and federal government
contractors from discriminating in employment
against LGBT people.
When Trump issued his statement last week
about that, that was the only piece of this
entire issue that he focused on.
And the reporting in the wake of my reporting
on the broad executive order only indicated
that the Kushners had prevailed upon him regarding
that particular employment issue.
That reporting does not indicate at all whether
the Kushners prevailed on him about these
exceedingly broad religious exemptions, nor
does it address the question of what they
think about the Johnson Amendment.
I was not able to discover who within the
administration is pushing for this, but after
I reported that, the existence of that executive
order, there were many figures on the religious
right who expressed support for it in its
entirety and urged President O—sorry, President
Trump to sign it.
Ryan Anderson at the Heritage Foundation,
who—which is a conservative think tank,
he is an outspoken opponent of marriage equality.
He tweeted and then subsequently wrote a column
about how the executive order was lawful and
right and that President Trump should sign
it.
Other figures on the religious right also
chimed in along those lines.
Bryan Fischer, a talk radio host, tweeted
that if President Trump signed it, he would
be the Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King
of religious freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, why did, at the
time, Senator Lyndon Johnson do the amendment?
We just have 10 seconds.
SARAH POSNER: Right.
Well—
AMY GOODMAN: Why did he push the Johnson Amendment?
SARAH POSNER: Because, basically, taxpayers
subsidize tax-exempt organizations, because
the—you can get a tax exemption for donating;
they don’t have to pay taxes on it.
So, it’s an issue of taxpayers subsidizing
political activity.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah Posner, we thank you for
being with us.
SARAH POSNER: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’ll link to your piece
in The Nation magazine, which—in which you
describe this issue.
Today, special thanks to Andre Lewis and Ariel
Boone.
