Reuters U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, U.S., February 2, 2017. 
 
 President Donald Trump on Thursday used his address at the National Prayer Breakfast to cover a lot of ground, from joking about praying for the ratings of rival Apprentice host, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to invoking the need to fight terrorism to protect religious freedom. 
 
 But the most topical comments may have come with respect to what Trump said about his phone calls with foreign leaders. 
 
 “The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out, okay, that’s what I do, I fix things, we’re going to straighten it out, believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about, just don’t worry about it.” President Trump 
 
 The “tough phone calls” were a reference to reports about his conversations with Mexico and Australia. According to reports, Trump told Mexico’s president, Enrique Pena Nieto, that he could be forced to send in troops to deal with the southern neighbor’s “bad hombres.” 
 
 Trump also blasted Australia’s prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, over a deal where the U.S. will take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center. ||||| Campaigners have denounced Donald Trump’s vow to repeal a law that stops religious groups endorsing or campaigning for political candidates – claiming it would damage both America’s democracy and its houses of worship. 
 
 Speaking at a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, the US President said he would “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment, a piece of legislation dating from 1954. The provision threatens churches and other religious institutions with the loss of their tax-exempt status if they “campaign from the pulpit”. 
 
 “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,” said Mr Trump. 
 
 Trump pledges to destroy Johnson amendment 
 
 He added: “Jefferson asked, ‘Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God’. Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs.” 
 
 But activists fighting to retain America’s separation between church and state, have condemned the remarks, saying the move would open the way to a flood of money entering politics through unregulated, tax free churches. They also claim polls show an overwhelming majority of people – along with members of the clergy – do not want the law repealed. 
 
 “If the law is repealed, it would lead to the funnelling of money into political campaigns with no way to check,” Rob Boston, Director of Communications for the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The Independent. 
 
 Mr Boston said polls showed most Americans did not support repealing the law. He cited a surgery carried out last year by LifeWay Research, which found that 79 per cent of people thought pastors should not endorse candidates during a church service. 
 
 He said he believed the move had had been pushed on Mr Trump by members of the religious right, including Jerry Falwell Jr, the president of the largest Christian college in the world and a key supporter of the New York tycoon. He said Mr Falwell’s father, a major religious leader, had fallen foul of the law during the 1980s. 
 
 Mr Boston said he believed the move could also detrimentally affect America’s houses of worship. “There are a number of reasons why people go to a place of worship. But rarely are they looking for guidance on who to vote for,” he said. 
 
 Steve Benen, a political writer and blogger, wrote on MSNBC: “Why does Trump want to change this? Basically because the religious right told him to. But why does the religious right want this? Because some on the right still dream of creating a church-based political machine.” 
 
 Rabbi Jack Moline, President of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, said that Mr Trump’s claim that the clergy were too afraid to speak openly, was a “lie that has been advanced for years by the religious right”. 
 
 “President Trump's attack on the Johnson Amendment, if successful, would undermine religious freedom by plunging houses of worship into partisan politics and inviting the rewards and punishments of patronage,” he said. 
 
 “What’s more, houses of worships would become conduits for unregulated “dark money” in elections, with no restrictions or disclosure requirements.” 
 
 At the gathering of religious leaders in the nation’s capital, Mr Trump also joked about the poor ratings of Arnold Schwarzenegger since he took over as host of The Apprentice. 
 
 He also defended his recent executive order on immigration, decrying “generous” immigration policies and arguing that there were people who sought to enter the country “for the purpose of spreading violence or oppressing other people based upon their faith.” 
 
 According to the Associated Press, he said: “In the coming days we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty and that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination.” ||||| Ann Voskamp has been a successful Christian author for the past decade, with a largely conservative evangelical audience. On Thursday morning, she stood outside the National Prayer Breakfast to protest President Trump’s order restricting entry into the U.S. by people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. 
 
 “I just think we’re called as the church right now to stand up and to be on the right side of history that says, ‘We will risk, we will open the doors for children who are starving,’” Voskamp said, holding a sign and standing outside the Washington Hilton as Trump spoke to religious leaders inside. “If we as Christians say we are pro-life, that means we have to be pro-refugee.” 
 
 Voskamp and her friend Vickie Reddy co-founded a group called We Welcome Refugees after a trip to Iraq in 2015. 
 
 “I sat in a shipping container with Yazidi women who had fled ISIS up Mount Sinjar. They had two arms and they had to decide which of their little children they could grab and take with them and which of their children they would lose. And sitting there, listening to their stories, stewarding their stories, I realized it could be me,” Voskamp said. “I think once you look into the eyes of people who have fled war, who have left home because home has become the mouth of a monster, you realize that national security can’t ever negate compassion for people who need refuge. Jesus was a refugee. We’re called to love our neighbor without exception.” 
 
 Reddy also attended the protest Thursday morning, which drew about 150 members of local churches, many of which have been working to help refugee families find housing and jobs. Both Voskamp and Reddy said they had never taken part in any kind of political protest before. 
 
 “We just wanted this to be a prayerful witness … to give moral courage to people walking in the room,” Reddy said. 
 
 “I think compassion and security don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I know how the refugee resettlement program works. I know how thorough the vetting is,” she said. “There’s always room for security to be relooked at and reconsidered, and absolutely we should be doing that, but I think that the shutting down of the program for any period of time and preventing Syrian refugees from coming here is not necessary. … The reality is that being a refugee is one of the hardest ways to get into this country. It’s not an easy way for terrorists to infiltrate or anything like that, because the vetting is so thorough.” 
 
 Michael Wear, who was a top White House faith issues adviser to President Obama during his first term, and who oversaw faith outreach in Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, took part in the protest as well. 
 
 “Especially as Donald Trump is receiving a lot of acclaim from some portions of the religious community for his Supreme Court nomination, it was important that the message was sent that we’re not forgetting about this [executive order],” Wear said. “We’re going to affirm when he does good and we’re going to stand up when he does wrong. … I’m glad to be outside the breakfast this year.” 
 
 “The travel ban should be rescinded,” Wear said. 
 
 Voskamp said she expected to be criticized by many evangelicals, but felt it was vital to take a stand. 
 
 “We need to keep talking to each other, we need to keep dialoguing. We need to keep educating each other about what the process already is,” she said. 
 
 Voskamp said that last fall she and her family sponsored a family that relocated to the U.S., and they’re in the process of sponsoring three more. 
 
 “We’re looking at children right now in Aleppo who are starving to death,” she said. Our refugee family, our newcomer family, has told us that they have family in Aleppo eating grass.” 
 
 Read more from Yahoo News: ||||| President Trump, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, promised to "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment," which prohibits some tax-exempt organizations like churches from supporting political candidates, on Feb. 2. (The Washington Post) 
 
 A version of this story was first posted on Feb. 2, 2017. It has been updated. 
 
 President Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday relaxing rules that bar tax-exempt churches from participating in politics. 
 
 The move, which is part of a broader step on religious liberty, aims to fulfill a promise Trump made repeatedly during his campaign that he would do away with something known as the Johnson Amendment. In his address at the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 2, he vowed again, “I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment.” 
 
 What is that? Is it in Trump’s power to destroy it? And who would want him to do that? 
 
 What the Johnson Amendment is: It’s named for Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced it in the Senate in 1954, nine years before he became president. It bans all tax-exempt nonprofits — which includes churches and other houses of worship, as well as charities — from “directly or indirectly” participating in any political candidate’s campaign. 
 
 President Trump has vowed to repeal the Johnson Amendment, because he says it infringes on the freedom of speech of religious groups. Here is what you need to know about this amendment. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) 
 
 What Trump can do: Trump presented the ban on participating in politicking as a restriction on the freedom of faith groups to put their religion in action, if their religion calls on them to campaign for a candidate. The Johnson Amendment is part of the tax code, so to completely remove it would take an act of Congress. 
 
 “If he ‘totally destroys’ the Johnson Amendment, he will way overreach and open an enormous loophole,” said Douglas Laycock, professor at University of Virginia Law School and an expert on religious freedom who has urged Congress to fix the amendment. What Trump could do, however, is direct law enforcement discretion elsewhere or maybe say it’s unconstitutional. 
 
 The next president could direct the IRS to enforce it, for example, but churches would be free from worry about their political speech or donations during Trump’s term. 
 
 How it actually works: Most of the discussion of the Johnson Amendment, whether coming from Trump or from pastors, focuses on whether clergy put their churches’ tax-exempt status at risk when they endorse their favorite candidates from the pulpit. 
 
 But in reality, the Internal Revenue Service very rarely punishes churches for political statements. For several years, more than 2,000 pastors have joined what they call “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” to test the ban by speaking their political views in their sermons — and the IRS investigated one and did not punish in that case, according to the conservative organization that organizes the annual effort. In the 1990s, a church called Branch Ministries lost its tax-exempt status after taking out a full-page ad against President Bill Clinton in USA Today. 
 
 But the Johnson Amendment has not been at the forefront of the debate about religious liberty, which has in recent years been centered around contraceptive access and LGBT rights. 
 
 “In the universe of religious freedom issues facing our country today, the Johnson Amendment doesn’t come even close to the top,” said John Inazu, professor of religion and law at Washington University in St. Louis. “My hunch is that one or two of Trump’s ‘religious advisers’ mentioned the Johnson Amendment early in the campaign. But how and why they focused on that issue is beyond me.” 
 
 What Trump hasn’t talked about in his speeches about the Johnson Amendment is the implication for how churches can spend their money, not just how clergy can talk about candidates. 
 
 “Most people’s concern is if you allow churches to freely allow political activity — churches, synagogues, temples, whatever the religious organization — now what you’ve done is you’ve turned those into Super PACs,” said David Herzig, a Valparaiso University tax law professor. 
 
 Churches would be freed to use their budgets to support campaigning — and citizens would get a tax deduction for contributing to the church, which would still be a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Also, Herzig pointed out, nonprofits like churches aren’t required to make the same public disclosures as PACs, so political funding could theoretically become much less transparent if campaign funding were funneled through churches. 
 
 Some critics are worried doing away with the amendment could allow a huge flow of money in campaigning between churches and candidates. But, Herzig says, even without the Johnson Amendment, the country’s tax law severely constrains churches’ ability to engage in politics. 
 
 Who wants it gone: Until Trump’s campaign, the Johnson Amendment rarely came up in political discussion. Some pastors, including those 2,000 who publicly oppose the policy on Pulpit Freedom Sunday, objected to the ban, but it wasn’t high on most Christians’ policy wish list. 
 
 LifeWay, a Christian polling firm, found in 2015 that 79 percent of Americans thought clergy should not endorse candidates during worship services. Evangelicals were more likely to say pastors should be able to do so — 25 percent compared to 16 percent — but support for clergy endorsements was low across the board. 
 
 Trump’s attack on the Johnson Amendment has found eager supporters, though, including Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, and other prominent evangelicals who supported his presidential campaign. 
 
 Falwell said on Wednesday that Liberty officials have been “harassed” by organizations that would report the university for violating the Johnson Amendment. 
 
 “I don’t think it was being enforced anyhow, but it had a chilling effect on pastors and conservative universities,” Falwell said. 
 
 On the other hand, many religious groups like their nonpolitical status just fine the way it is. 
 
 Interfaith Alliance president Rabbi Jack Moline said on Wednesday that the Johnson Amendment has prevented houses of worship from being turned into partisan political tools. 
 
 “To hear the Religious Right say it, clergy in America are being muzzled. But that’s a lie,” he said in a statement. “Repealing the Johnson Amendment is nothing more than President Trump carrying water for the Religious Right.” 
 
 According a 2016 survey the Pew Research Center, about 10 percent of parishioners say they have heard direct support for or opposition to a specific candidate. Among those who heard religious leaders speak out for a candidate, Hillary Clinton was the name mentioned most often, with 6 percent of recent churchgoers saying their clergy had spoken out in support of her. Black Protestants were much more likely to say they had heard their clergy speak out directly about specific political candidates, according to Pew. ||||| Trump is championing an agenda of religious nationalism. Along with key White House staffers like Stephen Bannon, he believes America represents a set of values, rooted in the country’s religious identity. While there’s little evidence that Trump himself is religiously devout, he has benefited from affiliations with largely white evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. 
 
 During his speech, Trump argued that America’s religiously grounded values are being attacked—not just through acts of violence, but through ideological erosion. “We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation,” Trump said on Thursday, seeming to refer to the “radical Islamic extremism” he has emphasized in past speeches. “You look all over the world and see what’s happening.” He will defend these values, he said, because “that’s what people want: one beautiful nation under God.” 
 
 America was not always “one nation under God”—at least, not officially. The words “under God” weren’t added to the pledge of allegiance until 1954, during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower—not coincidentally, the first president to convene the National Prayer Breakfast. Over time, this relatively new tradition has become a mandatory exercise for commanders in chief; and during the breakfast this year, Trump specifically praised Eisenhower for kicking it off. 
 
 In many ways, Trump’s vision of religious nationalism is a continuation of Republican presidents before him. In an interview in August, the Princeton University professor Kevin Kruse pointed out that Trump’s religious rhetoric more closely resembles Nixon’s than Eisenhower’s: “He used it to justify the extent of the Vietnam War and Cambodia; he used it to advance all sorts of Silent Majority proposals before Congress,” Kruse told me. “That’s what you see in Trump today: It’s much more of a defensive pushback against people who are seen as outside one nation under God.” 
 
 This echoes recent findings of the Pew Research Center on Americans’ sense of their own national identity. While only a third of Americans believe being Christian is a very important part of being American, the numbers are split neatly along party and denominational lines: 43 percent of Republicans were likely to say that’s the case, compared to 29 percent of Democrats, and 57 percent of white evangelical Protestants said the same. Trump’s message seems to be directed toward these groups: He is affirming their sense of the tie between national and religious identity, and pushing back against those who would diminish either of those identities. 
 
 And he’s doing this through fear. In his comments at the prayer breakfast, Trump gave a graphic description of Christians being murdered overseas: “They cut off the heads, they drown people in steel cages,” he said. He also spoke “peace-loving Muslims brutalized, victimized, murdered and oppressed by ISIS killers,” and the threats against the Jewish people. He was inclusive in his description of those who are under threat, for the sake of emphasizing the need for fear: “We have seen unimaginable violence carried out in the name of religion,” he said, “acts of wanton abuse of minorities, horrors on a scale that defy description.” The fundamental threat to religious freedom, he said, is terrorism. 
 
 While Trump has often spoken about the need for safety and security, his comments at the prayer-breakfast offer a look at the ideological framework beneath that call. Like his Republican predecessors, he has aligned himself with a vision of America that is strong and powerful because of its piety. Against the threat of foreigners, terrorists, and corrupting ideologies, the United States will be one, beautiful nation—and in Trump’s view, that’s only possible under God. 
 
 We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. ||||| Every year during Barack Obama’s presidency, the Democrat would make an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he’d deliver pensive, thought-provoking remarks about the depths of his Christian faith. And nearly every year, conservatives would express their outrage over the ideas the president challenged them to consider.Donald Trump is clearly a very different kind of president, and his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast captured an almost unrecognizable perspective.For example, the Republican thought it’d be wise to reflect on his NBC reality show. “[W]e had tremendous success on ‘The Apprentice,’” Trump said, adding, “And they hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster and Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again. And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, OK?”Yes, the president used the National Prayer Breakfast to talk about television ratings for a reality show – which he remains the executive producer of – because everything at all times is about him and his career.Trump went on to use inspirational rhetoric such as, “The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out. OK? That’s what I do. I fix things. We’re going to straighten it out. Believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it. Just don’t worry about it.”But there was a substantive element of the speech that probably mattered more than Trump’s embarrassing boasts: 
 
 “It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said, ‘The God who gave us life, gave us liberty.’ Jefferson asked, ‘Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?’ “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.” 
 
 For now, let’s put aside the complexities of Jefferson’s approach to religion and focus instead on Trump’s intentions to “totally destroy the Johnson Amendment.”Circling back to our previous coverage , those who followed Trump’s campaign closely may recall his frequent references to the Johnson Amendment – a policy of great concern to the religious right movement and evangelical Christians, but something most of the country has probably never heard of.So, what is it? Under current federal tax law, tax-exempt houses of worship are not allowed to intervene in partisan political campaigns. Ministries can obviously speak out on moral and spiritual issues of the day, and can even get involved in ballot referenda related to various policies, but churches and other houses of worship can’t take steps to help (or hurt) candidates or political parties. 
 
 This law was created in 1954 , thanks to the efforts of then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson, and for the most part, it hasn’t been especially controversial. 
 
 But as the religious right movement became a more prominent fixture in Republican politics, the Johnson Amendment became problematic. Efforts to create a political machine involving pastors and congregations were stunted by the law – because if a religious leader can’t tell his or her congregation who to vote for without risking the ministry’s tax-exempt status, the movement’s potency has limits. 
 
 And so the religious right decided the Johnson Amendment has to go. It even came up with an argument that seems vaguely compelling at first blush: those who lead houses of worship should be able to say whatever they wish to their congregants, and it’s not the government’s job to intervene. The First Amendment’s free-speech protections, the argument goes, should be applied to ministers in the pulpit. 
 
 What’s wrong with that argument? Quite a bit, actually. 
 
 As we discussed a couple of years ago, when it comes to electioneering and tax law, houses of worship have effectively made a deal with the government: the pastors will enjoy the benefits of a tax-exemption, and in exchange, their ministry will be non-partisan. 
 
 Trump is saying he wants to scrap the deal: the churches should get the benefit of a tax exemption from the government, without any of the conditions. 
 
 As for the First Amendment, note that tax-exempt entities, including churches, have the option of getting engaged in partisan politics, endorsing candidates, and intervening in campaigns to their hearts’ content – but they can’t do this while keeping their tax exemption. 
 
 Why does Trump want to change this? Basically because the religious right told him to. But why does the religious right want this? Because some on the right still dream of creating a church-based political machine. 
 
 The consequences could be dramatic. Imagine the campaign-finance mess that would exist if parties, candidates, and PACs could funnel campaign donations through tax-exempt churches, free of oversight. 
 
 
 
 That’s the system the Republican is vowing to create, and it matters more than the latest unfortunate joke about “The Apprentice.” 
 
 
 
 
 

– Yes, President Trump took the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to drag Arnold Schwarzenegger and his weak Celebrity Apprentice ratings. But he also brought up something arguably just as important: the Johnson Amendment, which he vowed to "totally destroy." Here's what you need to know: The Washington Post has a great explanation of the Johnson Amendment, which basically bans churches and charities from participating in political campaigns unless they give up tax-exempt status. Getting rid of the Johnson Amendment is part of Trump's emerging "agenda of religious nationalism," in which the president is linking being American with being Christian, the Atlantic reports. MSNBC weighs in on why promising to "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment is important. One such reason is that it would allow political parties and candidates to "funnel campaign donations through tax-exempt churches" with no oversight. While the Johnson Amendment is wildly unpopular with the religious right, that's not necessarily the case elsewhere, the Independent reports. A survey last year found 79% of people didn't think pastors should endorse candidates. And some religious leaders believe churches would be hurt by entering the partisan world of politics. In addition to the Johnson Amendment and Celebrity Apprentice, Trump also discussed foreign relations, telling those in attendance, "just don't worry about" the "tough phone calls I'm having," apparently in reference to threatening to invade Mexico and picking a fight with Australia, MarketWatch reports. Outside the National Prayer Breakfast, around 150 members of local churches were protesting Trump's Muslim travel ban. One Christian author at the protest tells Yahoo News it's important for the church to "stand up and be on the right side of history."