Bondi vows to protect religious freedom
By: BrieAnna J. Frank
USA Today
WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said religious liberty has "come under attack" in the nation during the inaugural meeting of President Donald Trump's Religious Liberty Commission.
.....
The commission met at the Museum of the bible and Bondi referenced Trump's May 1 [2025] executive order, which established the panel and said Americans must work to "preserve (religious freedom) against emerging threats."
..... "The federal government became complicit in sheltering these threats, becoming the greatest threat itself," Bondi said before listing events under former President Joe Biden's administration.
..... She
mentioned the nearly two-dozen anti-abortion activists whom Trump pardoned in January [2025] and claimed Biden "marked Easter Sunday, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, as transgender Day of visibility>" As USA Today previously reported, the latter commemoration has long been celebrated on March 31, and Easter also landing on that date in 2024 was coincidental.
..... Bondi said the administration has dropped cases that stemmed from the Freedom of Access to clinic Entrances Act, under which anti-abortion activists have been arrested, and has supported the "right of parents to protect their children form transgender books" in public schools.
..... Bondi's message didn't sit well with Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons of Interfaith Alliance, who was one of a half dozen people who left the museum's theater during what he described as Bondi's "very extreme" remarks.
..... "To see the attorney general sue her short remarks to just act aggrieved was disturbing, but expected," he said.
..... Gravies-Fitzsimmons was already skeptical of the commission before June 16, [2025] and he found the meeting affirmed his suspicion by ahivng "very little diversity of thought."