Repeatedly during his campaign for president in 2016, Donald Trump promised to protect religious freedom, gaining broad support from both the evangelical community and conservative Catholics in the process.
And repeatedly during his presidency, Trump has taken actions that show he takes that promise seriously. In the last few weeks, liberals have demanded that the president make climate change the focus of U.N. meetings in New York, but Trump chose instead to make religious liberty his focus at the September meetings.
Seventeen months ago, we at Public Advocate of the United States decided to check into whether the perpetual bureaucracy—aka the swamp—was implementing or ignoring Trump’s religious liberty reforms. Here’s what we found.
The same day, Sessions sent a memorandum to all 94 U.S. attorneys offices, ordering each office to take a number of steps to implement the religious liberty principles outlined in his memo.
Thus, “a religious liberty point of contact will ensure that the Attorney General’s Memorandum is effectively implemented,” according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Unfortunately, it seems that protecting religious liberty hasn’t been all that important to U.S. attorneys nationwide. In April 2018, our organization, Public Advocate of the United States, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the DOJ, asking for “all records demonstrating compliance or noncompliance with” the order to appoint religious liberty points of contact.
When the government failed to answer this very simple request, Public Advocate filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In response to that suit, the government agreed to provide the requested documents, and this month completed a full production of responsive records. Here’s what we found.
Of the 94 U.S. attorneys offices, only 20 could provide a record showing they had complied with the order and appointed a religious liberty point of contact. Of those 20, three of them took action only after Public Advocate brought suit.
The documents obtained demonstrate that, while religious liberty protection is important to the president, it’s not that important at all to the U.S. attorneys offices around the country. No one is responsible and, in most cases, that likely means nothing has changed. On a day-to-day basis, it looks like the swamp has swallowed up the president’s new policy.
Public Advocate’s FOIA litigation has shown that government officials cannot be expected to carry out the president’s instructions. The White House needs to adopt something like President Ronald Reagan’s “trust but verify” approach, and can never fully trust bureaucrats to faithfully implement Trump’s agenda.