Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - BONUS ｜ EXCLUSIVE： DOJ Releases a New Report on Anti-Christian Bias ｜ Camille Varone

00:00:00.000 Today, we've got a special bonus episode for you with Senior Counsel for the Department of Justice, Camille Veroni.

00:00:07.280 She is giving us an exclusive look at a new report out by the DOJ by the Task Force Against Anti-Christian Bias

00:00:17.060 that reveals so many disturbing aspects of the Biden administration and his DOJ's target on the backs of Christians,

00:00:26.380 And 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.

00:00:41.720 And then, of course, there was the targeting of the pro-lifers.

00:00:45.660 Even within the DOJ, there was an attitude of anti-Christian discrimination and the feeling

00:00:52.300 that Christians really didn't count as a protected class.

00:00:56.620 And that manifested itself in very real illegal prejudice against Christians.

00:01:02.080 And now the Trump administration is doing everything they can to shine a light on that

00:01:06.160 and to reverse that, to make sure that there is equal protection under the law for people

00:01:11.600 of all different backgrounds, including Christians.

00:01:14.220 Here's a report's explanation of why and how American current moral values

00:01:22.120 in Christianity come in conflict.

00:01:24.680 And then, of course, what is the government's job

00:01:27.420 when those two belief systems conflict?

00:01:30.640 When acted upon, traditional Christian moral beliefs

00:01:33.120 can fall into significant conflict with modern American culture

00:01:36.140 and generate significant policy and political disagreements.

00:01:38.980 in many respects the current debates within american culture wars reveal that the disparate

00:01:43.800 views hold incompatible understandings of the source and nature of truth the nature of human

00:01:48.220 life and personal autonomy identity and human relationships and actually the citation for that

00:01:54.780 quote as an example on page 29 of the report is my book you're not enough and that's okay and that

00:02:00.380 is one of the most important tasks i think i have is to help christians see what does the bible

00:02:06.180 actually say, not modern American politics or culture, about these moral issues of our day,

00:02:11.880 how do we stand firm in them? And I'm so thankful we have lawyers in this DOJ who are willing to

00:02:17.940 protect our rights as Americans to exercise those Christian beliefs fully. Without further ado,

00:02:23.900 here is our friend, Camille Veroni.

00:02:25.800 camille thanks so much for taking the time to join us on there's a new report out by the task force

00:02:41.280 to eradicate anti-christian bias and i have to say as a christian i did not know that this task

00:02:46.480 force existed in the doj so can you tell us about that first absolutely and ali thank you for having

00:02:53.420 me. It's a pleasure to be here. So the task force is a part of the Department of Justice,

00:02:58.920 but actually it was created by an executive order. So President Trump established it back

00:03:04.340 in February of 2025, and it has 17 different departments and agencies on it. So the task

00:03:10.240 force members are the cabinet members and the heads of the agencies themselves.

00:03:14.660 Okay. And what exactly does this task force do?

00:03:17.360 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.

00:03:32.200 And he wanted us across the federal government to take the time, 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.

00:03:45.480 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.

00:03:53.160 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.

00:03:59.520 And what exactly did this report find when it came to anti-Christian bias in the Biden administration?

00:04:07.580 Well, Ali, it's almost what you would expect.

00:04:10.520 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.

00:04:23.800 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.

00:04:35.520 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.

00:04:56.580 Right. Can you give us an example of that?

00:04:58.900 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.

00:05:13.760 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 at the federal government.

00:05:26.400 So at the end of the first Trump administration, the political leadership there looked at what the Supreme Court said.

00:05:34.020 And there was very clear language that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was not gone.

00:05:39.140 It still provided strong protections.

00:05:40.960 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.

00:05:52.480 The Biden administration, when it came in, went in a totally different direction.

00:05:56.420 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.

00:06:17.500 Wow. Yeah, this is from the report. So 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.

00:06:41.480 And so that kind of led to this rewrite of Title IX, which it sounds like you're saying the Biden administration really weaponized against Christian institutions, individuals and schools.

00:06:54.240 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. 0.98

00:07:08.660 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. 0.99

00:07:17.180 So it seems like that would be one example of that. 0.97

00:07:19.820 From the report, it says after the Bostock 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.

00:07:31.900 Career attorneys balked and requested that the incoming Biden DOJ rescind the memorandum immediately to boost employee morale.

00:07:40.420 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 supports under Title IX.

00:07:52.000 The Biden DOJ also considered requests for religious exemptions as harmful conduct to be regulated and pushed its incorrect Bostock interpretation and amicus briefs, even though federal courts repeatedly rejected it.

00:08:06.160 So they really wanted to use this rewrite of Title IX, this transgender issue specifically

00:08:11.860 to push back on Christians and Christian institutions exercising our beliefs about 0.58

00:08:17.300 biology and gender. Is that right? No, that's exactly right. And thank you for reading so 0.96

00:08:22.640 much of the report. That is exactly what we found. And when it comes to the school lunch program that

00:08:27.240 we were discussing, it actually was worse than what you said. It was religious schools that 0.99

00:08:33.100 were most impacted here, not public schools. So the report talks about Catholic schools

00:08:38.440 that were trying to participate, had participated actually in some of these instances

00:08:43.540 in school lunch programs for 20 years. And many of them were serving all children who came into

00:08:49.400 their schools without caring who they were, what their backgrounds were. But because the schools,

00:08:55.300 the archdiocese that ran them were unable to sign statements committing to gender ideology,

00:09:03.100 they they lost their ability to participate in those programs.

00:09:06.360 And some of them did sue and ultimately prevailed.

00:09:09.460 So we're thankful that the Constitution stood strong.

00:09:12.320 But you can see where the policy impulse was that was driving this.

00:09:15.900 Absolutely. And I didn't know that, that it was in particular Catholic schools that were hit by that.

00:09:21.940 And it seems, according to this report, that maybe that was intentional.

00:09:25.240 And we also see that they embedded the Biden administration,

00:09:29.580 embedded the expansive reading of Bostock into guidance memoranda regarding gender affirming

00:09:34.320 care for minors. The Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission likewise dismissed

00:09:40.100 sincerely held religious beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity

00:09:44.020 as discrimination in hiring cloaked as religious practice. Yes. And that's so disturbing. And,

00:09:53.700 you know, the chair of the EEOC under President Trump has talked often as part of this task

00:09:59.320 force about how Christians are not second class citizens here. And the way that the EEOC handled

00:10:04.760 these cases was deeply troubling to her and to the task force. Yeah. What exactly did that look

00:10:10.560 like? How did the Biden administration kind of weaponize the EEOC to go after these religious 0.96

00:10:16.040 institutions? Well, so there were a number of ways, but one of them was the COVID-19 vaccines

00:10:23.840 that was in the news substantially during the time. But the EEOC was the one who should have

00:10:30.160 been leading the way in setting policy that was protective of objections for religious objectors,

00:10:36.880 but also, you know, people who had other types of sincere health objections. The EEOC did not

00:10:43.000 do that. So instead, the Biden administration created a new different type of task force

00:10:47.780 to take the EEOC's place and run roughshod over sincere religious objections.

00:10:55.100 Wow. And it really seems like this, especially with Bostock and the redefinition of gender,

00:11:02.060 that that was really used as the way that the Biden administration forced its will upon a lot

00:11:09.340 of these institutions. I mean, public housing, the Department of Labor was a part of this.

00:11:14.120 Even the Biden Health and Human Services Department pushed providing gender affirming care for minors into their guidance memoranda with little provision for religious exemptions.

00:11:24.300 Do we know how many Christian medical professionals specifically lost funding or licenses or faced investigations because they refused to go along with this?

00:11:34.540 No, that's a great question.

00:11:35.700 Unfortunately, I don't know yet the full extent of how many people were impacted by it.

00:11:40.340 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 affirmation.

00:12:10.340 care. And they threatened to withhold federal funds, a similar theme that you see across all

00:12:14.940 of these examples, if these providers were unwilling to do what they asked. Yeah, can you

00:12:20.360 explain a little bit further what this means in the report? When courts made clear that the HHS

00:12:25.320 must offer religious accommodations for what we're talking about, HHS pivoted to a burdensome case

00:12:31.120 by case analysis in which it could consider any perceived harm inflicted by religious exemptions

00:12:37.100 on third parties, a process that could appear to offer illusory protection to those seeking

00:12:41.260 to act in accordance with their faith, but I guess actually didn't offer that protection.

00:12:46.900 Yeah. And, you know, that's a procedural question, but it's a very important one.

00:12:51.100 So in the way that the federal government and some of the regulatory structures

00:12:55.180 are assembled, there's often a presumption that people have sincere religious beliefs.

00:13:02.820 actually the way that HHS used to operate with some of the conscience objections over

00:13:07.300 contraceptive care was that religious organizations could sign a one-page form

00:13:12.120 explaining that they do have a sincerely held religious belief. And then HHS would take them

00:13:17.300 at their word. They wouldn't push back further. But what we found under the Biden administration

00:13:21.940 is that they changed that practice. So now it was much harder for Christians, faith organizations

00:13:28.420 to prove that they actually were Christian and that their beliefs on marriage, on the types of

00:13:35.380 care that they wanted to offer to patients, that that actually was not harming people. So it put

00:13:40.840 the burden on Christians to be able to keep their constitutionally protected rights. 1.00

00:13:46.920 Right. Right. That reminds me a lot of Jack Phillips in Colorado when, you know, he was 1.00

00:13:53.040 facing all kinds of persecution prosecution um for refusing to bake the cake to celebrate a gay

00:14:01.440 wedding and the attorneys there were basically trying to make him prove the sincerity of his

00:14:08.320 beliefs which the supreme court ended up ruling that you can't do that's you know treating

00:14:13.240 christians with hostility and it seems like the biden administration was getting away with that

00:14:17.800 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.

00:14:26.220 Can you talk more about what you found?

00:14:28.860 Absolutely. And thank you for asking about that.

00:14:32.560 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.

00:14:43.480 So when you look at the one, the report that we've been discussing here today is just a summary of that.

00:14:49.040 But what we found falls into three main categories.

00:14:52.900 So the first was the way that the Biden DOJ was outsourcing its enforcement, a federal criminal law to pro-abortion groups.

00:15:01.680 So the National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood and the Feminist Majority Foundation.

00:15:06.400 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.

00:15:25.620 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.

00:15:43.700 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.

00:15:56.640 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.

00:16:20.540 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 overturning Roe v. Wade.

00:16:32.180 And what was so troubling to us here was that it wasn't the judges who were intervening to give harsher penalties.

00:16:39.460 It was actually the Department of Justice.

00:16:42.140 Wow.

00:16:42.460 As a department, we requested twice as harsh penalties against those pro-life Christians than the vandals in those cases.

00:16:49.340 Wow.

00:16:49.820 And by we, obviously not talking about you, but just talking about the DOJ under Biden.

00:16:57.940 And, you know, 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.

00:17:13.320 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?

00:17:24.680 So we have significant concerns about that.

00:17:27.480 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.

00:17:37.900 in the reports. So we've focused on a couple of cases where taxpayers have come forward with

00:17:43.280 their own information and volunteered it to the public. So it's important to say that up front.

00:17:48.680 But what we found, there were a number of churches and Christian organizations

00:17:54.060 who interacted with politics. They tried to look at how Christian beliefs should impact

00:18:01.040 how they vote or how they should approach local referendums. So one of those that we

00:18:06.800 talked about in the report was a church that simply had a candidate come speak on the stage

00:18:12.640 about her testimony and prayed for her. The Biden IRS issued inquiries going after them because of

00:18:18.800 that. What we flag in the reporter, there were also a significant number of incidents across

00:18:23.360 the country where Democratic politicians showed up at churches as well. And to our findings to

00:18:31.680 date, there were no inquiries in the same way after them. So it does appear to be an area where

00:18:36.280 the Biden administration was at least applying this in a political way, only against particular

00:18:41.560 Christians because of their political views. Camille, something that's really unique about

00:18:47.020 this is a government report, or at least I think that this is unique. I haven't seen this before,

00:18:51.580 is that at the beginning, it's not just about the results. It's an explanation of basic Christian

00:18:57.540 theology. What do Christians believe? Why does it matter? Can you tell us more about what it

00:19:02.620 actually says and why y'all chose to set up this report that way. Absolutely. And thank you so much

00:19:08.380 for that question. I think it's important when we're talking about religious liberty that we

00:19:12.600 start from defining what it is we're talking about. There's a quote from G.K. Chesterton that

00:19:17.180 says, what is religious liberty without first knowing what is religion and what is liberty?

00:19:21.960 And so that's what we do in this report. We start with an overview of the role that Christianity

00:19:25.860 has played in American history and the American governmental system. We go through the rules that

00:19:32.080 govern, how religion can interact with both the government and the people. But then we spend a lot

00:19:37.060 of time going through, on average, what is it the Christians believe? And I think that that's 0.93

00:19:42.480 important in this context, because a lot of these issues, when you're running against these

00:19:48.320 conflicting worldviews between policy preferences and Christian doctrine, they get to incredibly

00:19:55.300 personal issues that touch people in the most personal parts of their lives, their families,

00:20:00.940 the way that they view themselves, who they marry. And Christian theology is important to understand

00:20:09.160 when we talk about those. So the report runs through, you know, what do Christians believe

00:20:14.680 about God creating men and women? What do Christians believe about sin? What do Christians

00:20:19.780 believe about God's forgiveness and redemption and why sin is an important part of that theology?

00:20:24.520 And I think that that is an essential context before we dive into the areas where Christians 0.77

00:20:30.660 start to differ from American culture. Yeah, gosh, that's so brilliant for so many reasons, 1.00

00:20:36.060 because in any discussion, you have to define your terms. Like, what do we actually mean by

00:20:40.260 this? But also, it seems that in this report, we're talking about the Biden administration

00:20:45.900 really dismissing the convictions of Christians as something that are just like arbitrary or even

00:20:50.360 rooted in hate. And so giving a theological framing for where we're coming from, that it's

00:20:57.020 not coming from a place of hate. It's coming from a sincere belief in God and the Bible.

00:21:01.600 It just makes so much sense and gives us so much context. And also it's like a comfort for me as

00:21:06.080 a Christian that there are people in the government that understand where we're coming from and why.

00:21:11.720 So that's amazing. Yeah. And I will say it's certainly not an exhaustive overview, nor should

00:21:18.040 it be. You know, it's not for the government to say what Christian theology should be or what

00:21:22.300 people should believe. But like you said, it's a central context here. We've had a lot of people

00:21:27.720 give it some close thought to make sure that we're really trying to hit on those key points

00:21:32.820 of what it is that Christians believe. I think that they're hopefully verses that are encouraging

00:21:37.940 to many of your listeners who I think share those views that are described in the report.

00:21:41.740 And just to close this out, can you talk about the other ways that you found disturbing that

00:21:46.700 the Biden administration seemed to be discriminating against Christians specifically?

00:21:52.300 So the report is 210 pages. There's, I think, nearly 1,200 footnotes. So I would love to go

00:21:59.840 through them all. I know you don't have that kind of time. But one of the things that from a

00:22:04.760 Department of Justice perspective that I think is worthwhile to note as we wrap up is just the type

00:22:09.840 of outreach that we normally see the federal government do that was handled in a very different

00:22:15.060 way. So normally when we're trying to inform the public about what civil rights protections they

00:22:20.560 have in place, the constitutional rights that protect them. Many of the federal agencies will

00:22:25.980 put together informational packets or information to dispense to constituents, to the American people,

00:22:31.980 so they know what rights they have and when they should reach out because they're concerned about

00:22:36.320 some sort of criminal violation or civil rights violation. So with that context, what happened

00:22:41.840 under the Biden DOJ is they created a new brochure to try to explain what religious discrimination

00:22:47.760 might look like. And that compiled about 20 pages of examples ranging from all sorts of different

00:22:54.900 religions, different types of discrimination, but there was one that was not included and that was

00:23:00.100 Christians. And the message that that sent was that the Biden DOJ didn't think that Christians

00:23:05.120 could be the victims of discrimination. And I think that that really gets to the heart of the

00:23:11.180 issue here, that because Christians were the majority faith in the country, the Biden

00:23:16.860 administration seemed to view them as really not eligible to be considered under these

00:23:23.160 constitutional and statutory protections. Wow, which is and should be illegal, which is,

00:23:31.320 you know. Yes, well, it's contrary to what the law requires, which is even fair-handed

00:23:35.980 application of justice for all people. Right, and we don't really have a justice system if we don't

00:23:41.980 have blind justice that way. So this should really disturb everyone, right? Whether you're

00:23:46.760 a Christian or not. Yes. Yeah. And that's what we've been saying since day one is that even if

00:23:52.300 our findings are tailored to what happened to Christians, what we found here really should

00:23:57.360 disturb everyone who holds religious beliefs. Because if the government can do that against

00:24:01.980 majority group, nobody's rights are safe under that kind of system. True. Absolutely. So what 0.97

00:24:08.520 does the Trump administration, after all of these findings are uncovered, what exactly

00:24:13.240 happens?

00:24:13.820 How do we right the ship?

00:24:16.240 Thank you for asking.

00:24:17.400 And I hope people will take a look at chapter five of our report because we have about 30

00:24:21.820 pages just running through example after example, not just of proposals.

00:24:25.980 What we've assembled there are things that have already been done since day one of the

00:24:30.080 administration to protect religious liberty.

00:24:32.460 So we have in there policy decisions that were from the Biden era that have been rescinded

00:24:37.620 right from the get-go. Those include things like the Garland Memorandum, you know, pursuing

00:24:43.820 parents at school board meetings, the targeting of traditional Catholics. All of that was taken

00:24:48.660 off the books from the very beginning of the administration. And then we also have in there

00:24:53.160 from across these different agencies, examples of new proposed regulatory changes that they've

00:24:59.000 announced. There are examples of types of cases and enforcement actions that different agencies

00:25:05.480 have brought on behalf of Christian institutions, Christian individuals. It's a really wonderful

00:25:12.220 list that we've compiled. The task force is really proud of the work that we've done.

00:25:16.760 And I think we hope the American people will take heart because even if the findings that we have

00:25:22.800 in the report are troubling, it really is an opportunity to get back to first principles.

00:25:28.680 And that's what we've tried to show there is even if our hearts are sometimes troubled,

00:25:32.640 that the Constitution is strong, its principles are entering, and it's pretty easy to right the

00:25:38.100 ship hopefully back to where they should be. Yes. Amen. Well, praise God for that. I'm just

00:25:43.080 very thankful. And even just people being aware that things like this are happening,

00:25:47.580 it makes us all more vigilant, more grateful for the Constitution. It encourages us to know

00:25:53.400 our constitutional rights, and that can only be a win. Camille, thank you so much. Remind us again

00:25:58.080 where people can read the full report?

00:26:00.580 Yes, so it'll be on the Department of Justice website.

00:26:03.140 It's dropping tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.

00:26:06.380 You can find it on our social media

00:26:07.840 and on the website with the press release as well.

00:26:09.860 Okay, and when this comes out, this is Thursday morning.

00:26:13.600 So Thursday morning, it comes out.

00:26:15.940 Awesome, thank you so much.

00:26:17.740 Okay, thank you so much for having me, Allie.

00:26:19.580 Yes.

00:26:28.080 You

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 30, 2026

BONUS ｜ EXCLUSIVE： DOJ Releases a New Report on Anti-Christian Bias ｜ Camille Varone

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