Joe Biden has repeatedly criticized Donald Trump for downplaying, or even undermining, an array of human rights causes in America and beyond.
But as Biden prepares to take over the presidency, he’s facing an unusual request. Activists are urging him to reduce, or “right-size,” the U.S. focus on one human right the Trump administration has done a lot to promote: religious freedom.
It’s an odd situation: Human rights activists rarely complain that a cause gets too much attention. It’s also politically tricky. If Biden is perceived as rolling back the emphasis on religious freedom, Republicans can use it against him to help rally their electoral base — especially evangelicals for whom the topic is near and dear.
The dilemma is one example of the dangerous policy terrain Trump is leaving behind for Biden. From heaping sanctions on countries with which Biden hopes to negotiate, such as China and Iran, to cutting hasty diplomatic deals that break with long-held U.S. positions, as with Morocco, Trump is leaving behind a legacy that could be hard for Biden to undo.
In the case of religious freedom, the Trump administration has done everything from host international gatherings on the topic to direct more funds toward specific religious groups overseas. Such efforts have been embraced emphatically by evangelical groups, which often work to protect vulnerable Christian minority sects in places like Iraq. Trump aides also have used the cause of religious liberty to whack adversaries such as China, with administration officials even pondering whether to label Beijing’s mass detention of Uighur Muslims a genocide.
Many people in Biden’s orbit have watched the emphasis on religious liberty with unease. That’s not because they disagree with the cause. Rather, they question whether the Trump team’s intense emphasis on it is more about politics or about using religious freedom as a way to undermine other rights, such as those of gays and lesbians.
For now, Biden transition aides have made no promises to activists asking them to scale back or repudiate some aspects of Trump’s religious freedom agenda. But the Biden team seems to grasp the sensitivities involved, some advocates told POLITICO.
“My guess is they’ll think carefully,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director for Human Rights Watch. “If there are changes, it’ll probably be part of a package — you would try to embed it in a broader project.”
Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), who served as assistant secretary of State for human rights during the Obama administration, said Biden needs to articulate a “strong and principled global human rights policy.”
“Our advocacy for religious freedom in the world would be more effective if it’s seen as grounded in such a policy, rather than as a political pet project and not as something that seems to take precedence over other core values that the United States has always championed,” Malinowski said.
Some prominent conservatives, meanwhile, say Biden should build on the religious liberty infrastructure the Trump team is leaving behind.
“This is something that would lessen evangelicals’ opposition to him, make them feel more supportive of him, if he were to embrace this policy,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary.
A Biden transition spokesperson declined to comment for this story but referred a reporter to Biden’s pledges to devote more resources to protecting America’s faith-based communities against extremist violence.
Biden also issued a statement Thursday in honor of Human Rights Day, in which he promised to “put universal rights and strengthening democracy at the center of our efforts to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”
Every presidential administration, Republican or Democrat, has faced accusations of inconsistency on human rights. But the Trump administration is unusual in the degree to which it has prioritized one right, religious freedom, above others.
Among other things, Trump aides have: launched an annual ministerial gathering to promote religious freedom; created an alliance of countries devoted to the topic; and elevated the offices of the special envoys for international religious freedom and combating anti-Semitism in the State Department’s command structure. The president, meanwhile, issued an executive order calling for more emphasis on religious freedom in diplomatic decision-making. Many of the administration’s political appointees at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development have experience in the religious freedom field.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also created the Commission on Unalienable Rights, a panel devoted to rethinking human rights policy. Pompeo used the panel’s report to declare that religious freedom, as well as property rights, are the “foremost” human rights. He’s given several speeches about the importance of Christianity in his life and calls religious freedom America’s “first freedom.”
On one hand, human rights advocates are happy the administration pays attention to the oppression of faith groups, many of whom face dire conditions.
While Trump himself usually shows indifference or hostility to human rights — he calls journalists the “enemy of the people,” has banned citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from U.S. soil and even reportedly supported China’s mistreatment of the Uighurs (he denies this) — many of Trump’s aides have lined up behind the religious freedom agenda.
But rights activists suspect Trump aides’ motivations are not entirely pure.
Emphasizing religious liberty is, after all, a way to make even more inroads in the evangelical community, whose members are especially concerned about the plight of Christian minorities overseas.
Pompeo, who is eyeing a White House run, has already seen his profile rise in evangelical Christian circles partly because of his loud advocacy for religious freedom. Reports that Vice President Mike Pence has sought to prioritize sending aid to Christian minorities also have alarmed rights activists who insist religious freedom policies must be faith-neutral.
Some rights activists also believe that Trump aides are prioritizing religious freedom in a long-term effort to impose policies that degrade the rights of LGBTQ people, as well as women’s rights.
“They essentially have tried to weaponize it, use it as a license to discriminate against certain communities,” said Mark Bromley, chair of the Council for Global Equality, which advocates for LGBTQ rights.
The council and other rights organizations are asking the Biden team to repudiate Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, making it clear that the U.S. doesn’t agree with the notion that there’s a hierarchy of rights with religious freedom at the top.
“We haven’t received any assurances or anything like that, but in talking to folks on the transition, we get the sense they understand the equities,” said Bromley, whose organization has sued Pompeo over the commission.
Sam Brownback, Trump’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, agreed to an interview, but his aides later claimed he was unavailable. Asked for comment, the State Department said in a statement attributed to an unnamed official that “the right to freedom of religion or belief is a fundamental right out of which others’ rights flow.”
“More religious freedom leads to other freedoms, including freedoms of assembly and expression,” the statement said. “We think that promoting and protecting religious freedom makes life better for every citizen.”
Human rights activists have mixed views on which elements of Trump’s religious freedom agenda should be kept or jettisoned.
For instance, some predicted that the Biden administration will keep the annual ministerial gathering on religious freedom, though perhaps other countries can host it on a regular basis.
Some activists say that instead of cutting back on religious-liberty-related activities, the Biden team could find ways to emphasize other human rights issues that have gotten short shrift under Trump, such as freedom of the press or women’s rights. Biden already has promised to hold a “Summit for Democracy,” a forum in which some of these issues could be highlighted.
Brownback’s office, as well as that of the envoy focused on anti-Semitism, should be placed back under the auspices of the State Department’s human rights bureau, some of the activists argue. That, as well as whom Biden names to lead those offices, could send strong signals that one right won’t be prized above others.
Conservatives, too, say they will watch Biden’s envoy picks closely.
While it’s unlikely the religious freedom issue will drive an electorally meaningful number of evangelicals to support Biden, they said, treating the subject with sensitivity and caring could save him some unnecessary headaches.
‘This is a very, very important issue to the vast majority of evangelicals in the country,” Land said. “They won’t be silent about it.”