Religious liberty executive order draws mixed reviews
In a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House on the National Day of Prayer, President Trump signed a highly anticipated executive order on religious liberty, basking in the praise of religious leaders who blessed his action as an answer to their prayers.
“It was looking like you’d never get here, folks, but you got here!” a triumphant Trump told the May 4 gathering after a series of invocations from Baptist and Catholic leaders and from Paula White, the prosperity gospel televangelist who is one of Trump’s main religious advisers.
Yet social conservatives who had been expecting more expressed sharp disappointment, and the order itself may not have much real impact on current laws and regulations, such as the Johnson Amendment, the 1954 law that threatens nonprofits with the loss of their tax-exempt status if they engage in electioneering.
