Leftist Groups Suing to Silence Trump's Religious Liberty Commission Actually Prove Its Point
A leftist lawsuit seeking to silence President Donald Trump’s commission investigating threats to religious freedom actually proved the commission’s point, and the leftist groups’ ties to the Woketopus highlight just how established this threat truly is.
The lawsuit faults the members of Trump’s commission for expressing the view that “the law should protect the exercise of religious beliefs over the civil rights of minority groups.” Yet LGBTQ activists weaponize claims of an embattled minority to silence religious freedom—and that’s one of the key threats the commission aims to combat.
Trump signed an executive order in May 2025 establishing the Religious Liberty Commission, tasking it with producing a report on the foundations of religious liberty, as well as its impacts on American society, current threats it faces, and strategies to preserve it.
In February, however, four left-leaning activist groups that support LGBTQ+ activism—Interfaith Alliance and its president Rev. Paul Rauschenbush, Muslims for Progressive Values, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Hindus for Human Rights—sued, asking a court to block the commission’s proceedings.
While a judge rightly dismissed the lawsuit, this leftist lawfare echoes the LGBTQ+ activist claims that conservative Jews and Christians who try to live out their faith are engaging in bigotry.
The Leftists’ Legal Claims
Represented by Democracy Forward, the groups claimed the commission violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, a law that demands committees such as the Religious Liberty Commission be “reasonably” balanced.
How was the committee unbalanced? The leftists said the committee “contains no members who represent the perspective of a non-‘Judeo-Christian’ religious tradition.” They faulted commission members for arguing that “religion, specifically what they would term ‘Judeo-Christian‘ values, should be promoted by the government.”
Most revealingly, the groups also cried foul because “each member of the commission has expressed the view that the law should protect the exercise of religious beliefs over the civil rights of minority groups.”
The groups also say the commission’s final report will force them to “divert further resources to advocate for pluralistic democracy and fight back against extremists who would privilege those who hold a narrow set of Judeo-Christian beliefs.”
The Judge’s Ruling
Judge John P. Cronan, a Trump appointee, rightly struck down these claims. He ruled that the law is exceptionally broad in allowing presidents to select members of committees, and he cited a previous ruling finding that Congress intended such committees to be balanced not according to religious beliefs but by “the members’ employment status and background.”
Cronan faulted the plaintiffs for cherry-picking quotes in order to claim that commission members would privilege “Judeo-Christian” views over other beliefs. He also rejected the notion that the commission must represent all religious minorities.
“It is not clear where the logic of plaintiffs’ argument ends,” Cronan wrote. If the commission is not fairly balanced because it doesn’t include a Sikh, though census data show there are only 70,000 Sikh Americans, “does President Trump need to appoint adherents from every single religious denomination in America?”
The commission heard testimony from more than 100 witnesses, including two Muslims, two Hindus, and one Sikh.
After the ruling, Democracy Forward claimed that the litigation “helped uncover the information the Trump-Vance administration attempted to hide from the public about this biased and unlawful body.” That statement referred to resources related to the commission’s work.
The Effort to Silence Traditional Faith
This lawsuit both sought to silence the Trump administration’s message on religious freedom and, ironically, proved the truth of that very message.
The commission heard testimony from Svitlana Roman, one of the parents who challenged a Maryland school district’s LGBTQ+ books program, which did not allow parents to opt their children out of sexualized lessons. It heard from Jennifer Mead, the Michigan mom whose 11-year-old daughter was “transitioned” by school officials behind her back. It heard from Shea Encinas, a fifth grader who was forced to read to a kindergarten student a book promoting transgender identity.
The plaintiffs’ complaint reflects a view that religious freedom claims should yield when they conflict with favored understandings of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The logic underlying these arguments is not new. Americans saw it before in the prosecution of Christian baker Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding. We saw it in the law that sought to penalize Lori Smith, a Christian graphic designer who would not create websites for same-sex weddings.
In each of those cases, the Supreme Court struck down an attempt by the state of Colorado to force conservative Christians to endorse LGBTQ+ beliefs. LGBTQ+ activists defended these efforts as protecting the “civil rights of minority groups,” but the Supreme Court rightly saw them for what they were—violations of the First Amendment.
Trump rightly highlighted how LGBTQ+ activism threatens religious freedom, and pro-LGBTQ+ activist groups sought to silence his administration’s report.
These activists are free to publish their own reports disagreeing with the commission, but that’s not what they sought to do here. Instead, they aimed to prevent the administration from issuing its report.
Ties to the Woketopus
The leftist groups suing to block the Religious Liberty Commission aren’t just isolated nonprofits. They often fit into the same nonprofit ecosystem that shaped policy in the Biden administration.
The Open Society Foundations, the grantmaking organ of Hungarian American billionaire George Soros now operated by his son Alex, gave $400,000 to Muslims for Progressive Values in 2022. Open Society Foundations has also committed about $20 million for 2026 to a group of nonprofits including Interfaith Alliance and Democracy Forward, according to Inside Philanthropy.
The Interfaith Alliance has partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center, co-hosting an “Interfaith Summit on Countering Hate.” Yes, this is the same SPLC that smears mainstream conservative and Christian groups, putting them on a “hate map” with chapters of the Klan. The SPLC has long faced accusations that it is “anti-Christian” because it condemns Christian organizations for upholding traditional Christian values. It arguably embodies the LGBTQ activist threat to religious freedom.
The Center for American Progress, which fed upwards of 70 staff into the Biden administration, worked with both the Interfaith Alliance and Democracy Forward on a report explicitly countering Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission.
FROM MY DESK
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Democracy Forward counts among its partners many of the leftist groups that influenced the Biden administration, including the Human Rights Campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and more.
While the Religious Liberty Commission highlighted many threats to Americans’ first freedom, this episode of leftist lawfare went a long way to proving its central thesis.
By seeking to shut down the commission rather than merely rebut its findings, the Woketopus-aligned groups demonstrated exactly why so many Americans believe religious liberty needs defending in the first place.
Large portions of this article were initially published on The Daily Signal.
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