Top officials and federal agencies in Donald Trump’s administration used their official government social media accounts to share explicitly religious messages and declare Jesus the nation’s savior during the week of Christmas, drawing warnings from First Amendment advocates fearing a critical breach of the church-and-state firewall.
The Department of Homeland Security shared two videos on X with the caption “Christ is Born!”
Another post from the agency included the caption “we are blessed to share a nation and a Savior” with an 85-second video with rapidly cut-together American Christmas imagery with a cassette-like filter.
Both messages were shared by the White House.
“Merry Christmas to all. Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote that “the joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ.”
In a video posted to X, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins claimed that “the very best of the American spirit … flows from the very first Christmas, when God gave us the greatest gift possible: the gift of his son and our savior, Jesus Christ.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon wished “you and your family a day filled with lasting memories as we celebrate the birth of our Savior.”
“Let Earth Receive Her King,” the official account for the Department of Labor wrote.
Their messages and other posts across government accounts — sharply diverting from generalized greetings for religious holidays — swiftly drew criticism from First Amendment and religious freedom advocates who warned that the Trump administration is once again appearing to favor a religious state.
The First Amendment’s establishment clause prohibits the government from establishing a religion or favoring one over another, while the free exercise clause ensures the freedom to express one’s faith. Thomas Jefferson had stressed the importance of a “wall of separation between the church and state” to prevent religious dominance in governance.
Justice Department civil rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon said the agency relies on the “principles of the First Amendment and religious freedom protections on “a daily basis to protect Christians,” pointing to legal actions defending conservative Christians and anti-abortion activists.
The Trump administration’s social media posts are “one more example of the Christian Nationalist rhetoric the Trump administration has disseminated since Day One in office,” according to Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“Our Constitution’s promise of church-state separation has allowed religious diversity — including different denominations of Christianity — to flourish in America,” she said in a statement.
Former Homeland Security spokesperson Alex Howard called the messages an “inappropriate use of official government channels.”
“Americans don’t share a religion,” added Alex Nowrasteh, senior vice president for policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. “Our state is secular.”
Administration officials responded to criticism and requests for comment with “Merry Christmas.”
Nearly two-thirds of Americans identify as Christian, according to the Pew Research Center’s most recent Religious Landscape Study. That reflects a roughly 16-point decline from 20 years ago, while the largest share of Americans who don’t identify themselves with any religion climbed up by more than 13 points to 29 percent this year.
Nearly one in four Americans identify as evangelical Christians, but they played a crucial role in Trump’s presidential elections, including roughly 80 percent of white evangelical voters in 2024.
In February, the president directed a task force at the Department of Justice to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society” and “move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.”
He also established the Religious Liberty Commission in the Justice Department and appointed televangelist pastor Paula White-Cain as a senior adviser to the White House Faith Office.
The Trump administration’s alignment with an evangelical base also is parallel to a growing effort among religious right-wing special interest groups to move public funds into religious groups and education.
The president has also long promised his evangelical base that his administration would work to repeal tax code that prohibits tax-exempt charitable organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates, which would upend decades of federal law intended to prevent campaigns from using churches as political tools.
Earlier this year, the IRS indicated that it would allow churches and houses of worship to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without losing their tax-exempt status.
Amid several cases at the Supreme Court backed by Trump-aligned groups, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in 2022 that the conservative-majority court “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.”
She has warned that the court is treating the separation of church and state as a “constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.”
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