Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to lead Trump’s commission on religious liberty

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WASHINGTON — Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been tapped to chair President Donald Trump’s new commission on religious liberty, which was announced during the National Day of Prayer celebration at the White House on Thursday.

“You are restoring the hopes and the prayers of millions upon millions of believers of all faiths,” said Patrick, referencing Trump, during a speech at the event.

The commission, according to Trump’s executive order, will make a report about threats to religious liberty and strategies to increase awareness of religious pluralism in the country.

This commission is a part of Trump’s push to “bring back religion,” to the United States. Trump on Thursday touted his pardons of anti-abortion protesters, the reinstatement of military members who were discharged due to vaccine mandates, creation of a Department of Justice task force to eradicate “anti-Christian bias,” and executive order against anti-semitism.

Ben Carson, the Housing and Urban Development Secretary in the first Trump administration, will serve as the commission’s vice-chair. Other commission members include television host Dr. Phil McGraw, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, various religious leaders, and Kelly Shackelford, the CEO of First Liberty, a Plano-based conservative legal organization. Commission members will serve at least until July 4, 2026.

Patrick approached Trump with the idea for the commission, Trump said during his speech in the Rose Garden.

Patrick, who was in Washington on Thursday for the announcement, said during his speech that the United States was “birthed by prayer,” and founded on the “Judeo-Christian ethic,” that people can worship without government interference. Patrick accused the Biden administration of having attacked people of faith.

“We have a magnificent inheritance of religious liberty and every believer today, no matter your faith, has a claim to that inheritance,” Patrick said.

Patrick has long promoted policies to infuse religion into public life, most recently prioritizing legislation that would require the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms and allow time for prayer in public schools. Patrick has referred to the United States as “a Christian nation” and echoed many of his political allies in arguing that there “is no separation of church and state. It was not in the Constitution.”

“We were a nation founded upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Constitution,” Patrick said in 2022.

Jasper Scherer contributed to this report.

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