This month, voters chose to turn the page on the Biden-Harris Administration and re-elect Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States.

This was an enormous win for the American people. It’s clear that Trump’s vision for freedom, populism, and patriotism inspired tens of millions of voters from all backgrounds, including those from working class communities. A critical part of his victory can be attributed to people of faith, who, for the last four years, have been mocked, ridiculed, targeted, and persecuted by the Left. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the power of the federal government was unleashed on America’s large Christian population and even sought to destroy higher education institutions that offer alternatives to traditional universities. While Republicans should certainly look to the future and focus on delivering on our political mandate, we should also identify the harmful anti-Christian discriminatory actions taken by the Biden Administration – and ensure that no future Administration can ever pursue such an agenda again.

While it is safe to say that President Trump, who has a great deal of respect for Christians, will not continue the Biden Administration’s lawfare and targeted persecution of Christian institutions, Congress must enact reforms to the Department of Education to prevent it from arbitrarily targeting certain schools because they refuse to adopt left-wing woke orthodoxy and indoctrinate their students.

• After a prolonged attack on career colleges, the Biden-Harris Department of Education has turned its aggressive scrutinize-and-penalize campaign against Christian students and the colleges and universities that serve them.
• The Department of Education’s assault on Christian colleges is being carried out by its Office of Enforcement—an obscure agency created under President Obama and resurrected by President Biden. This secretive office’s mission is to shut down colleges and universities that don’t align with the Administration’s woke agenda.
• Nearly 70 percent of penalties imposed by the Office of Enforcement have been against Christian institutions and career colleges, even though these schools represent less than 10 percent of college students.
• Within the last year the Biden-Harris Department of Education imposed record fines against two of the nation’s most prominent Christian universities—Grand Canyon University ($37.7 million) and Liberty University ($14 million). These fines total more than all other penalties assessed by the Department of Education over the past seven years.
• President Biden increased the Office of Enforcement’s budget by nearly 600 percent last year—and it has requested another almost 230 percent raise this year—signaling the Department of Education’s plans to escalate its attacks further.

Days before his inauguration then President-elect Joe Biden wrote in a statement that “ensuring freedom of religion remains as important as ever” and that government must safeguard “bedrock protections.” No one should be “afraid to attend a religious service, school, or community center,” the statement asserts.

That statement is not representative of what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually believe. Since assuming office, the administration has waged an unprecedented assault against Christian colleges, universities, and students, while systematically protecting “elite” public and private institutions, foisting woke ideology on reluctant students, and enabling antisemitic, violent protests on campuses across the nation.

It’s done so by weaponizing the Department of Education’s Office of Enforcement—an obscure subsidiary of the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) that was created with the implicit intent of shutting down schools and programs that do not conform to the administration’s radical agenda. This campaign, which has been advanced under the auspices of protecting students from “predatory” colleges and universities, threatens to erode traditional family values from higher education and financially squeeze and shut down schools that align with Christians’ values and beliefs.

Some of the Biden-Harris administration’s actions to dismantle religious protections are well documented. In 2023, it rescinded an executive order that required colleges and universities to treat religious student groups equally to other student groups. As one legal organization explains, the measure was “put in place to prevent universities from censoring students’ religious speech and denying religious student groups the same benefits that other student groups receive.” The Biden-Harris Department of Education called it “unduly burdensome.”

Only weeks earlier, the Department of Education issued guidance warning teachers not to encourage or endorse prayer or religious expression in public schools. The edict was applauded by American Atheists. “We all see through Christian nationalists’ lies,” the organization’s president said in a statement. “The Biden administration’s guidance protects families from Christian nationalists’ hypocritical attempts to foster coercive religious exercise in schools.”

This year the Department of Education published new Title IX regulations that codify “sweeping” protections for transgender and LGBTQ+ students. The administration punted its plan to include a policy that would prevent schools from banning transgender athletes from participating on teams inconsistent with their gender at birth—a decision NBC News described as a “political maneuver during an election year” and U.S. News called “too much for the White House to risk in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.” But experts predict, if elected, Vice President Kamala Harris would revive the effort.

“The religious practice of student groups and individuals is under immense fire at universities,” 21 state attorneys general wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona last year.

The Biden-Harris administration’s campaign against Christian students has now shifted to the institutions that serve them. Students are increasingly choosing faith-affiliated colleges and universities over public and private schools. Enrollment at faith-based schools grew 82 percent between 1980 and 2020, about 44 percent faster than the national average. That doesn’t sit well with the Biden-Harris administration, which is working hard to curb these trends and confine students into conventional four-year schools by limiting student choice. Read more»

Jon Schweppe | The Department of Education’s Office of Enforcement: The Obscure Agency Leading A Crusade Against Christian Colleges and How New Data Proves The Bias | November 18, 2024

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