Joe Biden's White House barred National Guard kids from decorating Easter eggs with crosses.
Now Trump's Religious Liberty Commission says the legal excuse used to justify moves like that was never real.
At a federal hearing, the commission's own chairman revealed the one phrase he says was never actually in the Constitution.
Dan Patrick Told the Commission There Is No Such Thing as Separation of Church and State
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick chairs President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission.
On April 13, 2026, he stood in front of a federal panel and said something most Americans have never heard a government official say out loud.
"There is no such thing as 'separation of church and state' in the Constitution," Patrick told the hearing, according to the Justice Department.
He said the phrase has been used "to suppress people of religion in our country."
Patrick did not stop there.
He told commissioners that "witness after witness testified that the so-called 'separation of church and state' was used to take their God-given religious liberty rights away."
Then came the line every conservative in that room needed to hear: "People of religion are under assault by the secular left."
Patrick was not speaking in the abstract.
He was describing a government that had, not long before, told children they could not draw a cross on an Easter egg.
In 2024, Biden's White House barred National Guard members' children from submitting Easter eggs decorated with religious imagery to its own annual contest.
That same spring, Joe Biden's administration declared Easter Sunday the Transgender Day of Visibility and had Biden tell transgender Americans, "You are loved."
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, and Rep. Diana Harshbarger all condemned the move as an insult to Christians during the faith's holiest week.
Biden's White House skipped a Good Friday proclamation that same year.
That is the suppression Dan Patrick was describing, and it did not happen by accident.
Trump's Final Report Recommends Repealing the Johnson Amendment and Reinstating Discharged Troops
Patrick's commission closed seven hearings and more than 100 witnesses before handing President Trump a final report in the Oval Office on June 26, 2026.
Vice Chairman Ben Carson stood beside him.
"We're bringing back religion in our country, and we're bringing it back quickly and strongly," Trump said.
"We must always be one nation under God," he added.
The report lays out 12 steps, and none of them are vague suggestions.
It calls for repealing the Johnson Amendment, the rule that threatens pastors with losing their tax-exempt status for preaching on politics from the pulpit.
It calls for restoring career and retirement benefits to service members Biden's Pentagon discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds.
It calls for a Justice Department task force built to prosecute religious liberty violations, with officials forced to justify in writing within 30 days any time they challenge someone's faith.
It even creates a Presidential Medal of Religious Liberty for the Americans who refused to back down.
President Trump's Reformation Day message, released October 31, 2026, tied all of it together – faith, the Founders, and what he called the moral restoration of the Republic.
A toddler's Easter egg with a cross on it was never a threat to the republic, but Biden's White House treated it like one while renaming the holiest day on the Christian calendar.
Dan Patrick just told a federal hearing room what every one of those parents already knew – the phrase used to justify that kind of thing was never in the Constitution to begin with.
It was manufactured, and it did exactly what it was built to do, pushing God out of classrooms, hospitals, and the military while the government that was supposed to stay neutral kept picking the same side.
Trump's commission did not just write a report.
It handed Christians the receipts, and it gave the Justice Department 30 days to start using them.
Sources:
- The White House, "Presidential Message on Reformation Day," The White House, October 31, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Religious Liberty Commission Holds Final Hearing on the Past, Present and Future of Religious Liberty," U.S. Department of Justice, April 13, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, "President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission Delivers Historic Report Draft," U.S. Department of Justice, June 26, 2026.
- Todd Starnes, "Biden Make Easter Sunday a Transgender Holiday," Townhall, March 31, 2024.
- Christian Post Staff, "Trump's Religious Liberty Commission Gathers for Final Hearing," The Christian Post, April 2026.
