FFRF Action Fund’s “Secularist of the Week” is a stellar secular ally and repeat “secularist” honoree for his work in protecting democracy (and fighting Project 2025).
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, representing California’s 2nd district, has taken the leadership in exposing the dangers of Project 2025 since launching a congressional task force to stop it in June. He warned then: “Project 2025 is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will.”
Since launching the taskforce, Huffman has been all over the media, from his own social media posts to C-SPAN to The Guardian, to ensure that the public knows how the Heritage Foundation and followers are plotting to upend democracy. Project 2025 would take “a wrecking ball” to America’s democratic norms and institutions,” and “weaponize the Department of Justice,” he noted.
After a summer spent educating on the dangers found in the 900-plus page document, already this month Huffman moderated a briefing about stopping Project 2025, joined by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin and Joyce Vance, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law.
“Trump’s attempt to disown his Project 2025 isn’t fooling anyone,” Huffman said recently. “The ‘resignation’ of Trump’s federal personnel czar Paul Dans from Heritage is laughable — Dans had already boasted of ‘giving notice’ to Heritage so he could return to work for Trump. Nice try guys.”
Huffman has also called attention to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s ominous vow to Christians: “In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” Huffman said, “Trump’s ‘jokes’ about claiming dictatorial power are catnip for this audience — fundamentalist ‘kingdom’ evangelicals who want to end our secular democracy. The choice between Trump and Kamala Harris is clear, especially if you value democracy.”
In a particularly fascinating interview in the British publication The Freethinker, Huffman talked about his status as the only open nonbeliever in Congress and his efforts to combat Christian nationalism in the United States by founding the Congressional Freethought Caucus with Raskin and launching the Stop Project 2025 Taskforce. Huffman described coming out as a humanist and why he decided to go public with his lack of religion after Trump won the 2016 election.
“The American people are getting less religious all the time and they are getting more religiously diverse, but Congress is stuck in a religious profile from the 1950s,” Huffman said. “Religious fundamentalists correctly sense that their power and privilege are waning and that has caused them to become more desperate and extreme in their politics.”
Huffman described Project 2025 as “an extreme takeover plan for a second Trump presidency to quickly strip away many of the checks and balances in our democracy” and declared that “the Christian nationalist agenda is at the heart” of the project. While the best way to stop Project 2025 will be to ensure Trump is not elected in November, Huffman points out that Congress will need “to build some policy firewalls.” Huffman urges: “We need to build our [defenses] against this kind of extreme takeover of government.”
“But the truth is that, though we did an incredible thing by separating church and state in our Constitution, we have never done a great job of upholding that ideal,” Huffman concludes. “We have allowed Christian privilege and Christian power to influence our government for a long, long time, and in some ways what we’re struggling with now is a reckoning between the written law and the desperate attempts of Christian nationalists to hang on to their power and the founding premise of separating church and state.”
Watch for Huffman’s interview about Project 2025 with FFRF’s own “Freethought Matters” TV show in its fall season debut, coming out on Sunday, Sept. 8 in six major cities and over YouTube.
FFRF Action Fund is extremely thankful to have a secular champion like Huffman in Congress. As the election approaches, we commend Huffman’s efforts to ensure the public understands what a second Trump presidency would entail.
FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues.