FFRF Action Fund’s “Secularist of the Year” is a stellar advocate in Congress for state-church separation and the rights of nonbelievers.
In 2024, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman helped lead the charge against Project 2025 and its dangerous Christian nationalism, earning him his “Secularist” honorific. In June, Huffman, representing California’s 2nd District, launched a congressional task force to counter Project 2025. Huffman co-founded the task force with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, representing Massachusetts’ 7th District. Huffman cautioned: “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.” Huffman also cautioned that a “Christian nationalist agenda is at the heart” of Project 2025.
While launching the task force, Huffman warned the public that Project 2025 would take “a wrecking ball” to America’s democratic norms and institutions and would “weaponize the Department of Justice.” The task force intended to “build some policy firewalls” in Congress to counter Trump’s possible implementation of Project 2025’s goals.
The Huffman-led task force helped facilitate a historic hearing on Trump’s Project 2025 in September. The hearing was hosted by the Steering and Policy Committee in collaboration with the House Democratic leadership and the Stop Project 2025 Task Force. During the hearing, Huffman highlighted Project 2025’s most prominent potential threats, including the criminalizing of abortion nationwide.
In September, the task force also launched a confidential tip line for any information regarding Project 2025’s 180-Day Playbook after the Heritage Foundation failed to respond to requests to publish the hidden playbook. The playbook is suspected to include executive actions to criminalize reproductive health care nationwide, eliminate the Department of Education and exploit the Insurrection Act.
While appearing on FFRF’s “Freethought Matters” TV show during its fall season debut, Huffman said, “It’s true that [Project 2025 is] 920 pages of crazy, but it’s deadly serious at the same time. And that’s why we are spending a lot of time right now breaking it down. We’re having deep dive subject matter briefings for members of Congress and staff.”
Huffman has also delved into the cultural landscape that Project 2025 stems from. “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 in an August interview with the British publication The Freethinker. “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.”
“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,” Huffman concluded.
Huffman is also vocal on social media about Project 2025 and its Christian nationalism. On X, Huffman wrote: “Trump’s Project 2025 and Christian Nationalism are deeply intertwined. The pages of Project 2025 are riddled with ways to give Christian Nationalists the power to force America into a place where one extreme religious ideology dictates how we all live. It’s not what our country was founded on, and it’s not what the American people want.”
Huffman, the only open nonbeliever in the outgoing Congress and a self-described humanist, has long been an ally of FFRF Action Fund’s parent organization, FFRF, and protecting state-church separation and the rights of nonbelievers. In 2018, he founded with Reps. Jamie Raskin and Jerry McNerney the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which works to “protect the secular character of our government by adhering to the strict constitutional principle of separation of church and state.” Huffman currently co-chairs the caucus with Raskin.
We commend Huffman for his staunch commitment to state-church separation and our secular democracy. Huffman’s work to learn the inner workings of Project 2025 and help Congress construct roadblocks to its implementation will be critical during Trump’s second term. By countering Project 2025 and circulating its foundational Christian nationalism, Huffman has undoubtedly earned his “Secularist of the Year” designation.
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.