California’s Jared Huffman calls annual event ‘a big part of the dystopic, authoritarian agenda at the heart of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement’
Democratic congressman Jared Huffman (Calif.) on Thursday protested the National Prayer Breakfast, accusing President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” of violating the First Amendment to advance a “dystopic, authoritarian agenda.” The breakfast, an annual bipartisan event since 1953, is chaired by former senator Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), a Democrat.
“Speaker Johnson’s National Prayer Breakfast is yet another example of MAGA Republicans taking a sledgehammer to the wall between church and state,” Huffman wrote on X. In a video accompanying the post, the California Democrat walked toward the Capitol and said, “This complete breakdown of church-state separation is a big part of the dystopic, authoritarian agenda at the heart of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.”
The National Prayer Breakfast, which consists of a series of meetings, luncheons, and dinners, has been held yearly in Washington, D.C., since 1953. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has attended, with former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both having spoken at the event during their terms.
While Huffman claimed that the breakfast is still controlled by the Fellowship, the Christian group that started the event, it has been run since 2023 by the independent National Prayer Breakfast Foundation. The foundation was originally led by a Democrat, former Arkansas senator Mark Pryor, and is now chaired by Heitkamp. Another Democrat, former Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu, sits on the board, while one of the honorary co-chairs for this year’s event is current Democratic senator Maggie Hassan (N.H.).
Congress took over hosting the event in light of Democrats’ concerns about the Fellowship, the Associated Press reported at the time.
Trump spoke at the prayer breakfast, saying he’ll sign an executive order to establish a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” Huffman described the president’s presence as a violation of the separation of church and state.
“Upstairs today, we had a National Prayer Breakfast, where our Statuary Hall was hijacked and turned into a church service where, amazingly, Donald Trump presided in weird and random ways,” Huffman said. “We’ll be burning sage for months because of that.”
