When Sen. James Lankford stood up on Tuesday to praise the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for its annual report, the Republican was emphatic: “The hope is that this report is not a report that everyone says, ‘Look, there was a release,’ but that it’s actually applied and is implemented,” he said.
“Thank you, and I really, truly mean it,” he told the commissioners.
Lankford didn’t draw attention to just how far apart Donald Trump’s policies are from the panel’s 2025 recommendations — very far — or how tech billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting crusade has undermined international religious freedom work. But those dynamics were on many attendees’ minds during the normally bipartisan event.