Or take the “regulatory relief” for religious organizations that object to Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. Lawyers from Becket, the religious-liberty law firm that led the most high-profile court challenge on behalf of a group of Catholic nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor, were happy that the administration addressed the case: “We're encouraged by the promise of protection for the Little Sisters coming from the White House,” wrote Mark Rienzi in an emailed statement. And yet, last spring, the Supreme Court already ordered the Obama administration to work with religious non-profits to find a resolution. The executive order “may very well simply be, ‘Yeah, you have to do it, because SCOTUS told you to do it,’ which doesn’t move the ball,” said Anderson.

Tim Schultz, the president of the First Amendment Partnership, which works with legislators at the state and national level on religious-liberty issues, said the conservative reaction to the order would be mixed, especially because it leaves out protections for those who object to same-sex marriage. “Many will be disappointed that this signals a lack of will by the administration to expend political capital in this context,” he wrote in an email on Thursday morning. “Others want to see this addressed with great political care … and they will see an opportunity in this omission.” On the Johnson Amendment guidance, he wrote that “there could well be unintended consequences that are bad for faith communities.” This might include the further politicization of houses of worship or the flow of lobbying dollars into religious organizations.

On Wednesday, Kelly Shackelford, the head of First Liberty, said he thought there would be disappointment among religious-liberty advocates if the order only addressed the Johnson Amendment. But on Thursday, he was optimistic and encouraged. “This sends the message of where the president is,” he said. The “executive order is just the beginning—it’s not the long term—and it can show where his heart is.”

Meanwhile, the executive order turned out to be much milder than liberal advocacy groups and LGBT-rights advocates had feared. Earlier this week, as rumors of an intended executive order spread, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Transgender Equality circulated statements slamming the administration’s intention to give religious organizations a “license to discriminate” against women and LGBT people—issues that are arguably not addressed at all by the final version of the order.

The evangelicals who dined in the White House Blue Room on Wednesday night didn’t “get anything at all on the EO,” wrote Eric Metaxas, another conservative evangelical leader who attended, in an email—on Wednesday night, he was still “as curious as you are about the details,” he said. But some were already showing their support. Ralph Reed, a political strategist who runs the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said in a statement on Wednesday night that the provision of the executive order on the Johnson Amendment “removes a sword of Damocles that has hung over the faith community for decades” and the provision on religious non-profits “lifts a cloud of fear over people of faith and ensures they will no longer be subjected to litigation, harassment and persecution simply for expressing their religious beliefs.” This order is “just the first bite at the apple,” he wrote, “not the last.”

At least some seemed to be ready, as Jeffress said when he opened spoke to his fellow evangelicals in the White House on Wednesday night, to be Trump’s most loyal friends, no matter what.

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