The Family Research Council (FRC) said in a statement Tuesday that the nomination of Mike Pompeo for Secretary of State will enhance the administration’s goal of a return to “American values and principles” and make support for human rights and religious freedom a priority.

“President Trump has been an agent of change in Washington,” said FRC president Tony Perkins in a press statement. “It is hard to identify another federal agency that is in more need of change than the State Department, which has historically and consistently been at cross purposes with American values and principles. Mike Pompeo is a proven leader, and I am very confident that he will be the desperately needed agent of change at State.”

Mike Pompeo is a proven leader. A very smart move by President Trump. https://t.co/QW2pygf0uG — Tony Perkins (@tperkins) March 13, 2018

In the Christian pro-family group’s “Washington Update” Tuesday, Perkins and his staff noted that, under Rex Tillerson, the “harmful cultural imperialism” that existed during the Obama administration continued.

FRC observed that the State Department has done little “to restore our promotion of international religious freedom to where it should be.”

“Religious freedom and human rights for all continues to take a backseat to the LGBT agenda as LGBT-promoting acting ambassadors remain in place around the world and our tax dollars still go to non-government organizations (NGOs) aligned with groups like George Soros’ Open Society and the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the group asserts.

In April 2017, Fox News reported that watchdog group Judicial Watch sued the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to obtain its records believed to show nearly $5 million in American taxpayer funds awarded to the Macedonian branch of Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Both the State Department and USAID failed to respond to a prior records request.

“The Obama administration seemed to bust taxpayer budgets in an effort to fund the Soros operation,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, according to the report. “The Trump State Department and USAID should get their act together and disclose the details of the Obama-Soros spigot.”

FRC views the nomination of Pompeo to head the State Department as a sign there is “hope for the United States to once again lead the world toward the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of human rights.”

“I believe Mike Pompeo is the agent of change the State Department needs, and he has the president’s ear,” Perkins says, adding:

He cares about religious freedom, and about restoring the United States to its historically-esteemed role of human rights defender – not cultural imperialist. And with Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom [Sam] Brownback also in place, the United States is perhaps better poised than any other time in recent memory to significantly make inroads in promoting religious freedom worldwide.

FRC praises Trump’s National Security Strategy that commits the United States to the support and advancement of religious freedom.