Thursday in the Rose Garden at the White House, President Donald Trump declared freedom to be “a gift from God” before signing an executive order to protect the tax-exempt status of churches and religious groups if they engaged in politics.

Trump said, “We remember this eternal truth. Freedom is not a gift from government. Freedom is a gift from God. It was Thomas Jefferson who said the God who gave us life gave us liberty. Our Founding Fathers believed that religious liberty was so fundamental that they enshrined it in the very First Amendment of our great beloved Constitution.”

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