‘Everyone needs access to basic financial services,’ said Brian Knight, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom.
President Donald Trump’s executive order banning politicized debanking is intended to reverse what some analysts say is a trend of banks and payment services refusing service to people and companies for political, religious, or ideological reasons.
Advocates against political debanking cite cases of Christians and conservatives who they say have been victims of this process. This includes allegations by Christian organizations including Tennessee-based nonprofit Indigenous Advance Ministries, as well as Sam Brownback, the chairman of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), and the president himself.
Speaking to bank executives at the World Economic Forum in January, Trump said, “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America.”
Many conservative groups expressed support for this executive order.
“Everyone needs access to basic financial services,” Brian Knight, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a leading advocate against ideological debanking, told The Epoch Times. “No American should have to worry that they could lose their bank account or have a payment declined because of their religious or political beliefs.”
Banks have denied that they have taken part in political debanking.
“We don’t close accounts for political reasons, and we agree with President Trump that regulatory change is desperately needed,” Patricia Wexler, a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase, told The Epoch Times in a statement. “We commend the White House for addressing this issue and look forward to working with them to get this right.”
A Bank of America spokesperson told The Epoch Times in January: “We serve more than 70 million clients and we welcome conservatives. We are required to follow extensive government rules and regulations that sometimes result in decisions to exit client relationships. We never close accounts for political reasons and don’t have a political litmus test.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing advocacy group, criticized efforts by groups including Alliance Defending Freedom, calling them “an ongoing crusade to force private businesses to adhere to conservative Christian theology, in part by spreading the false narrative that private sector banks have been dropping conservative religious clients since the Obama administration.”
Trump’s executive order seeks to reorient federal regulators and law enforcement away from practices that may have supported political debanking and toward actions that will actively oppose it.
Here are five key takeaways from the order.
