Editor’s note: This article is part of a Stream series on the current attacks on Religious Liberty. See the whole series here.

Do you remember when the Trump administration, as part of its pro-life stance, set federal agencies to compile a database of women who’d had abortions? Critics howled, of course, about the federal government targeting people who’d exercised legal rights, guaranteed at the time by a Supreme Court interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s people waved off their concerns, and grimly continued collecting names, addresses and Social Security numbers, offering no legitimate explanation for their actions. Republicans rallied around this policy, scorning talk of “privacy” and ridiculing critics as “extremists.”

You remember any of that?

We Don’t Play That Game. But Democrats Do

No, of course not. It never happened. Conservatives don’t act like that when they’re in power. But Progressives do. And right now they’re promoting dozens of policies aimed at curtailing religious freedom and marginalizing believers. For the big picture, see the report on the Bidenist regime by the National Faith Advisory Board (NFAB) which The Stream published a few days ago. (And for contrast, see the NFAB’s account of the Trump administration’s expansion of religious rights.)

Biden’s people have tried to purge the U.S. military of “extremists” who pose a “terrorism” threat, by which they mean … evangelical Christians and faithful Catholics. The Biden Justice Department warned that disgruntled patriotic parents at school boards need to be watched by the FBI. A recent report warned that election skeptics, pro-lifers, and other Trump supporters pose the greatest threat of domestic terrorism.

I recently learned about perhaps the most Orwellian and menacing measure by the Biden gang in power. Craig Huey, founder of Election Forum, is circulating a report that should alarm any American who values our Constitutional freedoms. Huey has learned that Biden really is doing something parallel to that fantasy of Trumpian tyranny with which this column began. It’s every bit as sinister, and it’s actually happening.

A Deep State Database of Dissenters

Huey writes:

At this point we know of 25 federal agencies working now or that are in the process of creating a database of those federal employees, contractors and vendors who have asked for a religious exemption to receiving a COVID-19 vaccination.

Bureaucracies under Biden are ideologically-driven and have been at war with Christians on a variety of different fronts and policy issues.

But now they are taking the war to a whole new level that is very similar to what occurs in countries like communist China.

The federal agencies in the process of Christian database collection include:

• Pre-trial Services Agency
• The Department of Justice
• The Department of Health and Human Services
• The Department of Transportation
• The Department of the Treasury
• Social Security Administration
• Federal Election Commission

None of these agencies can legitimately use this type of database other than for a terrible and unconstitutional assault on Christians in their war on Christianity and people of faith.

Liberty Counsel and other activists have confirmed and condemned the development of this database.

Leviathan’s Tentacles Everywhere

Remember that “federal contractors” include most companies that do any business with the federal government or agency. Given the vast (and expanding) size of the federal government, that means we’re talking about millions of people under the microscope. Huey warns:

The collection of the database is extensive.

For example, the Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) will process the religious exemptions and:

• Store information about every federal employee asking for the exemption
• Volunteers for any agency are included
• Interns are included
• Contractors are included
• Consultants are included

For the PSA, not only is the database created for PSA use, it has the authority to “disseminate” employee religious exemptions to any other agency.

In other words, a total violation of the privacy of the individual.

Incidentally, the obscure bureaucracy gathers information and makes recommendations on newly arrested defendants in the federal criminal system.

We Are All January 6 Defendants Now

You know, like the January 6 defendants, whose friends and associates and organizations are now being subject to a Congressional witch hunt by a politicized committee. We know that some defendants have been required to denounce Donald Trump, the Republican party, and their previous political views as conditions of avoiding more extensive jail time. That’s the way things work in Communist China — and now in the PSA, apparently.

Huey teases out the implications the database could have:

On the surface, it is obviously a chilling infringement on the free expression of faith.

But it is more than that:

• It will make someone think twice before they get a religious exemption
• It opens the door to discrimination, promotion, or having a job
• Moving from one agency to the next may become impossible
• It will help identify Christians to be fired – a purge of Christians from federal employment

In other words, once identified, then a search for any excuse for termination could begin.

We see this with the U.S. military purge of Christians – those in the military who have asked for a religious exemption – are told they will be dishonorably discharged.

Huey concludes:

This type of intrusion into the private lives of an individual and their own personal beliefs is a violation of First Amendment rights.

It should have no place in the federal government.

Congress must immediately move to stop this.

The courts must intervene immediately to stop this unconstitutional bureaucratic violation of religious freedom.

An Un-American Extremist Party

What should we conclude? That the Democrats are no longer a mainstream American political party. Instead, they are more like the old Communist Party, USA: an extremist organization opposed to our Constitution, unfit to exercise power.

That’s the truth, and that’s how we should talk about the Democrats, as the un-American enemies of freedom they are proving themselves to be. Those still within that party who reject the persecution of their fellow Americans for their religious or political beliefs … should quit that party. Maybe form a new one, which treasures Progressive views while honoring our Constitution. Or else they must take their party back from the Deep State apparatchiks whose model isn’t “socialist” Scandinavia but socialist East Germany.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”