In May 2020, the Centers for Disease Control planned to advise churches that they should conduct services online, to curb the spread of Covid. But the Trump Administration blocked the proposal, citing religious-freedom issues, newly released email exchanges show.

Paul Ray, who headed the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, explained at the time: “Each faith tradition—not the federal government—is best situated to understand the demands of its own beliefs and therefore to choose, among the multiple effective means of preventing the virus’s spread, those means that best comport with its beliefs.”