House Democrat locks horns with Sean Duffy over Jesus painting

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., grilled Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy earlier this week on Capitol Hill about his calls for a historic Jesus painting at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy to be restored to a place of prominence after being put in a basement in 2023.

During a Wednesday exchange that grew heated, Duffy and Huffman — who has represented a congressional district north of San Francisco since 2013 — went back and forth about whether it violates the First Amendment to allow the federal service academy’s “Christ on the Water” painting to hang in a room with mandatory meetings and disciplinary hearings.

“I would just note that we have the freedom of religion, not freedom from religion,” Duffy said. “And this painting was in this place of prominence for, I believe, 70 years, and it was folded up and moved to the basement.”

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“It was put into the chapel by your predecessor, not put away to be hidden in a basement, right?” Huffman interrupted. “That’s misleading.”

Huffman to Duffy at the end of a tense exchange: “We have a First Amendment for a reason.” pic.twitter.com/WLSpBUjGhn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2025

The 10-foot by 19-foot painting, created by the late merchant mariner Hunter A. Wood in 1944, depicts Jesus saving sailors lost at sea and has been hung in the USMMA’s Wiley Hall for 76 years.

Under the recently removed USMMA Superintendent Vice Adm. Joanna M. Nunan, the school’s administration first covered the painting with a curtain during official events, following a 2023 letter from Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder Mikey Weinstein, who demanded its removal on constitutional grounds. It was then placed in the basement of the school’s chapel, which is reportedly prone to flooding.

Duffy went viral on social media in April because midshipmen erupted in applause during his speech at the USMMA’s annual Battle Standard Dinner. He called for the painting to be restored and for Jesus to be brought “up from the basement.”

Duffy has also since hung a replica of the painting in his office at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C.

During their tussle on Capitol Hill over the painting, Duffy thanked Huffman for caring so much about the painting.

“This is ‘Christ on the Water,’ these are sailors, and it has a lot of history within the Merchant Marine Academy,” said Duffy. “And I love your attention to this ‘Christ on the Water’ photo.”

Duffy pushed back against Huffman’s implication that having a painting of Jesus in the administrative building would alienate non-Christian midshipmen, noting, “We’re all in this together.”

Huffman and Duffy locked horns about funding for the dilapidated USMMA.

“The issue here is that the Merchant Marine Academy has been underfunded for too long,” said Duffy as Huffman tried to talk over him. “You have midshipmen eating off of paper plates, using plastic forks. They didn’t have hot water for four months. So if you want to talk about the Merchant Marine Academy, let’s look at how these poor midshipmen have been served by Congress and the last DOT.”

“You promised them more funding in your speech to the cadets. How’s that going?” Huffman shot back, to which Duffy replied by noting that the money has to come from Congress.

Huffman, who helped found the Congressional Freethought Caucus in 2018 after he “came out as the only openly non-religious member of Congress,” has repeatedly made headlines for expressing opposition to Christianity in government.

In January, he joined the caucus in protesting the 2025 National Prayer Breakfast in the U.S. Capitol, claiming the event was an inappropriate use of Statuary Hall, participated in “anti-LGBTQI+ advocacy” and intersected with Christian nationalism, among other concerns.

“We’ll be burning sage for months because of that,” Huffman said during a press conference, referring to a cleansing ritual common in witchcraft.

Huffman drew rebuke from congressional Republicans in 2021 when he suggested that the Roman Catholic Church should lose its tax-exempt status after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted to draft a document that could rebuke pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

“If they’re going to politically weaponize religion by ‘rebuking’ Democrats who support women’s reproductive choice, then a ‘rebuke’ of their tax-exempt status may be in order,” Huffman tweeted at the time.