Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) demanded Thursday that a radical pro-abortion organization provide answers on its involvement with the Biden administration’s targeting of peaceful pro-life protesters, according to a letter obtained by The Daily Wire. 
In a <a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/10.16.25-CR-to-NAF-Gonen-re-DOJ-coordination.pdf">letter</a> to the National Abortion Federation, Roy gave the organization two weeks to provide documents and communications on its relationship with former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. The letter comes after The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bidens-fbi-worked-with-radical-pro-abortion-group-to-target-pro-lifers-emails-show">reported last month</a> about emails that appeared to show that a pro-abortion group had worked with Biden’s FBI and DOJ to investigate Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) cases. 
Under Biden, elderly grandparents, devout Christians, and other pro-life activists were sent to prison over FACE Act convictions. Republicans have argued that these prosecutions were politically motivated. Roy, the chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, is heading up an investigation into the abuse of the FACE Act. 
“Documents indicate that the Biden-Harris DOJ may have coordinated with radical anti-life groups, including the National Abortion Federation (NAF), to prosecute peaceful pro-life demonstrators,” Roy wrote, citing The Daily Wire. “This coordination raises significant questions about the Biden-Harris DOJ’s misuse of the FACE Act.”
The documents, which were obtained by the Functional Government Initiative, included an email from National Abortion Federation Security Manager Robert Ledogar saying that his organization has “been part of several FACE Act investigations working with [assistant U.S. attorneys] and the FBI in TN, FL, VA, CA, NY, MD, and NC.” The email also touted the “amazing relationship” between the NAF and the Biden administration. 
“The Biden-Harris Administration weaponized the federal government to target its political opponents, including by selectively enforcing the FACE Act against pro-life Americans,” Roy wrote to the NAF. “During the Biden-Harris Administration, DOJ used the FACE Act to target prayer and peaceful demonstration near abortion clinics while failing to prosecute criminals who vandalized or threatened pro-life pregnancy counseling centers.”
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Roy noted that the apparent relationship between the NAF and DOJ raised questions about testimony from National Abortion Federation lawyer Talcott Camp when she told Congress in May 2023 that she had no contact with the Biden administration related to the FACE Act. That testimony came five months after Ledogar bragged in January 2023 about the NAF’s relationship with the DOJ. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
A National Abortion Federation lawyer testified to <a href="https://twitter.com/chiproytx?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@chiproytx</a> that it had no influence over the Biden FACE Act prosecutions.
But Jan 2023 emails revealed today by The Daily Wire show it partnered with the Biden’s FBI and DOJ on multiple FACE Act cases. <a href="https://t.co/7uKMjhWR20">pic.twitter.com/7uKMjhWR20</a>
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1970603237125558731?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 23, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“Given her senior position at NAF, the Committee has questions about who was engaging with the Biden-Harris DOJ regarding FACE Act prosecution,” Roy wrote Thursday. 
It is unclear which specific FACE Act investigations the National Abortion Federation was involved in, but at least two of the states referenced by Ledogar had major FACE Act prosecutions. 
For example, six pro-lifers in Tennessee faced over 10 years in prison after they were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-church-meeting-is-now-a-conspiracy-pro-lifers-pray-outside-court-after-conviction-over-peaceful-protest">convicted</a> of violating the FACE Act and conspiring against rights. Three of the pro-lifers were sentenced to prison over that case, which involved a group of Christians singing and praying inside the hallway of an office building outside an abortion facility.
“To develop effective legislation ensuring that civil rights laws are not used to target Americans who engage in protected speech, the Committee must understand the extent to which the Biden-Harris DOJ worked with ideologically-aligned groups to target pro-life Americans,” Roy wrote. 
The House Judiciary Committee voted earlier this year to repeal the FACE Act, citing its disproportionate use against pro-life defendants. Since its inception, data obtained by Roy shows that over 90% of FACE cases have targeted pro-lifers, even though it is supposed to protect crisis pregnancy centers and churches as well.

House Votes 9/4/25

Chip Roy Demands Answers About ‘Amazing Relationship’ Between Abortion Group And Biden’s DOJ

Chip Roy Probes 'Amazing Relationship' Between Abortion Group And Biden's Justice Department

Abortion

Biden Administration

Chip Roy

Department of Justice

FACE Act

Pro-Life Movement

As the Biden administration locked up elderly grandparents and devout Christians over peaceful pro-life protests, it partnered with a radical pro-abortion organization to prosecute pro-lifers, previously unreleased emails show.
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department and FBI partnered with the National Abortion Federation for multiple investigations into pro-life protests and developed an “amazing relationship,” according to <a href="https://functionalgovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/23-00119-F-5.7.2025-Production-Redacted-Final.pdf">emails</a> shared with The Daily Wire by the Functional Government Initiative. The watchdog group told The Daily Wire that the emails show a “disturbing picture of DOJ’s eagerness to meet with pro-abortion lobbyists and activists and punish pro-life Americans” in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The revelation of the apparent partnership came in a message sent by National Abortion Federation Security Manager Robert Ledogar on January 9, 2023, to the Justice Department requesting a meeting with Kristen Clarke, then the Justice Department&#8217;s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The National Abortion Federation is the professional association for abortionists. 
In the email, Ledogar wrote that both the Justice Department and the FBI had partnered with the DOJ on multiple Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) cases. Biden’s crackdown on peaceful pro-life protests landed elderly grandparents, devout Christians, and other pro-life activists in federal prison. 
“Over the past two (2) years that I have been with NAF Security, I have witnessed an amazing relationship with the [National Abortion Federation] Security Director Michelle Davidson and members of the DOJ Civil Rights Division AUSA Sanjay Patel, AUSA Katelyn Smith, AUSA Laura Cowall, and Supervisor AUSA Paige Fitzgerald,” Ledogar wrote. 
Patel headed up the Justice Department’s &#8220;Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Providers,” and  Cowall is the current deputy chief of the Civil Rights Division. 
<div id="attachment_975533" style="width: 1728px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-975533" class="size-full wp-image-975533" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-22-at-2.25.11-PM.png" alt="" width="1718" height="782" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-22-at-2.25.11-PM.png 1718w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-22-at-2.25.11-PM-300x137.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-22-at-2.25.11-PM-1024x466.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-22-at-2.25.11-PM-768x350.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-22-at-2.25.11-PM-1536x699.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1718px) 100vw, 1718px" />Email from Ledogar to DOJ/ Functional Government Initiative.</div>
“The past year, NAF Security has been part of several FACE Act investigations, working with [assistant U.S. attorneys] and the FBI in TN, FL, VA, CA, NY, MD, and NC. The guidance from the team in DC has been nothing short of superb,” he added. 
It is unclear which specific FACE Act investigations the National Abortion Federation was involved in, but at least two of the states referenced by Ledogar had major FACE Act prosecutions. 
In Tennessee, six pro-lifers faced over 10 years in prison after they were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-church-meeting-is-now-a-conspiracy-pro-lifers-pray-outside-court-after-conviction-over-peaceful-protest">convicted</a> of violating the FACE Act and conspiring against rights. Three of the two pro-lifers were sentenced to prison over that case, which involved a group of Christians singing and praying inside the hallway of an office building outside an abortion facility. In New York, pro-life mother <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-harris-doj-sending-another-pro-lifer-to-prison-young-mother-hit-with-3-plus-years">Bevelyn Williams</a> and Catholic priest Fidelis Moscinski were sentenced to prison over FACE Act violations. 
“It sounds like NAF and other abortion activists were trying to remove Lady Justice’s blindfold, and Kristen Clarke and Sanjay Patel were allowing it. Action must be taken,” Functional Government Initiative spokesman Roderick Law told The Daily Wire. 
Earlier in the email, Ledogar wrote that the National Abortion Federation attended events like the March for Life, the annual event in Washington, D.C., where tens of thousands gather to urge the nation to protect the unborn, to “identify and witness the extremists that find the need to prevent reproductive health care.”
In response to Ledogar’s email, Clarke asked if the Justice Department&#8217;s Criminal Section had “any concerns” with her meeting with Ledogar. Then-Deputy Chief of the DOJ Civil Rights Division’s criminal section Robert Moossy replied, “CrimeSec has no concerns.” 
The full extent of the partnership between the FBI, DOJ, and National Abortion Federation is not clear from the email. But Law told The Daily Wire that the emails revealed a troubling partnership between pro-abortion activists and the federal government. 
“These emails reveal undue influence of abortion activists on federal law enforcement investigations, and violations of DOJ norms,” he said. “The Biden DOJ Civil Rights Division actions undertaken with outside influence appear to violate the civil rights of the Americans convicted under the FACE Act. “
The Trump Justice Department told The Daily Wire that it had “no comment on the actions of the previous administration.”
“Under the leadership of President Trump and Attorney General Bondi, this Department of Justice no longer weaponizes the use of the FACE Act to unfairly target crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations, and churches,” a department spokesman said. 
Pro-lifers arrested under Biden’s crackdown included defendants like 89-year-old communist concentration camp survivor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ive-paid-the-price-89-year-old-pro-life-activist-speaks-at-sentencing">Eva Edl</a> and 75-year-old Massachusetts grandmother <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bidens-doj-sends-75-year-old-woman-to-prison-for-2-years-for-violating-face-act">Paula Paulette Harlow</a>. It also featured armed FBI raids of the rural Tennessee home of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kidnapped-at-gunpoint-pro-life-activist-testifies-about-harrowing-fbi-raid-of-home">Paul Vaughn</a>, a father of 11, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-life-father-mark-houck-sues-biden-doj-over-arrest-raid-for-millions">Mark Houck</a>, a father of seven. 
During his first week in office, Trump pardoned nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life activists, including several who were serving lengthy prison sentences. Trump called the prosecutions ridiculous. 
The National Abortion Federation responded to the pardons by saying the move was “disturbing and concerning for the safety of abortion providers and their patients.”
The Trump administration also issued <a href="https://www.justice.gov/media/1386461/dl">new guidance</a> to prosecute the FACE Act only in cases of extreme violence or property damage. Historically, the FACE Act has primarily been used to go after pro-life individuals, even though it is technically supposed to protect crisis pregnancy centers as well.

President Biden Delivers Remarks At The White House

Biden’s FBI Worked With Radical Pro-Abortion Group To Target Pro-Lifers, Emails Show

Donald Trump

Joe Biden

Mark Crosby arrived in court last week to attend the sentencing of the man who punched and kicked him in the head outside of a Baltimore Planned Parenthood prepared for his attacker to get a light sentence. 
Before the sentencing began, Crosby, 75, sat outside the courtroom holding up photos of his bloodied face as his assailant, 28-year-old Patrick Brice, paced nervously down the hall. Crosby also carried with him the blood stained shirt he was wearing when he was attacked and a list of peaceful pro-life protesters who were jailed during the Biden administration. 
Brice was convicted earlier this year of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment charges for attacking Crosby and then 84-year-old Dick Schaefer as they stood outside a downtown Baltimore Planned Parenthood facility urging women not to get abortions. Surveillance <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-full-video-shows-lead-up-to-brutal-attack-of-elderly-pro-lifers-by-man-who-dodged-prison?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=EXCLUSIVE%3A+Full+Video+Shows+Lead-Up+To+Brutal+Attack+Of+Elderly+Pro-Lifers+By+Man+Who+Dodged+Prison">footage shows</a> Brice getting into an argument with Schaefer before tackling him to the ground and turning around and attacking Crosby. 
Crosby asked people standing outside of the courtroom, including reporters and supporters, if what happened to him looked like a misdemeanor. 
In the end, his prediction that Brice would get a light penalty came true. Baltimore City Circuit Judge Yvette Bryant <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/man-who-brutally-beat-elderly-pro-lifers-dodges-prison-time?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Man+Who+Brutally+Beat+Elderly+Pro-Lifers+Dodges+Prison+Time">sentenced him</a> to just one year of home detention with work and other allowances, and three years of probation. 
&#8220;What about my rights and my well-being?&#8221; Crosby shouted as Bryant left the courtroom. 
Crosby later told The Daily Wire that he believed the light sentencing was because of the fact that Baltimore is a “criminal-friendly” city and run by pro-abortion officials. Crosby was represented by the Thomas More Society, which decried the sentencing. 
“This was not a minor altercation between two parties with differing views on abortion. It was a vicious, targeted assault on two senior citizens whose only ‘offense’ was praying for expectant mothers and offering life-affirming alternatives to abortion,” Thomas More Society President Tom Brejcha said.
“One of the victims was knocked unconscious. The other suffered broken facial bones and a lifelong eye impairment. This was an act of cowardice and cruelty, and sheer mayhem. This crime deserves far more serious consequences than a ‘get out of jail free’ card and a one-year home detention that amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist.”
Brice&#8217;s sentancing contrasted sharply with those of the dozens of peaceful pro-life protesters who were prosecuted by the Biden administration. Many of those defendants were sentenced to years long prison sentences for violating the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). 
The law, signed by President Bill Clinton to supposedly guarantee access to both abortion facilities and crisis pregnancy centers, has been used disproportionately against pro-lifers. The Biden administration paired FACE charges with a Reconstruction-era conspiracy against rights law that allows for prison sentences of over 10 years. 
Biden’s Justice Department successfully prosecuted these cases across the country — from Michigan to Tennessee to Washington, D.C. — and got lengthy prison sentences for multiple defendants. 
One woman, Lauren Handy, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-life-activist-sentenced-to-over-four-years-in-prison-over-protest-at-d-c-abortion-facility">was sentenced</a> to 57 months in prison for her role in an October 20 sit-in at the notorious D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic late-term abortion facility. Handy helped lead a protest inside the facility that involved the group singing, praying, locking arms in front of the facility’s staff entrance, and attaching themselves with ropes and chains to block doors inside the building.
They were convicted of FACE Act charges and conspiracy against rights.
Many of Handy&#8217;s co-defendants also received lengthy prison sentences including John Hinshaw (21 months in prison), William Goodman (27 months), Jonathan Darnell (34 months), Herb Geraghty (27 months), Jean Marshall (24 months), Joan Bell (27 months in prison), Paula Paulette Harlow (24 months), and Heather Idoni (24 months). 
Biden’s Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/seven-defendants-sentenced-federal-conspiracy-against-rights-and-freedom-access-clinic">claimed</a> that the protest “resulted in injury to a clinic nurse.” But the Thomas More Society, which defended Handy, <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/news/thomas-more-society-files-emergency-appeal-of-lower-court-decision-denying-lauren-handys-release-from-jail-pending-sentencing#:~:text=Lauren%20Handy%2C%20et%20al.,for%20Release%20Pending%20Sentencing%2C%20here.">argued</a> differently. 
“The only basis for a finding of the use of force was when an overzealous clinic worker rushed at the pro-life advocates and tried to forcibly remove them from the clinic waiting room, resulting in her twisting an ankle,” the legal group said. “There was no allegation that Ms. Handy or her co-defendants intended to harm anyone. In fact, Ms. Handy and her co-defendants were united in their commitment to non-violence.”
In another prosecution brought by the Biden administration, six pro-lifers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-life-demonstrators-found-guilty-face-up-to-11-years-in-federal-prison">were convicted</a> in Tennessee of the FACE Act and conspiracy against rights. Their protest involved the demonstrators signing, praying, and sitting in front of doors in a hallway outside of an abortion facility in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.  
Two of those defendants, including 64-year-old <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pardoned-pro-life-activist-says-hes-running-on-adrenaline-and-the-holy-ghost-after-trump-pardon">Calvin Zastrow</a> and 75-year-old Chet Gallagher, were sentenced to prison. Heather Idoni, one of their codefendants, was also sentenced to serve a prison sentence to run concurrently with her sentence from D.C.
Another FACE Act defendant was Bevelyn Williams, who was sentenced in New York to 44 months in prison.  
This all changed after Trump took office and he <a href="https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1386366/dl">issued pardons</a> for the FACE Act defendants, meaning that Handy and the other imprisoned pro-lifers were freed. The Justice Department also issued a directive to only enforce the FACE Act in cases of extreme violence.
Crosby believes that the Trump administration should get involved in his case and look at prosecuting what happened to him and Schaefer as a hate crime as he believes that he was targeted for his religious and political beliefs.

MixCollage-14-Aug-2025-01-14-PM-6596

This Man Dodged Prison For Beating Two Pro-Lifers. Biden Jailed Pro-Lifers Over Peaceful Protests.

Baltimore

Planned Parenthood

Tennessee

Washington D.C.

A lawyer who defended many of the peaceful pro-life protesters targeted by the Biden administration praised the House Judiciary Committee for voting to repeal the decades-old statute used to put them behind bars. 
Steve Crampton, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society, told The Daily Wire that it was “very encouraging” that the Judiciary Committee passed a <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/589/all-actions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bill</a> on Tuesday from Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The FACE Act, first passed in 1994, is a law that makes obstructing access to an abortion facility a federal crime and ostensibly provides the same protections for churches and pregnancy centers.  
In reality, Crampton noted, the law has been used to go after peaceful pro-life demonstrators, while attacks on churches and crisis pregnancy centers are often ignored. Data obtained by Roy show that 97% of all FACE Act prosecutions since 1994 have been against pro-lifers.
“You have ample law under state law and elsewhere to prosecute truly violent undertakings,” Crampton told The Daily Wire. “All the FACE Act adds is the physical obstruction component, which is targeted at peaceful civil disobedience acts that have historically been really cherished and celebrated in our country, rather than singled out for harsh federal prosecutions.”
Throughout multiple federal trials, Crampton defended peaceful pro-life protesters, such as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kidnapped-at-gunpoint-pro-life-activist-testifies-about-harrowing-fbi-raid-of-home" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paul Vaughn</a> in Tennessee and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-life-activist-sentenced-to-over-four-years-in-prison-over-protest-at-d-c-abortion-facility" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lauren Handy</a> in Washington, D.C., who were convicted under both FACE and conspiracy against rights charges during the Biden administration. Both faced over a decade in prison. Handy was sentenced to over four years in prison, while Vaughn was sentenced to home detention. 
In January, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/they-should-not-have-been-prosecuted-trump-pardons-23-pro-lifers-targeted-by-biden-doj" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pardoned</a> the pro-life protesters, freeing Handy and others from federal prison. Trump’s Justice Department also issued a memo saying FACE would only be prosecuted in cases of extreme violence. 
Crampton said he was disappointed to see California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock voice opposition to repealing FACE during Tuesday’s hearing, as he argued that the law was neutral but abused by the Biden administration. Crampton said the law was inherently content-based, noting that you could only be charged under FACE if your intent was to prevent abortion and not just obstruction in general. He also said that the bias of the law &#8220;screams through the statistics&#8221; of the prosecutions. 
Vaughn, a Christian father of 11 whose Tennessee home was raided by armed FBI agents, told The Daily Wire he was happy to see the repeal advance. 
“The reality is it&#8217;s never done anything other than provide a federal hammer to be used against the pro-life community,” he said. “There&#8217;s not a law that it covers, that is not already a state law, or is not an infraction that it covers, it&#8217;s not covered under a state law.”
Vaughn says he would also like to see reforms brought to the conspiracy against rights provision from the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which Biden’s Justice Department paired with FACE in their cases against the pro-lifer protesters. That meant that Vaughn and others — like 89-year-old communist concentration camp survivor Eva Edl — faced over 10 years in prison. 
Crampton agreed, noting that he would like to see the provision heavily revised to ensure First Amendment protections or even done away with altogether. He thinks that FACE should be dealt with first because state attorneys general still bring FACE prosecutions under the law even if the Trump administration is not active. 
FACE “remains a very, very powerful weapon in the hands of these left-wing attorneys general,” Crampton told The Daily Wire, adding that &#8220;protecting fundamental First Amendment rights ought to be of the highest priority in our national debate&#8221; and that pro-life advocates should &#8220;keep charging forward.&#8221; 
A full vote on the repeal has not yet been scheduled for the House, and the legislation would likely have an uphill battle in the Senate. Republican Senators such as Mike Lee of Utah and Josh Hawley of Missouri have been very outspoken about the weaponization of the FACE Act.

US-POLITICS-BIDEN

Lawyer Who Fought Biden’s FACE Act Weaponization Urges GOP To ‘Keep Charging Forward’ On Repeal

First Amendment

House Judiciary Committee

WASHINGTON—The House of Representatives will take steps towards repealing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act this week, a law repeatedly weaponized against pro-life activists by President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration.
Lawmakers on Wednesday will mark up H.R. 589, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/589">FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025</a>, which Texas Congressman Chip Roy introduced in January. The bill &#8220;repeals provisions of federal criminal law that prohibit conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with persons who are seeking to (1) obtain or provide reproductive health services, or (2) exercise their right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.&#8221;
Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/223?s=1&amp;r=78">Senate version of the bill</a> in January as well.
The move comes after years of work from Roy and his team, who aggressively argued in favor of repealing the FACE Act while the Biden Justice Department used the law to imprison <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/defend-our-country-imprisoned-pro-life-activists-urge-americans-to-vote-against-kamala">pro-life activist</a> after pro-life activist from 2022 to 2024, often pairing FACE with a felony conspiracy charge to lock peaceful pro-life protesters. President Donald Trump pardoned these imprisoned activists earlier this year.
&#8220;Over the past 4 years, we have witnessed the weaponization of the justice system, using the FACE Act to jail Americans fighting for the right to life,&#8221; Roy told The Daily Wire on Monday afternoon. &#8220;It is not enough to merely end Biden-Harris era discrimination — we must act to reverse course, ensuring selective and unfair political prosecutions are never again possible under this statute.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_922337" style="width: 893px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-house-moves-to-repeal-face-act-after-years-of-weaponization/attorney-general-garland-holds-press-conference-on-civil-rights-matter-at-doj-6" rel="attachment wp-att-922337"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-922337" class="wp-image-922337 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-1332546154-883x576.jpg" alt="U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke speaks on a federal investigation of the City of Phoenix. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)" width="883" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-1332546154-883x576.jpg 883w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-1332546154-300x196.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-1332546154-768x501.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-1332546154.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 883px) 100vw, 883px" /></a>U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke speaks on a federal investigation of the City of Phoenix. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)</div>
&#8220;While I am proud that the FACE Act is finally being moved through committee, Congress should move quickly to repeal the FACE Act and put an end to legal harassment of pro-life Americans once and for all,&#8221; he added.
The FACE Act was intended to protect abortion clinics, pregnancy centers, and places of worship. But the Biden administration — led by former U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke — almost exclusively used it to target the pro-life movement following the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion showing that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
Roe’s overturn increased “the urgency” of the Justice Department’s work, <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/12/12/doj-official-admits-targeting-pro-lifers-is-response-to-overturn-of-roe/">Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta</a> said, including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”
Roy&#8217;s office obtained data that confirmed the Biden Justice Department charged 24 FACE Act cases against 55 defendants, and just two of those cases were brought in defense of pregnancy centers. None were brought in defense of a house of worship, even though hundreds of Catholic Churches have been attacked, firebombed, and vandalized with pro-abortion slogans since the Supreme Court leak.
&#8220;Nearly 92% of all Biden-Harris FACE Act cases were brought against pro-life demonstrators, despite over <a href="https://catholicvote.org/tracker-church-attacks/">285 churches</a> and <a href="https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">94 pregnancy resource centers and pro-life groups</a> being attacked and vandalized since May 2022,&#8221; Roy <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/heres-why-the-face-act-must-be-repealed">wrote in a Daily Wire op-ed in October</a>.
&#8220;To stop this growing weaponization and intimidation, Congress should stop this targeted harassment and ensure the FACE Act is repealed,&#8221; he added at the time. &#8220;Allowing it to remain means permitting bureaucrats at the highest levels of government to unequally apply the law, target pro-life Americans with unwarranted retaliation, and shield a radical abortion industry.&#8221;
The move is also significant given that Trump&#8217;s Justice Department is rolling back <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-89-year-old-woman-convicted-faces-over-a-decade-in-prison-for-peaceful-pro-life-protest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">aggressive prosecution</a> of the FACE Act, saying that the Biden administration weaponized the law against pro-life protesters.
In a January memo, Trump Justice Department Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle said that it will only prosecute the FACE Act in cases of “extraordinary circumstances” or in instances related to “death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage.”
“Cases not presenting significant aggravating factors can adequately be addressed under state or local law,” the memo said. “Additionally, until further notice, no new abortion-related FACE Act actions — criminal or civil — will be permitted without authorization from the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.”
Leif Le Mahieu contributed to this report.

House Freedom Caucus Holds Press Conference To Discuss Government Funding

EXCLUSIVE: House Moves To Repeal FACE Act After Years Of Weaponization

Biden

Congress

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed a Democrat-backed bill on Tuesday that advocates say would have been used to target peaceful pro-life protesters and sidewalk counselors outside of abortion facilities. 
The bill would have sharply restricted the activities of pro-life advocates around abortion facilities, including imposing penalties for “impeding” access to an abortion provider. In his veto message, the Republican governor said that the legislation was an unconstitutional attack on free speech. 
“This legislation is an unconstitutional time, place, and manner restriction on the God-given, constitutionally protected right to the freedom of speech,” Youngkin <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20251/SB1324/text/SB1324VG" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>. “It creates new criminal penalties for what one might say or where they stand when they say it. If this bill were to become law, a citizen of the Commonwealth, the crucible of our representative democracy, could be jailed simply for carrying a sign.”
The legislation, <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20251/SB1324/text/SB1324ER" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SB 1324</a>, would create penalties for anyone “who knowingly obstructs, detains, hinders, impedes, blocks, or delays another person&#8217;s entry to or exit” from a health care facility. 
It would also block anyone from approaching “another person within eight feet of such person in the public way or sidewalk area within a radius of 40 feet from any entrance door to a health care facility, unless such other person consents to the approach, for the purpose of giving, tendering, or exhibiting any material to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person.”
That provision would have restricted the work of pro-life sidewalk counselors who gather outside abortion facilities to urge women not to end the life of their unborn child and frequently offer help with their pregnancies. 
The Democrat-backed legislation <a href="https://legiscan.com/VA/votes/SB1324/2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passed</a> the House of Delegates 51-45 and Senate 21-19 in party-line votes. 
Pro-life advocates said that SB 1324 was meant to chill their speech.
“This bill is part of a concerted effort to stifle efforts to provide oversight of abortion providers and prevent individuals and groups from counseling women away from abortion,” Victoria Cobb of the Virginia-based Family Foundation <a href="https://www.lifenews.com/2025/01/29/trump-pardoned-pro-life-americans-now-virginia-democrats-want-to-lock-them-up/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warned</a> as the measure worked its way through the legislature. “SB 1324 represents a clear attack on the ability to peacefully voice opposition to abortion, criminalizing the very act of offering alternatives and support to women visiting these facilities.”
The law would have been similar to the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal offense to sit or stand in front of the entrances to abortion facilities. During the Biden administration, FACE was used to lock up peaceful pro-life protesters. 
President Donald Trump has taken a drastically different approach, pardoning the pro-lifers targeted by Biden, and directing his Justice Department to only prosecute FACE cases in instances of extreme violence. 
Youngkin on Tuesday also vetoed a number of other Democrat backed-bills, including legislation on gun control, pushing so-called green energy, and expanding recreational marijuana.

planecrash

Youngkin Vetoes Democrat Bill Allowing Pro-Lifers To Be ‘Jailed Simply For Carrying A Sign’

Free Speech

Glenn Youngkin

Virginia

Florida has successfully used a federal law previously weaponized by President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration to target and jail pro-life activists to protect pregnancy resource centers, The Daily Wire can first report.
The state&#8217;s attorney general, James Uthmeier, sent a letter Wednesday to Florida&#8217;s chief financial officer, transmitting a $10,000 civil fine &#8220;received by court order from a member of the extremist organizations, Antifa and Jane&#8217;s Revenge, who unlawfully threatened employees of a Florida pregnancy resource facility.&#8221;
The fine is attached to Florida&#8217;s successful civil lawsuit filed against four pro-abortion vandals, all of whom are members of the radical groups Antifa and Jane&#8217;s Revenge, under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The law prohibits interfering with &#8220;reproductive health services,&#8221; and <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/26/dojs-kristen-clarke-pro-abortion-activist-enforcing-law-pro-lifers/">protects</a> pregnancy centers, abortion clinics, and Catholic Churches.
<div id="attachment_890249" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-florida-pregnancy-center-biden-doj-abortion/img_8557" rel="attachment wp-att-890249"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-890249" class="wp-image-890249 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/IMG_8557-1024x450.jpg" alt="Courtesy of the Florida Attorney General's office. " width="1024" height="450" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/IMG_8557-1024x450.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/IMG_8557-300x132.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/IMG_8557-768x338.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/IMG_8557.jpg 1290w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>Courtesy of the Florida Attorney General&#8217;s office.</div>
The Biden Justice Department almost exclusively used FACE to target pro-life activists. Despite <a href="https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/">hundreds of pro-abortion attacks</a> on pregnancy centers throughout the United States since May 2022, the Justice Department only brought cases against vandals in <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/three-defendants-plead-guilty-civil-rights-conspiracy-targeting-pregnancy-resource-centers">Florida</a> and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/ohio-woman-pleads-guilty-freedom-access-clinic-entrances-face-act-violation-damaging">Ohio</a>.
President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-trump-to-pardon-imprisoned-pro-life-activists-within-days">freed almost two dozen</a> of the pro-life activists imprisoned by the Biden Justice Department when he took office in January.
&#8220;The U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal charges against the defendants under the same Act,&#8221; Uthmeier explained in his Wednesday letter. &#8220;Three of the defendants pleaded guilty and one — the defendant whose fine I am transmitting today — was convicted by a jury.&#8221;
&#8220;As a result of our civil action, the federal court enjoined the defendants from coming within 100 feet of the seven pregnancy resource centers at issue in our lawsuit for the next ten years, entered a judgement for each defendant to pay fines ranging from $1,100 to $13,000, and directed them to apologize to the crisis pregnancy facilities for their wrongful acts.&#8221;
The Florida attorney general specifically highlighted the high number of pro-abortion attacks on pregnancy centers since the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women&#8217;s Health Organization, the case that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade.
&#8220;We in Florida will not sit idly by when thugs attempt to threaten, intimidate and harass pro-life facilities who offer life-saving healthcare free of charge to Florida women,&#8221; vowed Uthmeier. &#8220;As the State&#8217;s chief legal officer, I will ensure that pro-abortion bullies who violate the law will be held accountable.&#8221;
Florida&#8217;s efforts come amidst renewed calls from Republican lawmakers to repeal the FACE Act, as they argue that the law was created for and weaponized by Democrats to target pro-life activists.
&#8220;We in Congress need to do our part to eliminate the laws used for the weaponization, including the FACE Act,&#8221; <a href="https://roy.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-roy-reintroduces-legislation-repeal-face-act">argued</a> Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in January. &#8220;Data my office obtained from Merrick Garland&#8217;s DOJ showed that 97% of FACE Act prosecutions from 1994-2024 were against pro-life Americans. Now that we have a Republican trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House, Congress should move quickly to repeal this law and ensure that no future president can weaponize it against pro-lifers ever again. No more excuses, let&#8217;s get it done.&#8221;
Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R.) is also a strong supporter of repealing the FACE Act, and the Heritage Foundation<a href="https://www.heritage.org/life/report/congress-should-repeal-the-freedom-access-clinic-entrances-act"> said for the first time this month</a> that Congress should repeal the weaponized legislation.
&#8220;Its legislative history and record of enforcement, however, show that it is an ideological weapon designed to suppress ordinary pro-life activity and expression,&#8221; Heritage Foundation experts Thomas Jipping and Seth Lucas argued, concluding, &#8220;the FACE Act itself is the problem. It is irredeemable as policy and beyond Congress’ constitutional authority. Congress should repeal it.&#8221;

Republican Presidential Candidates Speak At The CUFI Washington Summit

EXCLUSIVE: Florida Successfully Uses Law Weaponized By Biden DOJ To Protect Pregnancy Centers

Florida

LENOIR CITY, Tenn.—Nearly a year after a Nashville jury convicted them on federal conspiracy charges over a peaceful pro-life protest, a group of pro-life Christians reunited to celebrate their pardons from President Donald Trump, recount their time in prison, and encourage each other in the fight against abortion. 
In the year since they had last all been together, two had gone to prison, one was slated to go to prison, and the rest were restricted from traveling, owning guns, and voting. But thanks to Trump’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/they-should-not-have-been-prosecuted-trump-pardons-23-pro-lifers-targeted-by-biden-doj">January 23 pardons</a> of the nearly two dozen pro-lifers targeted by the Biden administration, 10 of the pardoned traveled last week for a reunion at the Patriot Church, just outside of Knoxville. 
Those pardoned who made the trek to East Tennessee included Paul Vaughn, Coleman Boyd, Dennis Green, Chet Gallagher, Heather Idoni, and Cal Zastrow, all of whom were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-life-demonstrators-found-guilty-face-up-to-11-years-in-federal-prison">convicted</a> on felony conspiracy charges in January 2024 over a sit-in at a now-closed Mt. Juliet, Tennessee abortion facility. Each of them had faced over a decade in prison, with Zastrow getting six months, Gallagaher 16 months, and Idoni eight months to run concurrently with her two year sentence over a similar protest in Washington, D.C. 
Other pardoned pro-lifers in attendance at the reunion were Paul Place, Eva Edl, and Eva Zastrow, who were convicted on a lesser Freedom of Access To Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act charge in Nashville; and Justin Phillips, who was convicted in August on conspiracy charges over a pro-life protest at a Michigan abortion facility.
Steven Lefemine, who spent 60 days in prison after sitting in front of the door to a South Carolina abortion facility, also was in attendance. He did not apply for a pardon because he wanted to continue to fight the FACE Act, which he says is unconstitutional. 
This reunion featured a potluck dinner, Christian worship songs, and testimonies from the pardoned pro-lifers.  
“I was in prison. I’m out of prison. Just like that. By one man’s signature. By a declaration that way. I was pardoned from prison by the president of the United States,” Zastrow said on Wednesday as he spoke to a cheering crowd at the Patriot Church while holding up a copy of his pardon.
Zastrow, who was imprisoned in Thomson Federal Correctional Institute in Illinois, said that he didn’t expect to be pardoned based on his experience with previous politicians. 
“I’ve helped other guys run for office and I just quit believing that when people promise what they’re going do when they’re elected,” Zastrow said. “So I don’t have real high expectations when somebody says they’re going to do something when they’re running for office.” 
He thanked the crowd for their letters and phone calls to his wife, saying that “God used your lobbying for a pardon.”
He added that he wasn’t afraid of prison because of his faith. 
“It&#8217;s because I just get so close to Jesus, I press in so close to Jesus and I just receive and accept his love for me and I just channel that out to other people,” he said. 
He recounted several stories from prison, including one involving a prison guard whom he said used to swear at the prisoners when they were in line for food. Zastrow said that one day the guard took God’s name in vain, and he responded by saying “praise your name oh Jesus,” after which the prisoners standing around him backed away from him because, he said, no one ever talked while they were in line for food. Everyone stopped for a moment before Zastrow said that the prison guard responded by saying, “Amen.”
“That was the last time he ever swore at us and took the Lord&#8217;s name in vain,” he said. 
Heather Idoni, another one of those who was freed from prison, also spoke about how prison gave her an opportunity to share her faith, joking that she had a “captive audience for the Gospel.” 
“Prison is the best federally-funded mission trip you can go on. Everywhere I went, there were women hungry for the Lord,” she said. “They didn’t, some didn’t know it yet. Do you know what I got to tell them? I got to say, ‘I’ve been praying for you for two years now and I didn’t even know who you were yet.&#8217;”
Idoni, who was convicted on FACE Act and felony conspiracy charges in Nashville, Detroit, and D.C., had been imprisoned since the summer of 2023, before she was freed in January. She previously spoke about how she was shuttled from prison to prison, exacerbating some of her health challenges. 
“God was keeping me every day, his peace, his presence, not one day without it,” she said. 
Both Idoni and Zastrow met new grandchildren for the first time when they were released from prison. 
The final pardoned pro-lifer to speak was 89-year-old Eva Edl, who spoke about her experience surviving a communist prison camp in Yugoslavia as a young girl. Edl said that witnessing Nazis targeting Jews and the communists targeting her people group because of their ethnic heritage motivated her to fight the dehumanization of the unborn.
Both of her parents were taken prisoner during World War II, and she was sent to a prison camp at the age of nine.
“The Nazis had taken my daddy. The Russians had taken my mother and my grandfather to dig trenches on the Russian side,” she said. 
She was shipped in a cattle car to the camp and nearly died of starvation while she was mistreated horrifically by the prison guards, saying that “people were eating rats and rats were eating people.”
During her time in prison, she said that she got her hands on a Christian prayer book, which was “more important to me than the food itself that I was craving.”  
“When you have that closeness and that peace, you lose the fear of anything else,” she said. 
Edl, her mother, brother, and sister eventually escaped to Austria before immigrating to America in the 1950s. Witnessing the horrific way that people were demonized motivated Edl to become outspokenly pro-life, and she began engaging in sit-ins at abortion facilities around the country. 
When pardoned, she was facing sentencing for a felony conspiracy charge after she sat outside an abortion facility in Sterling Heights, Michigan in 2020. She could have been sentenced to over a decade in federal prison before receiving a pardon from Trump.
Edl closed her testimony by urging churches to encourage adoption and support women in crisis pregnancies. She said she always wished that someone had stood up for her back when she was thrown into the prison camp, and that people should stand up for the unborn today. 
She turns 90 in May and is determined as ever to fight for the unborn. 
While they’ve been pardoned, the shakeout of the Biden pro-life prosecutions are still being played out in court, as lawyers for the defendants are attempting to present arguments that the FACE Act should be ruled unconstitutional and voided.

Screen Shot 2025-03-03 at 11.51.24 AM

‘By One Man’s Signature’: Pro-Life Defendants Reunite A Year After Conviction To Celebrate Pardons

Nashville

A pro-life advocate said that President Donald Trump’s pardons of nearly two dozen pro-life protesters was a “powerful” rebuke to the weaponization of government.
Thomas More Society Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation Peter Breen testified Tuesday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight about the Biden administration’s prosecution of peaceful pro-life protesters. Breen urged the lawmakers to take action to repeal the FACE Act, a Clinton-era law that makes it a federal crime to block an entrance to an abortion facility.
“The Biden DOJ engaged in a systematic campaign to abuse the power of the federal government against pro-life advocates, while that same DOJ ignored hundreds of acts of vandalism and violence against pro-life churches, pregnancy help centers, and other advocates,” Breen said.
The Thomas More Society represented several of the pro-life defendants who were prosecuted under Biden and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-21-pro-life-defendants-targeted-by-biden-doj-ask-trump-to-pardon-them" target="_blank" rel="noopener">later urged</a> the Trump administration to issue pardons.
On his fourth day in office, Trump pardoned 23 of the pro-lifers targeted by Biden, including multiple people who were serving years-long prison sentences.
“They should not have been prosecuted,” Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/they-should-not-have-been-prosecuted-trump-pardons-23-pro-lifers-targeted-by-biden-doj" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> as he signed the order. “Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this.”
Breen said that the pardons were a “powerful message.”
“On behalf of our clients and the pro-life movement as whole, we are thankful to President Trump for his recent pardons and to the members of this House who supported that effort,” he said. “Those pardons sent a powerful message to the country—and especially to the millions of Americans in the pro-life movement—that the federal government should not be weaponized against Americans because of their sincere beliefs in the sanctity of human life.&#8221;
During his testimony, Breen discussed the case of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kidnapped-at-gunpoint-pro-life-activist-testifies-about-harrowing-fbi-raid-of-home" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paul Vaughn</a>, a pro-life father of 11 pardoned by Trump. In 2022, armed FBI agents raided Vaughn&#8217;s rural Tennessee home while his children were waiting to go to school. Vaughn was present at a pro-life protest in Tennessee in 2021 where he did not block entry into the abortion facility, but spoke with police and other protesters.
Breen urged the lawmakers to repeal the FACE Act, saying that a “Sword of Damocles” hung over pro-life advocates across the country as long as there was a possibility that future administrations could take a similar aggressive prosecutorial approach as the Biden administration.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

Pro-Life Advocate Says Trump Sent ‘Powerful Message’ With Pardons Of Peaceful Protesters

Executive

Social Issues

U.S.

WASHINGTON — Conservative and pro-life groups are calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate reports that pro-life activists imprisoned by the Biden Justice Department were neglected, while trans-identifying prisoners were given special treatment.
In a letter first obtained by The Daily Wire, the coalition highlighted former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany&#8217;s interview with the pro-life prisoners, who Donald Trump pardoned on his fourth day in office. William Goodman, one of the prisoners, alleged to McEnany that he was mistreated while in prison on Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act charges brought by the Biden Justice Department.
&#8220;William Goodman, unjustly sentenced to 27 months in prison, alleges that he was kept in a condemned unit and suffered from neglect while in prison, going two weeks without toilet paper,&#8221; reads the letter, led by Advancing American Freedom&#8217;s Paul Teller. &#8220;Meanwhile, Mr. Goodman alleges that other prisoners, suffering from gender dysphoria, were provided with dresses, mascara, lipstick, and perfume, as requested.&#8221;
&#8220;While Mr. Goodman’s allegations are shocking, they are not unsurprising given the Biden Administration&#8217;s gross mistreatment of pro-life Americans,&#8221; the letter continues. &#8220;We request that you conduct a full investigation into these, and other allegations of mistreatment made by FACE Act prisoners.&#8221;
CatholicVote, Live Action founder Lila Rose, Students for Life, and Liberty Counsel also signed onto the missive, sent Friday to Bondi.
<div id="attachment_872535" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/?attachment_id=872535" rel="attachment wp-att-872535"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-872535" class="wp-image-872535 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2197231132-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2197231132-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2197231132-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2197231132-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2197231132-1536x1024.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></a>(Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)</div>
&#8220;We went over two weeks without toilet paper,&#8221; Goodman <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/pardoned-trump-pro-life-activists-break-silence-after-being-sentenced-prison-during-biden-admin">told McEnany in the interview</a>. &#8220;And some of the guys mentioned that some of the men who were there with gender dysphoria, wearing dresses, could get mascara, lipstick, and perfume — but we couldn’t even get toilet paper or basic needs. So there was a lot of neglect.&#8221;
Last year, Goodman suffered a serious head injury while he was imprisoned in Danbury, Connecticut’s Federal Correctional Institution. He <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-life-activist-targeted-by-biden-doj-suffers-serious-head-injury-in-prison" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> The Daily Wire that he fell off the top bunk in his cell, which did not have guard rails, and landed on his head.
After a trip to the emergency room where he found out he had fractured his skull, he said that he was sent back to prison overnight even though he said he was still feeling severely dizzy and nauseous. Goodman said that he was only given Tylenol and some anti-nausea medication.
“I just feel dizzy and abandoned and sore and sick. But it could be worse…mostly I stay in bed and drink water and take meds and try to sleep,&#8221; Goodman said. &#8220;But I can’t sleep. It is like a cruel torture. My left side of my head is like a constant migraine that seems to bang all night. Plus the loud prison noise and bright lights add to the turmoil. And the uncomfortable beds and no pillow.”
Heather Idoni, another former pro-life prisoner freed by Trump, also said that she was mistreated by federal agents during her time in custody. Idoni, 60, was convicted in three FACE Act cases across the country, including one in Washington, D.C., for which she was sentenced to two years in prison.
When she was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/59-year-old-grandma-in-prison-over-pro-life-protest-says-she-just-wants-to-hold-my-new-grandson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sentenced</a> in Nashville over a peaceful sit-in at a Tennessee abortion facility, she said the U.S. Marshals who had been bussing her from prison to prison had treated her cruelly. In one instance, Idoni said that some marshals had put chains so tight around her waist that she struggled to breathe when she sat down, and that one marshal told her she would tighten it more if she complained again.
During her time in federal custody, Idoni had three stents put into her heart, which was complicated by the fact that she was ferried around to at least eight different prisons.
The treatment of the imprisoned pro-lifers has already received <a href="https://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2024-05-16_-_member_letter_on_healthcare_for_marshall_and_idoni.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">scrutiny</a> from federal lawmakers, including Republicans in the House Pro-Life Caucus. Led by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Andy Harris (R-MD). They wrote to the U.S. Marshals Service and Federal Bureau of Prisons demanding answers on the treatment of Idoni and Jean Marshall, 77, who was also imprisoned over the D.C. protest.
Marshall was reportedly denied hip surgery, despite increasing pain in her right leg and difficulty in walking.
Lawmakers also hope to probe whether the Justice Department and FBI violated the First Amendment rights of pro-life protests. Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-chip-roy-demands-fbi-doj-retain-records-of-pro-life-prosecutions-as-biden-leaves-office" target="_blank" rel="noopener">repeatedly demanded</a> that the two entities keep all records of the prosecutions.

Pam Bondi Sworn In As Attorney General

EXCLUSIVE: Conservative Orgs Ask Bondi To Investigate Neglect Of Pro-Lifers Imprisoned By Biden

Pam Bondi

Today is the annual March for Life Rally in Washington, which I&#8217;ll be attending along with pro-life activists from all over the country. It&#8217;s easy to forget that our wonderful &#8220;pro-life&#8221; Republican presidents prior to Donald Trump wouldn&#8217;t even show up in person to the March For Life.
Trump was the first president to break that mold, when he became the first sitting president of either party to attend the event in person back in 2020. Then, just two years later, thanks to judges Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade was overturned. A generational goal of pro-life activists was finally accomplished — sparing the lives of millions of children.
In the wake of this historic victory, Democrats retaliated. The Biden DOJ commenced a wave of illegitimate prosecutions targeted at peaceful pro-life protesters all over the country, from Washington to Tennessee to Michigan. Here&#8217;s how these prosecutions worked. First, the DOJ alleged that the protesters were violating the &#8220;FACE Act,&#8221; which protects &#8220;access&#8221; to abortion facilities. Then, the Biden DOJ invoked the &#8220;KKK Act,&#8221; otherwise known as the &#8220;conspiracy against rights&#8221; act. That&#8217;s a law that has nothing to do with abortion facilities. It&#8217;s a Reconstruction-era law that was intended to prevent the KKK from intimidating black people from voting or serving on juries.
By pairing these two laws together, the DOJ was able to pursue felony charges and extremely lengthy prison sentences for these peaceful pro-life demonstrators. Every single person attending one of these protests at an abortion facility could be accused of being a &#8220;conspirator&#8221; — even if they didn&#8217;t step foot in the facility itself. This is a legal approach that was never even considered to be possible when the FACE Act was debated in Congress, back in the early 1990s. In fact, Senator Ted Kennedy explicitly stated at the time that, &#8220;if an individual does violate this law for the first time, it is not a felony.&#8221;
That would be news to 75-year-old Paulette Harlow. She&#8217;s the mother of six children, including four kids she adopted. Harlow was sentenced last summer to 24 months in federal prison for &#8220;conspiracy against rights&#8221; and Face ACT violations. This is an obviously outrageous sentence that was issued by D.C. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. In particular, the judge completely ignored the fact that Harlow was in very poor health. As Harlow&#8217;s husband stated during sentencing, &#8220;I feel like Paulette is dying. In my heart, I think she’s having a hard time staying alive.&#8221;
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1522-member-exclusive">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
Instead of responding to this information in any way, the judge appeared to mock Harlow&#8217;s faith, saying she should, “make an effort to remain alive” because that is a “tenet of [Harlow’s] religion.” Paulette Harlow was sentenced to home confinement, until federal officials could find a prison that could handle her medical needs.
Outside the courthouse, Harlow emphasized that she wasn&#8217;t violent in any way. And just looking at her, you can tell that she doesn&#8217;t deserve to spend 24 months in a federal prison. She&#8217;s obviously not a threat to anyone. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="007 Harlow" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8xZi2RoSBZs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
If you can look at that elderly, infirm lady and think that she deserves two years in federal prison for sitting outside of an abortion clinic, then you simply a bad person, if not a lunatic. As Harlow&#8217;s lawyers at the Thomas More Society have <a href="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63d954d4e4ad424df7819d46/6787e6eb978c3844c48bed30_TMS%20Pardon%20Petition%20Cover%20Letter.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointed out</a>, this prosecution gets even more unlawful when you look at the cases the DOJ chose NOT to prosecute over the last four years. 
Specifically, the DOJ failed to prosecute, &#8220;almost any of the more than 170 incidents of violence against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches nationwide in the wake of the leak of the Dobbs decision.&#8221; There were at least 86 Catholic churches and 74 pregnancy resource centers that were targeted post-Dobbs. One of those resource centers received a threat, &#8220;If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you.&#8221; And yet, when The Daily Signal <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/26/dojs-kristen-clarke-pro-abortion-activist-enforcing-law-pro-lifers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reached out</a> to the DOJ and the FBI to see if any of these cases were being investigated, they didn&#8217;t get a response.
In other words, the DOJ was clearly targeting pro-life protesters specifically because of their religious beliefs. They were applying the law to different groups of people in different ways. That is unconstitutional. It is unethical. And the point of it was to intimidate pro-lifers into silence. That&#8217;s why they arrested these people like they were terrorists. They hit Paul Vaughn&#8217;s home like he was bin Laden. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="008 Testimony" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZwAdQEGkoNQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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This was an especially incredible prosecution by the DOJ, because it was clear to everyone Paul Vaughn wasn&#8217;t even blocking access to the abortion facility in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. Video evidence proved that. Instead, the DOJ accused Paul Vaughn of &#8220;stalling&#8221; the police negotiators, outside the facility. So again, they&#8217;re treating anyone remotely associated with these protests as a violent terrorist.
But yesterday Donald Trump put an end to these political prosecutions. He signed pardons for nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life demonstrators, including Paulette Harlow and Paul Vaughn. Watch:
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Between these pardons and the repeal of Roe, there is now absolutely no question that Trump has done more for the pro-life cause than any other Republican president in history. It&#8217;s not even close.
During the campaign, there were some conservatives who doubted that. Some of them even suggested that pro-lifers shouldn&#8217;t vote for Donald Trump. But that was always a very bad idea, as I argued at the time — and now everyone can see that. For the first time in history, pro-lifers have a true advocate in the White House. What the hell did George Bush ever do for the pro-life cause? What did Ronald Reagan do? They treated pro-lifers like the red headed step children of the conservative movement. Trump — even though he is personally more moderate on the abortion issue than I am — is actually delivering major wins for the cause.
He actually accomplishes things — things that seemed impossible not too long ago. And he&#8217;s not stopping. Donald Trump is now single-handedly reversing a wave of lawfare against pro-lifers who were punished, in cruel and inhumane ways, because of their religious beliefs.
In fact we&#8217;ve had so much success on this issue in the last few years that some conservatives think the March For Life is pointless. But events elsewhere in Washington prove otherwise. As you might have heard, every Democrat in the Senate just voted against a measure that would have required doctors to provide life-saving medical treatment to infants born alive after a botched abortion. They&#8217;ve temporarily blocked the bill, because in the Senate, as of now, you need 60 votes to clear a filibuster and force a vote. Even the &#8220;reasonable Democrats&#8221; like noted slob John Fetterman voted in favor of infanticide.
Here&#8217;s what Fetterman <a href="https://x.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1882157782377611475" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>: &#8220;I’ve always stood on the side of Roe and a woman’s right to make her own health care choices. It’s absurd to mandate criminalization because of those choices. Any bill that does so, including the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act, is a NO from me.&#8221;
In other words, he&#8217;s saying that women have the right to murder their children even after they&#8217;re born. Of course, this is the natural extension of Democrats&#8217; pro-abortion logic. And in this case, he&#8217;s just coming right out and saying it. So no, I don’t want to hear another word about so-called “moderate” Democrats. A lot of people have been saying that about Fetterman lately, but there&#8217;s no such thing. I don&#8217;t know how many times we need to learn this lesson. Even the moderate, mainstream Democrats believe that infant children outside the womb have no inherent right to life.
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If you look at the text of the law, that becomes very clear. Here&#8217;s what the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/6/text" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law requires</a>: &#8220;Any health care practitioner present at the time the child is born alive shall — “(A) exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age; and “(B) following the exercise of skill, care, and diligence required under subparagraph (A), ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.&#8221; And then the law states, &#8220;A health care practitioner or any employee of a hospital, a physician’s office, or an abortion clinic who has knowledge of a failure to comply with the requirements of paragraph (1) shall immediately report the failure to an appropriate State or Federal law enforcement agency, or to both.&#8221;
This is not some hypothetical scenario. It happens more often than you might think. In Florida, 14 babies were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/yes-democrats-support-ending-the-lives-of-babies-who-survive-abortions">reported</a> to have survived abortions in 2023, and 16 babies survived abortions in 2022. In Michigan, 122 babies were involved in so-called &#8220;failed abortions,&#8221; and we have no information as to what happened to them afterwards. In Tim Walz&#8217;s Minnesota, as we&#8217;ve previously discussed, at least five abortions resulted in a live birth in 2021 — and instead of receiving life-saving measures, at least two of those infants received &#8220;comfort care.&#8221; They soon died. And instead of outlawing this, the state of Minnesota decided to simply stop posting records from these failed abortions. So now they can kill infants and not tell anyone.
On the Senate floor, Chuck Schumer made an attempt to defend infanticide. Here&#8217;s how he framed the argument:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="010 Chuck Schumer" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b-0YMAkO-iI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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First of all, he claims that the bill is redundant. He suggests it&#8217;s already illegal to commit infanticide. But as we just established, many states are currently allowing doctors to kill infants after they&#8217;re born, by providing them with a lesser standard of care. The doctors are allowed to do this, and no one reports them for it. The law against murder is clearly not being enforced in these contexts. That&#8217;s why we need this legislation. It enhances the reporting requirements surrounding this barbarism, so that doctors can&#8217;t keep hiding it.
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If you parse what Schumer is saying, he&#8217;s trying to argue that some women decide to kill their children when it&#8217;s clear that they&#8217;re going to have serious, life-altering medical problems. And then when those children manage to survive the abortion, he&#8217;s saying we should allow these women to &#8220;finish the job,&#8221; so to speak. But again, having a life-altering medical problem doesn&#8217;t mean you deserve to die. You are entitled to the same degree of care as anyone else with that life-altering medical problem. That&#8217;s what the bill requires. What if a four year old child has an accident on the playground and ends up disabled for life? Would it be okay with Chuck if the child’s parents decided to simply suffocate him with a pillow and throw him in a dumpster out back? Apparently so. Because that’s what his own logic would justify.
Democrats&#8217; decision to block this bill proves two things. First of all, it shows that the Democrat Party is still radically, horrifically, satanically extreme — despite whatever concessions to &#8220;moderates&#8221; they claim to be making. And secondly, it demonstrates that, despite all of our victories in recent days and years, we still have a lot of work to do. The pro-life movement has never had more power than it has right now. And at this moment, after the overt embrace of infanticide that we just saw in Congress, it&#8217;s clear that we need to use it.

US-POLITICS-ABORTION

Biden’s Pro-Life Political Prisoners Are Finally Free

Biden's Pro-Life Political Prisoners Are Finally Free

Chuck Schumer

March For Life

Opinion

The Department of Justice is rolling back President Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-89-year-old-woman-convicted-faces-over-a-decade-in-prison-for-peaceful-pro-life-protest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">aggressive prosecution</a> of the FACE Act, saying his administration weaponized the law against pro-life protesters.
A new memo from President Donald Trump’s DOJ says that the department will only prosecute the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act in cases of extreme violence. Under Biden, FACE was successfully paired with a felony conspiracy charge to lock up nearly a dozen peaceful pro-life protesters.
“President Trump campaigned on the promise of ending the weaponization of the federal government and has recently directed all federal departments and agencies to identify and correct the past weaponization of law enforcement,” the memo from DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Biden’s DOJ: Used the FACE Act to throw pro-life advocates in jail
Trump’s DOJ: Stops the abuse of the FACE Act and protects the pro-life community
🇺🇸 ELECTIONS MATTER 🇺🇸 <a href="https://t.co/Yg1CqS5mYP">pic.twitter.com/Yg1CqS5mYP</a>
— Terry Schilling 🇺🇸 (@Schilling1776) <a href="https://twitter.com/Schilling1776/status/1882873934477185134?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
FACE was originally passed in 1994 with the supposed intent to protect abortion facilities, churches, and pregnancy care centers from violence. However, data obtained by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) shows that 97% of cases have been brought against pro-lifers, despite increasing attacks against churches after the end of Roe v. Wade.
The memo said that the DOJ would only prosecute FACE under “extraordinary circumstances” or in instances related to “death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage.”
“Cases not presenting significant aggravating factors can adequately be addressed under state or local law,” the memo said. “Additionally, until further notice, no new abortion-related FACE Act actions — criminal or civil — will be permitted without authorization from the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.”
Under Biden, nearly a dozen pro-life activists were sentenced to prison, including a woman named Lauren Handy who got 57 months in prison over a protest at a notorious late-term abortion facility in Washington, D.C. Others, like 64-year-old Calvin Zastrow, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/63-year-old-pro-life-grandpa-reports-to-notorious-federal-prison-after-biden-harris-prosecution" target="_blank" rel="noopener">were given six months</a> in prison over a peaceful protest at an abortion facility in Tennessee.
“To many Americans, prosecutions and civil actions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (‘FACE Act’) have been the prototypical example of this weaponization. And for good reason. Even though more than 100 crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations, and churches were attacked in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, nearly all prosecutions under the FACE Act have been against pro-life protesters. That is not the evenhanded administration of justice,” the memo said.
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The DOJ also moved to immediately dismiss three ongoing FACE Act cases brought by the Biden administration that have yet to be resolved. The Thomas More Society, which is involved in each of the dropped cases, celebrated the decision.
“Huge moment in the fight against FACE,” the organization <a href="https://x.com/ThomasMoreSoc/status/1882895890219978780" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on X. “In each of these three FACE Act cases, Thomas More Society attorneys were representing several brave and peaceful pro-life defendants—who can now breathe easy without the heavy burden of federal prosecutors on their backs.”
The revamped approach from the DOJ follows action on Thursday from Trump when he signed a pardon for 23 pro-lifers convicted under Biden, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pardoned-pro-life-activist-says-hes-running-on-adrenaline-and-the-holy-ghost-after-trump-pardon">freeing many</a> of them from prison.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pardoned-pro-life-activist-says-hes-running-on-adrenaline-and-the-holy-ghost-after-trump-pardon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Pardoned Pro-Life Activist Says He’s Running ‘On Adrenaline And The Holy Ghost’ After Trump Pardon</a>

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Trump DOJ Rolls Back Biden’s Aggressive Prosecution Of Pro-Lifers

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