Trump’s DOJ Just Declared Blocking Abortion Clinics Is Religious Freedom

Today Trump’s Department of Justice released an 882-page report from its Weaponization Working Group declaring that Biden-era prosecutions of anti-abortion activists under the FACE Act were religious persecution. The FACE Act was passed in 1994 because abortion providers were being murdered. One of the groups Trump pardoned chained themselves to clinic doors and livestreamed it. Former DOJ prosecutor Laura-Kate Bernstein described a case where a woman having a miscarriage was bleeding in the back of her car, unable to enter the clinic because activists were blocking the door. Those activists were convicted by a jury. Two of Trump’s pardoned activists were arrested again months later at a Pennsylvania clinic. The report includes little evidence, ignores multiple court rulings and jury verdicts, and is not legally binding. It was produced by a working group created by Pam Bondi, whom Trump fired last week. This same DOJ has stopped enforcing the FACE Act at clinics while using it to arrest pro-Palestinian protesters and journalists. In the months since Trump pardoned these activists, a 20-year-old in Montana was arrested for planning to assassinate an abortion provider, and an anti-abortion activist shot someone inside a South Carolina Planned Parenthood. Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe