The Dictatorship
DOJ investigating Biden-era prosecutions of anti-abortion protesters, draft report shows
The Trump Justice Department is expected to release a report as early as next week concluding that the prior administration politically targeted abortion opponents because of their religious beliefs when prosecuting them for blocking access to abortion clinics, according to three people familiar with the report and a draft reviewed by MS NOW.
The nearly 60-page draft seeks to justify President Donald Trump’s pardons of two dozen defendants who were convicted during the Biden administration of blockading abortion clinics, threatening violence and verbally assaulting patients and staff. The report argues those defendants’ convictions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act — a 1994 law that prohibits interfering with people trying to access reproductive health clinics — were unjustly motivated by what the report characterizes as the targeting of people “with traditional Christian views.”
“Upon assuming office, the Biden DOJ shattered the public’s trust by weaponizing the FACE Act to advance a pro-abortion agenda, and DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was at the forefront of this weaponization,” the draft states.
The report does not reconcile its claims of Biden-era weaponization with the fact that Trump’s DOJ has unsuccessfully sought to prosecute several of the president’s political enemies, and is currently trying to bring FACE Act charges against former BLN anchor and independent journalist Don Lemon and protesters who entered a church in Minneapolis earlier this year.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on reports or findings that are not yet public but pointed to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s remarks at a Tuesday news conference that the public should expect the results of DOJ weaponization investigations soon.
The draft criticizes the work of Sanjay Patel, a longtime Civil Rights Division attorney who has been a target of Republicans for prosecuting all but four of the 24 people Trump pardoned. The report alleges Patel prioritized prosecuting cases against anti-abortion protesters while comparatively ignoring violence against churches and anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers — an allegation two former DOJ employees who worked with Patel denied to MS NOW.
The draft also criticizes Patel for suggesting prosecutors bring additional charges against violators of the FACE Act to ensure longer jail sentences — though Trump’s DOJ is doing just that in its case against Lemon and the Minneapolis protesters.
Last month, the department put Patel on administrative leave, according to two people who have knowledge of the move but are not authorized to speak about sensitive matters.
Patel did not respond to a LinkedIn message and emails from MS NOW and could not be reached by phone.
Word of the report and Patel being placed on administrative leave comes as the DOJ has removed experts and installed loyalists who are committed to advancing Trump’s agenda. That has included emboldening anti-abortion protesters — even as abortion providers have faced hundreds of incidents of trespassing, obstructions and death threats in recent years — and pledging to combat what it describes as the previous administration’s anti-Christian bias.
Days after Trump pardoned the two dozen protesters last year, the Office of the Associate Attorney General released a memo announcing that the office would roll back abortion-related FACE prosecutions except in circumstances involving “death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage.”
The memo also demanded the immediate dismissal of three federal cases brought under FACE charges, in which defendants were accused of barricading themselves inside abortion clinics, refusing to leave and verbally harassing patients in PennsylvaniaFlorida and Ohio in 2021 and 2022. The draft report reviewed by MS NOW characterizes these dismissed cases as involving “peaceful, pro-life demonstrators.”
The FACE Act report also comes in the run-up to the midterm elections, and would mark a rare win for abortion opponents who have been upset with the Trump administration for not taking stronger action to restrict access nationwide.
The law was passed in 1994 to deter mounting violence — including murders — against abortion providers. Trump’s DOJ has focused on a lesser-used provision of the law that prohibits blockading or invading houses of worship, which prosecutors are using in both the Minneapolis case and against pro-Palestinian protesters who demonstrated at a New Jersey synagogue in November 2024. The report states that Patel previously argued that provision of the law was “unconstitutional because it lacks a jurisdictional hook.”
Patel worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section beginning in 2011, according to a short biography available online, and has prosecuted FACE Act cases against people charged with threatening to bomb abortion clinicsassaulting a clinic escort and threatening to kill an abortion patient. Patel prosecuted all but one of those cases under Biden. He also prosecuted two FACE Act cases during the Biden administration against people who vandalized anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.
Patel also served as the director of the DOJ’s National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers, a group that was formed in the wake of a murder of an abortion provider in the late 1990s to provide security tips to abortion providers and clinics and coordinate prosecutions of people who enact violence against them.
A former DOJ employee who prosecuted a FACE Act case with Patel described him to MS NOW as a “good guy” whose prosecutions were not politically motivated.
“He was by-the-book, in my experience with him,” the former DOJ employee said. “He followed the facts and the law.”
The defendants who Patel helped prosecute under the Biden administration — and who Trump later pardoned — include people who entered abortion clinics, blocked doorways and refused to leave; verbally harassed patients and staff; injured multiple clinic staffers; and livestreamed their actions on social media. But the report paints a largely sympathetic picture of them, characterizing them as “nonviolent, pro-life demonstrators, including a Catholic priest and elderly people.”
Although the report suggests that the DOJ previously only brought FACE prosecutions for “violent conduct [and] repeat blockaders,” it fails to mention that many of the people Trump pardoned were repeat offenders themselves. Several of the people Trump pardoned have since been rearrested multiple times for blockading abortion clinics, as MS NOW previously reported.
According to the draft, Biden’s DOJ charged more than 45 anti-abortion defendants in more than 20 cases with violating FACE, which it characterizes as “a significant increase … compared to prior administrations” that was motivated by the administration’s desire to preserve abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
The Biden DOJ prosecuted only five people for damaging anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers — which the report says saved “the lives of numerous unborn children” — and did not prosecute any cases for damages against churches, the report states. Testifying before Congress in 2023, former Attorney General Merrick Garland said the department “put full resources” into investigating vandalizations of crisis pregnancy centers, but that those centers were more often attacked at night, making them harder to prosecute than blockades of abortion clinics, which were more often done during the day.
Patel argued in 2022 that prosecutors should bring other charges against FACE Act violators that “may provide stronger penalties,” such as conspiracy against rights, a charge punishable by up to a decade in prison that was originally intended to prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan. The report critiques this argument, yet Trump’s DOJ is charging Lemon and the Minneapolis protesters under both the FACE Act and conspiracy against rights.
Laura-Kate Bernstein, a former DOJ prosecutor who also worked on FACE Act prosecutions, said claims that she and fellow prosecutors pursued these cases for political or religious reasons is “outrageous.” She called Patel a “stellar” prosecutor focused on facts, not politics. She pointed to the office’s prosecution of protesters who blocked one devout Christian woman from getting medical care at a clinic that provides abortions and other services — a case discussed in detail in the report.
The woman and her husband had been trying to have a baby, but when she had a miscarriage in her second trimester, the woman’s doctor urged her to undergo a medical procedure to remove the fetal tissue and staunch her bleeding for her own safety.
“She’s bleeding and crying in the back of her car,” Bernstein said. “People who blockaded doors and prevented this woman from getting access to the health care she needed were prosecuted and found guilty by a jury of their peers.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday imposed 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods, declaring that Canada has unfairly discriminated against American autos, alcohol and dairy products.
The move could unleash a new wave of economic chaoswith risks of higher inflation and further fraying of relations between two nations that had been closely woven together before Trump’s return to the White House. The administration official previewing the action said that Canada was one of the only nations other than China that retaliated against Trump’s previous tariffs and must be held accountable.
The official insisted on anonymity on a call with reporters to preview the president’s actions and said that Trump signed three proclamations to launch the tariffs under Section 338 of the 1930 Trade Act. Several Democratic lawmakers last year proposed repealing the section because they said Trump could use it to destabilize the economy.
The new 50% tariffs would exclude energy products, potash, fish and critical minerals, but they would include goods that had previously been protected from import taxes by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreementor USMCA. That 2020 trade pact was not renewed by the U.S., triggering a new set of negotiations that could run until 2036.
The White House said in a fact sheet that the tariffs would go into effect in 30 days, meaning there is time for negotiations as Trump has not always followed through on his announced tax hikes on imports.
A welder works at Walters Group Steel fabrication plant in Hamilton, Ont., July 16, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
A welder works at Walters Group Steel fabrication plant in Hamilton, Ont., July 16, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement that his government believes in the “benefits of free and fair trade,” having signed “more than 20 new economic and security partnerships.” He said Canada is prepared to negotiate with the Trump administration.
“This trade dispute has raised costs for families, particularly in the U.S.,” Carney said. “Canada stands ready to engage intensively to address outstanding issues with the U.S. to the mutual benefit of our citizens.”
Canada faces the risk of a broader trade war
Still, the tariffs could escalate into a wider trade war as Canada seeks to defend its economy. Ontario Premier Doug Ford saw a possible showdown ahead.
“If these tariffs proceed, Canada should respond tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar,” Ford posted on social media.
Candace Laing, CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said the Trump administration’s moves were “regrettable” but the two countries need to use the 30-day window before the tariffs start “to make meaningful progress in advancing formal talks.”
Chris Swonger, CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, also called for a deal: “We encourage policymakers on both sides of the border to pursue a negotiated solution that restores market access for U.S. spirits and avoids further harm to the U.S. hospitality sector.”
But the use of a Great Depression-era law to impose the tariffs broadens some of the risks, as those tariffs could be applied to other U.S. trading partners, not just Canada, and inject “massive uncertainty” into the global economy, said Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
“We crossed the Rubicon,” Lincicome said. “The invocation of 338 is the nuclear option for Trump tariffs.”
Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a media availability in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Thursday, July 9, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a media availability in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Thursday, July 9, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Tariffs are also a political challenge for Trump
The new tariffs carry serious political and economic risks for Trump ahead of the November midterm elections for control of Congress. His “Liberation Day” tariffs last year in April provoked a financial market meltdown over concerns about inflation and a recession, prompting him to walk back the rates for a period of negotiation.
The Supreme Court ruled this February that Trump had lacked the legal authority to impose the tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, causing the administration to find alternative ways to raise import taxes based on a series of legal authorities.
Tariffs are taxes on imports, which companies can then pass along to consumers in the form of higher prices. The president maintains that the costs created by tariffs will cause manufacturing to relocate to the U.S., though there is little evidence of that in the economic data.
“These new taxes will raise prices on American families and likely lead to retaliation against the very industries Trump purportedly wants to protect,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who is chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The latest import taxes could worsen Trump’s weak ratings on the economy. He promised voters when running for the presidency that he would bring prices down, but the annual inflation rate has risen since he became president because the tariffs and the war in Iran are pushing up oil prices.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
Trump has repeatedly targeted Canada on trade issues
The Trump administration official said the president had also requested that his aides look into additional tariffs on Canada because its wildfires hurt air quality in the U.S. He had publicly threatened to do so in social media posts.
At the World Cup final on Sunday, Trump watched the game with Carney. The Trump administration official said their time together at the game was not a working visit to discuss trade and tariffs.
Trump claims in the proclamations that Canada discriminates against American autos, alcohol and cheese relative to other nations, but his argument rests in large part on retaliatory actions taken by Canada after the U.S. president imposed tariffs on Canada under the pretext that it should do more to stop fentanyl smuggling.
Trump noted in his autos proclamation that Canada maintained, starting in April 2025, a 25% tariff on the imports of U.S. motor vehicles that did not qualify for preferential treatment under the USMCA.
The White House said that, regarding alcohol, all but two Canadian provinces and territories halted the purchase and retailing of American alcoholic beverages beginning last year, which was also a response to Trump’s tariffs and taunts of making Canada the 51st state.
But Trump has long objected to Canada’s treatment of U.S. cheese, saying in his proclamation that Canada discriminates against the U.S. compared to Europe on dairy products.
Trump and Carney have had a frosty relationship, with Carney, a former central banker, who pledged to go “elbows up” for Canada during his election campaign last year.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Carney called out Trump — without naming him — by saying that the “most powerful” countries are using the economy to coerce less powerful nations.
Trump responded at the time by saying: “Canada lives because of the United States.”
___
Associated Press writer Jim Morris contributed from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Establishment Democrats have been panicking that an uptick in democratic socialist candidates within their party could make it easier for Republicans to win by painting the entire party as extreme. But a new poll showing that MAGA ideology is less popular than democratic socialism should help allay fears that the Democrats’ left wing is a toxic liability in the upcoming midterm elections.
According to the CNBC All-America Economic Survey released Friday, which polled 1,000 registered voters from July 8 to 12, American voters are more likely to support a democratic socialist candidate than a candidate who identifies as part of the MAGA movement or is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Democratic socialism isn’t particularly popular in mainstream America, but it is less unpopular than MAGA politics. The survey found that if a candidate self identifies as a democratic socialist, 32% of voters say they are more likely to vote for that candidate, while 50% are less likely. If a candidate is endorsed by Trump, 29% of voters are more likely to vote for them, and 52% are less likely. And if a candidate self-describes as MAGA, then 27% of voters are more likely to vote for them, while 57% are less likely to vote for them.
The far left is somewhat more acceptable to a broader swath of the public than Trump and his movement.
Taken together, the results suggest the far left is somewhat more acceptable to a broader swath of the public than Trump and his movement. Neither side commands a majority. But democratic socialists appear to excite roughly a third of the electorate, while MAGA affiliation excites closer to a quarter. Both sides to some extent repel a big chunk of the electorate, but democratic socialism deters half of voters, while MAGA puts off a significant majority of them.
This finding might be a function of the growing popularity of the concept of socialism. CNBC’s poll found that 28% respondents rated socialism positively — 10 points higher than in 2024. And a larger proportion of voters appear to be comfortable with at least some socialist policies being enacted: 40% of respondents said some form of socialism would be a good thing, while 44% of voters said it would be a bad thing, and 14% had no opinion.
Moreover, the asymmetry between the socialist movement and the MAGA movement also bodes well for the left’s electoral prospects. Trump and the MAGA movement dominate their party, whereas democratic socialists remain at its fringe, even if they are growing in numbers. The poll doesn’t ask respondents to rank, say, centrist Democrats compared to these other camps, but it’s striking that the Democrats’ leftmost extreme — the part that the party leadership is most worried about — is more appealing than the heart of the GOP.
These numbers should be sobering for centrist Democratic leaders who treat democratic socialism as an albatross. First of all, the overwhelming majority of Democratic candidates up for election in November will not run on socialist platforms, and most voters will understand that. Moderate Democrats in the Rust Belt aren’t going to be running on Medicare for All or an aggressive billionaire wealth tax, and their more restrained calls for change are often legible to midterms voters. But to the extent that in some races Republicans will try to suggest that even moderate Democratic candidates could be a stalking horse for creeping socialism, the association isn’t necessarily lethal, and in some cases will excite some segment of the Democratic electorate.
Trump (wrongly) claims democratic socialists are no different than 20th century communists and treats them as an obvious liability for the Democrats, but some Republicans are not so convinced that leftists are necessarily an easy target — and believe they could even be a political danger to MAGA. Meghan McCain, the conservative daughter of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, wrote on X on Monday that she sees New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a true threat to the right after viewing his recent interview with The New York Times.
“What he is saying is absolutely brilliant in his attacks against the right,” McCain wrote. “The tone of what he is saying is brilliant. It is part folksy everyman, Republicans have abandoned the working class and are a bunch of elites, without being harsh or conspiratorial.”
She added, “Despite my abject fear and repulsion of socialism, it is really impactful. If Democrats are smart they will nominate someone with his tenor and tone on economics and national policy.”
McCain’s concern brings in another element of the dynamics on the left that the poll doesn’t measure. Even if many Americans have no inclination to say they currently actively desire the U.S. to be more socialist, that doesn’t mean that socialists won’t be able to leverage a uniquely trenchant critique of the right. There is plenty of space for persuasion as the center of American politics is getting chipped away at from all sides. Democrats need to spend less time punching left and think more about why leftists are stacking wins.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
President Donald Trump knows that if Democrats manage to win back control of the House in November, his third impeachment likely will not be far behind. And yet, despite racking up a laundry list of potentially impeachable offenses primed for investigation, the president might not be the most vulnerable person in his administration. Democrats would be wise instead to set their sights not on the White House itself, but next door in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where Russell Vought has spent the last year and a half willfully breaking the law.
As head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Vought has a hand in how practically every tiny bud on the executive branch operates. With the possible exception of deputy chief of staff Stephen MillerVought arguably has the firmest grip on the levers of power in Washington. While Trump’s focus is trained on a handful of obsessions, Vought has the knowledge and skill set to turn his Christian nationalist ideology into policy — and transform those policies into reality.
As head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Vought has a hand in how practically every tiny bud on the executive branch operates
For years, Vought has advocated for massive, draconian cuts to federal spending, during both his previous stint atop the OMB in the waning days of the first Trump administration and as part of a pro-MAGA think tank in the interregnum period. The OMB acted as overseer for the Department of Government Efficiency project last yearproviding an aegis for the quasilegal agency to initiate mass firings and unilateral spending cuts. While that effort failed to deliver on its promised savingsit gave Vought the ability to stress test his vision for a reduced role for Congress over spending.
Constitutionally, it’s Congress that controls the power of the purse. The president is required to submit a budget request to lawmakers each year, but he and all the executive departments and agencies under him rely on congressional appropriations to fund their activities. While Republicans control both the House and Senate, lawmakers yet again rejected the suggested cuts in Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget in favor of their own preferred spending levels.
Vought claims though that the figures in appropriations laws are a ceiling for how much can be spent, not an order of what must be spent. Accordingly, Trump’s OMB director has insisted that the president is allowed to hold back, or “impound,” funds that he doesn’t want to spend despite the 1974 Impoundment Control Act and Supreme Court precedent saying otherwise.
After one successful effort to get Congress to legally rescind unspent funds last year, Vought shifted tactics, using another tool at his disposal to make whatever spending reductions he sees fit. Once Congress has appropriated funds, it then falls to the OMB to apportion that money to agencies, telling them when to spend it and under what circumstances. According to a tracker from Protect Democracya nonprofit group dedicated to anti-authoritarianism, Vought has used the “apportionment” process to hold up millions of dollars in funds that Congress has allocated.
A recent opinion essay published in The Hill from Cerin Lindgrensavage, a counsel with Project Democracy, and David A. Super, a law professor at Georgetown Law, detailed some of these budget cuts via apportionment, why they are illegal, and the overreach they represent:
Trump proposed cutting funds for the Smithsonian by more than $60 million. Congress rejected that cut and increased Smithsonian funding to account for inflation. Vought’s office then unlawfully forbade the Smithsonian from spending any money Congress appropriated beyond the president’s budget request…
Congress has made clear that this is not allowed. For more than a decade, annual appropriations bills have required, government-wide, that no funds “may be used to increase, eliminate, or reduce funding for a program, project, or activity as proposed in the President’s budget request for a fiscal year until such proposed change is subsequently enacted in an appropriation act,” unless the administration follows congressional procedures to reprogram appropriated funds.
The two also argued that in withholding those funds, Vought and Trump have violated not just the Impoundment Control Act, which has no legal penalties, but also the Anti-Deficiency Actwhich does: “When a president delays, withholds or impounds funds to impose a cut proposed rejected by Congress, he is blatantly disregarding the appropriations laws: the funds appropriated for the salary of the Office of Management and Budget officials imposing those cuts is being spent in direct violation of that legal prohibition.”
Lindgrensavage and Super go on to suggest that a potential referral to the Justice Department for violating the ADA could be on the table for Vought.
But impeachment is a tool readily available for Congress. It is well within the legislative branch’s ability to bring articles of impeachment against Vought as, unlike Miller, he holds a Senate-confirmed position and clearly counts as among the “civil Officers of the United States” who shall be removed from office for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
It is precisely because Vought is not Trump that a winning case can more easily be made against him.
The Government Accountability Office has already found multiple instances where OMB has clearly violated the law. But impeachment is a political process, one where the same standard doesn’t apply as in the courts. Even if Democrats manage to reclaim the Senate as well as the House, it will be difficult to reach the two-thirds vote needed to remove Vought from office, as many Republicans will likely be hesitant about removing a key member of Trump’s Cabinet.
And yet it is precisely because Vought is not Trump that a winning case can more easily be made against him. While the president has a power base of his own among lawmakers to protect him, Vought has repeatedly shown nothing but contempt for Congress’ role in governing. When sitting in hearings, he’s been savvy enough to be evasive under questioning while never acknowledging that he lacks the authority to override legislators’ orders with his own. Even the most zealot deficit hawks would be forced to defend giving away their own power to someone that has never received a single vote in their life.
It would be fully in keeping with the founders’ vision for the balance of powers that lawmakers jealously protect their prerogatives. Absent his willingness to accept congressional supremacy on this front, Vought could — and should — serve as an example for what happens to bureaucrats who try to place themselves above elected lawmakers.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.
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