The Truce Is Over

By Nick Catoggio

Friday, October 02, 2026

 

I’ve been toying lately with a hot take that the era of political activism driven by cultural grievances is ending.

 

The gist of it is that a politics based on culture war is a kind of luxury, the sort of thing people fight about when their country is sufficiently well off that they don’t need to prioritize fighting about money. Pitched battles over trans rights and Confederate statues make sense when inflation is low, labor-force participation is high, and interest rates are ZIRP-y.

 

When times are good, you can afford to roll the dice on a con man selling luxury nationalism as a panacea for all ills. How much harm could he do, right?

 

But when times are no longer good; when inflation is chronically high and unremediated by administrations from both parties; when America can no longer guarantee the stability of Middle Eastern oil markets; when chaotic government and a spiraling national debt are pushing rates ever upward; when politicians from the party of “fiscal responsibility” seem to think it’s bad that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency; and when a frightening new technology promises to make tens of millions of jobs obsolete—in an era like that, the fate of Confederate statues will no longer seem so important.

 

Ergo, the future of partisan political activism in America is economic, not cultural, warfare, I tell myself.

 

Then I think: That’s the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.

 

When, historically, has economic turmoil ever eased cultural divisions rather than inflamed them? If anything, privation is the great incubator of cultural radicalism. Impoverished people will make all sorts of moral compromises in politics if they’re promised relief from their financial misery in return. Joining a kulturkampf against some designated scapegoat is a small price to pay for being able to feed your family.

 

It took less than a decade after the stock market crash of 1929 for the Nazis to rampage through Poland. And it wasn’t an economic vision that they were there to impose.

 

Hard times economically in America might plausibly cause activists on both sides to escalate their cultural disputes and grow more radical in their goals. You don’t need to look hard for recent examples in the GOP: From screeching about an ad that dared to depict a Medicaid recipient as white to conversations in populist media about, and I quote, “the Indian question,” race is an increasingly prominent part of political identity for elements of the young grassroots right.

 

For 10 years their party has been led by a guy who regularly bellows about expelling undesirables. They’ve taken that worldview to its inevitable conclusion.

 

There’s an exception to my theory of privation and culture war, though. Last week I pointed out the curious “truce” on abortion that’s emerged between the two parties, a notable cultural deescalation in an era of escalating economic hardship.

 

During his debate with Joe Biden in 2024, then-candidate Donald Trump went as far as to say, “The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it.” Wary of the backlash in 2022 to the end of Roe v. Wade, the president has ducked the issue since returning to office. Democrats, meanwhile, have had bigger fish to fry politically, flogging the cost of living and the war in Iran and generally feeling little urgency to address a status quo in which abortions have in some ways become easier to obtain than ever.

 

But the truce is ending, apparently. According to the Washington Sun, Iran isn’t the only war that the president is preparing to resume after the election.

 

Two avenues.

 

Citing a senior administration official, the Sun claims that Todd Blanche has been told by the White House to go slow on abortion litigation—until November. “Once the midterms are over and it’s truly lame-duck time, we’ve heard the gloves will be off,” one conservative source told the outlet.

 

Before we go further, I know what you’re thinking: Yes, it is remarkable that the president would be dictating law-enforcement priorities to the Justice Department based on his party’s political needs before an election. And yes, it’s extra remarkable that he would be doing so on this subject in particular. How many thousands of infant lives were lost this year because Trump and Blanche feared that impeding abortion might hurt Republicans’ midterm prospects?

 

And yes, it’s extra extra remarkable that the White House evidently intends to respond to a midterm drubbing by doubling down on initiatives which they have every reason to expect will be unpopular, like Iran and new abortion restrictions. But I wrote that piece already.

 

Anyway, the litigation that Blanche is slow-walking has to do with mifepristone, the so-called “abortion pill” taken in tandem with misoprostol that’s now responsible for more than 60 percent of terminations. Pro-lifers spent the last few years challenging the lawfulness of the FDA’s initial authorization of mifepristone decades ago but have been stymied in court so far on procedural grounds. They might eventually revive that line of attack depending on lower court rulings, but the legal strategy to halt distribution of the drug has since branched out.

 

One avenue is to have the FDA, now under Trump’s control, restrict mifepristone itself. The agency is currently conducting a safety review of it; the president’s new nominee to lead the FDA was cagey during her confirmation hearing about which way that review might go. Deauthorizing mifepristone altogether would be a bombshell, igniting ferocious political and legal battles, but the agency wouldn’t need to go that far to reduce access to it. (And might be reluctant to do so, given the drug’s other medical uses.) It could simply require women to seek prescriptions in person instead of obtaining them via virtual “telehealth” appointments with doctors in blue states and then ordering the pills by mail, as they’re currently able to do.

 

“Tens of thousands of patients in states with abortion bans” have gotten hold of mifepristone that way, the New York Times notes. A new FDA rule closing the telehealth loophole would make it considerably harder to evade state abortion bans.

 

The second avenue is for the Justice Department to start enforcing the Comstock Act, about which I’ve written a few times before. That’s an old federal law that prohibits sending material “intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion” via U.S. mail or common carriers like UPS. It was rarely enforced during the Roe era, being presumptively unconstitutional under that case’s holding, but it was also never repealed. The end of Roe made Comstock viable law again, which means the DOJ could use it to try to block interstate commerce of mifepristone even if the FDA doesn’t issue new rules restricting it.

 

And if it does, it might go further than barring women from receiving the drug directly from providers. It could “also stop pharmacies and health care providers from getting shipments,” according to experts who spoke to Axios in 2023. If that happens, even a patient who visits a doctor in person to get a prescription might find that there’s no one locally who’s able to fill it for her.

 

Presumably Trump’s post-midterm abortion strategy will draw from both approaches. The FDA will announce that it’s discovered alarming new evidence that mifepristone is unsafe and will issue some restriction on it; the president and his attorney general will then use that finding to revive Comstock, insisting that the health risk to women is a national emergency that they have a solemn duty to address.

 

How is that likely to play out politically next year?

 

Wargames.

 

The polling on this topic isn’t voluminous, but it’s safe to say that something resembling a total ban on mifepristone would be quite unpopular.

 

In 2024, an Axios poll found that 76 percent of independents and even 51 percent of Republicans believed women should be able to obtain the drug from their doctor or a clinic. Another survey taken this past June by the Kaiser Family Foundation backed that up, with 65 percent opposed to prohibiting “medication abortion” versus 33 percent in favor. If the FDA deauthorized mifepristone entirely, or the DOJ used Comstock to keep it out of pharmacies, Trump and the GOP would need a very compelling “safety” argument to avert a serious backlash.

 

Ask Americans whether the pills should also be available by mail, though, and opinion softens. The same Axios poll saw independents drop to 51 percent and Republicans to 23 percent on that question. A recent poll by the Center Square detected ambivalence as well, with 51 percent of adults somewhat in favor of abortion by mail and 37 percent somewhat opposed. When asked whether they’re more concerned about safety and verification risks in sending drugs through the mail or more concerned about women’s access to abortion if they can’t visit a clinic in person, the sample split 48-39.

 

An FDA ruling that mifepristone is unsafe might push public opinion further toward the pro-life position. And if the White House were to eventually land on a compromise in which the drug remained accessible in blue states but unavailable in red ones, I can imagine Americans broadly tolerating it on federalism grounds. What’s the point of letting states ban abortion, they might reason, if those bans can be skirted by simply dropping something in the mail?

 

On the other hand: How likely is it that Trump, having just been reduced to a lame duck, will agree to a politically feasible compromise following a humiliation at the polls that exposed just how lame he is? What will be stopping him post-drubbing from going big on abortion (and Iran, and tariffs, and everything else Americans don’t like about his agenda)? Having been rudely owned by the libs at the polls, an all-out war on mifepristone would be an obvious way to own them right back.

 

Again and again during his second term, he’s taken issues on which his party is either competitive with Democrats or enjoys an advantage over them and farked them up so badly that they’ve become liabilities. Overreaching on abortion by mail feels like the logical next step.

 

Trump isn’t the most interesting political player in this conflict, though.

 

Democrats.

 

The new Democratic Congress will see obvious opportunity in a renewed culture war over abortion, particularly given the left’s post-Roe electoral advantage on the issue. Legislation punishing the FDA for restricting mifepristone would be sketchy—defunding a scientific agency because it reached the “wrong” finding about a drug’s safety is horrendously bad precedent—but the Comstock Act is a more fruitful target.

 

A bill to repeal that law’s abortion provisions would pass a Democratic House easily.

 

It would also almost certainly die in a Democratic Senate, a casualty of a Republican filibuster. (Unless November’s blue wave is truly tidal, I suppose.) But maybe the left would prefer that for selfish electoral reasons: If the new restrictions on mifepristone are allowed to linger until 2028, they can be used as a cudgel against Republican presidential nominee J.D. Vance and his party during that cycle.

 

And while it’s true, as I said, that the public might accept restrictions on sending abortion pills through the mail to states where it’s banned, it’s hard to predict how opinion might move on that question following a pro-choice messaging onslaught. Democrats would push hard to convince Americans that mifepristone is safe no matter what Trump’s highly politicized FDA might say to the contrary, with lots of doctors on their side.

 

“If the drug were dangerous, there would have been an epidemic of side effects among the millions of women who have taken it over the years,” they’ll say. “If the evidence that it’s safe were thin, the drug wouldn’t have remained legal for years under Democratic and Republican administrations.” Those arguments will carry weight.

 

The very fact that the White House asked Todd Blanche not to make any sudden moves on abortion before November means Trump’s own team believes Republicans are likely to lose the battle for public opinion. And I don’t blame them: The KFF survey I mentioned earlier found opinion split 36-64 when Americans were asked whether it should be a crime for healthcare providers to send abortion pills to women in states where abortion is banned. That’s a bad starting point for a national abortion dragnet.

 

Probably the safest prediction about how Democrats will react to restrictions on mifepristone, though, is that it will further boost the party’s support for court-packing.

 

Whatever the administration is planning will be litigated out the wazoo, needless to say, and a Supreme Court that overturned Roe and usually defers to presidential authority over all aspects of the executive branch is unlikely to meddle with Trump’s agenda at the FDA and DOJ. If the court upholds his attempt to limit abortion in blue states by curtailing national access to mifepristone, that’s another talking point for progressive Jacobins bent on radical judicial reform.

 

2028.

 

And then there’s the vice president.

 

J.D. Vance is certainly pro-life but has been characteristically slippery about the extent to which federal power should be used to restrict abortion nationally. In 2022 he declared that a 15-week ban proposed by Senate Republicans was “totally reasonable.” The same year, in an interview, he considered the problem of pro-choicers providing transportation for pregnant women in red states to seek abortion in blue ones. “If that happens, do you need some federal response to prevent it from happening?” he wondered. “I’m pretty sympathetic to that, actually.”

 

But as the GOP’s new vice presidential nominee in 2024, he committed to not imposing a federal ban on abortion and said Trump would veto any effort by Congress to pass one. “Donald Trump wants to end this culture war over this particular topic,” he declared, and called for “letting the states figure out their own abortion policies” so that the federal government could focus on bringing down the cost of living.

 

Two years later, having failed to bring down the cost of living, the Trump-Vance administration is preparing to revive the culture war over this topic in a way that might end up affecting blue states’ ability to set their own policies on abortion. Was the “real” J.D. Vance the guy who called in 2023 for using the Comstock Act to “shut down all mail-order abortion operations” nationwide or was the real Vance the guy who said a year later that he supports keeping mifepristone accessible? I suppose we’re about to find out.

 

As with Iran, there’s no truly good outcome for him in a renewed abortion conflict, I think. If Vance were to try to distance himself from this war the way he’s tried to distance himself from that other one, it would deepen the doubts that some Reaganites have about his ideological kinship with them. Some conservatives have already begun building the case against letting the GOP continue on a nationalist trajectory post-Trump; Vance going squishy on restricting abortion by mail because he’s worried about swing voters in 2028 would add a pro-life angle to that case.

 

He does need to worry about voters outside the Republican tent, though. The VP’s infamous comment about “childless cat ladies” before he ran for Senate has done him enough damage that he felt obliged to renounce it in his latest book, an almost unheard-of example of a Trump toady expressing regret for speaking intemperately. Clearly he thinks he has work to do rehabilitating his image with women to improve his chances in 2028 (his recent appearance on The View also points that way)—yet now here he is, on the verge of his administration resuming the abortion wars with a dramatic escalation that will land squarely on younger women.

 

At some point the president’s how-low-can-he-go job approval will start to weigh on his heir apparent and a broadly unpopular abortion initiative is unlikely to lighten the load. Ultimately Vance may have little choice but to do what he’s going to end up doing on everything else for the next 27 months—defending the boss as best he can, urging socialists to “get the hell out” of the country, and hoping that what’s left of the GOP’s favorability come 2028 isn’t a smoking crater. Maybe devising a few more new welfare benefits will help him atone.

The Power of ‘Baby’

By Hector Chapa

Sunday, May 10, 2026

 

Mother’s Day celebrates the unique bond that a mother has with her child, a relationship unlike any other in the human experience. This profound attachment begins long before the moment of birth, taking root and flourishing throughout the course of pregnancy as a woman carries, nurtures, and prepares for the arrival of her son or daughter.

 

But a concerning political shift at odds with this natural reality has medical associations prioritizing clinical, sterile terms such as “fetus” or, more jarringly, “products of conception,” to dehumanize the life in the womb in furtherance of abortion politics.

 

Groups ranging from the American Society of Radiologists to the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine endorse replacing terms used in the first trimester, such as “heartbeat,” with “cardiac motion,” and advise that the words “‘live’ and ‘living’ are best avoided.” Such guidelines not only ignore the distinct DNA, heartbeat, and developing person in the womb that mothers sense through every kick and ultrasound, but they also can leave a mother feeling as if her deep emotional connection is a mere sentimentality rather than the biological reality it is.

 

This is more than semantics. It’s a philosophical departure from the traditional dual-patient understanding of obstetrics, of mother and child, redirected to a model that intentionally distances both doctor and patient from the developing life in utero. And this linguistic shift risks normalizing a more detached, clinical view of pregnancy, where the emotional and human dimensions of carrying a child are downplayed even further.

 

As a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, I value the accuracy of medical terminology. Terms such as “embryo” and “fetus” have a necessary place in the realm of clinical education and biological research, providing a standardized framework for scientific study. However, when these cold, clinical labels are imported directly to the bedside, they act as a barrier rather than a bridge. Applying sterile terminology to direct patient communication diminishes maternal reality, treating a woman’s child as a specimen to be monitored rather than a person to be loved.

 

About a year ago, I was called to our ultrasound suite by our ultrasonographer to assess the heart rhythm of a child in utero. After a detailed evaluation, we concluded the survey was normal. The sonographer reflexively told the patient, “It’s okay, your fetus has a normal heart tracing.” The patient looked at us with a surprised expression and responded, “You mean my baby is okay, right?” That subtle exchange in terms, that one-word substitution of our “fetus” for her “baby,” stopped me in my tracks.

 

True bedside manner requires a language that recognizes the humanity of the patient, both mother and child, ensuring that the miracle of new life isn’t lost in the language of researchers.

 

But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and similar professional bodies are shifting their language to strip children of their humanity and make it easier to view pregnancy as a medical condition to be managed or terminated rather than a human being to be welcomed.

 

Such “neutral” language serves the interests of activists and policymakers, at the expense of the maternal-child bond that is foundational to a healthy society. Earlier eras of obstetric practice, reflected in common speech and patient-facing materials, more readily used relational and humanizing terms like “baby” or “unborn child,” particularly in conversations with expectant mothers.

 

But today, ACOG explicitly discourages the use of terms such as “womb,” “baby,” or “unborn child” on the grounds that they are “medically inaccurate” or apply “emotional value.” While such language may be defensible within clinician medical educational materials or peer-reviewed publications, this shift — applied universally at the patient’s bedside — represents more than just “medical precision”; it reflects a broader cultural and ideological reframing of pregnancy.

 

This is the acme of the politicization of medicine, where the language of care is no longer just about “biologic accuracy,” but about aligning with sociopolitical positions. The side effects erode one of the most distinctive and profound aspects of women’s health care: the recognition that pregnancy is not merely a condition to be managed, but a transcendent biological relationship in which new human life is nurtured and brought into the world.

 

The words an obstetrical physician chooses are never neutral. They frame the reality of the patient’s experience. When medical professionals use life-affirming language, referring to the life within as a “baby” or an “unborn child,” they validate the mother’s instinct to protect and bond with her offspring.

 

Reflecting the growing unease and pushback within medicine against unilateral political and ideological currents, organizations such as the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) explicitly maintain and endorse such life-affirming language, preserving the nature of obstetrics that recognizes the humanity of the preborn child alongside the care of the mother. And as the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing noted, “Person-centered language in maternity care involves moving away from terms that may diminish or dismiss women’s experiences, discomfort, or concerns.”

 

True health care should support the holistic well-being of both patients involved in a pregnancy. By returning to life-affirming language, obstetrical providers can honor the sanctity of the womb and strengthen the vital, irreplaceable bond between a mother and her child.

 

Ultimately, the goal of obstetrics goes beyond safe clinical outcomes to support women through one of the most significant transitions of their lives. The language of the obstetric care professional should reflect the reality of the nursery. To deny a mother the right to hear that she is carrying a “baby” is to deny the very essence of the maternal vocation.

Brandon Gill’s Master Class in Exposing Abortion Euphemism

By Alexandra DeSanctis

Tuesday, May 05, 2026

 

In a recent hearing on the FACE Act, Republican Representative Brandon Gill put on a master class in exposing pro-abortion euphemism, pressing abortion advocate Jessica Waters of American University on which type of abortion procedure she prefers: saline injection, suction, or dilation and curettage.

 

Waters, evidently uncomfortable with this line of questioning, clung to the fig leaf of “reproductive health care,” declined to answer Gill’s question, and insisted on sticking to the subject of the hearing — namely, abortion facilities.

 

Abortion advocates, as it turns out, are so accustomed to obfuscation that they can unironically insist on discussing abortion facilities while refusing to engage the non-germane topic of . . . abortion.

 

Gill’s performance proves that it isn’t all that difficult to simply refuse the smokescreens that abortion supporters use to obscure the grotesque reality of their position. In doing so, he offers pro-life politicians a blueprint for how to make real headway, even in a gridlocked political climate, by using the rhetorical power of the bully pulpit to drag the truth of abortion into the open.

 

His comments put me in mind of a somewhat similar occurrence nearly a decade ago. During a 2016 presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about abortion, citing Clinton’s opposition to the ban on partial-birth abortion. After Clinton defended her position, Trump said the following:

 

Well, I think it’s terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.

 

Now, you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay. But it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she’s saying, and based on where she’s going, and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.

 

It was characteristically inelegant, but it was effective. Pro-life groups heaped praise on Trump for doing what Republican politicians so rarely do: using a highly public stage to expose the simple, horrible fact of what happens in an abortion procedure.

 

Gill’s more sophisticated version of this strategy, albeit on a much smaller stage, reminded me of that moment from 2016. It also reminded me that the Donald Trump who was “not okay” with abortion appears to have vanished — right around the time that the Supreme Court finally overturned Roe v. Wade.

 

Today, Trump has drifted so far from the pro-life camp that he has begun to draw the ire of the very anti-abortion groups that spent years hailing him as the most pro-life president in history and the great conqueror of Roe.

 

But the president’s sharp leftward turn on abortion is nothing new. Running for a second term, Trump expressed support for chemical abortion and insisted that the Court in Dobbs had returned the issue of abortion to the states, when in fact the ruling left ample room for Congress to act — to say nothing of the executive branch’s tremendous power to regulate abortion.

 

Trump presided over a shameful softening of the GOP platform’s historic support for the right to life of the unborn and an open embrace of IVF, long opposed by pro-lifers due in part to the destruction of embryonic human life.

 

Since his reelection, Trump has overseen an administration that has refused to undo Biden-era pro-abortion policies and has actively opposed pro-life state efforts to regulate chemical abortion. So much for leaving abortion to the will of the people.

 

It ought not surprise anyone when a politician turns out to have been disingenuous. But one does have to wonder whether the Trump who expressed righteous disgust at the reality of abortion still exists somewhere inside the man in the Oval Office today.

 

Was his clumsy effort to expose Clinton’s extremism mere politicking, or was there a part of him that was sincerely appalled after having grasped the violent reality of abortion — and even, if only for a time, converted?

 

Perhaps Gill’s effort to expose the grisly truth of abortion will provoke a crisis of conscience, not only for the president but for all who turn a blind eye to the child in the womb.

Remember Kermit Gosnell’s Victims

National Review Online

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

 

Kermit Gosnell, the infamous late-term abortionist of West Philadelphia, has died at age 85. Gosnell came to national attention in 2011 after a grand jury report detailed the “house of horrors” that was his clinical abortion practice. Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder in 2013, charged with seven born-alive infant deaths, and the involuntary manslaughter of Karnamaya Mongar, a patient at his clinic. Gosnell’s life’s work is a testimony to gruesome neglect in American law and society. This neglect allowed Gosnell to profit at incredible cost to his community, to unborn children, and to women in difficult pregnancies. Prosecutors speculated that Gosnell caused perhaps hundreds of born-alive infant deaths.

 

His case illustrates several uncomfortable truths about abortion. Abortion’s propagandists often talk of the dangers of childbirth, but late-term surgical abortions are dangerous to women for an obvious reason. Millions of years of evolution determine that a woman’s body protects the child in the womb. Killing the unborn child with sharp implements and powerful vacuums presents obvious risks to the mother. In Gosnell’s practice, one woman’s cervix and colon were torn, requiring removal of nearly six inches of her intestines. Another was sent home with fetal parts still inside of her, leading to an infection that nearly killed her. Another went into shock and required a hysterectomy.

 

This comes alongside another uncomfortable truth — the kind of callousness required to carry out this work cannot be contained solely to the unborn. Patients at Gosnell’s clinics were given powerful sedatives or labor-inducing drugs by untrained staff. Women were left semiconscious on dirty recliners or on operating tables. They were left on furniture the grand jury report found was stained with blood, urine, and cat feces, which was also in the operating room. Mongar died after being given outdated medication, which led to staff giving her an overdose of it.

 

The Gosnell case exposed more than a clinic; it also exposed Pennsylvania’s government, and ultimately American society. The Pennsylvania Department of Health had three decades to detect and shut down Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society.” For political reasons, it was decided that inspections would, inherently, impede “access” to abortion. Gosnell never faced scrutiny from the state, despite 46 civil lawsuits filed against him, including ten for malpractice and one involving a patient death.

 

Well-documented complaints, administrative irregularities, and regulatory violations were ignored by the government as policy. Gosnell’s clinic operated without a formal certificate from 1980 to 1989. By that time, Gosnell was the only physician in the clinic; there were no trained nurses, and no outside lab work was being done. The state renewed the clinic’s approval based on promises to improve. A 1992 inspection left entire sections blank — indicating no qualified person was administering anesthesia or post-op care. The report concluded “no deficiencies” despite the fact that the report itself documented deficiencies. Then, oversight ceased entirely. To their credit, the National Abortion Federation inspected Gosnell’s clinic and concluded it was so far below standard it could not be recommended as a referral site. But this information wasn’t sent on to state regulators.

 

None of Pennsylvania’s 22 abortion clinics had been inspected by the government for more than 17 years before the grand jury investigation of Gosnell, a posture of neglect that began under pro-choice Republican Governor Tom Ridge.

 

Gosnell was finally discovered because the DEA and FBI were doing their job regarding the opioid crisis. Gosnell was running a pill mill out of his abortion clinic, writing fraudulent subscriptions for oxycodone, alprazolam, and codeine. This is perhaps the most obvious uncomfortable testimony. Evil is not easily contained. Gosnell’s fundamental mercenary hostility to life wasn’t limited to abortion but spread to the side hustle of profiting from the deadly addictions of opioid users. By the time he was brought to trial, Gosnell had managed to accumulate 17 properties.

 

Gosnell’s horrors are what American society offered the scared, troubled pregnant women of West Philadelphia, turning a blind eye to the insidious “service” he provided to his community. It brings to mind the warning of Thomas Jefferson: We tremble when we reflect that God is just.

The Simple Case for Arresting Don Lemon

By Kevin D. Williamson

Monday, February 02, 2026

 

The simple case for arresting and prosecuting Don Lemon for his role in the invasion of a St. Paul Church by a group of anti-ICE protesters is, well, simple: It seems that he probably broke the law, including a federal statute that forbids “nonviolent physical obstruction” of worship services.

 

Lemon insists that he was not there to participate in the protest action but to cover it as a journalist. In fairness, he did not claim to be there as a good journalist—a claim to which I would take some exception—but, in any case, that does not matter very much: Lemon entered the church, disrupting its business, and stayed after he was specifically asked to leave by the people in charge. We do not license journalists in the United States—thank goodness—and acting as a journalist does not give anyone any special license to break otherwise applicable laws. The First Amendment gives Americans the right to publish and speak, but it does not protect those engaged in publishing and speaking from being prosecuted for criminal acts, including criminal acts that frequently come up in the course of doing a reporter’s work, such as trespassing, receiving classified documents, or making audio or video recordings in way that might violate local laws requiring the consent of those being recorded. Journalists, like those engaged in civil disobedience, at times willfully break the law in the course of doing something they think important, and, like those engaged in civil disobedience, they must be prepared to bear the legal consequences for illegal actions.

 

The First Amendment protects protesters just as much as it does journalists. If the First Amendment were a shield against trespassing in the church, it would not matter whether Lemon were there as a protester, a reporter, or in some other capacity. A judge or a jury may see things differently when it comes to judging Lemon’s intent, a valid question that is beyond our remit here.

 

It is worth noting that many of the same nice liberals who are complaining about Don Lemon’s arrest were quite happy to see anti-abortion activists convicted of felonies for making secret recordings of Planned Parenthood officials that embarrassed the abortion industry. They, too, were engaged in First Amendment activity and considered themselves journalists making secret recordings in the tradition of 60 Minutes. I do not say that they were good journalists or good documentarians—claims to which I would take some exception—only that the First Amendment that protects their right to publish and to speak does not necessarily override laws against making surreptitious recordings.

 

In fact, one of the laws under which Lemon is being prosecuted was specifically enacted to make it easier to prosecute abortion protesters, creating a federal course of action against individuals and groups whose First Amendment activities go over the line and run up against what would otherwise be local trespassing cases at most. I do not think that this is a good law, for the same reason I do not think “shield laws” protecting journalists from being prosecuted for certain crimes are good laws: I believe in the American principle of equality before the law and therefore think it both wrong and unwise to create special protected classes of people and institutions. A country with a properly functioning criminal justice system would not need special laws that make murder or assault an extra-special, super-duper crime when the victim is a policeman—the laws that protect civilians must be good enough for the lawmen charged with protecting civilians, or else we are laying (as we have) the foundations for a caste system. Special protections for journalists—meaning, inevitably, government-recognized journalists—would be a step in the same direction.

 

The FACE Act—that is, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, another imbecilic congressional acronym—was celebrated by many of our progressive friends when it was being used by the Justice Department during the Biden administration to discourage abortion protests that were in the main a good deal less rambunctious than what we have seen in Minneapolis and elsewhere of late, just as many progressives cheered actions to censor anti-abortion speech in the form of graphic depictions of what the procedure actually does.

 

It is obvious that the FACE Act was meant to discourage anti-abortion protest per se, and not only trespassing or physical interference. Some linked the FACE Act to ordinary political speech, such as those embarrassing Planned Parenthood videos. Then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for example, expressly linked “aggressive tactics” such as “illegal filming” to the kind of thing the FACE Act was meant to prohibit and discourage. Feinstein also justified prosecuting the documentarians on the grounds that they had “longstanding ties to the anti-choice movement, including Operation Rescue, which is closely associated with clinic violence.” She argued that such speech, if unpoliced, would result in “the message being sent is that it is okay to commit crimes against Planned Parenthood, its employees, and its patients,” which is, of course, exactly what some of Donald Trump’s apologists say about anti-ICE protests: that the political speech should be suppressed because it could be understood as justifying violence or other criminal acts.

 

Lemon is also charged under a federal statute prohibiting “conspiracy against rights,” a post-Civil War measure that was targeted at the Ku Klux Klan and its terrorist campaign against the political and economic rights of African Americans. The statute is very broad, and prosecutors may be able to make a case that Lemon violated the letter of the law—but it is probably not a very good law. One of the sillier things I covered as a journalist was Lincoln University’s lawsuit against the neighbors of the Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, under the “Klan Act,” the civil-recourse version of the statute here in question. The episode involved residents of an upscale, liberal, largely Jewish neighborhood who complained that the art institution (which Lincoln controlled) was creating parking and traffic problems for the residential community in which it was located. These anti-Klan laws may have made sense in the 19^th century, but it is probably time to revise or repeal them.

 

And therein lies a lesson: Every time someone argues for creating some broad new power for the government—regulatory, criminal, defense-related, whatever—I want to tell them: Remember that the other side is going to win elections from time to time. The FACE Act seemed great when its advocates expected that Bill Clinton was going to represent the rightwardmost bound of presidential action. Democrats should always keep in mind that the American people are more than capable of putting such a man as Donald Trump in the White House, just as Republicans should keep in mind that the American people are more than capable of entrusting power to the likes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or Zohran Mamdani. Every time there is a change of administration, you are handing the other party a toolbox—you might want to think about whether you want to put a loaded gun in there.

 

Lemon will complain that the Trump administration is being vindictive because he is a critic, and, of course, he will be correct about that—after all, it was Trump himself who declared to his partisans: “I am your retribution.” Lemon will complain that the case against him is political (it is), extraordinary (it is), an example of selective prosecution (it is), a matter of bias (it is), etc.—but none of that means that he did not break the law. It is not a very good law. But, then, many of our drug laws are not very good laws, our immigration laws are not very good overall, our business regulations are, in many cases, positively terrible laws, etc.—and yet we expect, for good reason, that the laws will be enforced. Good citizenship demands that we forgo treating Lemon with the same gentle consideration that he and his comrades have extended to abortion protesters, that we give him the same First Amendment considerations that he would give to anti-abortion documentarians or right-wing provocateurs making secret videos or to a figure such as James O’Keefe or to a media entrepreneur more closely resembling Don Lemon, such as Tucker Carlson—it is always gratifying to beat an opponent with his own stick and hoist with his own petard, but the times we are in ask more of us.

 

If we want orderly government, the way to achieve it is not to forgo law enforcement when enforcing the law is inconvenient—the way there is to rid ourselves of agents of chaos, from minor irritants in the private sector, such as Don Lemon, to major malefactors in the public sector, such as the men and women prosecuting Don Lemon. We need better laws, and we also need better people to enforce them.

 

And Furthermore

 

History is very short, if you think about it: For example, it took only 127 days for the Trump administration to go from extrajudicial killings of non-U.S. citizens in the Caribbean to extrajudicial killings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Some slopes really are very slippery.

 

Don’t you dare compare him to Hitler, the president’s apologists say. Trump’s wife (one of his wives) did claim that he kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speeches at his bedside for inspirational reading, but—no, not Hitler. There are many ways to be awful short of being Adolf Hitler—and Hitler would have succeeded in taking Greenland. Don’t you dare call him a fascist, they say. Fair enough—fascism is infamously hard to define, but it is a school of political thought with some organization to it, whereas Trump’s political thought is not thought at all, nor is it organized—it is what Lionel Trilling once called conservatism: a series of “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” I have a similar thought when people accuse Trump of being a racist: He is a dumb bigot, to be sure, but racism implies a perverted sense of loyalty, in this case to a race, and loyalty to anything is entirely alien to Trump’s character. Unless you count his sense of humor, Trump is a man without virtues.

 

Fascism is a rotten way of looking at the world, but it implies some intellectual discipline. If, on the other hand, you have ever heard Billy Bob Thornton talk about his dyslexia, then you will have an idea of what it must be like to be Donald Trump listening to a policy briefing and wondering when it is his turn to talk. Thus spake Billy Bob:

 

I’m as dumb as a bag of hair, [and] I grew up with severe anxiety disorder, which I still have. And I have severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. And I also was severely dyslexic. But for some reason, I’ve always been able to memorize things instantly. It’s like I’m dumb as hell on every other aspect of life. But I can see things—it’s almost like a savant thing. I can look at a monologue ... and I see two or three chunks. I don’t read left to right slowly like most people do. I look at something and I go, “Oh, okay. It says that.” It’s almost like some kind of weird science fiction movie where it goes into my head. ... I’ll tell you where I do have a problem is if there’s a scene that’s nine pages long and there’s seven or eight people in it, and I’ve got one line every other page. I sit there and start thinking about other shit. God, you can’t help it with my mental issues. But it’s really harder for me when I don’t have as much dialogue.

 

Fascist? Not in the classical sense, though his economic ideas are fascism-adjacent and his love of thuggery is fascist-aligned.

 

But there are many interesting lines on Donald Trump’s résumé: pampered and self-aggrandizing real-estate heir, spectacular failure in the casino business, spectacular failure in the hotel business, sycophant of Arab princelings, sycophant of Russian oligarchs, enemy of the First Amendment, man accused of rape by his wife (by one of his wives, she later recanted the claim), man found legally liable in a court of law for sexual abuse, man who has a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to sexual abuse allegations about him, social-media addict, enemy of the Second Amendment, game-show host, deadbeat, Putin suck-up, Xi suck-up, convicted felon, tie-taper, make-up enthusiast, Broadway showtune enthusiast with an especial regard for the big show-stopper from Cats, enemy of the Fourth Amendment, bit player in pornographic films, golf cheat, heretic, grandson of a German whoremonger and Yukon horse-meat vendor, pal of Jeffrey Epstein, fraudster, swindler, Enemy of the Fourteenth Amendment, serial bankrupt, serial adulterer, serial divorcee, serial liar, desultory coup d’état leader, draft-dodging coward, precisely the kind of creep who probably shouldn’t own a beauty pageant business, Hillary Clinton donor, Kamala Harris donor.

 

It is a little weird to think about what a man on the edge of 80 might be when he grows up, but if Trump ever grows up, a fascist is what he will grow up to be. That said, I agree it is unfair to call him a fascist today for the same reason it would be unfair to ask my dachshund to write a commentary on Aristotle.

 

Economics for English Majors

 

I wrote last week about the folly of capping credit-card interest rates. Interest rates are a price, and when you artificially lower prices, what you get isn’t low prices—it is rationing.

 

Donald Trump, who once crowned himself the “king of debt,” wants credit card interest rates capped at 10 percent. He has urged the industry to adopt that cap voluntarily—which is not going to happen—but also has suggested to Congress that it should impose such a cap through law. The effect of doing this would not be to save Americans money on interest payments. The effect would be to deprive many Americans of access to ordinary consumer credit, beginning with those who have lower incomes and lower credit scores.

 

Trump, of all people, is well positioned to understand how this works in the real world. During his time as an incompetent real estate developer, Trump made almost as many appearances in bankruptcy proceedings as he did on Page Six. Trump is a known deadbeat and a bad credit risk. When you are a bad credit risk, you pay higher interest rates and get credit on generally worse terms. And then, at some point, you simply cannot get credit at all, at least through ordinary channels. Toward the end of his run in real estate, Trump found it practically impossible to get loans from any of the major lenders with which he had been associated—often to those banks’ regret—over the years. Trump is, at the moment, legally prohibited from taking out commercial loans from banks in the state of New York after having been found by a court to have engaged in financial fraud.

 

But most borrowers are not as outlandish in their behavior—or as wealthy—as Donald Trump. Ordinary borrowers see their credit ratings dinged from time to time over things like unpaid bills or late payments, too much debt relative to their incomes or savings—all the familiar stuff. Interest rates charged to consumers take into account credit risk—the banks’ chances of not getting paid back or of having to spend money and time recovering money owed—but also things such as opportunity cost (Why lend anybody money at 3 percent when you could just park those assets in an index fund and expect to make more money?) and, of course, the ultimate arbiter of interest rates: the market. People with poor credit scores or low incomes pay higher interest rates in part for reasons having to do with risk but also because there is a lot more competition to lend money to multimillionaires with 840 credit scores. The old bankers’ proverb holds true: You don’t want to lend money to people who need it—it is far better to lend to people who don’t need the money.

 

Not every problem is an economic problem with an economic solution. When we have division, convulsing debates over wars or abortion or education, “Let markets work!” is not usually the answer to the questions at hand, even though many of those concerns have economic concerns wrapped up in them. (If you think education is only about ensuring that businesses have workers and that young Americans can get good jobs, then you have a crude idea of what education is and is for.) But sometimes, “Let markets work!” is exactly the right answer. When Americans are unhappy about the price of something—gasoline, houses, college tuition—it is never the case that the problem is the price per se: The problem is always something else that the price is trying to tell us about.

 

Listen to prices!

 

Words About Words

 

Headline: “A Traitor’s Worst Enemy Is Themself.” That and grammar, apparently. Themselves would be ungrammatical, but what the heck is a themself? As often is the case, the homepage headline and the article headline are slightly different. It may be that the homepage copy is generated by a particularly illiterate AI. But, then, artificial intelligence is no match for organic stupidity.

 

A rhetorical tic exemplified in Slate: “It’s Time to Face the Big Question About Trump That No One Wants to Ask.” The question is whether Trump is “losing it”—i.e., the big question pretty much literally everyone wants to ask. Pretending that “no one wants to ask” a question or that “no one wants to talk about” an issue is a way for a writer, or his headline writer, to give him an unearned glow of courage or to add a synthetic flavor of originality to bland commentary. It is similar to the politician who boasts of his courage in “standing up to” this or that supposedly powerful group that everybody in his coalition detests and despises, making “standing up to” that group profitable and popular rather than an act of courage.

 

From Uncrate, a shopping site, a blown chance to use tetradecagon in writing about a new Zenith watch: “Its octagonal stainless steel case measures 37mm and is topped by a 14-sided bezel.” I mean, that opportunity doesn’t come up all that much. (If you read the entry, you’ll also see that they wrote “allied” when they meant “applied.”) Nifty-looking watch, with a tetradecagonal bezel, bezel from the French biseau and the Old French besel, meaning a sloped edge or chamfer, related to bevel. And do you know who knows the proper names for a great many of the polyhedra? Dungeons & Dragons dorks, that’s who.

 

From the New York Times: “On social media, Mr. Macron’s sunglasses were seen as a political statement, projecting a tough image in the face of Mr. Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on French wine and champagne and to annex Greenland.” Champagne is wine. Writing “wine and champagne” is like writing “cheese and cheddar.”

 

You all can, I think, imagine what my poor wife has to put up with. When the waiter, insipidly trying to cultivate a little cheap familiarity, asks: “Have we decided?” I have to stop myself (and don’t always succeed) from asking: “Are we f—ing plural?”

 

Speaking of “you all,” that Texan contraction is “y’all,” not “ya’ll.” And, of course, the super-plural form is “all y’all.”

 

In Closing

 

Donald Trump wants you to believe that Alex Pretti was an “insurrectionist” and an “agitator,” agitator being the dumb man’s word for “protester of whom I do not approve.” Never mind the irony—though “irony” seems too mild a word—of Donald Trump complaining about insurrectionists after giving a blanket pardon to the most significant group of insurrectionists in recent American history.

 

Let’s pretend we’re stupid and take Trump at his word: Even if Pretti was an insurrectionist, do you know what we do with insurrectionists? We do not shoot them while they are unarmed and presenting no serious immediate danger to anybody. We arrest them, charge them under the relevant law, and put them on trial. I do not think that Donald Trump, of all Americans, should want to legitimize the precedent of just shooting insurrectionists.

 

Pretti seems to have been a big ol’ rage-monkey, which is no surprise: If you have ever been to protests of the kind we’re seeing in Minneapolis, then you may have noticed that they neither attract the happiest and most well-adjusted sort of people, nor do they bring out the best in the people they attract. (Do you know who else should know that? Donald Trump and every boot-licking sycophant in his orbit and employ.) I do not know whether Pretti was a bad man. It does not matter. Murdering a bad man is still murder, whatever the moral illiterates on your favorite social-media app have to say about it. Murdering a good man is not extra-special, super-duper murder—it is just murder. As a wise man once said, “Murders stay murder.”

 

Donald Trump once got nicked by a bullet—and he did not seem to enjoy the experience. We do not shoot people for being shmucks, a fact for which Donald Trump should be profoundly grateful.

Gavin Newsom Is Fooling No One

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

 

What’s that old Nietzsche line about gazing long into an abyss? Gavin Newsom would do well to recall it. Eventually, Donald Trump turns all of his critics into an ersatz version of himself, and, evidently, the governor of California is not immune. It is common to hear Newsom described as an oleaginous man, but, at this point, he might better be compared to sand. Sand absorbs oil, and retains its color in the process. Of late, Newsom has absorbed an Exxon Valdez’s worth of Trump.

 

It’s not just the all-caps tweeting, or the acid mockery, or the hypocritical demands that everyone but him must play nice that Newsom has assiduously copied. It’s the chutzpah. This week, Newsom tweeted that “nothing is sacred in Trump’s America — not the First Amendment, not the Second, not even life itself,” before vowing, “We, the People, will not allow the Trump Administration to erode our rights.” An admirable sentiment, in a vacuum. But surely the “we” in the sentence cannot include Gavin Newsom?

 

The Second Amendment? At present, Newsom is engaged in a national effort to repeal it, so that it can be replaced with a version that focuses on gun control rather than gun rights. As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom urged the city’s Board of Supervisors to impose “the maximum penalty under state law” on residents who violated San Francisco’s (now struck-down) total ban on handguns and — twice — joined amicus briefs that argued that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right. As governor of California, Newsom has signed a bill that bans concealed carry at the protests he now lionizes; signed a bill that bans Glocks, the most popular handgun brand in the United States; signed a bill (now enjoined) that gutted the Bruen decision by defining “sensitive places” so extensively as to render carry impossible for millions; signed a bill (now struck down) that was intended to prevent those who challenge California’s gun laws from obtaining attorney’s fees; and signed a bill (now struck down) that regulated what could be said about guns in print if it were possible that a minor might see it.

 

The First Amendment? In 2022, Newsom signed AB 587 (now partially enforced, following a settlement), which required social media platforms to submit periodic reports to the state about how they enforce rules on categories such as hate speech, extremism, and disinformation, and the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (now enjoined), which imposed default-setting requirements on any online service that was likely to be accessed by children. In 2024, he signed SB399 (now enjoined), which barred employers from requiring employees to attend meetings or communications whose primary purpose is to convey the employer’s views on politics, religion, or union organizing, and AB 2655 (now struck down), AB 2839 (now struck down), and AB 2355, which broadly regulated the same election-related AI and digitally altered political content that Newsom frequently traffics in on social media.

 

As for “life”? Come now. Under Newsom’s leadership, California has adopted some of the most extreme abortion laws ever seen in the United States. Among the initiatives Newsom has spearheaded or signed are a bill to furnish medication abortion at every public university in the state; a series of bills that provides civil and criminal liability to anyone receiving or providing abortions; a bill that allowed abortion providers in Arizona to operate in California; a bill that required health plans in the state to cover mifepristone, irrespective of its FDA-approval status; and a constitutional amendment (Proposition 1) that renders abortion as a fundamental right and, in practice, outlaws parental consent, waiting periods, and ultrasound, and allows abortion up to the point of birth. Had Kermit Gosnell put together a legislative record, it would not meaningfully differ from Newsom’s.

 

The United States is a big country, and it is inevitable that, somewhere, it will play host to a Gavin Newsom. But it would be better for all involved if, where they must exist, the Gavin Newsoms among us would have the good manners to be honest about their preferences. Despite his pretenses, Gavin Newsom is not a champion of the First Amendment, of the Second Amendment, or of life, and he is not interested in moderation, decency, or respect for his critics, either. Within hours, Newsom will complain that Trump’s rhetoric is inappropriate and tell anyone who disagrees with him that their “knee pads are in the mail.” Concurrently, he will insist that he is a champion of the right to bear arms and sell his plan to remove that liberty from the Bill of Rights. Simultaneously, he will describe his state as a haven for freedom and embark on yet another attempt to micromanage the internet in the name of fighting misinformation. Ezra Klein, Newsom’s fellow Californian weathervane, has described this tendency to go “in two directions at once” as “fascinating.” I disagree. It is pathetic, cynical, and Trumpite — and that, in this particular case, it is being delivered by someone who has good hair and a lupine smirk does not alter that one whit.

March for Life’s Miscalculation

By Alexandra DeSanctis

Thursday, January 22, 2026

 

Vice President JD Vance will speak at the annual March for Life on Friday. It is a regrettable miscalculation to elevate Vance as a pro-life leader given his recent track record on abortion, as well as that of the administration he serves.

 

Surely, this invitation is part of a strategic effort to accomplish pro-life objectives over the rest of President Donald Trump’s term. Developing a prudent political strategy is essential, and compromise will always be part of political life.

 

But we cannot lose our moral clarity. We must be willing to call a spade a spade. Inviting Vance to headline the march offers him the imprimatur of the pro-life movement and gives him a chance to misrepresent the administration as an ally of the pro-life cause.

 

The vice president himself publicly supported legal, accessible chemical abortion during the 2024 campaign and presently serves as a figurehead for an administration that has done markedly little to earn the celebration of pro-lifers — in fact, quite the opposite.

 

One year in, the Trump administration has failed to enact meaningful pro-life policies available to it and has continued the pro-abortion policies of the Biden administration.

 

Over the past week, for instance, the Trump White House has shown a willingness to abandon the Hyde Amendment, a longtime pro-life non-negotiable, which prevents taxpayer funds from directly subsidizing abortion. The White House omitted Hyde from its new health-care proposal just after Trump urged congressional Republicans to “be a little bit flexible” on Hyde, if that’s what it would take to get a policy through.

 

Meanwhile, the administration has spent its first year refusing to use its executive authority to regulate mifepristone, the primary drug used in chemical abortions, which now account for about two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. each year.

 

A pro-life administration would have wasted no time in immediately reenacting safety regulations on mifepristone — undone by President Biden’s executive action — and would have taken steps to limit chemical abortion further.

 

Increased access to chemical abortion is the foremost reason that, in the three years since Roe was overturned, the abortion rate has risen by 24 percent — from an estimated 955,000 abortions in 2022 to about 1.19 million in 2025.

 

Under Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services did away with the requirement that women visit a doctor in person before obtaining mifepristone, a policy that puts women’s health at risk and is likely the primary factor for this recent increase in the abortion rate.

 

Despite having overturned countless Biden-era policies, the Trump administration has failed to reverse this one. Indeed, the administration has not only left mifepristone unregulated but has actively opposed the efforts of pro-life states to regulate it. The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, has claimed it will look into reinstating the pre-Biden safety regulations but has instead slow-walked its study on how mifepristone harms pregnant women. This, despite research suggesting that abortion drugs are about 22 times more harmful to women than the FDA currently discloses.

 

This pro-abortion posture of the Trump administration should not come as a surprise.

 

During the 2024 campaign, both Trump and Vance stated their support for legal chemical abortion and announced that they didn’t intend to regulate it. Both candidates gave themselves cover for this stance by claiming that the Supreme Court had approved chemical abortion, when in fact no such ruling occurred.

 

Asked whether he would “block abortion medication” as president, Trump said, “First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill. And I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it.”

 

Vance, meanwhile, said in an interview, “The Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication [chemical abortion]. Donald Trump has supported that opinion. I support that opinion.”

 

But the Supreme Court did not protect chemical abortion. In fact, the ruling in question did not engage the legality and safety of chemical abortion, deciding only that the health-care professionals suing the government over the mifepristone regulations did not have standing.

 

Trump has spent the years since Dobbs blaming the pro-life movement for electoral losses. He and Vance have consistently taken the position that abortion should be handled by state legislatures alone, ignoring that the Court in Dobbs left room for federal lawmakers to act on abortion.

 

At Trump’s behest, the GOP removed pro-life language that had been in the party platform for decades, language that invoked the unborn child’s “fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.” It also removed language calling for a constitutional amendment and legislation “to make clear that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

 

Today’s Republican Party platform no longer mentions the fundamental right to life of unborn children at all. It supports no pro-life policies in particular, pledging only to “oppose Late Term Abortion.” The platform also supports in vitro fertilization, which pro-lifers have long opposed because it destroys embryonic human life — and the administration itself has acted to expand access to IVF.

 

Over the past few years, Trump and Vance have proven that Republican politicians need not be pro-life to earn the support of the pro-life movement, a shift that will have ramifications well past the Trump era. By enabling the fiction that this administration deserves to be called pro-life, the movement is willingly surrendering whatever political leverage it still has.

 

The March for Life has long been a foremost champion of the right to life of every unborn human being and an essential vehicle for the sentiments of pro-life Americans across the country. The future of the pro-life movement is at serious risk if Vance and the Trump administration are what it chooses to celebrate.

Wisconsin Move Exposes Planned Parenthood Lies

National Review Online

Monday, September 29, 2025

 

The “Big Beautiful Bill” provided a massive victory to the pro-life movement by preventing Medicaid dollars from going to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. As a consequence of the funding cuts, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announced that, starting October 1, it is no longer scheduling patients for abortions, supposedly because this will allow its clinics to continue seeing Medicaid patients. Neighboring states are anticipating an influx of Wisconsin women, and the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois acknowledged that “this is not sustainable.” Predictably, abortion-rights advocates and sympathetic media outlets claim that the development in Wisconsin is yet another attack on “reproductive rights” while expressing no concern for the innocent life inside the womb. Actually, though, this episode exposes the abortion lobby’s favorite lies about Planned Parenthood’s supposed financial self-sufficiency and purportedly long list of reproductive services.

 

Pro-abortion activists dubiously claim that abortions constitute only a small percentage of Planned Parenthood’s services, but that figure is artificially diluted because Planned Parenthood deliberately inflates the number of “services” provided. For example, if a woman underwent an abortion at Planned Parenthood and received a free condom upon leaving, the procedure might be counted as only 50 percent of the services provided. Some regional Planned Parenthood affiliates explicitly disclose on their websites that an in-clinic abortion appointment consists of several steps, such as an ultrasound and birth-control consultation, which thereby increases the number of services received during a single visit for an abortion procedure.

 

Indeed, Planned Parenthood’s own records show that its purported pregnancy care is disproportionately interventions to end pregnancy. In its annual report from 2023-2024, Planned Parenthood discloses that it performed 402,230 abortions — and during that time, it recorded just 2,148 adoption referrals, 7,008 instances of “prenatal services,” and 3,598 “miscarriage care” services. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin in particular reportedly performed 3,727 abortions in the state from October 2023 to the end of September 2024.

 

By stopping its abortion services in response to the loss of Medicaid funds, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin implicitly concedes what the pro-life movement has long insisted: Government money has supported abortion procedures. If the Wisconsin clinics shutter entirely, we’ll know that abortions were a large chunk of their operations, not a tiny percentage.

 

Meanwhile, National Review recently reported that Planned Parenthood’s free online sex-education courses for students explicitly instruct children in eighth grade and above to be pro-abortion activists. In fact, the lessons tell students to donate to pro-abortion initiatives and providers such as Planned Parenthood. The organization further attempts to suppress its competition, warning students to “avoid crisis pregnancy centers” because they supposedly “use misinformation to discourage pregnant people from seeking abortion care.”

 

Before the Big Beautiful Bill, Planned Parenthood received nearly $800 million in taxpayer dollars each year. Ultimately, Planned Parenthood is an abortion mill and ideological operation masquerading as a health-care provider, and it depends on constant subsidy from those who recognize that its industry is nothing short of wicked.

The Persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor

National Review Online

Monday, August 18, 2025

 

There are times when it is perfectly acceptable to judge a book by its cover, and, in the case of the Democratic Party’s relentless persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor, observers would be well within their rights to indulge the urge. For twelve years now, the Catholic order of nuns — whose sole purpose is to provide care to destitute elderly people — has been dragged through America’s courts by a series of monomaniacal ideologues. The nuns’ crime? Objecting to a provision in Obamacare that required nonprofits to provide contraceptives — directly or indirectly — as part of their federally approved health insurance plans. The position of the nuns was that any participation in the distribution of contraception represented a grave violation of their religious beliefs and that, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, the federal government was obliged to find another means of achieving the same end. The position of the Obama administration was that it had “compelling health and gender equity goals” to achieve, and that it didn’t care who was cast aside in that pursuit. In a country founded by dissenters, this position was jarring in the extreme.

 

Ultimately, the Obama administration lost its case — although it took until the end of Donald Trump’s first term for the Little Sisters to prevail. By that point, litigation on the matter had been ongoing since 2013 and, at various points, had been addressed by the Supreme Court — which punted it back down to the lower courts; by the Third and Ninth Circuits — both of which, astonishingly, prevented the Trump administration from providing an exemption; and by a host of states — some of which, disgracefully, chose to channel President Obama’s illiberalism and continue to press the issue. Happily, in July 2020, the Supreme Court finally permitted the Trump administration’s accommodation to take force. The case, Little Sisters v. Pennsylvania, was decided 7–2.

 

By rights, this should have been the end of the affair. And yet neither of the states that had lost at the Supreme Court — Pennsylvania and New Jersey — was willing to let it go. Worse still, they were joined in the endeavor by California, New York, Massachusetts, and others. Clinging to a tendentious argument that the Supreme Court did not address on the merits, those states insisted that the Trump administration’s modifications had been “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act. This month, a district judge in Pennsylvania concurred and struck down the rule. (Because nationwide injunctions are countenanced by the APA, this decision was not foreclosed by the Court’s Casa opinion earlier this year.) Once again — twelve years after their case was opened — the Little Sisters of the Poor were informed that they must choose between their consciences and the law.

 

That this litigation has lasted as long as it has is a problem. Infinitely worse, however, is how many of America’s politicians have worked gleefully to keep the saga going. The legal cases in which the Little Sisters of the Poor have been involved did not spring up unbidden from the earth. Nor are they a permanent or inevitable feature of the landscape. They are a choice. President Obama chose to demand that America’s nuns subordinate their religious beliefs to his social preferences. The leaders of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other Democratic states chose to attack the Trump administration’s compromise, long after Barack Obama had left office, and then to keep the effort up despite an emphatic loss at the Supreme Court. That is fanaticism, and, properly understood, it is anathema to the functioning of a pluralist society. Americans will, did, and often should disagree on important political matters. But there is a difference between seeking to win the battle of ideas and gratuitously bayoneting the wounded. Given the instincts of the current Supreme Court, it seems likely that the Little Sisters of the Poor’s most recent loss will eventually be overturned. But the instinct that led to their being pushed into the fight in the first instance will remain. That, ultimately, is a sickness of the heart — and there is no judge in America who can strike it down.