Trump using abortion-focused law to defend believers
Instead of the word of the Lord, worshippers at the Jan. 18 Sunday prayer service at Cities Church in St. Paul were met with chants such as “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” But that’s not all. Families in the pews were harangued as “pretend Christians” and “comfortable white people,” and even condemned as “Nazis,” who would “burn in hell” by at least one of the dozens of opponents of the Trump administration’s Twin Cities Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge who disrupted church services.
The protestors participating in “Operation Pullup” said they targeted the church and hurled such invective at its congregants because one of the church’s eight pastors is a federal immigration officer.
Two days later, federal prosecutors lodged a criminal complaint accusing the demonstration’s leader, Nekima Levy Armstrong, and other protestors including Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly, of conspiring to violate the rights of the congregants to freely worship, under charges historically brought almost exclusively against anti-abortion protestors tied to the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances or FACE Act.
Conservatives have long complained that the federal government weaponized the law to target pro-life Christians praying outside abortion clinics – with the Biden-led Justice Department for the first time combining FACE Act charges with such “conspiracy against rights” charges under the Ku Klux Klan Act to dramatically increase jail sentences. Now, the Trump administration is seeking to employ these laws to defend faithful Christians – and other worshippers – and bring their opponents to justice, under a long-dormant provision of the FACE Act aimed at protecting religious liberty.
It is not clear how successful this effort will be. A magistrate judge struck the FACE Act charge against the three protestors not because the law did not apply in the case but because, he ruled, prosecutors lacked probable cause at that juncture. The judge did leave in place a conspiracy charge against the three connected to the First Amendment’s protection of religious rights.
Whether authorities ultimately substantiate the FACE Act charge before a judge with further evidence, or secure it before a grand jury, Attorney General Pam Bondi was adamant, in tweeting on the day of the arrests, “Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP.”
Echoing previous complaints from pro-life advocates, progressives are now complaining that the Trump administration is weaponizing the law against its political opponents. The NAACP, whose Minneapolis chapter Armstrong formerly headed, issued a press release calling the administration’s actions unconstitutional, and asserting that “The only reason the FBI and DHS arrested them is that they didn’t like what they had to say.”
FACE in Trump’s Crosshairs
While progressives have seen the FACE Act as essential to protecting abortion rights since it was passed in 1993, many conservatives have seen it as a cudgel to punish the exercise of religious freedom.
In one of the first acts of his second term, President Trump pardoned nearly two-dozen pro-life protestors prosecuted by the Biden administration, many convicted on dual FACE Act and conspiracy against rights charges.
One day later, on Jan. 24, 2025, the Justice Department’s chief of staff issued a memorandum altering the department’s FACE Act charging policy. It directed that “future abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions will be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances, or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage.”
Going forward, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division would have to approve all abortion-related FACE Act actions, the memo stated. The department would also dismiss several pending cases with prejudice.
The prosecution of the Minnesota church protestors represents part of a new legal front opened by the Justice Department to protect worshippers and houses of worship using long-ignored provisions of the 32-year-old law.
FACE Act’s Forgotten Provisions
Citing evidence of growing “anti-abortion violence and blockades,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy introduced the FACE Act in 1993, claiming it would protect abortion providers facing an “unacceptable reign of terror.” The law initially prohibited individuals from engaging in violence, threats of violence, obstruction, intimidation, or interference solely against those seeking abortions or facilitating them and associated medical facilities.
Kennedy urged that Congress enact the law “before another doctor dies, or another clinic is blockaded or burned to the ground.” Peaceful protestors, the longtime “liberal lion” of the Senate assured, would “have nothing to fear from this legislation.”
One of Kennedy’s Republican colleagues was not so sure. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment extending the bill’s protections to those exercising or seeking to exercise their right to pray at a house of worship, as well as the houses of worship themselves. In introducing the amendment, Hatch asserted that it “would ensure that the First Amendment right of religious liberty receives the same protection from interference that…[the bill] would give abortion.”
“Simply put, anyone who votes against this amendment or who attempts to dilute it values religious freedom far less than abortion,” Hatch added.
Ted Kennedy accepted the amendment without objection. Congress would concur, adopting the provision and, among other things, expanding the bill’s protections to encompass not only abortion centers, but all reproductive health service facilities.
In 1994, the FACE Act became law. The signing ceremony foreshadowed how the Justice Department would apply the law, with then-Attorney General Janet Reno emphasizing that the bill achieved the Justice Department’s goal of protecting women’s “constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.”
In the ensuing decades, nearly every FACE Act prosecution brought under Democrat and Republican administrations alike targeted protestors at abortion facilities.
According to data obtained by Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, between 1994 and 2024, the Justice Department brought 211 FACE Act cases, 205 of which came against pro-life activists.
Roy obtained the statistics in probing the Biden administration, which he and other conservatives and Christian organizations allege selectively deployed the law to target pro-life protestors, while ignoring attacks on pro-life activists, reproductive facilities, and churches – particularly in the wake of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The Biden Justice Department brought 24 FACE Act cases against 55 defendants. Only two of the two-dozen cases, covering five individuals, concerned attacks on pregnancy resource centers, despite testimony from former FBI Director Christopher Wray that in the wake of the leak of the Dobbs decision, “more of our abortion-related violent extremism investigations have focused on violence against pro-life facilities as opposed to the other way around.”
The Biden administration’s critics noted that when it did apply the law, it tried to give it more bite. For the first time, its Justice Department tacked on felony “conspiracy against rights” charges in FACE Act cases, increasing prison sentences from no more than six months for a first-time nonviolent FACE Act offender to upwards of 10 years. In congressional hearings, Republican witnesses claimed the law was being weaponized to punish peaceful pro-life protestors.
Democrats challenged this view. In a June 2025 House Judiciary Committee hearing touching on the FACE Act, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, cited evidence from the National Abortion Federation that the Dobbs decision had given rise to “an immediate spike in major incidents targeting abortion providers, including arson, burglaries, and death threats.” Raskin dismissed the claims of weaponization, asserting that “If more people have been convicted of attacking pro-choice abortion clinics than have been convicted of attacking pro-life pregnancy centers…it is because there have been vastly more people attacking abortion clinics than attacking pregnancy centers.”
Even as the debate around FACE focused on abortion, some said it should be applied more widely. In her 2023 congressional testimony, Arielle Del Turco, Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council, reported that between January 2018 and April 2023 alone there were 565 attacks against churches across the U.S. Vandalism made up the lion’s share of recorded incidents, but there were also dozens of arson attacks or attempts, as well as gun-related incidents, bomb threats, and interruptions of religious services – many “directly tied to anti-religious animus related to the abortion issue” following the Dobbs leak and decision, Del Turco said.
“As long as the FACE Act remains law, it should be used as a tool to go after perpetrators of attacks such as th[e]se,” she said.
The Biden Justice Department did not heed this advice. It failed to prosecute a single case concerning an attack on a house of worship pursuant to the FACE Act.
Changing Face of FACE
The Trump administration has worked to change the often one-sided and exclusively pregnancy-related focus of federal law enforcement under the FACE Act – although its initial case concerned a synagogue, not a Christian church.
Last September, amid a rise in antisemitic attacks in the U.S. following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the Justice Department brought what it billed as its first-ever FACE Act case aimed at defending a house of worship.
The complaint concerned various incidents occurring during what the department characterized as a “violent protest” at a suburban New Jersey synagogue.
The department alleged that defendants, including several individuals, the Party for Socialism and Liberation-New Jersey, and American Muslims for Palestine-New Jersey, “engaged in a coordinated effort to intimidate and disrupt Jewish worshipers at a religious event held at the synagogue,” including “physical assaults” on, among others, the event’s organizer, Dr. Moshe Glick, “anti-Semitic and threatening chants, and defiance of police orders.”
Dr. Glick held the event, which included an Israel real estate fair at the synagogue, after shifting it from his home following alleged threats from one of the defendants, and on pro-Palestinian social media accounts publicizing his home address and indicating protestors would target it.
Approximately 50 anti-Israel protestors, lacking a permit to protest, mobbed the gathering in violation of police orders, allegedly obstructing Jewish worshippers from accessing it and attempting to intimidate and disrupt the service. Demonstrators reportedly chanted slogans such as “Zionists are Nazis,” “Intifada, Intifada,” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” in protest of an event they claimed promoted the sale of “stolen land.”
According to the complaint, one defendant participating in such activities, Altaf Sharif, a Muslim who marched on the synagogue’s property, allegedly blared a vuvuzela in Glick’s ear. The doctor swatted the vuvuzela away, and Sharif charged at him. In defending Glick, a fellow worshipper, David Silberberg, pepper-sprayed Sharif in the eyes. Another protester responded by yelling, “The Jew is here!” pointing at Silberberg. Sharif put Silberberg in a headlock, threw him to the ground, and allegedly dragged him down a hill outside the synagogue, and “drilled…[his] head into the ground.” With local police officers failing to quickly respond, the doctor intervened, hitting Sharif on the head with his flashlight. This caused Sharif to let go of Silberberg, enabling him to escape.
The Justice Department’s civil suit seeks to prohibit the defendants from threatening the synagogue or any other house of worship in New Jersey, as well as Dr. Glick’s residence.
The suit came months after Garden State local prosecutors alleged that Glick and Silberberg were the aggressors, charging the two with bias intimidation, aggravated assault, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon. The investigation and prosecution would reportedly suffer from myriad deficiencies, including withholding of exculpatory evidence, coaching a witness, and soliciting false testimony. Prosecutors dropped their original indictment, but not the case. That prosecution suffered a blow when, on Jan. 20, in his waning hours in office, outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick. (The case against Silberberg remains pending.)
Glick issued a statement expressing his gratitude to the governor, as well as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and the Trump Justice Department for “having the fortitude to protect religious freedom and bias motivated violence utilizing the FACE Act,” in apparent recognition of the civil case the department brought.
Dhillon told RCI that “Moshe Glick was unfairly targeted for defending a member of his congregation from violent, antisemitic protestors outside of their synagogue. Governor Murphy was right to end this outrageous prosecution, and this Department of Justice will continue to vigorously enforce the right of every American to worship in peace and without fear.”
The Council on American Islamic Relations, which had supported the prosecution of Glick and Silberberg, panned the pardon, with its New Jersey chapter executive director writing in a press release, “Selective accountability, especially in cases touching public safety, weakens confidence in our justice system.”
Just days after the pardon, the Justice Department sought FACE Act charges in defense of congregants of St. Paul’s Cities Church.
Armstrong said that the Trump administration’s efforts to bring the activists to justice are “how you continue to move us towards authoritarianism, when you weaponize the investigative powers that you have and the departments that you have.”
“This is fascism right at work right now where you go to jail and prison because you exercise your First Amendment right to criticize the government,” her lawyer charged.
In response, a Justice Department spokesperson told RCI that: “Political violence has no place in this country, and this Department of Justice will investigate, identify, and root out any individual or violent extremist group attempting to commit or promote this heinous activity.”
Meanwhile, Justice Department officials have indicated in public remarks that they may be probing incidents at other houses of worship.