MEMO: Trump’s plan to weaponize the DOJ to undermine reproductive freedom

TO: Interested Parties

FROM: Reproductive Freedom for All

RE: Trump’s plan to weaponize the DOJ to undermine reproductive freedom

DATE: February 25, 2024

Earlier this month, Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi, was confirmed and sworn in. Now, Donald Trump is continuing to stack the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with loyalists and extremists eager to help deploy Bondi and Trump’s anti-abortion and anti-freedom agenda—including Harmeet Dhillon, Dean John Sauer, and Aaron Reitz, who will appear in front of the Senate on Wednesday for their confirmation hearing.

In her short few weeks leading the DOJ, Bondi has already signaled support for criminalizing abortion care. She said she would “love to work with” Tony Clayton, a Louisiana district attorney who signed an extradition order for a New York doctor charged in Louisiana for allegedly prescribing abortion pills online.

Individuals confirmed to leadership positions throughout the DOJ help determine how critical statutes—including those affecting reproductive freedom and abortion access—are interpreted and enforced.

Project 2025 and anti-abortion advocates have called on Trump’s DOJ to use its power to undermine reproductive freedom through numerous avenues—some of which are already underway—and include:

• Using litigation efforts to restrict access to medication abortion and emergency abortion care;
• Ceasing to investigate and prosecute violations of federal laws aimed at protecting reproductive freedom, including the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), which has protected abortion providers against anti-abortion violence and harassment for over thirty years;
• Misinterpreting and misusing the Comstock Act to ban medication abortion, and potentially all abortion care, nationwide;
• Refusing to acknowledge the well-established constitutional right to travel to access care; and
• Allowing the DOJ to become an instrument to monitor, track, and punish people for pregnancy outcomes and to collaborate with anti-abortion states in their efforts to punish people for accessing, providing, funding, or otherwise helping facilitate care.

The Trump administration has picked the following nominees for key DOJ roles in part because of their anti-abortion records. They have a proven track record that leaves no doubt they would help execute his agenda to undermine our fundamental freedoms, including access to abortion, contraception, and other reproductive health care.

Harmeet Dhillon, nominee for U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights

Harmeet Dhillon was nominated to the role of assistant attorney general for civil rights. In this capacity, she would lead the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which “works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all persons in the United States.”

Dhillon is a self-proclaimed anti-abortion advocate, and one of the many laws that the Civil Rights Division enforces is the FACE Act, as described above. This is especially alarming as she has referred to herself as a “lawyer for the pro-life movement,” has called the right to abortion access a “fake federal right,” claimed that abortion is “fundamentally different” compared to other fundamental rights, and repeatedly represented an anti-abortion organization in a series of lawsuits in which federal courts regularly sided against them. Dhillon’s anti-abortion views, combined with Trump’s pardons of those who violated the FACE Act, the DOJ’s recent FACE Act enforcement memo curtailing prosecutions under the FACE Act, and Project 2025’s language disparaging FACE Act enforcement, are ominous signs for how the DOJ will continue to handle this issue.

Dean John Sauer, nominee for U.S. Solicitor General

John Sauer was nominated to be the solicitor general (SG) of the United States. The solicitor general is responsible for overseeing and conducting litigation at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government.

Confirming Sauer as solicitor general threatens access to reproductive freedom across the country. Throughout his career, he has spearheaded litigation, partnered with anti-abortion organizations, and given substantial funds to organizations that oppose access to abortion and contraception.

• As Solicitor General of Missouri, Sauer defended several of the state’s anti-abortion laws, including its decision to revoke the license of the last abortion clinic in Missouri. Later in Sauer’s term, he defended a challenge to Missouri’s abortion ban that was enacted prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision.

• His anti-abortion work continued into his private practice, where he represented an anti-abortion organization, opposed contraception access, and regularly submitted anti-abortion amicus briefs in federal court—including an amicus brief for Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, the case attempting to restrict access to mifepristone.

• He has personally donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-abortion initiatives, including donating $500,000 to the Missouri Right to Life Political Action Committee, $257,000 to an organization opposing the Missouri ballot initiative that successfully made access to abortion as a fundamental right in the state, and $20,000 to an organization that spreads disinformation about abortion care.

Aaron Reitz, nominee for Director of the Office of Legal Policy

Aaron Reitz was nominated to lead the Office of Legal Policy (OLP). The office is responsible for reviewing and coordinating DOJ regulations, as well as assisting the Attorney General in working with the White House and Senate on nominating and confirming judicial nominees.

All evidence in Reitz’s record confirms that he will be a lawyer for Trump and his radical agenda, which includes threatening access to reproductive freedom.

• In 2019, Reitz identified being “pro-life” as one of the “areas of public policy” that he is “personally passionate about,”—and his professional record backs it.
• Reitz’s legal training commenced with numerous fellowships at some of the most notorious anti-abortion organizations, including the Alliance Defending Freedom.
• Reitz is currently the chief of staff for one of the U.S. Senate’s loudest anti-abortion voices, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Cruz has supported so-called “personhood” language, which could be used by the GOP to impact access to abortion, contraception, and IVF.

• Prior to his current role, Reitz was deputy attorney general to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—a strident opponent of abortion rights and reproductive freedom. In that role, Reitz participated in a letter-writing campaign to use disinformation and threats as a way to deter pharmacies from dispensing abortion medication.

• Reitz has stated that the work he did with Paxton to undermine abortion access, “protected precious unborn children by defending Texas’s pro-life laws,” and he criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to protect abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court’s devastating decision ending Roe v. Wade.

###

For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.