In July, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was the featured speaker on a call convened by the White House Faith Office. At the time, the conversation was billed as off the record. On Tuesday morning, however, Politico reported that it had appeared on the YouTube channel of Intercessors for America, a Christian-right group that bills itself as “not just a policy and prayer organization, but also a revolutionary community of prayer and action for our nation.” That Blanche made this appearance while fighting to be made the attorney general of the United States, at a moment when confirmation hearings in the Senate were still underway, may seem unwise—but it is absolutely in keeping with the Trump-era political strategy of “Always be making content.”
And it’s not a stretch to imagine that there was a strategic reason for the leak and for Blanche’s participation in the call. Perhaps Intercessors for America posted the recording so that Blanche’s comments on abortion might persuade some senators to confirm him. Perhaps Blanche’s people want these “off-the-record” comments in front of a wider audience. Certainly Blanche has been repeatedly questioned about abortion by senators on the committee, who feel the administration has failed to realize the post-Roe dreams of the Christian right. On the White House Faith Office call, Blanche promised that a “permanent” victory on abortion was coming. Whoever the audience was meant to be, one thing was clear: The nominee was offering to use his power at the top of the Justice Department to extend abortion bans to every state.
It is deeply disconcerting that we have a White House Faith Office at all, let alone one that is so openly advancing a Christian-right agenda. The group that published the Faith Office call is not particularly high profile, despite being more than 50 years old and having filed a wild brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The groups’ founders, the brief states, called Roe “a sign—a warning—to the People, that the nation had opened itself up to the judgment of a Holy and Righteous God.” Although Blanche’s comments about abortion have already been reported, it’s worth examining the call in some detail to give some context to his remarks and to get a sense of how this so-called faith office, led by Christian nationalists, speaks about its mission to a sympathetic audience. These are the people Blanche appears to answer to, at least now, in a moment when he needs the support.
Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, kicked off the substance of the call. A prominent “Christian Nationalist power broker,” as Americans United for Separation of Church and States have described her, she heads the White House Faith Office. (She also offered a prayer on January 6, 2021, before the president’s speech.) After promoting the faith office’s social media influencer program and taking a victory lap on behalf of the president’s attacks on trans kids, she mourned for “the America we grew up in” and thanked those on the call for helping to restore that country. She praised Blanche, referring to him as the attorney general (at the time of the call, he remained merely acting attorney general), and celebrating him for his work on “religious liberty,” which she called “historic.”
After about 20 minutes of prayers and preamble, Blanche joined. Calling himself “a preacher’s kid,” he offered a detailed narrative of “how bad the Department of Justice acted over the past several years” and how Trump and Blanche have since saved and purified the department. Those achievements included Blanche’s work heading a Trump task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias,” a favored and mostly invented cause on the Christian right. He drew participants’ attention to the arrests of “dozens of radical left rioters who attacked the house of worship in Minnesota”—a protest, at which journalists were also arrested, against a church leader who was working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At the heart of this litany of Justice Department wins, however, was its work to control gender and sexuality. Blanche accused the DOJ, prior to Trump, of having “literally worked hand in hand with pro-abortion groups to target pro-lifers”—something that did not happen. He promised that a new team of Title IX investigators would “protect students, especially female athletes, from any sort of radical gender ideology in school programs or activities”—using the threat of Justice Department investigations to dictate school curricula. Then he seemed to beg for callers’ patience with the DOJ on the issue of abortion. “Some of that is taking longer than we want,” Blanche said, “but rest assured that we’re working hand in hand with HHS and the FDA and the White House and President Trump’s team to get permanent solutions so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state.”
For a future attorney general, this was a strange and circular reading of Dobbs, the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Dobbs did not dictate abortion laws; as its many supporters love to remind us, it empowered states to adopt whatever bans they like. It is already “permanent in every single state.” Perhaps, for Blanche, Dobbs is now shorthand for an abortion ban. Even if legally imprecise, that would at least be honest. He went on: “That means that if states have said we are going to protect the unborn, and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception, we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that, and they can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs and things like that.” By this, Blanche meant threatening those who help abortion medication reach people in ban states. “We don’t have complete victory yet,” Blanche said, “but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent.” (When Politico asked the Department of Justice about this “victory” that would be “permanent in every state,” it affirmed that Blanche’s comments were “with respect to mail order abortion drugs.”)
What Blanche is really saying is that he wants states with abortion bans to be able to extend those bans to states without them. It’s as if states that did not ban abortion after the Dobbs decision are somehow noncompliant, and need to be brought to heel. Unfortunately, Blanche has—or believes he has—a blunt instrument with which he can attempt to do so. The Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-obscenity law, was considered unenforceable for decades, but it contains language outlawing the circulation of “obscene” items. The law defines “obscenity” to include information about and any items that could be used for abortion. Lately, Christian nationalist legal groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom have been pushing a very questionable legal theory that any federal prosecutor could simply begin enforcing the Comstock Act tomorrow. They have not done so. But these groups hope that if Blanche heads the Justice Department, the abortion prosecutions will follow.
This is why the legal strategy Blanche is describing is so dangerous. It goes far beyond Dobbs. Whether he turns to the Comstock Act or not, Blanche is looking for a lawful way to extend abortion bans. His comments, according to the Justice Department, mean he seeks to impede the manufacture, purchase, or distribution of abortion medications. This would hurt people in every state. It would function as a ban on medication abortion even in states where abortion remains legal. But he may not stop there. Blanche also made clear that he knows the ultimate goal of this kind of audience is to end abortion. “I really thank you for you guys taking a knee at night and in the morning and sending prayers to keep us safe and doing God’s work,” the acting attorney general said. “And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
