Paulette Harlow joined 2020 clinic blockade that injured nurse and forced patient to crawl through window. Donald Trump announced on Thursday the attorney general will lead a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias,” including in the justice system. During remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast laying out the idea for the effort, the president cited the example of Paulette Harlow, whom he described as having been arrested for praying outside an abortion clinic.
In May of 2024, Harlow was sentenced to two years in prison, after being convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law inspired by a spate of anti-abortion violence in the 1980s and ‘90s. The group live-streamed the demonstration. Their actions resulted in an injury to a clinic nurse, and forced a patient to climb through a receptionist’s window, while another “laid in the hallway outside of the clinic in physical distress, unable to gain access to the clinic,” prosecutors said.
After her pardon, Harlow continued to insist she was peaceful. Since taking office, the Trump administration has made investigating some forms of religious discrimination a priority, including probing universities for antisemitism. Its efforts have conflicted with religious communities in other areas. The Republican’s push to defund the U.S. Agency for International Development will likely hobble Catholic Relief Services, a major international aid group and the single largest recipient of the agency’s funding.
Throughout the Biden years, Republicans alleged the Democrat oversaw an era of anti-Christian bias, pointing to how local Covid shutdowns prevented church services, and expressing outrage over a leaked FBI memo from the bureau’s Richmond field office suggesting developing sources inside traditional Catholic churches amid threats of extremist recruitment. A Justice Department internal review of the memo found it didn’t meet “tradecraft standards,” but the field office showed no sign of “malicious intent or improper purpose” in creating it.
