Paulette Harlow: Christian activist Trump cited as inspiration for anti-bias task force used chains to block abortion clinic
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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.
This dramatically understates the accusations against Harlow, who Trump pardoned last month along with other anti-abortion activists.
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.
Harlow was part of a group of 10 who conspired to make a fake appointment at a Washington abortion clinic in 2020, then “forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes,” according to the Justice Department.
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.
Since then, some on the right have taken up Harlow as a martyr of perceived anti-Christian bias, claiming she was prosecuted for peaceful prayers alone, though her lawyer told Reuters in 2024 this is “not accurate” and that the Justice Department’s charges against her are truthful.
After her pardon, Harlow continued to insist she was peaceful.
“I have never, ever, ever seen any violence on the part of pro-life people,” she told Fox News, accusing the Biden-era Justice Department of “isolating us and targeting us because of our pro-life stance.”
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.
Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray rescinded the memo, saying it didn’t meet the bureau’s “exacting standards.”
Subsequent congressional investigation revealed multiple field offices investigating potential radicalism involving Catholics.
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.
The Inspector General report also noted the field office produced the memo after tracking an individual who described himself as a “[radical-traditional (rad-trad)] Catholic clerical fascist” and was later arrested after making repeated violent threats, possessed ammunition and incendiary devices, and appeared to be trying to recruit others for an impending attack.
