Washington, DC — Damning new reporting just dropped that reveals Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is making promises to anti-abortion extremists behind the scenes. On a private call hosted by the White House Faith Office, he pledged that the Department of Justice would work with federal agencies and the White House to make the Dobbs decision “permanent in every single state”—essentially promising to enact a national abortion ban. Trump lied to voters when he campaigned on leaving abortion to the states—a backdoor ban has been Republicans’ goal all along.
During the call, Blanche told these extremists the administration is “putting practices and policies in place” to stop shipments of abortion medication into states with bans. He also singled out the shield laws in states that protect abortion access and allow providers to mail mifepristone to patients living in states with bans, promising “victory will be soon, and…it will be permanent.” These promises to extremists go much further than his public testimony to senators at his confirmation hearing last month and should alarm anyone concerned with the future of abortion access and reproductive freedom.
Todd Blanche’s anti-abortion extremism took center stage during today’s Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, where senators voted along party lines to advance Blanche’s nomination out of committee and to the full Senate. In light of this new reporting, Senator Blumenthal called Blanche a “zealot” who “wants to strip Americans of their right to choose and states of their right to govern.”
“Todd Blanche is making dangerous promises behind closed doors to weaponize the Justice Department to enact a national abortion ban,” stated Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju. “We must believe Blanche when he says he will come for our rights. Republicans are using every lever of government to attack reproductive freedom, and voters will make their voices heard this November to take our Congress back from these extremists.”
As the Acting Attorney General, Blanche has gutted the Department of Justice’s enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, the federal law protecting patients and providers from threats, intimidation, violence, and obstruction at reproductive health clinics. Blanche’s DOJ also fired the career attorneys responsible for enforcing clinic protections and dismissed pending FACE Act cases. Just last week, the DOJ, under Blanche’s leadership, cut a 7-figure taxpayer-funded settlement to a convicted FACE Act violator.
Condemnation of Erica Schwartz Confirmation to Lead CDC
Reproductive Freedom for All also condemned the Senate’s confirmation of Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite her dangerous commitment to undermine abortion access and patients’ data privacy. During her confirmation hearing, Schwartz said abortion surveillance is “absolutely a critical component” of the CDC’s work and signaled the federal government could explore collecting more sensitive abortion data. The push to expand abortion surveillance is part of anti-abortion extremists’ broader strategy to monitor, restrict, and ultimately criminalize abortion access.
Schwartz’s testimony also sounded alarm bells around further criminalization of patients and providers following her pledge to ensure states are not “conflating” emergency services with abortion care and “hiding abortions” in emergency case definitions. In states with abortion bans, the distinction between abortion and emergency care has already been used to stoke fear, and delays in care have resulted in preventable suffering and deaths.
Schwartz also admitted she did not know the Trump administration had made reporting of cyclospora optional—a disturbing revelation as the parasite has infected thousands, with infections growing each day. As the new head of the nation’s top public health agency, Schwartz’s confirmation marks a troubling, continued departure from science and patient safety at the CDC.
“Erica Schwartz is the latest in a long line of extremists stacked in this administration to undermine abortion access and patients’ privacy,” stated Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju. Her confirmation cements an anti-abortion agenda at the center of the CDC’s work, rather than containing outbreaks and keeping the public safe. Every senator who voted to confirm her will have to answer to their constituents for handing anti-abortion opponents another ally in the Trump administration.”
Schwartz will report to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has faced growing scrutiny over his efforts to politicize the nation’s public health agencies. In August 2025, Kennedy ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez less than a month into the job, after she refused to rubber-stamp the anti-vaccine recommendations coming out of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, which Kennedy purged and restacked with vaccine skeptics. Under Kennedy, the country has since endured its largest measles outbreak in more than three decades, and the agency has gone without a permanent director while facing political interference, budget cuts, and staff reductions amid multiple outbreaks.
For over 55 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 4.5 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.