Pardoning Pro-Life Activists Targeted By Doj

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, today, the President of the United States issued 21 very important pardons of individuals who had been put in jail, prosecuted, persecuted, for their religious beliefs and exercise of their speech. These are individuals who are pro-life who had been put in jail because a weaponized Department of Justice was unleashed against these individuals, very specifically and purposefully because they were espousing their pro-life views.

In the President's action to formally pardon these 21 individuals, he rights a wrong that was carried out against them. More importantly, he sends a loud message that the Department of Justice cannot and should not be targeted toward individuals for their political beliefs and their political actions. That is precisely what happened to those 21 individuals.

How do we know this? If you look at the application of the so-called FACE Act that was used to prosecute these individuals, to arrest and prosecute them, 97 percent of the FACE Act prosecutions between 1994 and 2024 were initiated against pro-life Americans.

I want you to pause and listen to that again. Ninety-seven percent of the prosecutions under this one act were carried out against pro-life Americans--this despite the fact that there have been numerous attacks on pro-life facilities and crisis pregnancy centers in the wake of Dobbs. Ninety-one pregnancy resource centers have been attacked since the Dobbs opinion was leaked.

In 2022, pro-life activist Mark Houck was arrested by the FBI for FACE Act violations related to an incident outside of an abortion facility. They didn't charge him in Pennsylvania--in fact, they passed--but the Feds went after him.

Mr. Speaker, you have to ask yourself: Why is that true?

There have been 411 recorded attacks on Catholic churches since 2020.

Was the FACE Act used once by the Department of Justice against any of these Catholic churches?

No.

So what does that look like for these 21 individuals?

By the way, I think this is really important in the context of the speeches that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were just giving with respect to the treatment of those individuals incarcerated, charged, and prosecuted in the wake of January 6. I will come back to that in a minute.

Regarding these individuals whom I am talking about with respect to the pro-life prosecutions by the Department of Justice under Joe Biden, as one of the attorneys for one of the defendants put it:

``While Biden's prosecutors almost entirely ignored the firebombing and vandalism of hundreds of pro-life churches and pregnancy centers, they viciously pursued pro-life Americans.''

``And had they been opposing anything but abortion, Joe Biden would have given them medals. Instead Biden wanted them branded as convicted felons and imprisoned for years in a Federal penitentiary.''

Eva Edl is an 89-year-old survivor of a Soviet concentration camp who sat in front of the entrance to an abortion clinic in a wheelchair. She was one of those targeted by the Biden Department of Justice.

Let's be clear. She described how she was shipped off in cattle cars to concentration camps in Yugoslavia at age 9. They were packed in body to body with no food and no water. She lived through that. She is 89 years old.

Again, I want everybody to understand who is listening to this at home: An 89-year-old survivor of gulags in Europe was prosecuted by the Biden Department of Justice at age 89 for being in a wheelchair in front of an abortion clinic--a Federal crime, Federal Department of Justice.

Paulette Harlow is a 75-year-old grandmother from Kingston, Massachusetts. She has six children and is a grandmother to eight. She is suffering from health issues: liver disease and arthritis. She was prosecuted and sentenced to jail in a 25-month sentence in Texas, miles away from her home in Massachusetts. She is 75 years old.

Why?

It is because she was at an abortion clinic professing her faith and her hope that they would not carry out abortions.

Lauren Handy is a peaceful, pro-life activist and was formally sentenced to 57 months, almost 5 years, plus 3 of supervision, for her efforts to peacefully save the lives of the unborn. I want to be very clear. Lauren, whom I met, is actually a progressive activist. She and I don't agree on a lot of issues, but she was out advocating for life, and she was sentenced by the Biden Department of Justice under Merrick Garland to 57 months in jail.

Again, I want everybody to think about that.

She was protesting an abortion clinic. Nobody here, Mr. Speaker, by the way, is saying that there isn't room for misdemeanor-type prosecutions if you are in the way and you won't listen to the calls for you to leave. Call it a misdemeanor, pay a fine, whatever it might be. It was a Federal prosecution and she was sentenced to 57 months.

John Hinshaw, 68 years old, was sentenced to 21 months. He said: ``People are having prayer services all over the place for us. The expression of support has just been tremendous.''

Today, the President of the United States righted those wrongs. He righted those wrongs for those four I have just described and 17 others for a total of 21. He also sent a loud message, as I said before, that the Department of Justice never again should be politicized to target people for their beliefs and to be used as a political weapon as it has been under the Joe Biden regime.

It is a new day, and it is an important day.

I want to follow up, though, on my colleagues here who took the floor regarding January 6. I was very clear on this House floor 4 years ago during January 6 that what occurred was wrong. What was occurring and what had occurred was wrong. Those who had broken the law should be prosecuted for breaking the law. I don't know anybody who disagrees with that. I really don't.

There are differing facts for each one of those 1,500 cases. Some of them are pretty bad facts, and regarding some of them there are absolutely no facts at all, but they were pursued anyway.

Therein lies the problem.

I want everybody to really listen to this point. There is going to be time for us to study all 1,500 cases, and we can look and we can judge what was the nature of how they were arrested, where they were arrested, where were they put in jail, how long were they in jail, what were the conditions in the jail, and how many of their loved ones could they talk to.

What was their access to defense counsel?

What was the nature of the prosecution?

What did the judges do?

What were the sentences?

We need to look at all those things.

Notably, the President commuted I think 14 individual sentences. I don't have it right in front of me, but I think it was 14, which tells me that the President and his team went through and tried to differentiate some of the worst, most egregious acts in their view that shouldn't be pardoned but rather commuted to time served.

I would also note this: we are now 48 months beyond the events. Many of these individuals were arrested early in the process, they have been in jail, they have been in the judicial system and have been dragged along. I have talked to dozens of parents, family members, wives, husbands, and spouses of the people who were jailed who were unable to talk to their loved ones. These are people without criminal records, people who had done nothing else.

Many of these people were charged with just parading here in the Capitol complex which then the court said: Well we are not sure about that, and then crossing a line and being in a place you are not supposed to be in, the obstruction issues.

What were you obstructing exactly?

Again, I think it is important to note that what occurred that day should not have occurred, that many of the acts that occurred should and have been punished. Some that were punished should have been punished, but when you completely ignore the rule of law, when you politically charge people, and when you use the Department of Justice as a political weapon, Mr. Speaker, then you undermine the rule of law and you turn it on its head, so that there is no differentiation between the right and the wrong.

Mr. Speaker, when you literally go prosecute an 89-year-old gulag survivor because she was exercising her pro-life views at an abortion clinic, what do you think one's view is of the righteousness of the other actions of the Department of Justice?

Mr. Speaker, how do you look at the 1,500 and go through and break them down in a way when 48 months later, as a father was on a news show today talking about his son and saying that his son had been moved from jail to jail, had had to filter the water through a sock because there was so much rust in the water, that they weren't able to talk to him for 3 weeks over Christmas, they didn't even know where he was and he couldn't get access to counsel during a lot of those times. What are we supposed to do with that?

Ignore it?

The President came in and made a judgment that these 1,500 people of varying forms, some sentenced and some not, some had taken plea deals and some not, had had 48 months of their life turned upside down by a Department of Justice who wanted to try to make an example out of them and the President of the United States said: Enough.

Do you know what, Mr. Speaker?

I agree.

That is because at the end of the day, 48 months later, many of them having been in jail for all or a lot of that time, many of them had their doors broken down, and many of them had FBI raids--I had two grandmas driving from Austin, Texas, out into the hill country just a few months ago who were arrested and jailed overnight because they were physically present here at the Capitol. They were not even inside, to the best of my knowledge. I think they might have just crossed one of the bike lines.

Three years later two grandmothers are arrested and put in jail?

Does anybody see what happens when we politicize the justice system and the scales of justice become something that we can't look at as blindfolded?

Again, why am I talking about this?

It is because today the President righted the wrongs of those 21 individuals who were literally protesting, in their view, and I share that view, the murdering of unborn children. I think that stuff matters. I think it matters a lot because had Joe Biden and had Merrick Garland not politicized the Department of Justice, then maybe 20 or 30 cases of individuals who had done something that were particularly egregious that were prosecuted, maybe those wouldn't have been pardoned. I don't know. I haven't studied every case.

However, Mr. Speaker, when you are looking at 1,500 cases and all the people who are being abused, I think the President did the right thing and again differentiated between those with the commuted sentences.

Meanwhile, what the President is doing besides, I think, trying to restore balance to the justice system is he is keeping his promises to secure our country.

One of my colleagues over there said that the first thing the President did was make us less safe.

Is he serious?

Is he serious?

He thinks reversing politicized political prosecutions 4 years later is making us less safe.

May I remind my Democratic colleagues that the individual who burned down a police station, a career criminal, got 27 months. That is the idea of justice from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Let's put aside the $2 billion worth of damages nationwide in the wake of the Floyd riots, and let's put aside all the other damage that flowed from that.

Meanwhile, what is the President doing?

He is making our Nation much more safe. There was an executive order declaring a national emergency at the border.

In the first Congress that I was in office, I introduced the Border Visibility and Security Act to help regain operational control of the border. I put together a bill calling on the designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and I am pleased that that was one of the President's executive orders this week, declaring cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

He issued an executive order requiring Homeland Security to deport aliens with orders of removal. There are over 1 million with orders of removal that Joe Biden wouldn't do.

Again, the lawlessness of the previous administration set the stage for the dangers that we have experienced, and now President Trump is undoing that damage.

There was an executive order saying categorical parole policies, undoing the CBP-1 app that was used to flood the zone with people who came into our country and were released and did things like kill Jocelyn Nungaray, whose mother Alexis I have gotten to know and who was with me for the inauguration this weekend.

There is an executive order to end the catch-and-release program and an executive order to resume the successful migrant protection protocols and return to Mexico, so we can stop the flow. To reinstate recognition of title 42 where you cannot travel through the country with communicable diseases. An executive order ending birthright citizenship, as it has been applied wrongly and incorrectly for years, to people who have manufactured or have used a manufactured cottage industry in which people pay money to get delivered into the country, have a baby, get the citizenship, and then it is what is known as anchor babies. It is real, it is pervasive, it is problematic, and it turns our country's system on its head.

By the way, yes, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will say: Yeah, but a court today ruled that that is not constitutional, so they put an injunction on it.

We will see. We will see how this plays out in the legal system.

From my reading of the law, when the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, a mere 4 years later, the United States Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases, explicitly said--4 years removed from the passage of an amendment to the United States Constitution, the then-sitting Supreme Court said that it did not apply to people who were here as the children that were being born here of people who were foreign citizens. Another court echoed that a decade or so later.

One court came in and said: Well, no, we think there is birthright citizenship if you are born here to a foreign national, but only if you are a legal permanent resident.

I believe the President's executive order is correct, I believe it is lawful, I believe it is constitutional, and I believe he ought to continue to enforce it.

We ought to be challenging this all the way up to the courts and immediately win this. I believe this Supreme Court will side on the right side, which is that you are a citizen if you are the child of an American citizen. Subject to the jurisdiction thereof has to matter.

The President is restoring our border, restoring law and order, and reversing the damage, and he should be. He should be thanked and congratulated for it.

What else has he been doing in the last, what am I adding up, 78 hours? President Trump, 78 hours in, has been withdrawing us from the disastrous World Health Organization, a globalist entity that has been undermining our sovereignty and wants to take away our own decisionmaking and make us subject to foreign powers on our health issues; withdrawing us from the disastrous Paris climate treaty that was making us beholden to China and foreign nationals and unable to advance and promote our own American energy.

By the way, had we not reversed all of that, we wouldn't have been adding fuel to the fire of Russia going into Ukraine, so to speak.

The President has been declaring a national energy emergency; unleashing American energy; opening up exploration; reversing Biden's ridiculous bans on offshore drilling; making it the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female; ending affirmative action and DEI in the Federal Government and trying to get us back to the actual view of a government that does not look through the lens of color or sex, but, rather, merit and hard work; and requiring that everybody actually shows up to work. Who knew?

All of those things are things that the President has been doing in a matter of 78 hours since getting sworn in a few feet from this Chamber and making our country immensely better off for it.

We have already seen a massive decline in the number of people trying to come across our border. Who knew? Who could have predicted that if the law is enforced maybe people will say: I guess we can't come now. Maybe the cartels will say: This may not be the profit center that we have at the moment.

Just last night, a guy was apprehended by ICE somewhere up in New York or somewhere in the northeast, and he lost his mind. He started swearing at Trump, F Trump, all this stuff. I am with Biden forever. I am not going back to Haiti, he said.

Yeah, he is. He is, and so are a lot of other people because prisons of the world shouldn't be dumped onto the streets of America, endangering our citizens. That is what Biden did, and that is what Trump is reversing.

Now we have to deliver. This is my message to my colleagues here. We have to deliver. My friends in the Freedom Caucus, other conservatives, we have put forward a plan that we believe would deliver and deliver quickly.

We don't have time to waste. The President needs resources. Tom Homan needs resources. The Border Patrol met with the union this last week. They need resources. ICE needs resources to do their job, so let's do it.

They want $86 billion. Let's find it. We can. The defense needs to be modernized, built up after getting undermined and focused on all sorts of ridiculous woke and DEI policies. We need a new, modern, robust military to beat China. We can do that.

We put forward $200 billion over 4 years under President Trump to modernize the military, an additional $50 billion a year. Let's do it. We can do it, and we can pay for it. We said we would raise the debt ceiling over 2 years, about $4 trillion. We are not inclined to want to raise the debt ceiling, if it hasn't been noticed, but we will do it.

The President wants us to get that aside so Chuck Schumer can't play games with the bond market, so let's get rid of the debt, or let's increase the debt ceiling. Let's get $86 billion for Border Patrol. Let's get $200 billion for defense. Then let's apply a handful of cuts to pay for those things. I don't know, how about we repeal the student loan fiasco? It is $100 billion to $270 billion.

How about let's just apply Medicaid work requirements so that, if citizens are on Medicaid for able-bodied Americans--not all, but the able-bodied Americans--that they must work? It is a pretty popular issue. Every Republican has voted for it, and it is $120 billion.

We can pay for defense, pay for Border Patrol, make our Medicaid system better, and reverse the ridiculous student loan bailouts which are giving money from one American to another.

The plumber who never went to college is subsidizing the sociology major sitting in their parents' basement tweeting about nonsense. How about we end that? The sociology major pays their student loans. They took the loans out. The plumber who didn't can go do their thing. Every American who I know who works hard agrees with that. We can do that.

Conservatives, the Freedom Caucus, have put that forward. We want to support President Trump. We want to make sure that President Trump can deliver on the border, get the debt ceiling away from being used politically by Chuck Schumer, and so we put that plan forward.

I think we should have already done it. As usual, we sit in this body, and we debate, and we continue to debate. Unfortunately, we are still debating. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we are going to continue to debate because there is a real debate going on about taxing and spending. I am blowing Republicans' minds when I say that I am all for tax cuts, but Members better cut the spending so that we can actually reduce deficits.

I have been pretty clear about that. A lot of my colleagues have been pretty clear about that. Some of my colleagues here seem to want nothing but tax cuts and no spending cuts.

I will also hear a lot of my colleagues say: Yeah, I am for the spending cuts. I will say: Okay. Well, how many? How much? Well, I mean, as many as we can get.

Okay. Are we going to reduce deficits, or not? I mean, that is the question I am going to be asking everybody. Can they do math, and are we going to reduce deficits? That is the question every American sent us here to do. Do the hard work. Sit at the table. Why don't we put the microphones down, put the cameras away, use these tables, roll our sleeves up, get the paper out, and do the math?

Yes, tax cuts can and do produce economic growth. It puts more money in the hands of the people. Yes, it is morally correct to leave more money in the hands of the American people. I would gladly vote to get rid of the income tax, zero it out, leave the money in the hands of the people, but guess what? Whether it is President Trump's vision or views on tariffs, whether it is something else, there has to be some amount of revenue to pay for all of the promises and all of the programs that every politician loves to go home and run on.

Now the rubber meets the road, or the piper needs to be paid, or whatever metaphor one wants to use. We cannot have our cake and eat it, too. We can't run around and beat up the CBO and blame the CBO and say: They never score anything right. That is probably correct. They are human beings, and maybe they are biased. Fine.

Okay. My colleagues think they are biased? Great. Come in with models. Come in with somebody else's models and show me how the math is going to work out, that if we do all of these tax cuts and do no spending cuts, that somehow we are magically going to have deficits going down because it is just not going to be true in the aggregate.

When Ronald Reagan cut taxes in 1981 from the confiscatory top rate of 70 percent under Jimmy Carter to 28 percent on the top marginal rate, there was a lot of good economic growth.

Corporations aren't these blobs. They are people. When we cut corporate rates 8 years ago from 35 percent to 21 percent, there was pretty significant economic growth. That was pretty meaningful in trying to keep more capital here.

Expensing, research and development, all of these things create growth. A lot of tax cuts don't. Take the child tax credits. I get how child tax credits can be argued to be good policy, pro-family policy, good for hardworking families that have kids. There are a lot of arguments for child tax credits.

They are not going to be massively stimulative. They cost about $800 billion over 10 years. So my point is, over here, it is like what are you cutting? What are we cutting because we can't continue to rack up deficits?

I think I am running close on time, and I just want to close with this: Right now, we have $36 point whatever trillion in debt. Right now, we are racking up about $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion a year in deficits.

When the interest on the bonds that we currently hold are getting refinanced over the next couple of years, those interest payments are going to go up, probably to the tune of another $200 billion to $300 billion a year.

If we renew all of the tax cuts, which I support, but we don't offer any cuts correspondingly, we will add hundreds of billions, if not several trillion dollars of deficit spending. The job for us, Republicans and Democrats, is to not do that.

I am asking for deficit neutrality on the tax bill. Let me just be clear. If all of my colleagues who want deficit neutrality or deficit reduction on the tax bill combined with spending cuts, being debated in reconciliation right now, if I win that fight that I am having right now with colleagues--because they are like, I don't know--the best we will get is the current deficit, that is how we would end up with exactly what we have right now of roughly $2 trillion deficits.

By the way, it will get worse because of the interest I mentioned if we keep financing and refinancing our debt, and interest goes up.

What I am trying to scrap for in this body is just trying not to make it worse. It is like ``Christmas Vacation.'' ``Worse? How can it get any worse?''

This is how it can get worse: Vote for more deficits. We shouldn't do that.

My actual last point with, I think, 1\1/2\ minutes remaining, is that, if we are going to do anything at all in reconciliation on policy, we should be fighting for healthcare freedom.

My office put out a report 2 days ago entitled: ``The Case for Healthcare Freedom.'' It is 48 pages that outlines all of the ways in which we are destroying the average American's access to healthcare; that we need to restore the doctor-patient relationship; that we need to break down the stranglehold that insurance companies and hospitals and pharma have on our healthcare. We need to free them up with expansive health savings accounts and allow them to decouple that so they can go out in the market and get actual insurance, go to direct primary care and actually get care for themselves instead of paying $25,000 a year between their employer and themselves to be able to go to an insurance company and be told that they can't get care.

If we want to transform this country, we need to reduce the deficits, give the President what he needs to secure the border, and give us healthcare freedom. That is my call to my colleagues.

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