WASHINGTON—In an explosive report released on Tuesday, the Trump administration revealed the lengths to which the Justice Department went under President Joe Biden’s watch to target religious Americans who opposed abortion. The Trump Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group reviewed over 700,000 internal records, The Daily Wire has learned, which they distilled into an 800-page report. The document, which details the Biden administration’s weaponization of federal law to target peaceful pro-life activists, also outlines how the Trump administration plans to correct the previous administration’s wrongs. “This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on Tuesday morning. “No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.” At the center of the Biden administration’s efforts is the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law meant to protect access to pro-abortion and pro-life facilities alike. The Biden administration infamously used the FACE Act to prosecute and imprison peaceful pro-life protesters. And Tuesday’s report found that “Biden DOJ senior leadership” and members of the Reproductive Health Care Providers Task Force “provided extensive support to abortion clinics” and “ignored and downplayed vandalism and attacks against pregnancy resource centers or houses of worship.” The DOJ report describes how the Biden-era “Reproductive Health Care Providers Task Force” was in constant contact with pro-abortion groups and the clinics they represented while disregarding pro-life groups. As The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu reported, one Justice Department official often texted an abortion activist and worked to track the travel plans of Christian pro-life activists who had not been charged with any crimes. The emails also show how pro-abortion groups provided dossiers to the Biden DOJ with pictures and information — which was later used by the FBI to make arrests. Meanwhile, the Task Force attorneys didn’t communicate with any pro-life pregnancy centers until September 2022 — months after the massive spike in violence against pregnancy centers related to the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned. Vandals would firebomb, attack, vandalize, or spray-paint the buildings with messages like “If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.” When the Biden Justice Department did address the attacks on pregnancy centers, they merely identified possible contacts “via a quick Google search and directed Task Force leadership to schedule meetings.” “The Task Force then had several meetings with the pro-life groups identified through that initial outreach and periodically sent them press releases,” the report states. “However, internally, CRT attorneys questioned whether to provide pregnancy resource centers with the same resources as abortion clinics, questioning whether these facilities fall under the FACE Act’s scope.” Biden DOJ prosecutors were also engaging in inappropriate conduct, the report found. The prosecutors “knowingly withheld evidence that defense counsel requested to prepare an affirmative defense” and lied about not having that information available. For example, in United States v. Gallagher, the defense counsel asked for historical data on FACE Act prosecutions, but the DOJ Task Force Director declined that data, saying he didn’t keep those records and that the DOJ wouldn’t provide them. “Notably,” the report says, “he had this information readily available and decided not to share it with the defendants, despite sharing substantially identical information with NAF.” Video of the FBI’s arrest of Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee. DOJ charged him with “conspiracy against rights secured by the FACE Act, and committing FACE Act violations” for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic. Paul tells me the footage was taken by his wife. pic.twitter.com/KSDvLRSrlF — Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 7, 2022 The Biden prosecutors also tried to screen jurors based on their religious beliefs, according to the report: in United States v. Zastrow in the Eastern District of Michigan, assistant United States attorneys allegedly tried to screen jurors based on whether they were conservative or religious “while not inquiring about liberal counterviews.” “They referred to Christian pro-life views as ‘culty’ and lambasted the defendants’ beliefs in the courtroom,” the report said. Notably, those assistant United States attorneys complained that they “ended up with a very Catholic magistrate on duty this week and he was very particular about the bond conditions and not infringing on [defendants’] First Amendment rights.” The report specifically points to the case of Mark Houck, a Catholic father of a large family whose son was attacked by an abortion clinic worker. The Biden DOJ tried to use the FACE Act to prosecute Houck, but lost the case. In Houck’s case, “prosecutors considered and declined a request for the defendant to self-surrender.” Apparently determined to make an example of Houck, the DOJ sent “16 FBI agents” to arrest him in front of his crying children. Photos from the morning the FBI arrested Mark Houck in front of his children. pic.twitter.com/NbLq5bnDQa — Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 4, 2022 “When faced with public backlash about the aggressive arrest, the Task Force Director attempted to blame the FBI, rather than address the Biden DOJ’s lack of initial guidance to law enforcement,” the report states. “The jury ultimately found Houck not guilty, and DOJ settled a civil claim to compensate for the Biden DOJ’s misconduct.” Trump’s Justice Department argues that the Biden DOJ pursued more severe charges, as well as “significantly harsher sentences,” for the peaceful pro-life defendants than the violent pro-abortion defendants, requesting an average sentence of 26.8 months for pro-life defendants compared to the 12.3 months for pro-abortion ones. “The Biden DOJ pursued significantly higher sentences (near the top range of sentencing guidelines) for pro-life defendants, while pursuing more lenient sentences against the handful of pro-abortion defendants that it charged,” the report reads. “Pro-life defendants were ultimately sentenced to an average of 14 months, while pro-abortion defendants were sentenced to an average of 3 months.” Meanwhile, as the National Abortion Federation cozied up to the Biden Justice Department, that same department “sought to provide funding to pro-abortion groups,” according to the report. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who was director of the Reproductive Health Care Provider Task Force, served as a reference for the National Abortion Federation’s application for a “large, private grant.” “We found no record of ethics approval for a DOJ attorney to take an interest in the financial outcome of a party having business before the Biden DOJ,” the report says. “Indeed, it is doubtful that the Biden DOJ could validly give any such ethical clearance for this conflict of interest.” The Trump administration says it is determined to rectify the actions of the Biden Justice Department. Tuesday’s report highlights Trump’s “full and unconditional pardons” of the many pro-life Christians who were targeted in these Biden-era prosecutions. The Trump Justice Department also dismissed, with prejudice, three Biden-era civil lawsuits against “non-violent pro-life demonstrators and issued a directive that, moving forward, DOJ prosecutors may only bring FACE Act civil actions and prosecutions in extraordinary circumstances or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors.”

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Last year 40% of Americans didn’t read a single book. Print book sales are rising, but not necessarily in any return to tradition; a printed book is a useful prop that can be held up to the camera for TikTok. Responding to ever greater challenges, the publishing industry is nevertheless a lot more ideologically homogenous than it used to be, and it doesn’t much care about you or me. But who’s black-pilling? We still love books, and we’re not giving up. Every day, new authors and publishers are turning out books for varying kinds of right-of-center audiences. It’s hard to stand out in an ocean of content, though, given that conservative outlets notorious for grousing about the culture never review right-wing authors’ contributions to it — until now. So, here are three thrillers by authors who don’t hate us. “American Paladin” by Larry Correia Larry Correia is underreviewed and complains about it, which sounds like egotism until you remember the man has sold so many books that he has literally purchased a mountain. Correia is best known for his flagship series “Monster Hunter: International,” wherein private contractors fight monsters and make money off of government bounties. Like many War on Terror-era thrillers, its hero is well-funded and aided by powerful individuals and organizations. Women fantasize about well-off romantic interests desperately attracted to them; men fantasize about well-paid, cool jobs that buy them guns. “American Paladin” goes the opposite way. Nick Spears is poor, inexpert, and unlucky. For years, he’s been desperately trying to hunt the supernatural, but it isn’t biting. When he was a teenager, he and his loved ones unknowingly wandered across the veil between worlds. Only Nick survived to make it home. Now the monsters and unholy cultists that are the subject of his desired revenge stubbornly refuse to show up. As consolation, he’s turned vigilante to hunt human predators instead. When a podcaster’s unwelcome attention threatens to draw attention to his work, Nick finds the podcaster in the crosshairs of the other side he’s hunted all these years. Now the two of them are running and gunning for their lives against the enemy Nick has sought all his life. Correia is always dependable at delivering action, but the real pleasure here is the setting. “American Paladin” offers a refreshing world of elusive cryptids, mysterious lands, and conspiracy-minded schizos trying to make sense of it all. Its magic and monsters feel genuinely eerie, and its hero stands out by being capable but entirely uncredentialed. Nick Spears has no cool resume; he never finished high school, never went to war, and at one point in the book encounters a gun he is unable to identify immediately. Fans of cryptid lore should get a kick out of this working hero in America’s lonely places. Nick Spears belongs on the weird adventure shelf beside F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack. “American Apocalypse: The Second American Civil War” by Kurt Schlichter There are an awful lot of right-wing books about American civil wars and their aftermaths. Most of them are heavy on red meat and bluster, Kurt Schlichter’s own Kelly Turnbull series included. So it’s an unexpected and interesting choice to see Schlichter consciously imitate Studs Terkel and fictional treatments such as Max Brooks’s “World War Z” to recount an American Civil War from a mostly ant’s-eye view, in the form of first-person reminiscences from a variety of participants. Some of these are more effective than others. Like most right-of-center authors, Schlichter isn’t any more convincing writing leftists than lefty writers are at writing conservatives. A widowed mother trying to survive, a cold-blooded hitman who wanted the war to keep going because he loved doing targeted killings, and unreconstructed leftists in exile all speak with the same voice. Worse, they’re all covering a similar general arc. While Schlichter divides his book into three sections covering different periods of the war, in practice each individual tells their whole story of the war from beginning to end. It gets a little redundant. Unlike a lot of right-wing civil war fiction, though, “American Apocalypse” is realistic enough to draw a portrait of a brutish war that’s far from the easy victory you frequently see braggadocious right-wingers assume on social media. Spoiler: Team Right wins, but it’s extremely ugly and the result winds up being American Francoism, which also makes the book notable as a yardstick of sentiment of the right-of-center type that doesn’t want American Francoism and wouldn’t advocate for it but might be willing to live under it if they didn’t have to shoulder any moral responsibility for it. A lot of right-wing authors cover similar subject matter, but none with Kurt Schlichter’s out-of-the-box approach. It doesn’t succeed as well as it might have, but it’s encouraging to see the effort. “Lost Causes” by Richard Nichols “Lost Causes” opens simply enough: When a British operator desperately breaks cover to get a warning out, only to be cut down by gunfire mid-call, the bureaucrats put the kibosh on any attempt at a rescue or retrieval. So the operator’s commanding officer turns to MI11, aka the Mill, a secret branch of British intelligence whose job is specifically killing people and breaking their stuff. The catch: MI11 is about to be disbanded, so its operative, code-named John Buchan (in a hat-tip to the author of “The Thirty-Nine Steps”), has only a few days before his support evaporates entirely. You can figure out mostly how it goes from there because “Lost Causes” is an old-school kind of thriller. And I’m not complaining about that: Nichols, more power to him for it, is clearly writing the kind of thriller he loves to read with elements that publishers aren’t as interested in buying. That’s what indie books are for. Some action scenes are quite good, notably one where the captured hero has to fight his way through a bunch of armed men in a moving car. Unfortunately, a lot also plays much less well. Interweaved flashbacks are too long and too dull, and the present-day digressions are worse. “Lost Causes” is awash in musings about the importance of rough men, the decadence of modern life, and the selfishness of baby boomers. A little red meat is nice, but Nichols serves it up in such quantities that the lions in the Circus Maximus would say “all right, already.” The lengthy monologue about the perfidiousness of baby boomers is delivered by the bad guy — as justification for his villainy because he’s a baby boomer! Even a reader completely in agreement with the author’s sentiments will find himself hoping Nichols will just get on with it. At its best, “Lost Causes” is just okay. It’s worth a read for aspiring novelists; seeing Nichols’s successes and missteps will help give them a better sense of what works and what doesn’t. *** David Hines has a background in forensic science and international human rights, has written for the Federalist and the American Conservative, and loves books. Possibly even yours.

In recent years, sharp-eyed parents and investigative reporters have exposed the racial resentment and antisemitism prevalent in DEI. But as public opinion and policymaking turn against this racial discrimination in disguise, a large association of private schools continues to push the radical agenda. If the biased activity at these elite schools remains unchecked, legal advocates and policymakers will be fighting the same civil rights battles with the next generation of college students. Today’s battles are certainly yielding good fruit. Lawsuits exposing segregation in schools under DEI’s banner have prompted state and federal lawmakers to reinforce civil rights laws. These laws have helped snuff out mandated “affinity groups” (where participants are separated by race, ethnicity, and/or sex), illegal hiring quotas, and doctrinaire DEI statements required by so-called diversity staff in K-12 schools and universities. Curiously, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), a K-12 private school association, is not moved by the lawsuits and new legislation — nor by DEI’s racial preferences. Later this month, on April 29, NAIS will even hold a “meetup” for DEI staff working at the association’s institutions. NAIS is a membership organization for private schools. The group holds conferences and posts job openings for its member institutions on its website and otherwise provides resources on what NAIS deems as best practices. Some of the “practices,” though, are little more than exercises in segregation. Member schools tout race-based affinity groups on their websites, and NAIS advertises diversity staff positions at its member schools via its job bank. Institutions infused with DEI crowd out competing opinions and create radical echo chambers of a biased orthodoxy. Small wonder that NAIS had to issue an apology in 2024 when speakers at one of the association’s DEI events “characterized Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide and the establishment of the state of Israel as a racist project.” The American Jewish Committee and Prizmah, an organization for Jewish day schools, were among the groups that wrote to NAIS, saying, “The pervasiveness of this rhetoric and the absence of any alternate perspectives created an atmosphere that was hostile for many Jewish students and faculty members in attendance.” In 2025, NAIS canceled its “People of Color Conference,” but resources on its website suggest DEI remains a priority. NAIS simply renamed the conference, now calling it the “Gather: A Convening for Renewal and Growth, Belonging, and Impact.” This title sounds benign, but NAIS specifically describes the event as a reinvention of its People of Color meeting. The conference will feature more “affinity group work,” as well as sessions on “inclusion and belonging,” a new title for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” NAIS remains out of step with civil rights laws. The U.S. Department of Education has been ferreting out racial discrimination in K-12 schools across the country. In February, the agency announced it is investigating Portland public schools because the district operates a racially segregated academic program. The federal agency has opened similar cases over the last year. In 2025, the Education Department canceled some $600 million in grants to schools for teacher training because the grant applications contained racial preferences, some in the form of DEI initiatives. State lawmakers in Arkansas, Ohio, and Kentucky adopted prohibitions on DEI in 2025, following earlier legislative activity in Florida, Idaho, and Texas. Today, there are nearly two dozen states with such legislation. NAIS member schools are preparing the next generation of college students, likely students at elite universities. Faculty and staff at schools like Harvard and Columbia have been among the worst violators of civil rights, allowing antisemitism to persist. DEI offices on these campuses and others have done nothing to stop such activity. Just last month, the Education Department opened yet another investigation into Harvard for racial discrimination. Independent schools are private institutions, but that does not exempt them from all civil rights laws nor does it excuse antisemitism. Racial discrimination should be exposed to withering scrutiny in public schools, universities, and yes, even private schools. * * * Jonathan Butcher is Acting Director of the Center for Education at The Heritage Foundation.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Artemis II pilot Victor Glover went a long way — 252,756 miles, to be exact — to make an impression, and boy, did he ever make one. A devout Christian, Glover praised God from the heavens as he and his compatriots completed their lunar mission — and his faith resonated in shockwaves back on earth. While many are accustomed to watching celebrities or sports figures answer victory — and sometimes defeat — with prayer and a call to glorify God in all things, those words are more striking when they come from scientists because so often culture teaches us that science and faith must be at odds with each other. But Glover says otherwise, loudly and boldly — and when he’s given a microphone, even hundreds of thousands of miles from earth, he says it again. The naval test pilot holds three master’s degrees in flight and engineering fields, and he explained in a 2023 interview that his faith feeds his academic and career pursuits. “My career is fed by my faith. Anytime I do something that’s pretty risky, I pray. Before I fly, every time I fly. Definitely when you go sit on top of a rocket ship,” he said. “In the military, there’s a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. There aren’t any on top of rockets, either.” Throughout Artemis II’s mission, Glover took every opportunity to share his faith — particularly in the context of God’s creation, to which he’d just been given a front-row seat. On Easter Sunday, he gave an impromptu speech from aboard the Orion capsule.

President Joe Biden’s administration relied on information gathered from radical pro-abortion groups to track, prosecute, and snoop on peaceful pro-life protesters, shocking emails released Tuesday by the Trump administration show. The emails show a top Justice Department official referring to an abortion activist as an “MVP” for flagging pro-life protests to prosecute and seeking to track the travel plans of Christian pro-life activists not yet charged with crimes. The emails also reveal pro-abortion organizations providing dossiers to the Biden DOJ with personal information and pictures of pro-life activists who were later arrested by the FBI. These dossiers contained the information of pro-life activists who were not yet charged with any federal crimes, but were deemed threats by the abortion groups because of their activism. Many of these individuals would later be prosecuted by the Biden administration. Dossier from National Abortion Federation. Under Biden, dozens of pro-life protesters were prosecuted for peaceful protests that included praying, singing, and sitting in front of doors of abortion facilities. Several were sentenced to years in prison with others awaiting sentencing before President Donald Trump pardoned the pro-life activists his first week in office. The emails released Tuesday were included in an extensive report documenting how the Biden administration weaponized the Freedom of Access To Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act against pro-life activists. The law was originally passed to protect both crisis pregnancy centers and abortion facilities, but has been disproportionately used against pro-life protesters. The weaponization can be traced to Biden resurrecting the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers shortly after he was elected, according to the Justice Department. The task force operated largely out of the department’s Civil Rights Division under the direction of Sanjay Patel, who was reportedly fired on Monday. “The Task Force Director was in regular, ongoing contact with pro-abortion non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the clinics they represented, but disregarded pro-life groups,” the Justice Department wrote Tuesday. “Pro-abortion groups capitalized on their relationship with the Task Force to gain internal information and push targets for FACE Act enforcement.” Patel was on “texting terms” with the National Abortion Federation Security Team and “regularly communicated” with Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Justice Department said. In one exchange from November 17, 2021, Patel connected an FBI agent with Michelle Davidson, the security director for the National Abortion Federation. Patel told the unidentified FBI agent that Davidson was “a wonderful contact for me as it relates to FACE Act investigations. She has been an MVP bringing incidents to my attention, often in real-time, which usually result in investigation/prosecution.” The email was labeled as highly important and began with Patel greeting both, “How the heck are you?” The bombshell revelations also include details of how abortion groups provided dossiers to government officials with information on pro-life activists later arrested by the FBI. The report said that Patel monitored “pro-life activists for years before charging them. This monitoring included three of the pardoned defendants.” One dossier provided to Patel from an abortion group in 2021 contained personally identifying information including addresses, photographs (including of spouses and young children), names of associates and affiliated ministries, information about their upcoming travel plans or planned protests, and even drivers’ license numbers of pro-life activists, according to the Justice Department. One man who faced particular scrutiny from the Biden DOJ was Calvin Zastrow, an evangelical Christian from Michigan who travels the country with his family engaging in evangelism and pro-life activism. Emails showed that Zastrow and members of his family were flagged for the Justice Department and that Patel even enlisted the help of abortion activists to track the whereabouts and activities of Zastrow years before he was charged with any crimes. An email from the National Abortion Federation to Patel on May 13, 2021 flagged “anti-choice social media” Facebook posts from Zastrow reflecting on how previous pro-life protests were “normal Christian behavior.” A few months later, Patel reached out to the National Abortion Federation to inquire about his travel plans. “Do you have any info on Zastrow and Co’s travel to Montana?” Patel asked Davidson of the National Abortion Federation on September 9, 2021. That came after Davidson emailed the DOJ telling officials she “bet” that Zastrow might attempt to lead a protest at an abortion facility in Montana. Justice Department Zastrow was not charged by the Biden Justice Department until October 2022 for a protest in Tennessee, and then again in February 2023 for a protest in Michigan. His daughter, Eva Zastrow, was flagged in a 136-page dossier compiled by the Justice Department documenting attendees of a conference hosted by Operation Save America, a pro-life group. “The entire Zastrow family is engaged in anti-choice activities and sometimes refer to themselves as the ‘Zastrow Holiness Revival Team.’ Several members of the Zastrow family, including Eva, have been arrested at reproductive health care facilities in the past,” the entry on the young woman read. The dossier added that she was “closely associated” with Coleman Boyd, Dennis Green, Heather Idoni, James Zastrow, and Eva Edl, an 89-year-old communist death camp survivor. All of those individuals were later prosecuted by the Biden administration. It also included personal details like birthdate, email address, phone number, addresses, description of her physical appearance, and noted that she had traveled as a missionary. National Abortion Federation/DOJ. The entry detailed protests Zastrow joined at abortion facilities in Tennessee and Michigan, incidents for which she was later charged and faced prosecution at trials covered extensively by The Daily Wire. Another dossier included in the exhibits for the report was compiled by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Global Safety and Security Intelligence and Investigations on Operation Save America. The dossier included the photos of multiple individuals later pardoned by Trump. In contrast, the Trump Justice Department said the Task Force spent little time investigating the attacks on pregnancy centers and largely ignored pro-lifers concerned about the uptick in vandalism targeting pro-life establishments following the leak of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. At the same time as they worked to prosecute pro-lifers with assistance from pro-abortion groups, Biden officials cozied up to abortion activists and agreed to help them obtain grants to continue their activism. An email from October 31, 2023 showed Biden DOJ official Paige Fitzgerald describing the relationship between the federal government and the National Abortion Federation as stretching on for “decades.” “We have worked with NAF for decades. NAF regularly refers potential FACE Act violations and other threats to RPCPs [Reproductive Healthcare Providers], helps us liaise with clinics and staff, lets us know about upcoming events that might result in security concerns so we can notify the FBI and USMS, etc,” Fitzgerald wrote in the email. “The information flow has always been a one-way street, and they have always been respectful, cooperative, and are frequently quite helpful.” Fitzgerald was asking a federal ethics officer whether they would be allowed to provide a reference after the National Abortion Federation asked for a letter “on DOJ letterhead” to help them with a grant application. “Is there anything that we can do to tell grant folks that they are totally legit and they have been valuable to our law enforcement efforts?” Fitzgerald wrote. In a different email from December 2020, Patel said he could serve as a reference for the National Abortion Federation application for a grant with the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund. Tuesday’s report contains other damning revelations, including that federal attorney Frances Lee Carlson complained about a magistrate judge being Catholic. “Unfortunately, we ended up with a very Catholic magistrate on duty this week and he was very particular about the bond conditions and not infringing on their first amendment [sic] rights,” she wrote in an email to Patel while prosecuting a case in Michigan against multiple pro-life defendants later pardoned by Trump. In response, Patel wrote, “Ugh…always a veritable circus with these cases.” The Justice Department, citing reporting from The Daily Wire, also detailed how the Biden administration requested an average sentence of 26.8 months for pro-life defendants compared to 12.3 months for pro-abortion defendants. The report is the latest effort by the Trump administration to rectify the Biden administration’s targeting of pro-life activists. The Justice Department settled last week with Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven who was prosecuted under the FACE Act by the Biden administration. His home was raided by armed FBI agents after an incident at an abortion facility. The settlement, for over $1 million was announced by the group Forty Days For Life, which told The Daily Wire it sent the message that Americans could still exercise their First Amendment rights. “We have to fight our government when they’re coming after us. We still have free speech and we still have the Constitution,” Forty Days For Life President Sean Carney told The Daily Wire. “So it was a huge vote of confidence for pro-life Americans.”