Todd Blanche is campaigning to become our real, confirmed Attorney General, presumably so he can better help Donald Trump, his corrupt family, and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet make off with as much of our money as they can.

Most recently, his campaign took him to the rightwing “religious” group Intercessors for America. When he was asked about progress in totally ending legal abortion in America, or at least Red State America, he told them:

“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and and it will be permanent.”

He added, later in the call:

“If states have said, ‘We are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception,’ we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that. They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs.”

So, how’s he going to pull this off? His sworn testimony before Congress may offer us a glimpse into the plan.

Ted Cruz asked him:

“18 USC 24 Section 1461, the Comstock Act, provides that every article or thing designed or adapted or intended for producing abortion is declared to be non-mailable. I have to admit that statutory text to me looks quite straightforward. It is not subtle. It is not difficult. It is straightforward. …

“[W]ill you commit that the Department will carefully evaluate every lawful action available to ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act and other Federal pro-life acts?”

Blanche answered: “Yes.”

How does he plan to “protect every life from the moment of conception”? Apparently, with the Comstock Act. And he may well have the backing of the six Republicans on the Supreme Court as their next step after their Dobbs decision.

Back during oral arguments before the Supreme Court in March of 2024, the Comstock Act was invoked repeatedly by Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Erin Hawley, the wife of Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who was the lawyer arguing before the Court that the abortion drug, Mifepristone, should be banned nationwide.

Justice Sam Alito said:

“This [Comstock Act] is a prominent provision. It’s not some obscure subsection of a complicated, obscure law. Everybody in this field knew about it.”

Erin Hawley was emphatic:

“We don’t think that there’s any case of this court that empowers FDA to ignore other federal law. The Comstock Act says that drugs should not be mailed … either through the mail or through common carriers.”

And Clarence Thomas laid out the possibility of future litigation when he essentially threatened the lawyer for Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of Mifepristone:

“How do you respond to an argument that mailing your product and advertising it would violate the Comstock Act?” He went on to note that the law “is fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours.”

In other words, they want the Act enforced today.

So, what the heck is the Comstock Act and why are Republicans trying to revive it before the Supreme Court and in threatening letters to pharmacy chains?

You’ve probably never heard of Anthony Comstock, a Civil War Union soldier and New York Postmaster, who died in 1915. You need to learn about him and his legacy, however, as his long fingers are about to reach up out of the grave and wrap themselves around the necks of every American woman of childbearing years.

Anthony Comstock was a mama’s boy who hated sex. His mother died when he was 10 years old and the shock apparently never left him; women who didn’t live up to her ideal were his open and declared enemies, as were pornography, masturbation, and abortion. He was so ignorant of sex and reproduction that he believed a visible human-like fetus developed “within seconds” of sexual intercourse.

Comstock spent decades scouring the country collecting hard-core pornography, which he enthusiastically shared with men in Congress, and harassing “loose women.” For example, when he visited a belly-dancing show (then a new craze) in Chicago at the Cairo Theatre during the World’s Fair of 1893, he demanded the show be shut down.

As Amy Sohn, who wrote a brilliant Comstock biography titled The Man Who Hated Women, noted:

“Despite national controversy and Comstock’s intervention, ultimately the only alteration made to the fair’s belly dancing was costuming: the dancers swapped their gauze blouses for thin woolen undershirts. The vice hunter had lost in Chicago. But he would not forget the dancers, and would have four of them arrested and fined when they came to New York that winter. New York, after all, was Comstockland.”

Comstock lobbied for and shepherded through Congress a law passed on March 3, 1873 titled “An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, obscene Literature and Articles of immoral Use.” Today we refer to it as the Comstock Act.

It’s language with regard to abortion is not at all ambiguous:

“Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance … designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and

“Every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

“Every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of such mentioned matters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means abortion may be produced, whether sealed or unsealed; and

“Every paper, writing, advertisement, or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

“Every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing—

“Is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.” (emphasis mine)

The penalty is also not ambiguous. Persons mailing information about abortion, or drugs or devices to produce an abortion:

“[S]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both, for the first such offense, and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each such offense thereafter.” (emphasis mine)

The Biden administration argued that the Comstock Act of 1873 was set aside almost a century ago.

And, indeed, in 1930, the Appeals Court for the Second Circuit ruled in Youngs Rubber Corp. v. C.I. Lee & Co that the law couldn’t apply to things sent through the mail that are legal, even if they were illegal at the time of the passage of the Comstock Act. (The case involved condoms manufactured by Youngs Rubber Company.)

“Such a construction,” the Court wrote, “would prevent mailing to or by a physician of any drug or mechanical device ‘adapted’ for contraceptive or abortifacient uses, although the physician desired to use or to prescribe it for proper medical purposes.”

The law has been amended by Congress four times (in 1955, 1958, 1971, and 1994), but the language above about abortion was never struck because legislators figured the 1930 appeals court’s ruling rendered it nugatory.

But don’t tell that to Trump’s appointee, Texas District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo, who ruled in 2023 that Mifepristone was to be banned nationwide: he based a large part of his decision on the plain language of the Comstock Act.

Republican members of Congress agree, and want the Comstock Act enforced nationwide now. They think they don’t even need a ruling from the Supreme Court: they just need Todd Blanche to “enforce the law already on the books.”

In a letter sent to CVS (among other pharmacy chains), Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and eight other Republican senators (Lankford, Daines, Braun, Rubio, Marshall, Risch, Crapo and Blackburn) wrote that the Biden interpretation (and that of Congress in 1955, 1958, 1971, and 1994) is wrong.

They explicitly asserted that the Comstock Act is still in effect and they want it enforced:

“We write to express our support and agreement with 21 [Republican] State Attorneys General,” they wrote “who have reminded you that Federal law in 18 U.S.C. 1461-1462 [the Comstock Act] criminalizes nationwide using the mail, or interstate shipment by any express company or common carrier, to send or receive any drug that is ‘designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.’”

The 1930 court ruling that lawmakers and judges had, for over 90 years, believed only applied the Comstock Act to items that were illegal (like child porn), Senator Hide-Smith wrote:

“[D]oes not protect CVS or any other individual or entity from being prosecuted within the five-year statute of limitations for the illegal mailing or interstate shipment of abortion drugs … even for conduct that occurs today.”

Keep in mind, under the plain language of the Comstock Act this could also apply to birth control pills, IUDs, and other things used to prevent pregnancy. And, of course, pornography and “masturbation devices” like vibrators.

The lawyer for Republicans defending Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Erin Hawley, went so far as to assert before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that even physicians and pharmacies shouldn’t be able to receive Mifepristone or other drugs that could produce an abortion via the mail, FedEx, or UPS:

“What the Comstock law says is that it is improper to mail things that induce or cause abortions, which is precisely the action the FDA took in 2021 when it permitted the mailing of abortion drugs.”

If Hawley’s interpretation is enforced by Todd Blanche once he’s securely settled into his office with a vote by Republicans in the Senate, all abortions in the United States could be ended when drugs and suction and surgical devices designed specifically for the procedure can no longer be shipped to hospitals, clinics, or physicians’ offices.

This is no idle threat.

As Washington Post reporter Dan Diamond wrote for his Substack newsletter, anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson, who’s helped several cities around the country put into law local versions of the Comstock Act, told him:

“If a future president were to enforce these federal statutes, then they could shut down every abortion facility in America.”

This is the specific goal of these mostly “Christian” religious fanatics: to completely outlaw all abortion and radically restrict access to birth control. And having Blanche start enforcing the law that’s already on the books, provoking a battle heading for the Supreme Court, is all it would take.

Such a case would, based on Blanche’s sworn testimony to the Senate, have Republicans, Clarence Thomas, and Sam Alito gleefully rubbing their hands in anticipation.

So, if you’re concerned about the future of abortion rights in America, it might be a good time to call your Senators — particularly if either is a Republican — and let them know your thoughts on Blanche’s nomination that’ll probably get a vote in the next two days.

-=-=

rww

12/17/2025

Peter Montgomery

Intercessors for America, a network of “prayer warriors” that functions as a shameless public relations arm of the Trump administration, is promoting a “prayer guide” denouncing “The Communist Takeover of the Democrat Party.”

“For years, unbeknownst to most Americans, the Communist Party has been purposely and diligently chipping away to gain a foothold into our nation,” the guide begins, before launching into a screed against the Democratic Socialists of America and the DSA-endorsed Mayor-elect of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

It’s not your father’s communist party! Green. Hip. And with new mouthpieces now carrying water for their repackaged red ideologies. Has this soft-peddled, mainstream-embraced socialist movement now found their foothold?

Among the political figures cited in the document, in addition to Mamdani, are Sen. Bernie Sanders and Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Greg Cesar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Inexplicably, the graphic on the front page of the prayer guide is an image of the Turkish flag and what appears to be a statue of Mustafa Kamal Atatürk, founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. Did someone at IFA confuse the star and crescent of the Turkish flag with the Communist hammer-and-sickle symbol? There is nothing in the text that explains the choice of image.

Every other page of the IFA document carries a banner reading “THE COMMUNIST TAKEOVER OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.” Among the policy proposals that the IFA regards as signs of a "Communist takeover" in process: Universal Basic Income, Single Payer Healthcare, “Tax the Billionaires,” Green New Deal, and Free Public College.

The guide ends with half a dozen prayer points, including “Pray for a spirit of confusion over the camp of socialists” and “Pray against the spirit of darkness behind socialism.”

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rww

04/18/2025

Kyle Mantyla

David and Tim Barton were on hand when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in Arkansas.

Intercessors for America is so elated by the White House's Easter message that they are encouraging activists to send President Donald Trump a note of thanks: "Please know that I am regularly praying for you, Mr. President--and also for your family, staff, and the rest of your administration. Like you, I believe that God spared your life to use you to accomplish His godly purposes in our nation."

Jackson Lahmeyer says that attending the Easter dinner at the White House was the "TIME OF MY LIFE."

Rep. Mary Miller explains why she approves of Trump's deportation policy: "He loves and cares about our country like a father and he wants to protect us."

Finally, Shane Vaughn wants to see Sen. Chris Van Hollen prosecuted for violating the Logan Act by traveling to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

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04/11/2025

Peter Montgomery

Intercessors for America, a group of ardently pro-Trump “prayer warriors” that is closely associated with White House aide Paula White, gathered a group of supporters in Washington, D.C. this week to “prayer walk the centers of power in our nation, pray with elected officials, and gather with other IFA intercessors.” It was the first of IFA’s new monthly “Insights and Intercession” events, designed to give supporters a chance to “strategically pray” in Washington, D.C.

The concept of “strategic” spiritual warfare is a key element of dominionist New Apostolic Reformation ideology. During the first Trump administration, White forged and maintained close relationships with Christian nationalist and dominionist leaders through her One Voice Prayer Movement and her alliance with groups like IFA. IFA President Dave Kubal has participated in national “prayer and repentance” gatherings attended by dozens of members of Congress.

Intercessors for America, like the National Faith Advisory Board White set up after Trump lost in 2020 and many Christian-right organizations and media outlets, functions as a virtual non-stop public relations operation for the Trump administration. Collectively, these activists relentlessly repeat assertions that Trump is anointed by God and that his opponents—whether Democrats or federal judges—are thwarting God’s will, thereby helping to maintain a cultish level of support among Trump’s base, which in turn empowers him to demand unquestioning loyalty from fellow Republicans.

IFA has celebrated Trump’s campaign of intimidation and retribution against law firms, laughably characterizing it as an effort to “bring an end to the politicization of justice once and for all.” It has produced a "special report" titled "Power Struggle: Trump vs. Activist Judges," which calls out judges who are "taking on the president." The subject line of a recent email read, “God is Protecting DOGE!”

On Thursday, IFA posted a photo of its prayer warriors praying through the halls of the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, IFA shared a picture of its members meeting with Rep. Nathaniel Moran, who IFA quoted saying, “We’re engaged in a spiritual battle here.” White also invited IFA’s intercessors to the White House for a private briefing.

IFA had been at the White House a week earlier as well, for an event sponsored by the White House Faith Office during IFA’s “supporters summit,” which bore the name of Dave Kubal’s forthcoming book, “Impacting Generations.” According to IFA’s Facebook page, Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Markwayne Mullin met with IFA supporters.

Among IFA’s activities are weekly prayer calls hosted by Kris Kubal, Dave’s wife and IFA’s Chief Program Office. For two weeks in a row in March, Kubal devoted her show to promoting the Trump administration’s claims that federal judges who are acting to slow or stop the administration’s lawbreaking are a “judicial oligarchy” exercising a form of “despotism.”

As Right Wing Watch reported in March, the guest speaker on March 20 was Phillip Jauregui, a longtime right-wing activist who heads the Judicial Action Group and promotes a wildly unconstitutional religious test for Supreme Court justices and other federal judges through the Center for Judicial Renewal, a project of the American Family Association’s political action affiliate. On the IFA call, Jauregui prayed that God would visit the Supreme Court justices in their dreams to bring them “into alignment with your will to preserve the proper powers of the presidency right now.”

Among the concrete steps Jauregui suggested was a little budgetary intimidation designed to force the Supreme Court to rein in lower courts judges. Jauregui asked, “What if Speaker Johnson put something out publicly and says, ‘Chief Justice Roberts, we’d like to talk with you about having Elon Musk and DOGE come look at judicial expenditures.’ Hello? You think that would spook Roberts a bit, and cause him to be concerned?”

The following week, Kris Kubal hosted right-wing activist Bill Federer, who floated conspiracy theories about John Roberts being compromised and blackmailed by some embarrassing information to explain why he hasn’t ruled in lockstep with Trump. Federer also suggested actions Congress could take to “uncreate” lower courts or strip them of jurisdiction. An IFA leader from Florida prayed that God would turn the hearts of judges or "remove" them, an echo of previousspiritual warriors' callsfor God to "remove" Supreme Court justices to give Trump more vacancies to fill.

Back in 2018, when Trump was close to choosing Brett Kavanaugh as his second Supreme Court nominee, Jauregui used an IFA prayer call to denounce Kavanaugh as a “usurper” and insist that Amy Coney Barrett was the one anointed by God. But a week later, after Trump had officially nominated Kavanaugh, IFA fell in line and mobilized support for his confirmation.

IFA is also active at the state level. The same IFA newsletter celebrating the group’s return to the White House also linked to an article about efforts by IFA leaders in South Carolina to decree a “divorce from Baal” and its “prayer and pronouncing separation from the roots of the Masonic for the State.”

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/intercessor-claims-demonic-rats-made-trump-back-off-his-prophetic-easter-declaration/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-christian-rights-perverse-hostility-to-science-is-definitely-going-to-get-people-killed/

no lnx

The Christian right’s perverse hostility to science is definitely going to get people killed

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon March 26, 2020

Scientists and health experts largely agree on the steps needed to fight COVID-19, the rapidly spreading new coronavirus: Widespread testing, if possible. Widespread and often stringent social distancing protocols in communities where it’s taken root, to slow the spread. Hygienic practices like frequent hand-washing and sterilizing commonly touched surfaces. Protective gear, like masks in medical settings, to keep health care professionals from catching it and spreading it.

But when it comes to conservative evangelical Christians, who are already hostile to science on many levels, advice from health experts is all too often being treated as something that can be dismissed out of hand, if it threatens the political or theological goals of their movement.

To be clear, Christian right leaders aren’t denying that coronavirus is a real problem (at least not anymore). If anything, the bevy of snake oil salesman who call themselves ministers sees the panic around the virus as a marketing opportunity to make money from selling dangerous supplements, to declare the virus can be beaten with the power of prayer and to declare that the pandemic is a divine punishment inflicted on sinners.

But Christian right leaders are also not about to let medical science supersede their authority, much less get in the way of their quest for power and cold, hard cash. Because of this, the Christian right has become a vector of bad advice, misinformation and dreadful business decisions that are directly threatening the health not just of their followers, but the public at large.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the shamelessly greedy president of Liberty University, has spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus threat, accusing the media of wildly exaggerating it to “destroy the American economy” and of course to damage Donald Trump. While nearly every university and college in the country has shut down their campuses and moved to online teaching to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Falwell seems determined to keep Liberty open.

Falwell is already allowing students back on campus, claiming it’s more imporant “to give [students] the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life.”

Roy Moore, the Christian right figurehead and twice-failed Senate candidate brought low by multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, is similarly defiant of the calls for social distancing that threaten to disrupt in-person church activities.

“I am writing a letter to pastors on the duty to continue church assemblies, even in the midst of these trying times,” Moore wrote in an open letter, adding on Twitter that “churches are closed by tyrants who pander fear in the place of faith in God.”

Moore invoked the example of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the Declaration of Independence signer who stayed in Philadelphia and caught yellow fever during an epidemic in the 1790s. Of course, Rush risked his life to save people with his medical expertise, an entirely different situation than a pastor insisting that people must come to church.

To be clear, most churches, especially mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, are prioritizing the health of members and closing their doors for the duration the crisis, often pointing believers to online services. But the pressure to keep the doors open, when it comes from someone like Moore, is no small thing. He may seem like an offensive joke to many liberals, but Moore has immense influence in the world of evangelical Christianity, which often favors megachurches that gather hundreds or even thousands of people at once, and whose pastors have been reluctant to close their doors. Reports suggest many of these churches are defiantly refusing to cancel services.

Along with pastors who want those collection plates to keep flowing, at least one wealthy and prominent Christian right family is determined to keep its business open to the public. David Green, the owner of Hobby Lobby, is keeping most of his stores open during the pandemic, except those actually forced to shut down by local governments.

His reason? His wife, Barbara Green, prayed about it and decided to focus instead on “profound words to remind us that He’s in control.” Those words were “Guide, Guard and Groom,” though the P-word, “profit,” may also play a role.

The Green family, let’s remember, was behind a recent lawsuit in which the Supreme Court granted privately held corporations the right to block their employees from using health insurance plans to pay for contraception. The case was presented by the Greens and their religious right allies as a relatively minor question of balancing reproductive rights against religious freedom. In reality, the case was about opening the door, both legally and culturally, to Christian right demands that arbitrary religious beliefs should trump human rights, public health, science and government authority.

The presumption undergirding the Hobby Lobby case — that Christian conservatives should be able to defy the laws that the rest of us are bound by — wasn’t taken seriously by many people in mainstream politics at the time, perhaps because the victims were low-income female employees who wanted access to contraception. But post-Hobby Lobby, the Christian conservative belief that they’re entitled to exempt themselves from any laws or public health regulations they disagree with is shaping the reaction to the coronavirus — and threatening the health of everyone in the country.

Ilyse Hogue of NARAL pointed this out on Twitter Wednesday night, writing that Republicans have been co-opted by “a radical right for whom fundamentalism [has] completely supplanted any rational thought or science and data-based policy approaches.”

“We’ve seen them use disinformation” to block access to contraception, suppress LGBT rights and close abortion clinics, she noted, adding that “now they’re doing it at a national scale during a global pandemic.”

Indeed, the power the religious right now wields through the White House only amplifies the dangerous impact of its anti-science views on the coronavirus response. Vice President Mike Pence — a Christian conservative with a long history of anti-science views, including both denying that condoms are safe and cigarettes are dangerous — is running the White House coronavirus task force, which is no doubt one of the big reasons the U.S. has one of the worst responses to the pandemic in the world. Pence is also wasting time on conference calls with religious right leaders who are more interested in exploiting this crisis to force women to give birth against their will than in preventing thousands or millions of people from dying.

Trump himself has surrounded himself with a phalanx of Christian right pastors who are eager to lie to their flocks about what a great leader he is and to amplify his relentless drumbeat of lies and misinformation. This includes Dave Kubal, the head of Intercessors for America, who told an audience on a prayer call last week that coronavirus “testing has limited value.” This is flat-out untrue — testing has been a critical element in every country that’s been able to get the virus under control — but it suits Trump’s approach to the disease, which has been to minimize testing access in hopes of keeping the official number of cases artificially low.

The Christian right has always been a threat to public health. They were a threat during the AIDS crisis, when they successfully exerted pressure on Republican leaders to minimize the disease, which conservative Christians saw as a punishment for sinful behavior. They have contributed to the spread of all manner of STIs, in fact, by convincing schools to replace sex education with programs meant to discourage the use of condoms. They’ve encouraged fear of vaccinations, especially the HPV vaccine that prevents cervical and other forms of cancer, for no other reason except that HPV is an STI and therefore viewed, sigh, as punishment for sinners. They’ve blocked access to contraception and abortion to punish women for having sex, even though unwanted childbirth is linked to poorer health outcomes for women and children.

But this renegade right-wing movement has been allowed to run rampant because their cruelty and hostility to science primarily affected marginalized people, especially low-income women and LGBTQ people. Now their attitudes are a threat to everyone, rich or poor, of every race or gender or faith (including no faith). But the sad truth is that as long as Christian right leaders keep on shilling for Republicans, the party will close its eyes and embrace them, no matter how many people have to die.