The White House has instructed the Justice Department to move slowly on any abortion-related actions ahead of the midterm elections, The Washington Sun has learned.
In a series of discussions, senior White House officials, led by White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, directly delivered the message to Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to a senior administration official not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Wiles suggested that an aggressive approach on abortion would generate unwanted attention, something the officials worried could alienate voters ahead of the November elections.
“No one wants us taking any real action before the midterms,” the senior administration official said, emphasizing the push came directly from top White House staff.
The White House denied that meetings took place: “This is completely false. These conversations never occurred between White House officials and DOJ officials.”
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But administration officials have also informed anti-abortion leaders, who have aggressively pressed the administration to move quickly to restrict abortion access, that any action on abortion would take place after the midterm elections, multiple sources told The Sun.
“Once the midterms are over and it’s truly lame-duck time, we’ve heard the gloves will be off,” one conservative in touch with the administration, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said. “We have heard we have friends, and there are definitely people who are staunch pro-lifers.”
The DOJ has consistently asked federal judges to pause ongoing lawsuits that seek to restrict access to the abortion drug mifepristone until the Food and Drug Administration completes a review of the drug’s safety and effectiveness. A departure from that strategy would create unfavorable headlines just before voters head to the polls, the White House officials made clear to Blanche.
The Supreme Court in 2024 dismissed a case that sought to ban the abortion pill mifepristone on procedural grounds. The justices have never taken a position on whether the pills should be available.
Other cases challenging abortion pill access that have emerged since are currently making their way through the federal courts. The Trump administration is defending FDA rules that allow these drugs to be available via mail, but is doing so only on procedural grounds rather than expressly supporting the current regulations. Anti-abortion groups and allies of the movement have urged the DOJ to drop its procedural defense of FDA and, instead, allow courts to rule more quickly on the merits of the cases.
The senior administration official said the White House has made clear to Blanche that it would not support such a strategy.
In response to questions about meetings between Blanche and White House officials, a DOJ spokesperson called President Donald Trump “the most pro-life president in history.” The spokesperson did not answer questions specifically about the meetings or the substance of those meetings.
“The Department of Justice represents [the Food and Drug Administration] in these matters, and FDA is continuing to review the safety data for mifepristone,” the spokesperson said. “We asked the courts to stay these cases while that review is ongoing. Should the Department learn of possible fraud or harm to women involving these drugs, we will investigate those matters.”
Anti-abortion leaders expect post-election action that is not just related to litigation.
A source familiar with the matter said DOJ officials have told some anti-abortion leaders that any action on enforcing the Comstock Act — which would bar the mailing of abortion drugs — would take place after the election.
The DOJ is “actively working on it,” the source said.
Tom McClusky, director of government affairs for CatholicVote, said he has heard “the same thing from every agency I talk to and from members of Congress.” He added, “It’s always that nothing’s going to happen until November.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told The Sun in May that she had “encouraging” meetings with a DOJ official, whom she declined to name, on the Comstock Act. Specifically, she said there are discussions around rescinding a 2022 memo from the Office of Legal Counsel issued during the Biden administration that effectively made the law unenforceable.
But when asked whether the DOJ had given the organization an update as to when action would take place, Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for Students for Life, told The Sun: “Everything but the election is pushed until after the elections.”
Blanche, in his July confirmation hearings, said he opposed abortion pills being available via mail and committed to enforcing the Comstock Act, a series of 1873 federal laws that prohibit the shipment of “every article or thing designed, adapted or intended for producing abortion.” Politico also reported that during an August call with faith leaders, Blanche said the administration was working to ensure abortion was banned “in every single state.”
As a result, some in the anti-abortion camp are holding out hope that Blanche will be an ally to them.
“Based on Attorney General Blanche’s testimony during his confirmation, we have hope and are expecting that swift action will be taken to stop mail-order abortion drugs that are undermining pro-life state laws across the country,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “Every day that goes by more women are coerced and harmed and more unborn children die. We are past due for action.”
But Blanche has said nothing publicly about abortion since the summer.
A directive from the White House to the DOJ to inject electoral politics into litigation would historically have been seen as highly unusual, at best. In the wake of Watergate, then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued a memo in 1979 that laid out guidelines to firewall DOJ from White House personnel on certain sensitive matters. That memo, which has become known as the “no contacts” policy, has been updated and strengthened several times in the intervening decades, though Trump loosened it at the start of his current term.
Any action to restrict abortion pills would immediately break Trump’s 2024 campaign pledge that he would “not block” access to the drugs.
The White House first made its intentions for the midterms clear to cabinet members in February, the senior administration official said. Blanche was deputy attorney general at that time but was brought up to speed after he became acting attorney general in April.
The Trump administration’s silence on abortion pills has frustrated even judges overseeing abortion pill cases.
Earlier this month, during oral arguments for Louisiana v. FDA, judges in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals multiple times pressed DOJ lawyers to state the administration’s perspective on the FDA’s regulations — to no avail.
“The only thing I can say, your honor, is what we’ve said in the briefs, which is that FDA is conducting an ongoing review. It has committed to do this. It’s doing it in an ongoing fashion, so we just haven’t taken a position,” said Daniel Winik, an attorney for the DOJ’s senior counsel.
In response, Judge Stephen Higginson said: “I find that very, very unsatisfactory that the agency won’t give an opinion as to its own regulations.”
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