Ranking Member Raskin’s Opening Statement at Subcommittee Hearing on Republicans’ Effort to Eliminate FACE Act Safeguards
Washington, D.C. (April 28, 2026)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks at a Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government hearing examining the public safety implications associated with failure to enforce the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
Below are Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks at today’s hearing.
WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s opening statement.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government
“From Tool to Weapon: The FACE Act and the Dangers of Federalizing Criminal Law”
April 28, 2026
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank all our witnesses for joining us today.
We are in a weird time warp with our friends across the aisle. Most of their energy is now focused on pardoning people who attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, wounding and injuring 150 of our police officers, disfiguring and disabling some of them for life. Their time is spent vacating the criminal convictions of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who engaged in seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government, which means conspiring to overthrow and put down the government. And now, the Department of Justice wants to vacate those convictions that were handed down by unanimous juries.
They want to give millions of dollars to convicted criminals like Michael Flynn, for example, President Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser, they gave him $1.25 million for a lawsuit he brought against the government which he already lost in court. And nonetheless, they wrote him a check for $1.25 million. They wrote a check for another $1.25 million to Carter Page, who unsuccessfully sued the government for damages, losing four different lawsuits. And nonetheless, they just wrote him a check of the taxpayers money: $1.25 million. And now they’re all lining up at the trough. A lot of the January 6th insurrectionists want their $1.25 million payout.
And Donald Trump has sued the IRS for $10 billion. He wants 80% of the IRS budget that he’s suing the government for. And he’s also suing for the search warrant handed down by an independent, neutral magistrate, where they executed a search on Mar-a-Lago and found lots of classified documents and confidential and secret documents he shouldn’t have. And he’s suing for several hundred million dollars as well for that. So it’s a big piggy bank for them.
So now we are having our third hearing about the claim, I’m not sure I fully understand it, but I think the claim is that the activists who forcibly blocked health clinic entrances and prevented women from accessing lawful reproductive health services were somehow unjustly prosecuted under the FACE Act, which they intimate is unconstitutional. But eight different federal circuit courts have upheld its constitutionality as a perfectly lawful exercise of Congress’ powers under the Commerce Clause, and not in any way in violation of the First Amendment. Okay, but they continue to want to pander to people who think that they never should have been prosecuted for their criminal conduct. So this hearing is an after the fact justification for President Trump’s anti-choice pander pardons which took place last year.
As one of his very first acts in office, President Trump pardoned nearly two dozen people convicted of FACE Act-related offenses, including one of the witnesses here today, Ms. Edl. Like the January 6th rioters and insurrectionists he also pardoned, President Trump and his allies are attempting to rewrite history to portray criminal conduct as mere “peaceful” protest, and to cast the dedicated public servants who sought to protect patient and public safety as the villains.
So, let’s discuss some of the facts of Ms. Edl’s case, who was pardoned by President Trump and invited as an example of the so-called “peaceful protestors.”
A jury convicted Ms. Edl, along with six co-conspirators, of federal civil rights offenses, including a FACE Act violation, arising out of their blockade of a reproductive health care clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan in August 2020. A jury of her peers – not the “deep state prosecutors” – convicted Ms. Edl by a unanimous vote after a trial before an impartial federal judge. Ms. Edl was also one of two defendants convicted of another FACE Act violation arising out of their actions in yet another clinic blockade in Saginaw, Michigan.
Now, I have no problems with the fact that Ms. Edl has strong moral convictions. I have no problems with the fact that Ms. Edl, and others like her, have strong moral convictions about this. So did Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis—they had strong moral convictions about Jim Crow apartheid and segregation in America, and they participated in civil disobedience.
They violated various trespass laws in different cases, and they were arrested for it. And they were willing to accept their punishment as the price for trying to get a law they considered or actions by the government reversed and to dismantle racial segregation.
But what these protesters have a problem with is other people accessing their own healthcare. The Civil Rights protesters weren’t trying to stop people from getting healthcare, and they were willing to nonetheless accept the consequences of having a sit in or whatever. But here they don’t seem to want to accept it. The fact that they violated the law, and in fact, they violated the law precisely in order to prevent other people from exercising their constitutionally protected rights to healthcare. That’s exactly what they were doing. So I’m afraid there’s a huge difference between them and other people who have participated in civil disobedience in the past.
We received a statement from the founder and operator of the Sterling Heights Clinic, who was present that day, which I will enter into the record in full, that described in detail what happened to those patients. She writes, in part:
Perhaps the most dangerous and appalling episode of clinic violence that I have experienced since the FACE Act became law took place in August 2020. Our Sterling Heights clinic was blockaded by extremists who prevented me and other staff from entering the clinic. Patients were stuck in their cars, including three women who were coming in for abortions following the detection of fatal fetal anomalies. One woman was actively losing amniotic fluid and was scheduled for the second day of a two-day procedure. She needed immediate medical care. She huddled with her mother and her husband, trapped in the parking lot, while extremists plastered signs of fake fetuses on her car windows and shouted “God loves you, God loves your baby.” The woman cried out, “I know God loves me, I know God loves my baby, but my baby is dying.” Her baby was missing most of its brain and had no kidneys. This woman later shared her powerful testimony at trial. As eight different federal circuit courts have found, Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause to protect people against being harassed and interfered with as they go to get medical attention.
The FACE Act is a legitimate exercise of congressional power, and these people were properly arrested and prosecuted for perhaps their very morally, sincerely held views, but they violated the law. These politically motivated pardons of FACE Act violators, as well as January Sixers, and dozens of white-collar criminals and fraudsters, are all part of a political strategy that’s got nothing to do with justice. And now this is the equivalent of the government giving people a green light to go out and break the law. And indeed, there are numerous reports that President Trump has been promising pardons rather to everyone who works for him as President Trump continues to endanger public safety with pardons like this.
They are making threats against the Southern Poverty Law Center which is the main not-for-profit organizational antagonist to the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis and the white extremist groups. And they’re being investigated and prosecuted for having sent people undercover to research what’s going on in those groups to get the information to government for prosecution.
So now the Trump Administration, which pardoned 1,600 extremists who attacked the U.S. Capitol, who violently assaulted our police officers and tried to overthrow a presidential election, which Joe Biden won by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. Well, now after having pardoned all of those people, they want to attack the Southern Poverty Law Center and that is real attack on the First Amendment.
I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.