A man armed with a gun, a knife, and pepper spray was arrested near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home on Wednesday. He told officers that he wanted to kill the justice, who is one of five members of the court to sign on the leaked draft Dobbs opinion from February, which would overturn Roe v. Wade.
“President Biden condemns the actions of this individual in the strongest terms and is grateful to law enforcement for quickly taking him into custody,” said White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates. “Any violence, threats of violence, or attempts to intimidate justices have no place in our society.” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland agreed. “It’s obviously behavior that we will not tolerate.”
Earlier this year, pro-abortion activists posted a map showing the home addresses of the justices who supported the Dobbs opinion, enabling protestors to demonstrate outside the justices’ homes. When asked whether the White House condemned the release of that map, then-Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not directly answer the question, saying instead, “the president’s view is that there is a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded by urging the House to consider the Supreme Court Police Parity Act (S. 4160), “to enhance the police protection for Justices and their families,” which passed the Senate unanimously on May 9. “They need to stop their multi-week blockade against the Supreme Court security bill and pass it before the sun sets.” Prominent Senate Democrats, including Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have also called on the House to pass the bill.
Supreme Court justices have not been the only targets of pro-abortion rage after the draft Dobbs opinion was leaked. Since early May, a dozen or so pro-life pregnancy resource centers have been vandalized by pro-abortion graffiti, Molotov cocktails, and everything in between. As of this writing, the most recent attack was on a pro-life medical office and pregnancy resource center in Buffalo, New York, which was firebombed Tuesday morning by a radical group styling themselves as “Jane’s Revenge.”
On Tuesday, 16 Republican senators signed a letter to the Department of Justice demanding answers “about how the Department of Justice is addressing the disturbing trend of harassment, intimidation, and violence against religious and other pro-life organizations and individuals.” In the letter, they compared the DOJ’s lackadaisical response to the abortion activists’ attacks with the way they “wasted no time” last fall in labelling parents “domestic terrorists” for showing up to school board meetings. They concluded by demanding answers to specific questions by Friday and added, “We are dismayed that the open and public urgency with which the Department of Justice undertook efforts in the name of public safety last year is not being replicated currently to protect religious and other pro-life organizations and individuals.”
While the DOJ may be dragging their feet, at least the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acknowledged the problem. In an advisory bulletin also released on Tuesday, DHS warned that “the United States remains in a heightened threat environment” because of, among other reasons, “a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court case about abortion rights.” But from there, their characterization of the situation goes awry. “Individuals who advocate both for and against abortion have, on public forums, encouraged violence, including against government, religious, and reproductive healthcare personnel and facilities, as well as those with opposing ideologies,” reads the bulletin.
So, according to the DHS, we can expect violence 1) because of online threats, 2) from both sides, 3) with an emphasis on violence toward abortion personnel and facilities. All three points are either entirely wrong or calculated to mislead.
First, the expectation of violence is not primarily due to online threats, but because multiple attacks have already been carried out, and, as far as we know, no one has been held accountable.
Second, there are probably enough bad apples to make the “both for and against” language technically true, but there’s no question that the threats of violence — and actual violence — have been mostly visible from one side. A Google News search for the words “abortion center vandalized,” sorted by date, reveal nearly nine pages of results detailing attacks on pro-life centers and churches since the Dobbs decision was leaked. Only one abortion center has (arguably) been targeted in 2022 — an overnight fire believed to be arson in a Casper, Wyoming building that was undergoing renovation before an abortion center was scheduled to open there.
The Anonymous Group “Jane’s Revenge,” which has taken credit for many of the pregnancy resource center vandalisms, posted a manifesto, of sorts, to “The Anarchist Library,” in which they call for action against the “evisceration of abortion access across the so-called United States.” By action, they don’t mean “demure little rallies for freedom.” Rather, they urge, “whatever form your fury takes … the next step is carrying that anger out into the world and expressing it physically.” The manifesto states in bold, “we need the state to feel our full wrath. … We need them to be afraid of us.”
This is a textbook example of domestic terrorism (the use of violence to intimidate in service of a political objective). Why aren’t law enforcement agencies taking it seriously? Or, if they are, why aren’t they telling the rest of us?
In recent years, Americans have suffered federal law enforcement agencies to prosecute with a double standard. Just compare the prosecution of BLM rioters with the theatrical obsession with January 6 (seriously, the January 6 Committee hired a documentary producer to oversee their live, primetime airing of a televised hearing tomorrow night, because that’s a normal thing for Congress to do). That’s not to mention their shameful handling of the Russia hoax, the Clinton servers, and more.
Federal law enforcement agencies have destroyed their reputations over the past few years with high-profile instances of partisan conduct, and they won’t be able to fix it unless and until they can guarantee equality before the law to Americans of every political stripe.
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.