President-elect Donald Trump may befamously inconsistent on abortion rights, but his picks to run federal departments and agencies haven’t been. Theyhave defended anti-abortion laws in court, spread disinformation about the procedure, and openly celebrated the Dobbs decision. Some nominees you’ve likely heard of because their troubling reputations preceded them; others are lesser-known.
Abortion restrictions are often viewed as being enacted through the judicial or legislative processes, through federal and state laws and court cases. But the heads of federal government agencies also wield immense power: They can quietly implement policies throughout their departments that can help chip away at abortion rights nationwide. Many of the dozens of anti-abortion recommendations in Project 2025—the 900-plus-page extremist guidebook to a second Trump term—deputize future agency heads to do exactly that.
Here’s a look at the individuals on Trump’s team who, if confirmed, are poised to enact an anti-abortion agenda through multiple levels of the federal government.
Pam Bondi as Attorney General
The next head of the Justice Department—leading a staff of more than 115,000 people—will have the authority to criminalize abortion, should they choose to do so. “Across the DOJ, various offices have responsibility for enforcing—or not enforcing—federal laws that have direct bearing on reproductive and other civil rights,” says Shaina Goodman, director for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women and Families.
The Attorney General will decide whether or not to enforce the 19th-century Comstock Act to criminalize the distribution of abortion pills, as Project 2025 recommends. (Democrats have tried to repeal that part of the law, but their efforts have stalled.) Biden’s DOJ issued a December 2022 memo stating that Comstock could not be marshaled to restrict the mailing of the pills, but abortion rights advocates worry that Bondi—an election denier with extensive ties to Trump and the first woman to serve as Florida’s attorney general—may reverse that interpretation. As Florida’s AG, Bondi established her anti-abortion record by defending state laws that mandated anti-abortion counseling and a 24-hour waiting period before getting an abortion. It’s no wonder, then, that the anti-abortion advocacy group Students for Life Action greeted the news of Bondi’s nomination saying, “There’s a great deal for pro-life organizations…to be excited about.”
“There’s a great deal for pro-life organizations…to be excited about.”
Current Attorney General Merrick Garland has also defended the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-long approval of abortion pills as safe and effective in the face of a Supreme Court case—FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—seeking to reverse that judgment. (While the Supreme Court ruled last June that the anti-abortion doctors who brought the case lacked standing to do so, conservative attorneys general in Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas filed a revised version of the lawsuit on the matter in the fall—which could eventually wind up back at the Supreme Court.) Democrats did not specifically ask Bondi if she would enforce the Comstock Act at her confirmation hearing, but when Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) asked her if she would continue the DOJ’s policy of defending the FDA’s judgment in the legal battles around access to mifepristone, the first of two pills used in a medication abortion, she assured him, “I will not let my personal beliefs affect how I carry out the law.”
Sen. Cory Booker asks Pam Bondi if the Justice Department, under her leadership, would defend access to medication abortion.
"I have always been pro-life, but I will look at that policy," Bondi says. "I will not not let my personal beliefs affect how I carry out the law." pic.twitter.com/7FJfIlo5Cz
The Solicitor General acts as the government’s lawyer in cases that go before the Supreme Court. Trump’s pick for the position is Dean John Sauer, who, as the Center for Reproductive Rightsnotes, defended various anti-abortion positions in court as Solicitor General of Missouri. (He also argued on Trump’s behalf in both the presidential immunity case that went before the Supreme Court and in a New York Appeals Court seeking to overturn the judgment in the civil fraud case state Attorney General Letitia James brought against him.) If confirmed, Goodman says, Sauer could ultimately “define our legal rights and protections for a generation”—including by potentially arguing in court for the FDA to roll back its approval of abortion pills, as Project 2025 recommends.
Sauer also likely would end the government’s challenge to Idaho’s anti-abortion law in Idaho v. United States, the case centered around the interpretation of a federal law known as EMTALA and, specifically, whether emergency rooms must provide abortions to save the life or health of a pregnant person, even in red states. (The Supreme Court sent the case back to lower courts earlier this year.) And if the legal challenge Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has brought against a New York-based abortion pill provider in an attempt to challenge shield laws—which provide legal protection for doctors who virtually prescribe and mail abortion pills to patients in red states—eventually winds up before the Supreme Court, Sauer would bearguing against those laws on the government’s behalf.
Then there is anti-abortion attorney and Republican party official Harmeet Dhillon, who has been nominated to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, a post charged with leading the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers, which oversees the prosecutions of the FACE Act. This federal law prohibits blocking the entrances to reproductive health clinics—and that includes anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)—or threatening those who use them. While violence against abortion providers has been on the upswing since the Dobbs decision, Project 2025 alleges that the FACE Act has been misapplied to prosecute anti-abortion extremists rather than abortion rights supporters who impede access to CPCs. Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute, said, “It’s concerning to think about how [Dhillon] could misuse some of DOJ’s enforcement of what should be civil rights protections and twist that for anti-abortion purposes.” Dhillon has publicly expressed her support for Dobbs and her opposition to shield laws. She also defended anti-abortion activist David Daleiden in a years-long, unsuccessful lawsuit against Planned Parenthood that the reproductive health organization won in 2019.
“It’s concerning to think about how [Dhillon] could misuse some of DOJ’s enforcement of what should be civil rights protections and twist that for anti-abortion purposes.”
Advocates also plan to keep an eye on Aaron Reitz, Trump’s nominee to run the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, which implements departmental policies and advises the attorney general. Reitz currently works as chief of staff to the anti-abortion stalwart Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and previously worked for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who credited Reitz with leading his office’s offensive against the Biden administration. Among his efforts were attempts to block pharmacies’ implementation of a new FDA rule allowing them to directly dispense mifepristone for use in medication abortions. Reitz was so proud of this work that he acknowledged it in his resignation letter to Paxton before departing for Cruz’s office, writing, “Together we’ve protected precious unborn children by defending Texas’s pro-life laws and blocking the Biden Administration’s attempts to undermine the US Supreme Court’s historic Dobbs decision.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary
The Department of Health and Human Services—the government agency that employs more than 80,000 people and oversees the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health, among other offices—has “the most opportunities to enact anti-abortion policies,” according to Katie O’Connor, director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center. (If you have any doubts, consider that Project 2025 recommends it be rebranded as the “Department of Life.”)
Like Trump, Kennedy has been inconsistent on his abortion stances. In 2023, for example, he said he backed a 15-week national abortion ban before subsequently walking that back. His campaign told the Washington Post in November 2023 that he supported codifying Roe v. Wade and maintaining the FDA’s approval of mifepristone—but these were positions he held before Trump named him as his HHS nominee. Since then, abortion opponents have reportedly asked that Kennedy appoint a high-ranking anti-abortion stalwart to HHS and publicly commit during his confirmation hearings to restoring anti-abortion policies within HHS from Trump’s first administration, such as preventing abortion pills from being mailed or distributed at pharmacies and rescinding a Biden-era rule that stipulated HIPAA privacy protections should apply to abortions. (In December, anti-abortion Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) claimed in a post on X that during a private meeting with him, RFK Jr. had committed to those measures and others.) Project 2025 also makes a litany of anti-abortion recommendations for the HHS secretary, including issuing guidance that states can defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans.
But it’s unclear if Kennedy has adequately proven his anti-abortion bona fides to secure confirmation. The Daily Wire first reported on Tuesday that former Vice President Mike Pence’s organization is calling for senators to vote against the RFK Jr. confirmation based on his inconsistent record on the issue. Still, no matter what the final outcome, HHS will be stacked with other leaders who have been far more consistent in their opposition to abortion rights and would likely carry out the long list of Project 2025’s anti-abortion recommendations.
Martin Markary as Food and Drug Administration Commissioner
The head of the FDA, housed within HHS,could lead the agency’s efforts to re-instate the in-person requirement to access abortion pills—which would prevent them from being legally mailed to patients, creating a massive blow to access—and in the longer term revoke FDA approval of the drugs entirely, as Project 2025 recommends. Markary, a surgeon and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has been open about his anti-abortion views. After Dobbs was handed down, Markary joined ex-Fox host Tucker Carlson on-air and described false information about fetuses’ abilities to feel pain in utero, as the Center for Reproductive Rights points out. All this makes it clear why the conservative political advocacy group CatholicVote celebrated Makary as a pro-life pick who could reverse FDA approval of the pills. Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion rights advocacy group, on the other hand, called Makary “a known anti-abortion extremist” after Trump announced his nomination.
It’s worth noting, though, that if Markary did try to roll back the agency’s approval of abortion pills, he would face an immediate legal challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act, which prevents agencies from acting in ways that are “arbitrary or capricious,” according to Rachel Rebouché, reproductive law scholar and dean of Temple Law School. (A spokesperson for the FDA said the agency would not comment on pending litigation or hypotheticals.)
Dave Weldon as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Project 2025 calls for the CDC, also housed within HHS, to require states that receive Medicaid funding to hand over detailed data on how many abortions have been provided, by what method, at what point in pregnancy, and for what reason, along with the pregnant person’s state of residence. Sharing abortion data is currently voluntary for states, but Project 2025 recommends cutting funding to states that refuse to comply. Advocates fear that in Weldon’s hands, the data could be misused to penalize or surveil people who get abortions or doctors who provide them. “The concern here is data being weaponized,” said Karen Stone, vice president of public policy and government relations at Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
As I have written, Weldon has had an openly anti-abortion (and anti-vaccine) record. A former Florida congressman, he’s perhaps best known for an eponymous federal law that prohibits HHS from funding entities that “discriminate” against health care providers, hospitals, or insurance plans that opt out of providing abortion care, which the National Women’s Law Center says the Trump administration used “to penalize state actors that protect abortion access and to deny patients access to critical care” during his first term. Weldon also co-sponsored anti-abortion legislation during his more than a dozen years in Congress, including one bill in 2007—sponsored by then-Indiana Rep. Mike Pence—that sought to bar HHS from providing any Title X family planning funding to entities that provide abortions. (Trump ultimately enacted it during his first term, when Pence was vice president.) A few years earlier, in 2004, Weldon had also supported a bill that proposed $3 million annually to study unsubstantiated links between abortion and depression and psychosis. He has also promoted unsubstantiated links between abortion and breast cancer—views that could affect the research and funding agendas he sets for the CDC.
Mehmet Oz as Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Among other things, CMS, which is an office within HHS, investigates EMTALA complaints that emergency rooms at hospitals that receive Medicare funding in states with abortion restrictions deny abortions to those who need them to stabilize their lives or health. During his failed 2022 Pennsylvania senate campaign against Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.), Oz, a surgeon by training, said that he thinks “local political leaders” should have a say in peoples’ abortion decisions. Project 2025 asserts that “EMTALA requires no abortions” and that HHS should stop investigating hospitals that have failed to comply with the Biden administration’s interpretation of the law. Therefore, it seems unlikely that Oz will prioritize investigating the well-documentedtragedies that unfold when people are denied emergency abortion care.
Russell Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget
The Director of OMB leads the implementation of the president’s policies, regulations, and funding decisions across the federal government. Trump’s pick for the role is Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist and one of the authors of Project 2025, which is full of anti-abortion recommendations. Vought headed the OMB during Trump’s first term. If he’s confirmed, Vought’s power will be vast—and he has made it clear he would wield it to “eliminate [the] central promotion of abortion” across government, which he has called “the most important issue to me.” As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote in a profile of Vought last year, his ambition seems to be to bring his ideology to every nook and cranny of the federal government:
For Vought, politics is downstream from religion. He sees a strong presidency as a way to bring forth a Christian nation. Vought opposes abortion and has referred to transgender identity as a “contagion.” He has suggested migration policy should be rooted in Judeo-Christian principles, with immigrants tested on their readiness to “assimilate.” If Trump wins, Vought wants to infuse the next conservative administration with the values of Christian nationalism—the conviction that the United States is bound to the teachings of Christ, from which all else follows.
“The president’s a pro-life president. I think the country has a good sense of where he is on the issues.”
At Vought’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked him a series of questions on abortion: If he would ensure the Hyde Amendment, which blocks most federal funding for abortion, is applied (it has been for nearly 50 years); if he would support restricting Title X funding for abortion providers, as Trump did in his first term; if he supports federal funding for anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers;and if he supports restricting federal funding for global health organizations from being used to refer or advocate for abortions, as Trump also did in his first term. Vought mostly declined to provide specifics, saying he would not get ahead of the president and that he would follow his lead. But he was clear about the direction he believes Trump will go: “The president’s a pro-life president,” Vought said. “I think the country has a good sense of where he is on the issues.”
Marco Rubio as Secretary of State
The Secretary of State, as the Center for Reproductive Rights notes, plays an important role in implementing the Global Gag rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, which restricts global health organizations that receive US family planning funding from referring or advocating for abortions. On his fourth day in office during his first term, Trump reinstated and drastically expanded the directive so it applied to all of the government’s global health assistance funding, including money that went towards fighting malaria, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) introduced a bill in 2021, and again in 2023, that would repeal the Global Gag Rule, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did not support either measure. Project 2025 recommends that Trump issue executive orders reinstating that rule and blocking funding to the United Nations Population Fund, for which Trump cut funding in his first term, alleging that the entity supported coerced abortions in China. (The UNFPA denied this.) Based on Rubio’s history, it is likely he will be quick to order the implementation of those executive orders once Trump signs them. (Rubio did not appear to be asked about this at his confirmation hearing this week.)
Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Department of Defense
In the fall of 2022, following the Dobbs decision, the Department of Defense announced that it would fund travel costs for service members and their dependents who need to travel for abortion care and in vitro fertilization. Last March, Sabrina Singh, the department’s press secretary, told reporters that the policy was used a dozen times in the last six months of 2023 and that the total cost to the department had been just over $44,700. (It’s not clear how many of those trips or funds were for abortions specifically, or how many service members took the trips, because service members could use the policy more than once, Singh said at the time.)
Trump’s nominee, Pete Hegseth—the ex-Fox host who has been accused of a drinking problem, sexual impropriety, and financial misconduct—openly supported the Dobbs decision. During his confirmation hearing this week, when Sen. Mazie Hirano (D-Hawaii) asked if he would maintain the travel policy, he replied, “I don’t believe the federal government should be funding travel for abortion.”
NOTABLE — Hegseth leaves the door wide open to banning DoD reimbursements for abortion healthcare and says, "I don't believe the federal government should be funding travel for abotion" pic.twitter.com/PZMLehKIQC
Also in the fall of 2022, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it would allow its benefits to cover abortion counseling and abortions when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest or the life or health of the pregnant person is at stake for veterans and their dependents. Advocates praised the new rule when it was finalized last year, noting that as of June 2023, research showed more than half of women veterans of reproductive age lived in states that have banned abortion or were likely to.
But if Collins, a former Georgia congressman who served as a chaplain in the Navy Reserve and Air Force, is confirmed as Secretary of the VA, he will likely rescind this policy, as Project 2025 recommends. Collins has been vocal about his anti-abortion views and has an A+ rating from the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group for supporting various anti-abortion bills in Congress.
