(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Creative Commons, Shutterstock)

Leesburg, Virginia
One of the major subplots in American politics over the past half-decade is evangelical Christians—the political constituency without which Trump would have never been elected president—becoming the dog that caught the car. They just haven’t had much reason to go to the polls since June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned the legal right to an abortion in its landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

The Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit was once a marquee political gathering for evangelicals and their allies in politics. But at this year’s event in Leesburg, Virginia, decline was evident everywhere, from the downsized venue far outside the Beltway to the sparse attendance and general lack of interest from elected officials. When the organization’s leader, Tony Perkins, addressed the audience, it became clear that he has been relegated to the D.C. sidelines after enjoying years of high-contact play as a leader in the anti-abortion movement.

Perkins’s position had once made him something of an evangelical kingmaker. But those who followed his lead in earlier times now largely get their information and political impetus from a shrinking number of online channels or from Trump himself. Perkins’s voice doesn’t resonate the way it once did with conservative audiences. This became clear from watching the crowd while he spoke.

Perkins’s remarks hit on one theme repeatedly: Notwithstanding the Dobbs decision, the right-to-life fight is not over. He supported this point with a real statistic: There are more abortions taking place in Trump’s America—including in deep red states—than in the years immediately preceding the overturning of Roe.

“Mailboxes across America have been turned into the instruments of abortion,” Perkins said, referring to abortion pills like mifepristone that can be delivered by mail. “As a result, we have more abortions today than before the overturn of Roe v. Wade—about a 21 percent increase in the number of abortions since 2020.”

“Many of you come from pro-life states. I’m from a pro-life state in Louisiana. It doesn’t matter,” he added. “We now have more abortions in Louisiana than before Roe [was overturned] because of this abortion pill.”

Each time he mentioned higher rates of abortion following the overturning of Roe, attendees shook their heads in disbelief. Utterances could be heard throughout the crowd of “My God” and “That can’t be.”

Perkins placed the primary blame for this situation on former President Joe Biden rather than Trump, citing the Biden administration’s rule change to allow abortion pills to be sent to private addresses through the United States Postal Service, sidestepping the need to go to a clinic to end a pregnancy, including in states that used the Dobbs decision as a license to ban abortion outright.

But Perkins’s beef isn’t just with Biden. Throughout the event, he expressed frustration with the Trump administration for a lack of interest in addressing abortion rates, and with Congress for claiming to be pro-life while showing little follow-through.

“It’s been kept in place by the Trump administration,” Perkins said of the FDA decision to allow mifepristone to be shipped by mail. “It has allowed the abortion industry to adopt an Amazon model for business.”

Perkins frequently noted ways in which “the Republican party has lost its voice on this issue,” citing the GOP’s removal of support for a nationwide abortion ban from its official platform in 2024.

“We’re fighting for this life issue that many people thought was solved in 2022 when the Court overturned Roe, but it’s more of a battle today than it was then,” Perkins said, adding that conservatives “have an administration that’s not as committed to it as we’ve seen before.”

Perkins and other evangelical leaders are hardly alone in feeling dissatisfied with Trump’s second term. Everyone from Big Oil executives to his most die-hard rallygoers has expressed doubt about whether the president’s priorities are in line with the country’s needs. And that sentiment has become predominant among the American public, according to recent polling.

Despite the lackluster attendance and smaller venue for its flagship conference, the Family Research Council isn’t short on cash. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with substantial annual revenue, FRC is obligated to file 990 tax returns, which are public documents; the organization’s filings show that its revenue has been steady since the Dobbs decision. But its big event, previously called the “Values Voter Summit,” no longer takes place at Washington’s swanky Omni Shoreham hotel in Woodley Park, where it convened annually for many years. This year’s summit was held instead at Cornerstone Chapel, an evangelical Christian church in Leesburg, Virginia, about an hour outside D.C.1

The venue was no longer welcoming reporters from across the media spectrum, either, although not necessarily because it didn’t want them. While there, I did not recognize another reporter from the political beat, and when I checked in at registration, the bin carrying envelopes of preregistered press credentials was half empty.

Government officials once flocked to these FRC conferences, but their interest has fallen way off. One easy way to gauge this was by following promotional releases for the event over the summer.

In the months leading up to the event, confirmed speakers included members of the House and Senate and the Trump administration, including at least one cabinet official. By Thursday, the roster of current federal officeholders slated to make in-person appearances had shrunk to just Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who appeared alongside his wife, Erin. Coincidentally, Erin Hawley works for Alliance Defending Freedom, a primary sponsor of the summit.

House Speaker Mike Johnson moved from confirmed speaker, to no longer on the roster, to appearing via Zoom on the final day. Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) all appeared on the confirmed speakers list at one point or another, but none was on the final roster. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who is struggling through a surprisingly tight race this November (ironically, facing a Democratic nominee who pastors a megachurch), also dropped off the confirmed speakers list at some point this summer.

Scott Turner, the secretary of housing and urban development, disappeared from the list as well. The only representation from the Trump administration came from the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist pastor, who called in via Zoom early Saturday morning.

The Pray Vote Stand Summit felt more like a social gathering than a serious political event. But that’s just how the pro-life movement works under Trump 2.0. Having caught the car, it is still slowly realizing that no one was ever going to let it drive.

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The House has left, and having left, it’s also left the Senate out to dry. When House Speaker Mike Johnson abruptly canceled votes last week to avoid a required vote on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s impeachment, the Senate stuck around to make some last-minute gestures.

Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), who is struggling to gain his footing in a hard race against the recently ousted former Sen. Sherrod Brown, is set to receive a consolation vote on his Ratepayer Protection Act, which could prove useful for messaging purposes during the final round of local television advertisements in his race.

While Husted’s bill already passed in the House in a sweeping bipartisan vote, the Senate is poised to advance it only through a procedural vote, not full passage, HuffPost noted Monday.

In addition, the Senate on Monday evening passed Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) College Sports Act. Cruz told Sports Illustrated that he believes Johnson will call the House back into session to move it over the finish line, with the aim of providing Trump with a spectacular signing ceremony live on ESPN’s College GameDay.

Don’t count on that. Lawmakers have pleaded with Johnson to come back into session to pass far more popular legislation that vulnerable Republicans can run on in the final stretch of the campaign.

“I texted him yesterday and put the extra pressure on. I think we should be in Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) said during a press conference over the weekend. “I think it was a mistake for them to cancel session. Every option should be on the table and we should be in Washington working to provide that relief right now and I stand ready to jump on a plane as soon as they make that decision.”

Johnson, meanwhile, is embarking on a tour of nearly two dozen states to make the case in person that the 119th Congress has already been one of the most successful of all time. (Good luck with that, Mike.)

The House and Senate don’t like to work in tandem unless it’s absolutely necessary for them to do so to pass landmark legislation or during electoral off-years when they have a lot more time to actually do their jobs. Besides, Johnson knows what’s waiting for him if he reconvenes the House. So don’t expect a sudden return to session.

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President Trump on Tuesday unveiled a new AI assistant intended to provide a one-stop information shop for anyone with questions about anything within the federal government’s purview. But based on a bit of honest questioning from me and my Bulwark colleagues, the bot appears to be dispensing information that directly contradicts President Donald Trump’s preferred versions of reality.

Here’s the no-brainer I started with:

(1) Who won the 2020 election?

The chatbot answered correctly, and it didn’t even dog up its answer with the technical copouts that so many of Trump’s nominees use when asked the same question under oath (they will often say that Joe Biden was merely “certified” as the election winner and “sworn in” as president, but refuse to say that Biden “won” outright).

On to another:

(2) How many times has Donald Trump been impeached?

The correct answer is two, despite MAGA lawmakers’ attempts to “expunge” the impeachments from . . . well, just, ah, to “expunge” them in some general sense. (I don’t think the sponsor of that bill knew what he meant exactly, either.)

Another:

(3) Is Donald Trump a felon?

He is indeed a felon. Good job, computer. Next:

(4) Has inflation increased or decreased since President Trump took office in 2025?

Trump seems to think prices are way down. I’m glad that his AI chatbot is able to link users to the real data. Here comes a good one:

(5) Are pocket rescissions illegal?

The issue is a timely one: The Trump administration recently moved to block more than $800 million in appropriated funds through a practice called pocket rescissions. Members of Congress are nervously dancing around the question of whether this is allowed, suggesting it will be litigated in the courts. The America.gov chatbot offers a pretty clear position on whether it is permitted. But it shouldn’t take a “super intelligence” to arrive at common-sense positions with reference to simple public facts.

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