Justice Department

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating an “anti-Catholic law” in Washington state that threatens priests with up to one year in jail if they fail to report child abuse they learn about during the sacrament of confession.

The Catholic Church announced that priests will be excommunicated if they follow a new Washington state law requiring clergy to report confessions about child abuse to law enforcement.

"Catholic clergy may not violate the seal of confession — or they will be excommunicated from the Church," the Archdiocese of Seattle said in a statement. "All Catholics must know and be assured that their confessions remain sacred, secure, confidential and protected by the law of the Church."

"The Catholic Church agrees with the goal of protecting children...

The Catholic Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington state: Any priest who complies with a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated.

The new law, which will take effect on July 27, eliminates the long-standing confidentiality of the confessional, forcing Catholic leaders and lawmakers into a highly charged standoff over religious liberty and child protection.

The Catholic Church and federal government reacted vehemently to new legislation in Washington state that requires priests to report child abuse or neglect to law enforcement after learning about the crime through confessions. 

Gov. Mike Ferguson signed the controversial bill into law last week, making it mandatory for all clergy to report child abuse, without exemptions for information disclosed during confession. Confessions were previously considered privileged...

It is generally a bad idea to get in the government’s crosshairs. After all, the Justice Department has powerful tools at its disposal — among them, the vast machinery of federal law enforcement and the ability to gather information that literally no one else can legally obtain. These are just some of the reasons why the government has a roughly 95 percent conviction rate in criminal cases.

But the Justice Department’s most potent asset is the credibility of its lawyers.

President Donald Trump signed a sweeping execution order Monday on the death penalty that directs the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to ensure that states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out executions.

Trump’s order, coming just hours after he returned to the White House, compels the Justice Department to not only seek the death penalty in appropriate federal cases but also to help preserve capital punishment in states that have struggled to maintain adequate supplies of lethal injection drugs...

Have all the people who “disapprove” of President Donald Trump considered that if he weren’t president, there’s a good chance they would have died in the past 100 days?

This is the message from the Justice Department, as Attorney General Pam Bondi has spent the week sharing some remarkable statistics.

The Justice Department's division tasked with enforcing the nation's federal civil rights laws has recently seen a mass exodus of "over 100" attorneys, the newly confirmed official leading the division said in an interview this week.

The Trump administration has shifted staff and undertaken a series of policy changes at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division that current and former staff say strike at the heart of its mission.

Justice Department leadership has in recent weeks directed attorneys to focus on priorities laid out in executive orders from President Trump, such as “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” and “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.”

It’s a departure for a division that under former President Biden...

After the Biden administration spent four years “weaponizing” her division, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon says that she needs more “energized attorneys” to help her spearhead new initiatives to protect rights that have been trampled on in the past years.