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    Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

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    Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.On race
    If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

    If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

    Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

    If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because affirmative action?
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024
    On debate
    We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.
    – Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

    Prove me wrong.
    – Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.
    On gender, feminism and reproductive rights
    Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
    – Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

    The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.
    – Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

    We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
    On gun violence
    I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
    – Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023
    On immigration
    America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

    The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

    The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024
    On Islam
    America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

    We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025
    On religion
    There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
    – The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022 More

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      Texas bill allowing residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers reaches governor

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      A measure that would allow Texas residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers advanced to the desk of the governor, Greg Abbott, on Wednesday, setting up the state to be the first to try to crack down on the most common abortion method.Supporters say it’s a key tool to enforce the state’s abortion ban, protecting women and fetuses.Opponents see it not only as another way to rein in abortion but as an effort to intimidate abortion providers outside Texas who are complying with the laws in their states – and to encourage a form of vigilantism.If the measure becomes law, it’s nearly certain to spark legal challenges from abortion rights supporters.Under the measure, Texas residents could sue those who manufacture, transport or provide abortion-inducing drugs to anyone in Texas for up to $100,000. Women who receive the pills for their own use would not be liable.Under the bill, providers could be ordered to pay $100,000. But only the pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives could collect the entire amount. Anyone else who sued could receive only $10,000, with the remaining $90,000 going to charity.Lawmakers also added language to address worries that women would be turned in for seeking to end pregnancies by men who raped them or abusive partners. For instance, a man who impregnated a woman through sexual assault would not be eligible.The measure has provisions that bar making public the identity or medical details about a woman who receives the pills.It wasn’t until those provisions were added, along with the limit of a $10,000 payment for people who aren’t themselves injured by the abortion, that several major Texas anti-abortion groups backed the bill.The idea of using citizens rather than government officials to enforce abortion bans is not new in Texas. It was at the heart of a 2021 law that curtailed abortion there months before the US supreme court cleared the way for other state bans to take effect.In the earlier law, citizens could collect $10,000 for bringing a successful lawsuit against a provider or anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion. But that measure didn’t explicitly seek to go after out-of-state providers.Pills are a tricky topic for abortion opponents. They were the most common abortion method in the US even before the 2022 supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans.They’ve become even more widely used since then. Their availability is a key reason that the number of abortions has risen nationally, even though Texas and 11 other states are enforcing bans on abortion in all stages of pregnancy.The pills have continued to flow partly because at least eight Democratic-led states have enacted laws that seek to protect medical providers from legal consequences when they use telehealth to prescribe the pills to women who are in states where abortion is illegal.Anna Rupani, executive director of Fund Texas Choice, said the measure is intended to threaten those out-of-state providers and women in Texas.“This is about the chilling effect,” she said. “This is yet another abortion ban that is allowing the state to control people’s health care lives and reproductive decisions.”Earlier this year, a Texas judge ordered a New York doctor to pay more than $100,000 in penalties for providing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman.The same provider, Dr Maggie Carpenter, faces criminal charges from a Louisiana prosecutor for similar allegations.New York officials are invoking their state’s shield laws to block extradition of Carpenter and to refuse to file the civil judgment.If higher courts side with Louisiana or Texas officials, it could damage the shield laws.Meanwhile, the attorneys general of Texas and Florida are seeking to join Idaho, Kansas and Missouri in an effort to get courts to roll back US Food and Drug Administration approvals for mifepristone, one of the drugs usually used in combination for medication abortions, contending that there are safety concerns. They say it needs tighter controls because of those concerns.If the states are successful, it’s possible the drug could be distributed only in person and not by telehealth.Major medical organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say the drug is safe. More

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      Texas threatens to sue organizations and doctor for increasing abortion pill access

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      The heated US war over abortion pills warmed up another degree on Wednesday, as the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, sent cease-and-desist letters to two organizations and an individual that he accused of mailing abortion pills to Texans or facilitating their shipment. Paxton threatened to sue if they do not stop their alleged activities.“These abortion drug organizations and radical activists are not above the law, and I have ordered the immediate end of this unlawful conduct,” Paxton said in a news release announcing the letters.The state of Texas bans virtually all abortions.Paxton sent the letters to Plan C, a website that provides information about how to obtain abortion pills; Her Safe Harbor, an organization that provides abortions through telemedicine; and Rémy Coeytaux, a doctor who has been accused of mailing abortion pills to a Texan.Debra Lynch, a nurse practitioner who works with Her Safe Harbor, said that Paxton’s letter would not stop the organization from sending abortion pills to people. If anything, Lynch suggested, it would spur the group on.“None of our providers are primarily concerned with our own wellbeing or our own legal status,” Lynch said. “All the horrors that women are facing because of these ridiculous bans and restrictions outweigh anything that could possibly happen to us as providers, in terms of a fine or a lawsuit or even jail time, if it were to come to that.”Lynch said that in the hours after news of Paxton’s letter broke, Her Safe Harbor received more than 150 requests from Texans who were afraid about abortion access and want to obtain pills that they may use in the future. Normally, Her Safe Harbor has around four to five providers taking calls from patients. Now, they plan to have at least 10 working “until this wave of fear subsides”.Neither Plan C nor Coeytaux immediately replied to the Guardian’s request for comment.In the three years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and unleashed a wave of state-level abortion bans, abortions have surged in the United States. This rise is due in large part to the availability of abortion pills and the emergence of “shield laws”, which have been enacted by a handful of blue states and aim to protect abortion providers who mail pills across state lines from out-of-state prosecution.By the end of 2024, clinicians working through shield laws were facilitating an average of 12,330 abortions per month, according to data from #WeCount, a research project by the Society of Family Planning.Enraged by this development, anti-abortion advocates have in recent months stepped up their campaign to crush abortion pill providers. In his cease-and-desist letters, Paxton – a Republican who is running to become a US senator – repeatedly cited the Comstock Act of 1873, an anti-vice law that bans the mailing of abortion-related materials. Although legal experts have long regarded the Comstock Act as a dead letter, several anti-abortion activists now believe that the fall of Roe has left the federal government free to fully enforce the act.Alongside 15 other state attorneys general, Paxton earlier this summer signed onto a letter imploring Congress to pass a law that would pre-empt states’ shield laws. He has also sued a New York-based doctor whom he accused of mailing abortion pills into Texas. Then, after a New York county court official said that the state’s shield law prohibited New York from enforcing a fine against the doctor, Paxton sued the official.Paxton’s cease-and-desist letters also follow similar letters sent by the Arkansas attorney general, Republican Tim Griffin. In July, Griffin sent a cease-and-desist letter to Possibility Labs, the parent company of Plan C, and to Mayday Medicines, the parent company of Mayday Health. Like Plan C, Mayday Health offers information about abortion pills, but does not directly sell them.Other anti-abortion activists are going after abortion providers through other legal avenues. A Texas man who said that Coeytaux supplied abortion pills to aid his female partner’s abortion has also sued Coeytaux in a federal wrongful death lawsuit. The man is being represented in court by Jonathan Mitchell, an anti-abortion attorney who masterminded a six-week abortion ban that took effect in Texas in 2021.Last week, Mitchell filed another federal wrongful death lawsuit against a different abortion provider. More

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      Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control | Moira Donegan

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      There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it.The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called “department of government efficiency,” or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women’s health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have.When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn’t afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them.It’s just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women’s advancement in work and education over the past 60 years.In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low-income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were “temporarily withheld”, mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions – including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates – had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding.The domestic cuts – along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live.But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women’s health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women’s lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an “infertility training center” and programs in something called “restorative reproductive medicine”. If Title X’s original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims – like learning or work – in the new administration’s version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration’s new priority of “restorative” reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the “root cause” of a woman’s infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise.In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women’s health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Judge orders Trump administration to continue Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood

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      The Trump administration must continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood clinics for Medicaid-funded services, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in an escalating legal war between the reproductive health giant and the White House over Republican efforts to “defund” Planned Parenthood.Days after Donald Trump signed his sweeping tax bill, Planned Parenthood sued over a provision in the bill that ended Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023, such as Planned Parenthood. The new court order, from US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston, will protect Medicaid funding for all Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide while litigation in the case continues.The order also replaces and expands a previous edict handed down by Talwani, which initially granted a preliminary injunction specifically blocking the government from cutting Medicaid payments only to Planned Parenthood affiliates that did not provide abortions or did not receive at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order.“In particular, restricting members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”More than 80 million people rely on Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people.It is already illegal to use Medicaid to pay for most abortions, but Planned Parenthood clinics – which treat a disproportionate number of people who use Medicaid – rely on the program to reimburse it for services such as birth control, STI tests and cancer screenings.In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood had argued that it would be at risk of closing nearly 200 clinics in 24 states if it is cut off from Medicaid funds. These closures would probably be felt most strongly in blue states, since they are home to larger numbers of people who use Medicaid. A Planned Parenthood affiliate in California has already been forced to close five clinics as a result of the “defunding” provision.Planned Parenthood estimated that, in all, more than 1 million patients could lose care.“We will keep fighting this cruel law so that everyone can get birth control, STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings and other critical healthcare, no matter their insurance,” the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said in a statement after the Monday ruling.Planned Parenthood is battling overwhelming political and economic headwinds. Even if it prevails against the Trump administration, its affiliates could still be removed from Medicaid in red states, thanks to a June decision by the US supreme court in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program.  On Monday, the state of Missouri also sued the Planned Parenthood Federation of America – the mothership organization that knits together Planned Parenthood’s network of regional affiliates – over accusations that the organization downplayed the medical risks of a common abortion pill, mifepristone, “to cut costs and boost revenue”. The lawsuit, which asks for more than $1m in damages, is part of an ongoing campaign by anti-abortion activists to cut off access to mifepristone.More than 100 studies, conducted across dozens of countries and over more than three decades, have concluded that mifepristone is a safe way to end a pregnancy.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Republicans wanted fewer abortions and more births. They are getting the opposite | Judith Levine

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      Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the US supreme court case that rescinded the constitutional right to abortion, is failing on its own terms. Since the ruling, in June 2022, the number of abortions in the US has risen. Support for reproductive rights is on the upswing. And the rate of voluntary sterilization among young women – a repudiation of Trumpian pronatalism, if a desperate one – jumped abruptly after Dobbs, and there’s no reason to believe it will drop off.Also rising at an alarming clip are preventable maternal deaths and criminal prosecutions of pregnant people.Yet the 21 state legislatures that have imposed total or near-total bans are doing little or nothing to give doctors legal leeway to save the health and lives of pregnant women in medical distress, even if that means inducing abortion. In fact, rather than trying to save lives, they are prosecuting pregnant people who handle those emergencies on their own.The first three – more abortions, more pro-abortion sentiment, more contraception –have frustrated the anti-abortion crowd no end. They know they need stronger disincentives to abortion.Which brings us to the latter two: more punishment and more death. Was punishment the aim all along? And has the anti-abortion movement accepted pregnant people’s deaths as an unfortunate consequence of saving the pre-born?According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions rose 1.5% in 2024 from 2023, on top of a 11.1% leap in the first year after Dobbs, compared with 2020, before the near-bans enacted in several states that presaged the ruling.It’s also probably an undercount. The statistics include only “clinician-provided abortions”, either surgical or medical (using abortion pills), performed in healthcare facilities or via telemedicine. Guttmacher does not estimate how many abortions are happening outside the formal healthcare system, with drugs obtained directly from suppliers or through feminist underground networks.Indeed, Plan C, the country’s biggest clearinghouse for pill access, reports 2m visits to its website and 500,000 click-throughs to resources and care in 2024, a 25% increase from the year before. How many of those people ended their pregnancies at home, with only a friend or lover in attendance? Anecdotal evidence gleaned from activists suggests they number in the tens of thousands.At the same time, rather than making abortion “unthinkable”, as the anti-abortion activists pledge, the bans may be having the opposite effect. An analysis of two restrictive states, Arizona and Wisconsin, and one with broad access, New Jersey, found that negative attitudes toward abortion are down and positive ones up, in both red and blue states.And if the goal of banning abortion is to produce more children, that’s not working either. Public health researchers saw “an abrupt increase in permanent contraception procedures” – sterilization – following Dobbs among adults in their prime reproductive years, ages 18 to 30. Unsurprisingly, the increase in procedures for women (tubal ligations) was twice that for men (vasectomies).The Trump administration is cheerleading for procreation. “I want more babies in the United States of America,” declared JD Vance in his first public appearance as vice-president, at the March for Life in Washington. He blamed the declining birth rate on “a culture of abortion on demand” and the failure “to help young parents achieve the ingredients they need to lead a happy and meaningful life”. The federal budget extends some of that help. It raises the annual child tax credit (CTC) from $2,000 to $2,200. It also creates “Trump accounts”, $1,000 per child, which parents or employers can add to.But only those with social security numbers are eligible for either program; the tax credit is available only to people who earn enough to pay taxes; and as with any investment, those able to sow more in the savings accounts reap more. It’s clear what sort of baby the administration wishes to be born: white babies with “American” parents, and not the poorest.The carrots are not appetizing enough. The stick is not effective enough. So red-state legislators and prosecutors are ramping up the punitive approach.This year, Republican lawmakers in at least 10 states introduced bills defining abortion as homicide, and, for the first time, criminalizing both the provider and the patient.No such bill has passed – yet – and anti-abortion organizations are usually quick to renounce them publicly, nervous about widespread opposition. But their passage might not be far off. The bills are based on fetal personhood – the concept of conferring full legal rights to a fetus from conception forward. The idea was introduced in 1884 and finally written into one state’s law in 1986. By 2024, 39 states had fetal homicide laws. Last year, there were three bills criminalizing the person who has an abortion; now there are 10. And though the federal courts rejected fetal personhood for a century, it is the bedrock of anti-abortion politics, and this US supreme court is looking much more friendly toward it.While they work toward straightforward criminalization of ending one’s own pregnancy, anti-abortion lawmakers and prosecutors are making creative use of existing law to punish miscarriage, an event indistinguishable from elective abortion, just in case the pregnant person induced the miscarriage. The most ghoulish is the prohibition on abusing corpses.For instance: last week a 31-year-old South Carolina woman who miscarried and disposed of the tissue in the trash was arrested for “desecration of human remains”, a crime carrying a 10-year sentence. In March, a woman found bleeding outside her Georgia apartment after a miscarriage was jailed for “concealing the death of another person” and “abandonment of a dead body” for placing the remains in the bin. A week before that, a Pennsylvania teenager was under investigation for corpse abuse after a self-managed pill abortion and burial of the fetus in her yard.In a grim sense, these are the lucky ones: they survived. Because Dobbs has indisputably been deadly.“Mothers living in states that banned abortion were nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth” as mothers living in states where abortion was legal and accessible, reports the Gender Equity Policy Institute. Maternal mortality rose 56% in Texas after it enacted a six-week ban; a Texan’s risk was one and a half times that of a Californian’s.The future isn’t sunny. A study of 14 total-ban states predicts that in the four years beginning a year after Dobbs, up to 42 mothers will die and as many as 2,700 will be afflicted with “severe maternal morbidity”, defined by the CDC as “unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short-term or long-term [health] consequences”. In one analysis Black women represented 63% of the deaths.The anti-abortion movement is indefatigable. “We abolishioners will not rest until we have effected the abolishment of human abortion,” one leader told Oklahoma Voice. But this is an unattainable grail. Where abortion is illegal, people still have abortions. They just take more risks. Globally, more than 39,000 women die yearly from unsafe abortions.As they run out of options, red-state lawmakers will harden criminal penalties against people who refuse to give up their reproductive self-determination. It may grow less outré to endorse Trump’s opinion, expressed in an unguarded moment, that women who get illegal abortions “deserve some form of punishment”. Whether intentional or not, the sentence for some of those women will be death.

      Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

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      Planned Parenthood sues Trump administration over funding cuts in big bill

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      Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration on Monday over a provision in Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill that would strip funding from health centers operated by the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider.In a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Planned Parenthood said the provision was unconstitutional, and its clear purpose is to prevent its nearly 600 health centers from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.Planned Parenthood said that would have “catastrophic consequences”, given that the health centers serve more than 1 million patients annually through Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people. More than 80 million people use Medicaid.“The true design of the Defund Provision is simply to express disapproval of, attack, and punish Planned Parenthood, which plays a particularly prominent role in the public debate over abortion,” Planned Parenthood said in its lawsuit.The lawsuit continued: “Stripping away this patient volume and reimbursements for care provided will result in the elimination of services, laying off staff and health center closures. The public health consequences for Medicaid patients and non-Medicaid patients alike will be dire and compounding.”The organization has estimated that the defunding could force roughly 200 Planned Parenthood clinics to shutter. Blue states, which are home to more people on Medicaid, would probably see a disproportionate number of closures.Since it is illegal to use Medicaid to pay for most abortions, Planned Parenthood clinics rely on the insurance program to reimburse them for providing services like birth control, STI tests and cancer screenings. But if blue-state clinics are forced to close, people will no longer be able to seek abortions at those clinics – a possibility that has led some abortion rights supporters, including Planned Parenthood, to call the Trump bill’s provision a “backdoor abortion ban”. Planned Parenthood provides an estimated 38% of US abortions.“We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, told the Guardian last week. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit asks the courts to declare the Trump bill’s provision unconstitutional on numerous grounds, or to at least preserve Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that do not provide abortions. The reproductive health giant suggests in the lawsuit that Congress did not understand its structure when it passed the provision. The Planned Parenthood technically consists of a mothership group, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and nearly 50 regional affiliate groups that operate as independent entities.Medicaid is overseen by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. That agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Planned Parenthood is being buffeted by intense financial headwinds. This spring, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars earmarked for family planning providers who participate in Title X, the nation’s largest family planning program. Although several of those providers have since had their funding restored, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson said last week their affiliates had not received funding.The US supreme court also ruled in late June in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program. Red states may see that ruling as a blessing to their own efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.Even if Planned Parenthood’s Monday lawsuit succeeds, the organization will probably have to grapple with the consequences of that supreme court ruling for years to come. More

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      Planned Parenthood CEO warns Trump bill will lead to $700m loss and ‘backdoor abortion ban’

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      Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.“We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Anti-abortion activists have longed to “defund” Planned Parenthood for decades. They are closer than ever to achieving their goal.That $700m figure represents the loss that Planned Parenthood would face from a provision in the spending bill that would impose a one-year Medicaid ban on healthcare non-profits that offer abortions and that received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023, as well as the funding that Planned Parenthood could lose from Title X, the nation’s largest family-planning program. In late March, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars of Title X funding that had been set aside for some Planned Parenthood and other family-planning clinics.“Essentially what you are seeing is a gutting of a safety net,” said McGill Johnson, who characterized the bill as a “backdoor abortion ban” in a statement.Medicaid is the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, and about 80 million people use it. If the latest version of the spending-and-tax bill passes, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage.Donald Trump has said that he would like the bill to be on his desk, ready for a signature, by 4 July.The provision attacking Planned Parenthood would primarily target clinics in blue states that have protected abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade three years ago, because those blue states have larger numbers of people on Medicaid. Although not all Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions, the reproductive healthcare giant provides 38% of US abortions, according to the latest data from Abortion Care Network, a membership group for independent abortion clinics.Among the clinics at risk of closure, Planned Parenthood estimated, more than 90% are in states that permit abortion. Sixty percent are located in areas that have been deemed “medically underserved”.In total, more than 1.1 million Planned Parenthood patients could lose access to care.“There’s nowhere else for folks” to go, McGill Johnson said. “The community health centers have said they cannot absorb the patients that Planned Parenthood sees. So I think that we do need to just call it a targeted attack because that’s exactly how it is.”Nationally, 11% of female Medicaid beneficiaries between the ages of 15 and 49 and who receive family-planning services go to Planned Parenthood for a range of services, according to an analysis by the non-profit KFF, which tracks healthcare policy. Those numbers rise in blue states like Washington, Oregon and Connecticut.In California, that number soars to 29%. The impact on the state would be so devastating that Nichole Ramirez, senior vice-president of communication and donor relations at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties, called the tax-and-spending package’s provision “a direct attack on us, really”.“They haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion nationwide and they haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion in California specifically,” said Ramirez, who estimated that Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties stands to lose between $40m and $60m. Ramirez continued: “This is their way to go about banning abortion. That is the entire goal here.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on X, the prominent anti-abortion group Live Action reposted an image of a Planned Parenthood graphic calling the provision “backdoor abortion ban”. “They might be onto us,” Live Action wrote.The Planned Parenthood network is overseen by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, but it also consists of dozens of independent regional affiliates that operate nearly 600 clinics across the country. In June, as the spending-and-tax bill moved through Congress, Autonomy News, an outlet that focuses on threats to bodily autonomy, reported that Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s accreditation board had sent waivers out to affiliates to apply for approval to cease providing abortions in order to preserve access to Medicaid funding. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a memo sent to the leadership of one California affiliate suggests that leaders there had considered ending abortion services.McGill Johnson said that there have been discussions within Planned Parenthood’s network about what it would mean to stop offering abortions. But no affiliates, to her knowledge, are moving forward with plans to stop performing the procedure.“Educating our volunteers and teams around hard decisions to stand and understand the impact of that is different than weighing and considering a stoppage of abortion,” McGill Johnson said.The budget bill and Title X funding freeze aren’t the only sources of pressure on the group. The US supreme court last week ruled in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program – a ruling that will likely give a green light to other states that also want to defund Planned Parenthood.At least one other organization that provides abortion and family-planning services, Maine Family Planning, will be affected by the provision, according to the organization’s CEO, George Hill. Maine Family Planning directly operates 18 clinics, including several that provide primary care or are in rural, medically underserved areas. If the provision takes effect, Hill estimates, the organization would lose 20% of its operating budget.“It’s dressed up as a budget provision, but it’s not,” Hill said. “They’re basically taking the rug out from under our feet.” More

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      US supreme court to hear case involving anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center

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      The US supreme court agreed on Monday to consider reviving a New Jersey anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center operator’s bid to block the Democratic-led state’s attorney general from investigating whether it deceived women into believing it offered abortions.The justices took up an appeal by First Choice Women’s Resource Centers of a lower court’s ruling that the Christian faith-based organization must first contest Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s subpoena in state court before bringing a federal lawsuit challenging it.The justices are expected to hear the case in their next term, which begins in October.Crisis pregnancy centers provide services to pregnant women with the goal of preventing them from having abortions. Such centers do not advertise their anti-abortion stance, and abortion rights advocates have called them deceptive. The case provides a test of the ability of state authorities to regulate these businesses.First Choice, which has five locations in New Jersey, has argued that it has a right to bring its case in federal court because it was alleging a violation of its federal rights to free speech and free association under the first amendment of the US constitution. First Choice is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has brought other cases on behalf of anti-abortion plaintiffs including an effort to restrict distribution of the abortion pill that has since been taken over by Republican states.New Jersey is targeting First Choice because of its views, Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Erin Hawley said.“We are looking forward to presenting our case to the supreme court and urging it to hold that First Choice has the same right to federal court as any other civil rights plaintiff,” Hawley said in a statement.Platkin said that his office may investigate to ensure nonprofits are not deceiving residents and that First Choice has for years refused to answer questions about “potential misrepresentations they have been making, including about reproductive healthcare”.“First Choice is looking for a special exception from the usual procedural rules as it tries to avoid complying with an entirely lawful state subpoena, something the US Constitution does not permit it to do. No industry is entitled to that type of special treatment – period,” Platkin added.First Choice sued Platkin in New Jersey federal court in 2023 after the attorney general issued a subpoena seeking internal records including the names of its doctors and donors as part of an investigation into potentially unlawful practices. First Choice argued that there was no good cause for the subpoena, which it said chilled its first amendment rights.Platkin moved to enforce the subpoena in state court. Essex county superior court Judge Lisa Adubato granted that motion, finding that First Choice had not shown that the subpoena should be quashed at the outset of the investigation, but ordered the parties to negotiate a narrower subpoena and said that the constitutional issues could be litigated further going forward.The US district judge Michael Shipp then dismissed the federal case, finding that First Choice’s federal claim was not ripe because it could continue to make its constitutional claims in the state court and did not face any immediate threat of contempt.The Philadelphia-based third circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling in December 2024 upheld Shipp’s ruling, prompting First Choice to appeal to the justices.In asking the supreme court to hear the case, First Choice argued that federal civil rights law is intended to guarantee parties a federal forum to assert their constitutional rights. It said that forcing it to litigate in state court would effectively deny it that forum, since the constitutional claims would be decided before a federal court could ever hear them.Crisis pregnancy centers have also drawn the attention of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who in 2024 sued 11 centers for advertising abortion pill reversal, a treatment whose safety and effectiveness is unproven. That case remains pending. Several New York crisis pregnancy centers sued James and in August won an order allowing them to continue touting abortion pill reversal. More