Trump Plots Massive Freeze on Planned Parenthood Funding
The Wall Street Journal reports that $120 million in funds set to go to organizations like Planned Parenthood this year is on hold, citing unnamed sources. Pregnancy testing, providing contraception, treating sexually transmitted infections, and infertility evaluation and counseling are among the services threatened by the freeze.
The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing recipients of the grants to comply with President Trump's executive orders prohibiting the funding of anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, a spokesperson for the agency said. The funds are distributed under HHS's Title X program, and $120 million amounts to about half of the funds available to the program for this year.
Under the program, about four million people receive free or reduced services at a network of about 4,000 clinics. Planned Parenthood clinics in about a dozen states would have received $20 million under the program. HHS could fully rescind those grants or redistribute them.
'The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they'll end people's access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it,' Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the Journal.
Conservatives have long fought to defund Planned Parenthood due to its abortion advocacy, despite no federal funds being used for the health procedure given that federal law already prohibits taxpayer funds from going to abortions. Vice President JD Vance said during the 2024 presidential campaign that Trump would halt funding for the organization if elected, and it looks like this is an early attempt to begin that process.
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San Francisco Chronicle
25 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump administration eyes California for new oil and gas drilling — including Bay Area
The Trump administration has taken a first step toward opening more of California for oil and gas development, launching reviews of potential extraction in such mineral strongholds as Kern County as well as in less explored places like the Bay Area. The federal government hasn't issued a drilling lease in California for years, largely because of environmental hurdles. While oil and gas wells still operate under older leases in parts of the state, officials say their new reviews will address the standstill and could clear the way for fossil fuel companies to operate on additional federal lands. They say there's the possibility for hundreds of new wells in the state. The move follows the president's directive to 'unleash' more of the nation's energy reserves. President Donald Trump has said oil and gas development will reduce gasoline prices and electricity bills and boost the economy. California, however, has generally been averse to greater fossil fuel production. The state has increasingly turned to alternative power sources to divorce itself from the problems of oil and gas, which include driving health-harming pollution and climate change as well as disturbing public lands and wildlife. The Sierra Club called the administration's latest actions in the state a 'massive drilling expansion (that) would be a huge loss to Californians.' The places that the federal government is reviewing — and eventually could be leased for oil and gas operations — are specifically lands and underground mineral deposits administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Bakersfield and Central Coast offices. This includes 684,000 acres of land and 959,000 acres of subsurface mineral estate sprinkled across 17 counties, from Contra Costa County in the north to Ventura County in the south. Much of the acreage is in the Central Valley's Kern County, where the Midway-Sunset oil field stands as one of the largest drilling sites in the nation. North of Monterey and San Benito counties, federal property and fossil fuel deposits are far less common, yet pockets exist in Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Officials at the Bureau of Land Management declined a request for interview about their plans, but they said in an email that 'completion of (their) efforts could allow the BLM to resume oil and gas leasing … which in turn may provide for additional economic growth and jobs … as well as revenue generated from oil and gas production.' Supporters of the industry, particularly those in the oil-bearing reaches of the southern San Joaquin Valley, cheered the agency's actions. 'With my advocacy, this important and needed move by the Bureau of Land Management is a strong step toward restoring California's oil production, lowering costs for families, reducing our reliance on foreign sources of energy … and protecting good-paying jobs,' said Rep. Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, in a statement. While California was once one of the top oil-extracting states in the nation, production has waned in recent decades, though the state is still among the top 10. Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for phasing out oil drilling entirely by 2045. Environmental and social justice groups oppose the Bureau of Land Management's plans, saying they will stymie the state's progress toward a greener future. 'It's unclear to what extent the floodgates will open,' said Michelle Ghafar, senior attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal organization that has fought oil and gas development in California. 'But this means new drilling can happen. This moves the state in the exact opposite direction it needs to go.' While the lands that the Bureau of Land Management administers are far-reaching, fossil fuel companies have historically been interested primarily in obtaining leases near existing drill sites, where the necessary infrastructure exists. Isolated plots of oil and gas can be expensive to access, and drilling at these sites can generate public outcry, industry experts say. This makes places like the Bay Area less attractive for new wells. Fossil fuel companies, even after obtaining a lease, must also obtain a permit to drill, which often means further public input alongside additional federal and state environmental reviews and approvals. The Bureau of Land Management, in its notice on the Federal Register last month, estimates that new leases could result in the development of 10 to 40 oil and gas wells per year in the Bakersfield area and 37 new oil and gas wells over two decades in its Central Coast region, which includes parts of the Bay Area. A series of lawsuits filed by Earthjustice and other environmental groups over the past 12 years essentially stopped the leasing of California's federal lands for drilling. The litigants successfully challenged the Bureau of Land Management for not adequately studying impacts of fossil fuel extraction. The legal fight spanned multiple presidential administrations, though environmental groups say the Trump administration appears more eager to confront the issue and get on with opening new areas to oil and gas development. Agreements reached between the warring parties in 2022 call for more extensive evaluations of federal lands before any future leases can be issued. In late June, five months after Trump returned to office, his administration announced that it was beginning the required reviews. 'We weren't surprised to see how quickly they moved to get this done when they came back,' Ghafar said. The Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comments through July 23 on what to include in its reviews. The agency's Bakersfield office expects to complete its review for eight counties later this year and finalize plans for potential leasing next year. The Central Coast office hopes to complete its review of 10 counties, including one split with the Bakersfield office, next year and submit final plans in 2027. Once the plans are done, and assuming leasing resumes, federal officials are expected to have an easier time permitting new wells because of regulatory rollbacks being advanced by the Trump administration. The rollbacks also apply to new well permits on existing leases. Additionally, the U.S. Interior Department last month rescinded a 2012 memorandum of understanding between the Bureau of Land Management and the state of California that called for sharing regulatory responsibilities on federal lands. Both the state and Bureau of Land Management declined to discuss the MOU's termination, but it's widely viewed as a show of the federal government's interest in taking over, and speeding up, the permit process for wells. State environmental laws remain in place, no matter what agency handles the permitting, though it's unclear to what extent the Bureau of Land Management would conform to state policies. 'Permits have just lingered,' said Rock Zierman, CEO of the California Independent Petroleum Association, a leading trade group, which supported the Interior Department's decision to rescind the MOU. 'BLM is saying we need the BLM to take over permitting on federal lands.' Zierman and other backers of fossil fuels see recent momentum for the industry. Newsom has been looking for ways to prevent oil refineries from shutting down after two facilities announced impending closures. The California Energy Commission, responding to the governor, offered recommendations last month that include permitting new wells. While Newsom has been a champion of cuts to oil and gas, he's tempered his opposition with calls for a gradual transition to cleaner energy, hoping to limit upheaval to prices, jobs and businesses in the fossil fuel sector. Still, the number of permits issued for new wells has fallen significantly over the past few years, notably on state and private lands where most of California's extraction occurs. Environmental and social justice groups say they want to make sure this trend doesn't cease on federal lands. 'We are really urging BLM not to allow any new land disturbance,' said Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law program. 'They do have that power to put constraints on what they do with the land. 'But under the Trump administration,' she said, 'that seems unlikely.'
San Francisco Chronicle
39 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
How the nation's first Asian American legal organization in S.F. is taking on Trump
The Asian Law Caucus office on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco sits a few blocks from where Wong Kim Ark — the man whose Supreme Court case cemented birthright citizenship for people born to foreign parents in the U.S. — grew up in the late 19th century. Arriving at the corner building, not far from Wong's childhood home in Chinatown, visitors — often immigrants seeking free legal services — will find a laminated sign on its office doors saying that federal immigration officers are prohibited from stepping inside the property. The Asian Law Caucus has long served clients from across the country. But the decades-old Bay Area organization now finds itself at the heart of the ongoing battle to protect birthright citizenship from an unprecedented challenge by the Trump administration as the fate of countless immigrant families hangs in the balance. In 1895, as a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment spread across the country, Wong, who was born in the U.S., returned to San Francisco from a trip to China. Upon arrival, he was immediately detained by customs officials who claimed he was not a U.S. citizen because his parents were Chinese. Wong was detained for four months on a steamship. But after his release, he and his attorneys from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association challenged the government's attempt to deny him citizenship. The legal battle eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in Wong's favor after about three years of litigation. And for the next 126 years, that decision enshrined birthright citizenship to anyone born in the country, giving clarity to what rights the 14th Amendment actually affords people born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents. But more than a century after the landmark ruling, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January intended to end birthright citizenship. The same day, the Asian Law Caucus, along with a coalition of other immigration advocacy groups, filed a federal lawsuit to block Trump's order. 'When Trump was a candidate, he told people what he was going to do, and (eliminating) birthright citizenship was part of the agenda,' said Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus. 'There was always a looming threat, and we had colleagues who started to plan on it.' The Asian Law Caucus is the only member of the coalition challenging Trump's order to solely represent Asian Americans, a distinction not lost on the organization's leaders. 'What ALC is doing right now is ensuring that we are working in a broad coalition, and that the stories and voices of the Asian American community are visible,' Kohli said. 'It's so important, right this moment, for people to understand that we're all in this together,' she said. 'We have a disproportionately high number of members of our communities who would be affected' by an end to birthright citizenship, Kohli said. 'This is a fight that we need to roll our sleeves up and commit ourselves to because so much is at stake,' Kohli said. To date, it's been over 53 years since the nation's first Asian American legal organization opened in a small Oakland storefront, staffed with one attorney and a handful of volunteers. The civil rights organization now boasts over 60 staff members, serving low-income Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the Bay Area and beyond. Before being enmeshed in one of the largest litigation battles this year, the Asian Law Caucus regularly provides legal services for immigrants on housing rights, worker rights and community safety issues. Kohli said the Trump administration's executive order on birthright citizenship would have far-reaching consequences. According to the Migration Policy Institute, ending birthright citizenship would leave 255,000 children being born in the U.S. without citizenship each year. Winnie Kao, one of the Asian Law Caucus' senior attorneys leading their legal team, fielded panicked questions from clients across the country after Trump signed the executive order. Many of them, particularly those from China and India on work or student visas, feared that their U.S.-born children would lose citizenship or face deportation, Kao said. 'We had community members trying to figure out should they try to induce their pregnancy so that they give birth before the executive order goes into effect,' said Kao, who grew up in the U.S. with Taiwanese parents. 'People asked questions, whether my children would be separated? Could my baby get deported? These are heartbreaking questions.' Since the beginning of Trump's second term, his administration has also threatened to revoke the nonprofit status of legal aid organizations whose work cuts against the grain of his policy goals. The Asian Law Caucus falls directly in those crosshairs, Kohli said. In the past months, Kohli said her team has had internal discussions to double down on their commitments to immigrants seeking help, while some potential donors have gotten cold feet in fear of being associated with an organization like theirs, Kohli said. But the Asian Law Caucus' efforts to pursue this legal battle have already drawn major applause from other community leaders, including the Asian American Bar Association in the Bay Area. 'Having ALC out there, standing up and representing the API community, and making clear that you know civil rights are civil rights regardless of which specific ethnic or racial group you belong to is critically important,' said Kelly Matayoshi, president of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area. In early February, the federal judge overseeing their coalition's case issued an injunction blocking Trump's executive order. So did other judges presiding over similar lawsuits filed by states and other immigration advocacy nonprofits, offering a temporary reprieve. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a case that limited lower-court judges from blocking executive branch policies. The decision left some states to enforce Trump's birthright citizenship order starting on July 27. Twenty-two other states, including California, challenged the order this year, blocking the order from immediately taking effect. The Asian Law Caucus soon filed a new nationwide class action lawsuit in New Hampshire with another coalition of legal organizations. On Thursday, Kohli's organization notched one of its biggest wins this year: The federal court in New Hampshire ruled in favor of their class action lawsuit and issued a preliminary injunction, again blocking Trump's executive order restricting birthright citizenship. Though she now feels relieved, Kohli anticipates a long road ahead, but she promises to lead her organization as long as it takes to certify protections for her clients and people nationwide. 'I'm feeling incredibly relieved because our clients were so worried,' Kohli said. 'At the moment, obviously, people are watching closely what happens in the courts, but for now, babies are protected in the United States, and that's really important.'
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump administration sues California over egg prices
The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against California, alleging that three state laws are contributing to the rising cost of eggs nationwide. 'The State of California has contributed to the historic rise in egg prices by imposing unnecessary red tape on the production of eggs," said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in central California on July 9. "Through a combination of voter initiatives, legislative enactments, and regulations, California has effectively prevented farmers across the country from using a number of agricultural production methods which were in widespread use — and which helped keep eggs affordable." The lawsuit takes aim at three California laws, Assembly Bill 1437, Proposition 2 and Proposition 12, which create welfare standards for farm animals and regulate egg production. The Trump administration argues that regulating eggs is within the federal government's domain under a 1970 federal law. The administration also contends that the federal law overseeing egg quality and packaging preempts state laws that seek to impose additional requirements on egg production. One California state law, AB 1437, regulates egg quality for human consumption. Prop 2 is a statewide ballot measure California voters passed in 2008 that created welfare mandates for farm animals such as egg-laying hens. The administration argues that the laws work in tandem to depress egg production and to increase prices. A third state law mentioned in the suit, Prop. 12, was passed by voters in 2018, which brought forth specific minimum-space requirements for chickens and other farm animals. Egg prices have been quite volatile this year, with increases of more than 40% due to factors including bird flu outbreaks, which were not mentioned in the Trump administration lawsuit. The average cost for a dozen eggs nationwide was $2.56 per dozen, while in California, egg prices averaged around $3.38 per dozen on July 4, according to the United States Dairy Association (USDA) Markets Overview Report. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for egg prices in May showed up to a 41% increase compared to one year ago. The next release of the CPI, which includes egg prices, is scheduled for July 15. Justice Dept. sues California again: Trump administration files lawsuit against California over transgender athletes The lawsuit is the latest in a feud and war of words with the state of California and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The suit came on the same day the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the California Department of Education, alleging that the state is violating anti-discrimination laws by allowing transgender athletes to compete in school sports. The complaint, filed in federal court, alleges that California's current policies "eviscerate equal athletic opportunities for girls" by forcing them to "compete against boys" in state athletic events. A Newsom spokesperson said the state is following a 2013 law and that no court has accepted the legal theory cited by the Trump administration in the suit. In June, Newsom filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles. President Trump ordered the deployment of 2,000 Guard members to quell demonstrations and violent protests against his immigration crackdown, a move Newsom has called unlawful. Newsom accused Trump of 'inciting and provoking violence,' 'creating mass chaos,' and 'militarizing cities,' and called the president's moves "the act of a dictator." The governor said the decision to sue the Trump administration was due to a "serious breach of state sovereignty" and demanded that the president "return control" to California. How's the president faring?: Where does Trump's approval rating stand after tax bill passes? See the polls U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the egg regulation lawsuit against California is the latest Justice Department action seeking to protect American consumers from predatory commercial practices and regulatory burdens. "Americans across the country have suffered the consequences of liberal policies causing massive inflation for everyday items like eggs," Bondi said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. "Under President Trump's leadership, we will use the full extent of federal law to ensure that American families are free from oppressive regulatory burdens and restore American prosperity." Meanwhile, two animal rights groups have taken exception to the lawsuit. California has prohibited the sale of cruelly produced eggs for more than a decade, a law that has been upheld by the courts, including the Supreme Court, said Sara Amundson, president of Humane World Action Fund. "Blaming 2025 egg prices on these established animal welfare standards shows that this case is about pure politics, not constitutional law," Amundson said in a statement. 'The Trump-led Justice Department is now choosing to ignore voters in red, blue and purple states alike who have rejected the cruelty of confining hens in cages so small they can't even spread their wings. To call these commonsense animal welfare laws a 'regulatory burden' is not just dishonest, it's an insult to millions of Americans.' Due to voter and consumer demand, more than 45% of the U.S. egg industry is already cage free, added Kitty Block, president and CEO of Humane World for Animals. "Rather than accepting this reality, the Department of Justice is using our tax dollars to fight a battle that's already been settled," Block said in a statement. "This is a Justice Department misadventure that ignores the interests of the egg industry, retailers and consumers — all of whom have embraced the cage-free future. Avian influenza and other factors drove up egg prices, not animal welfare laws." The lawsuit against California also names Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and other state officials as defendants. Newsom's press office took a jab at the lawsuit in a July 9 post on the social media site X, claiming President Trump is "back to his favorite hobby: blaming California for literally everything." "Next up: @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom caused the fall of Rome and sent the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs," the post added. (This story has been updated to add new information.) This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump administration suing California over egg prices
