Planned Parenthood wins partial victory in legal fight with Trump administration over funding cuts
A provision in that bill would end Medicaid payments to abortion providers for one year.
But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston granted a preliminary injunction Monday that, for now, blocks the government from cutting Medicaid payments to
Planned Parenthood
member organizations that either don't provide abortion care or didn't meet a threshold of at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.
It wasn't immediately clear how many Planned Parenthood organizations and clinics would continue to get Medicaid reimbursement under that decision and how many might not.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this month against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member organizations in Massachusetts and Utah.
A Planned Parenthood spokesperson said its lawyers were still examining the order and would release a statement shortly.
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The Hill
14 minutes ago
- The Hill
Darren Walker's new book is still hopeful despite growing inequality as he leaves Ford Foundation
NEW YORK (AP) — Darren Walker needed to be convinced of his new book's relevance. The outgoing Ford Foundation president feared that 'The Idea of America,' set to publish in September just before he leaves the nonprofit, risked feeling disjointed. In more than eight dozen selected texts dating back to 2013, he reflects on everything from his path as a Black, gay child from rural Texas into the halls of premiere American philanthropies to his solutions for reversing the deepening inequality of our 'new Gilded Age.' 'To be clear, not everything I said and wrote over the last 12 years is worthy of publication,' Walker said. A point of great regret, he said, is that he finds American democracy weaker now than when he started. Younger generations lack access to the same 'mobility escalator' that he rode from poverty. And he described President Donald Trump's administration's first six months as 'disorienting' for a sector he successfully pushed to adopt more ambitious and just funding practices. Despite that bleak picture, Walker embraces the characterization of his upcoming collection as patriotic. 'My own journey in America leaves me no option but to be hopeful because I have lived in a country that believed in me,' he said. Walker recently discussed his tenure and the book's call for shared values with the Associated Press inside his Ford Foundation office — where an enlarged picture of a Black child taken by Malian portrait photographer Seydou Keïta still hangs, one of many underrepresented artists' works that populated the headquarters under his leadership. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Q: Upon becoming Ford Foundation's president, you suggested that 'our most important job is to work ourselves out of a job' — a 2013 statement you include in the book. How would you grade your efforts? A: The past 12 years have been both exhilarating and exhausting. Exhilarating because there's never been a more exciting time to be in philanthropy. And exhausting because the political, socioeconomic dynamics of the last 12 years are very worrisome for our future. Philanthropy can play a role in helping to strengthen our democracy. But philanthropy can't save America. I would probably give myself a B or a B-. I don't think where we are as a nation after 12 years is where any country would want to be that had its eye on the future and the strength of our democracy. Q: Is there anything you would do differently? A: In 2013 and those early speeches, I identified growing inequality as a challenge to the strength of our democracy. And a part of that manifestation of growing inequality was a growing sense of disaffection — from our politics, our institutions, our economy. For the first time, a decade or so ago, we had clear evidence that working class white households were increasingly downwardly mobile economically. And the implications for that are deep and profound for our politics and our democracy. We started a program on increasing our investments in rural America, acknowledging some of the challenges, for example, of the trends around the impacts of the opioid epidemic on those communities. I underestimated the depth and the collective sense of being left behind. Even though I think I was correct in diagnosing the problem, I think the strategy to respond was not focused enough on this population. Q: Many people credit you for using Ford Foundation's endowment to increase grantmaking during the pandemic. Is that sort of creativity needed now with the new strains faced by the philanthropic sector? A: One of the disappointments I have with philanthropy is that we don't take enough risk. We don't innovate given the potential to use our capital to provide solutions. I do think that, in the coming years, foundations are going to be challenged to step up and lean in in ways that we haven't since the pandemic. The 5% payout is treated as a ceiling by a lot of foundations and, in fact, it's a floor. During these times when there's so much accumulated wealth sitting in our endowments, the public rightly is asking questions about just how much of that we are using and towards what end. Q: Where do you derive this sense of 'radical hope' at the end of your book? A: As a poor kid in rural Texas, I was given the license to dream. In fact, I was encouraged to dream and to believe that it will be possible for me to overcome the circumstances into which I was born. I've lived on both sides of the line of inequality. And I feel incredibly fortunate. But I'm also sobered by the gap between the privileged and the poor and the working-class people in America. It has widened during my lifetime and that is something I worry a lot about. But I'm hopeful because I think about my ancestors who were Black, enslaved, poor. African Americans, Black people, Black Americans have been hopeful for 400 years and have been patriots in believing in the possibility that this country would realize its aspirations for equality and justice. That has been our North Star. Q: Heather Gerken, the dean of Yale's law school, was recently named as your successor. Why is it important to have a leader with a legal background and an expertise in democracy? A: She is the perfect leader for Ford because she understands that at the center of our work must be a belief in democracy and democratic institutions and processes. She is also a bridge builder. She is a coalition builder. She's bold and courageous. I'm just thrilled about her taking the helm of the Ford Foundation. It is a signal from the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees that we are going to double down on our investment and our commitment to strengthening, protecting and promoting democracy. Q: Youtold AP last year that, when you exited this building for the last time, you'd only be looking forward. What does 'forward' mean to you now? A: I have resolved that I don't want to be a president or a CEO. I don't need to be a president of CEO. I think leaders can become nostalgic and hold onto their own history. Now there's no doubt, I know, that my obituary is going to say, 'Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation.' That's the most important job I'll ever have. But hopefully I'll be able to add some more important work to that. ___
The Hill
14 minutes ago
- The Hill
US and China officials meet in Stockholm to discuss how to ease trade tensions
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Top trade officials from China and the United States arrived for a new round of talks in Stockholm on Monday in a bid to ease tensions over trade between the world's two biggest national economies. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting at the offices of Sweden's prime minister for talks that Bessent has said will likely to lead to an extension of current tariff levels. Analysts say the two envoys could set the stage for a possible meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year to cement a recent thaw in trade tensions. The talks are the third this year between He and Bessent — nearly four months after Trump upended global trade with his sweeping tariff proposals, including an import tax that shot up to 145% on Chinese goods. China quickly retaliated, sending global financial markets into a temporary tailspin. The Stockholm meeting — following similar talks in Geneva and London in recent months — is set to extend a 90-day pause on those tariffs. During the pause, U.S. tariffs were lowered to 30% on Chinese goods, and China set a 10% tariff on U.S. products. The Trump administration, fresh off a deal on tariffs with the European Union, wants to reduce a trade deficit that came in at $904 billion overall last year — including a nearly $300 billion trade deficit with China alone. China's Commerce Ministry, for its part, said last week that Beijing wants 'more consensus and cooperation and less misperception' from the Stockholm talks.
San Francisco Chronicle
14 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Project 2025 author Paul Dans will challenge Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina
WASHINGTON (AP) — A chief architect of Project 2025, Paul Dans, is launching a Republican primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, joining a crowded field that will test the loyalties of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement in next year's midterm election. Dans told The Associated Press the Trump administration's federal workforce reductions and cuts to federal programs are what he had hoped for in drafting Project 2025. But he said there's 'more work to do,' particularly in the Senate. 'What we've done with Project 2025 is really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era," Dans said in an AP interview. 'If you look at where the chokepoint is, it's the United States Senate. That's the headwaters of the swamp." Dans, who is set to formally announce his campaign at an event Wednesday in Charleston, said Graham has spent most of his career in Washington and 'it's time to show him the door.' Challenging the long-serving Graham, who has routinely batted back contenders over the years, is something of a political long shot in what is fast becoming a crowded field ahead of the November 2026 midterm election that will determine control of Congress. Trump early on gave his endorsement of Graham, a political confidant and regular golfing partner of the president, despite their on-again-off-again relationship. Graham, in announcing he would seek a fifth term in the Senate, also secured the state's leading Republicans, Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Henry McMaster, to chair his 2026 run. He has amassed millions of dollars in his campaign account. Other candidates, including Republican former South Carolina Lt. Gov. André Bauer, a wealthy developer, and Democratic challenger Dr. Annie Andrews, have announced their campaigns for the Senate seat in an early start to the election season, more than a year away. Graham, in an appearance Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' did not discuss his reelection campaign but fielded questions on topics including his push to release 'as much as you can' from the case files on Jeffrey Epstein, something many of Trump's supporters want the government to do. Dans, an attorney who worked in the first Trump administration as White House liaison to the office of personnel management, said he expects to have support from Project 2025 allies, as well as the ranks of Trump's supporters in the state who have publicly tired of Graham. After Trump left the White House, Dans, now a father of four, went to work at the Heritage Foundation, often commuting on weekdays to Washington as he organized Project 2025. The nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint, with chapters written by leading conservative thinkers, calls for dismantling the federal government and downsizing the federal workforce, among other right-wing proposals for the next White House. 'To be clear, I believe that there is a 'deep state' out there, and I'm the single one who stepped forward at the end of the first term of Trump and really started to drain the swamp,' Dans said, noting he compiled much of the book from his kitchen table in Charleston. Among the goals, he said, was to 'deconstruct the administrative state,' which he said is what the Trump administration has been doing, pointing in particular to former Trump adviser Elon Musk's work at the Department of Government Efficiency shuttering federal offices. Dans and Heritage parted ways in July 2024 amid blowback over Project 2025. It catapulted into political culture that summer during the presidential campaign season, as Democrats and their allies showcased the hard-right policy proposals — from mass firings to budget cuts — as a dire warning of what could come in a second Trump term.
