Federal judges continue to try to thwart the conservative agenda — this time not by blocking an executive order but by blocking Congress’s power over Medicaid spending.
Independence Day 2025 was a day filled with conservative celebrations — for America’s 249th birthday, of course, but also for the signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), which, among other things, defunds Planned Parenthood.
Conservatives vary widely in their opinions of the law as a whole, but nearly all were glad to see abortion defunded, albeit temporarily.
While federal law prohibits taxpayer funds from being used to pay for abortions, Planned Parenthood receives hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds each year that are earmarked for other purposes, such as Medicaid reimbursement for services other than abortion.
In Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report, the organization said it received over $700 million in taxpayer funds.
While the OBBB didn’t eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood permanently, as many pro-lifers desired, it did remove it for one year.
Well, it did — until a federal judge blocked this particular provision of the law and and sent taxpayer funds flowing once again to the abortion giant.
Not surprisingly, while everyone else was enjoying the Fourth of July weekend, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and Planned Parenthood Association of Utah were working to file suit against the Trump administration to block the law, filing their paperwork on Monday morning in the U.S. District of Massachusetts.
And on cue, mere hours later, federal district judge Indira Talwani granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) that blocks the Trump administration from enforcing the law’s defunding of Planned Parenthood.
It wasn’t the first time Talwani has stepped in to try to thwart the other two branches of government from exercising their constitutional powers; in April, she blocked the Trump administration from ending a Biden administration program that allowed more than 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the country.
The Supreme Court only two weeks ago had issued a ruling rebuking district judges for using such tools as an ideological weapon. In the case of Trump v. CASA, the Court ruled that district courts had exceeded their authority when they issued nationwide injunctions blocking, among other things, Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants and temporary visa holders.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion of the Court, which found that “federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”
The Supreme Court had also ruled that Planned Parenthood is not some sacred cow when it comes to getting taxpayer money. In Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the majority ruled that South Carolina had the right to exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program.
In that case, prospective patients had filed suit against an executive order issued by Gov. Henry McMaster, R, which said that abortion clinics could not receive Medicaid or Medicare funding.
The Court ruled that individuals and providers do not have the right to sue if a provider is removed from the list of approved Medicaid recipients.
Yet Planned Parenthood and Talwani carefully skirted both of those rulings.
In this case, Planned Parenthood argued that the law unfairly targeted its member facilities.
The abortion conglomerate claims that Congress’s decision not to give it money is retaliation for its protected political speech and violates the Equal Protection Clause. Planned Parenthood also argues that the law singles out organizations that received more than $800,000 in Medicare payments in 2023.
“The Defund Provision purposefully treats Planned Parenthood Members unlike other organizations that provide the same medical care… the Defund Provision singles Planned Parenthood Members out for unequal treatment based on their association with other providers of lawful abortion and… their advocacy for access to sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion. The Defund Provision does not similarly restrict other abortion providers’ associational rights,” its suit laments.
Talwani’s TRO blocks the defunding of Planned Parenthood for 14 days. The judge also allowed Planned Parenthood Federation, which is the political lobbying group for Planned Parenthood clinics and claims it doesn’t receive Medicaid funding, to sue on behalf of all its members. That means the TRO functions across the entire country, which, for all intents and purposes, makes it a nationwide injunction.
But Talwani likely exceeded her authority.
Unlike the Supreme Court cases noted above, the OBBB wasn’t an executive action. It was legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump. Moreover, the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority over federal spending and, specifically, as the Supreme Court has interpreted it, the authority over Medicaid spending.
And it seems as though members of Congress are getting tired of the judiciary trying to usurp the other two branches of government.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote on X, “A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked Congress from defunding Planned Parenthood. This decision is so totally lawless, so completely at odds with the Constitution – Congress has the power of the purse under Article 1, NOT courts – as to approach grounds for impeachment”.
Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R, signaled that Congress may be ready to use their Article I powers to punish federal judges who exceed their authority.
“There may be ways we can use the power of the purse, which is, again, what the founders thought — that was the biggest power that the legislative branch had relative to the others. So I think we’re looking at that process as it unfolds here over the next three months,” Jordan told Just The News.
Jordan explained too that the Judiciary Committee has already approved legislation to limit the ability of district judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
He also said Congress could cut judicial expenditures.
“You know, the Judicial Conference just asked for a big, big raise in their budget. I think we need to take a look at that and decide,” Jordan stated.
While it is true that since the Supreme Court’s 1803 ruling in Marbury v. Madison that the judiciary has asserted its power of judicial review, it does not mean that power is unlimited.
It is important to remember that there is no federal right to abortion and the Supreme Court just made it clear that individuals cannot sue just because states removed their preferred provider from the list of approved Medicaid or Medicare recipients.
Now what Planned Parenthood would have you to believe, and as it argued in its suit, is that not a single taxpayer dollar that Planned Parenthood receives subsidizes abortion.
They also would have you believe that if its federal funding is removed, millions of women won’t be able to access medical care.
Both of those claims are false.
While Planned Parenthood holds itself out as a women’s health organization, it is overwhelmingly an abortion provider and a political activist organization. Many of its clinics do not even provide the medical care the organization claims they provide.
Meanwhile, women can receive those services at over 13,000 federally qualified health centers across the country.
Or maybe they could even receive those services for free at a crisis pregnancy center — the same ones that Planned Parenthood and its pro-abortion allies are actively trying to shut down.
Funding is not a problem for Planned Parenthood. In 2023, it received over $2 billion in revenue, including nearly $900 million in private contributions.
As such, it doesn’t need your money in order to provide cancer screenings for women.
It needs your money because it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on lobbying politicians to ensure it can keep providing abortions.
It is against the law for taxpayer money to go to the funding of abortion. Planned Parenthood exists to abort as many babies as possible. If taxpayer funding goes to Planned Parenthood, it is either directly or indirectly funding abortion or lobbying for abortion.
Congress has the right to remove taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood and no district judge has the right to stop it.
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