A federal judge on Monday blocked components of the “big, beautiful bill” that would effectively defund Planned Parenthood.

The new order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani states that the federal government must continue to reimburse Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the country, despite federal efforts to nix the health care provider’s funding via recent legislation. The decision expands on a preliminary injunction, issued last week, that narrowly applied to affiliates in states where abortion was legal and where services did not exceed an $800,000 revenue threshold.

“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order, rejecting the language of the bill on the grounds of the First Amendment. “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.”

The order gives the green light to patients using Medicaid to continue to seek services at Planned Parenthood.

Talwani specified that the court was not intervening in the federal government’s capacity to regulate abortion and was not ordering the public funding of elective abortion services. Instead, the order blocks the federal government from excluding specific groups from Medicaid reimbursements when they are legally entitled to them, and when their lawsuit has an overwhelming likelihood of success.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, but that’s not the only service it offers. The nonprofit additionally provides critical services such as physicals, cancer screenings, STI testing, and birth control access, and it does not use public funds to provide abortion care.

Donald Trump’s tax bill will gut $880 billion from Medicaid and other crucial social programs—a detail so little favored by Americans that conservative lawmakers stopped holding town halls due to their constituents’ staunch opposition to the line item. But neither that nor the fact that the legislation is estimated to add upward of $6 trillion to the debt stopped Republicans from passing it through Congress, ushering Trump’s key agenda item to his desk.

Shortly after Trump signed the tax bill into law, Planned Parenthood filed suit, arguing that the conservative initiative had specifically targeted its practice in hopes of punishing Americans who either provide or seek abortion care.

“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” Planned Parenthood wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed in Boston federal court last week.

Reacting to Talwani’s most recent order, Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Hill that the Trump administration “strongly disagrees” with the court’s decision.

“States should not be forced to fund organizations that have chosen political advocacy over patient care,” Nixon said in a statement. “This ruling undermines state flexibility and disregards longstanding concerns about accountability.”

Paul Dans, the architect of the far-right plan Project 2025, will primary Republican Senator Linsdey Graham in South Carolina next year. Dans’s campaign muddies the ideological waters of MAGA, as he admonishes Graham for being a “swamp critter” while President Trump has already given Graham his endorsement.

Yet Dans and his campaign are parroting Trump-aligend talking points while running against the guy who Trump backs.

“What we’ve done with Project 2025 is really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era,” Dans told The Associated Press. ”If you look at where the chokepoint is, it’s the United States Senate. That’s the headwaters of the swamp.”

“I want to run for our children,” he said Monday to NBC News. “I want to run to stop World War III. I want to run to make the American dream affordable for the next generation, but really to keep this great country in shape for another 250 years. This time, the patriots stood up and said, ‘Enough is enough.’ We need to have a government of, by, and for the people again. Not by swamp critters like Lindsey Graham.”

Dans also called Graham a “warmonger,” an increasingly common dealbreaker for MAGA Republicans, who want an “end to endless wars” (and have gotten nowhere with that thus far).

Dans left the Heritage Foundation last year after backlash to Project 2025 grew too overwhelming for him to bear and Trump unconvincingly washed his hands of Project 2025. Now he wants to join the Senate to be the Trump ally that he doesn’t think Graham truly is.

“There is no amount of lipstick that you can put on Lindsey to make MAGA fall for him, OK? That show is over. The jig is up. And it’s essentially ‘Sunset Boulevard’ for Lindsey at this stage,” Dans told The Post and Courier, referring to Graham being booed on stage in his home state in 2023 during a Trump rally.

Graham’s campaign doesn’t seem to feel threatened by Dans.

“After being unceremoniously dumped in 2024 while trying to torpedo Donald Trump’s historic campaign, Paul Dans has parachuted himself into the state of South Carolina in direct opposition to President Trump’s longtime friend and ally in the Senate Lindsey Graham,” Graham’s senior adviser (and former Trump senior adviser) Chris LaCivita said to NBC. “Like everything Paul Dans starts, this too will end prematurely.”

Donald Trump dodged an easy question Monday about his rift with alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

During a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, the president was asked to explain what caused the “breach” between the president and his Palm Beach neighbor. Trump’s answer only skimmed the surface.

“That’s such old history. Very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it,” Trump said.

“But for years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein, I wouldn’t talk, because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help. And I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again,’” Trump said.

“He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place,” Trump continued. “Persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, to tell you the truth.”

Trump’s supposedly “easy” answer isn’t all that easy to understand.

Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s alleged victims, has said she was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell to become Epstein’s traveling masseuse while she was working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in 2000. She was 16 at the time.

But Trump and Epstein reportedly didn’t have their........

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