Medicaid and Health-Care Funding

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit on Tuesday stayed a Massachusetts district judge’s injunction and allowed the Trump administration to enforce, in 22 Democratic-led states, a one-year budget provision cutting off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions. The states, led by California, had argued that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s language violated the Constitution’s Spending Clause and punished Planned Parenthood for its protected advocacy, but the three-judge panel, all Democratic appointees, said those arguments were likely to fail while the administration defended the restriction as a routine federal funding condition. Planned Parenthood and the states warn the cuts could force closures of some of the group’s roughly 600 facilities and reduce access to cancer screenings, STI testing and contraception for more than 1 million low-income patients whose Medicaid does not typically cover abortions.