First up, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS ''Greetings From Club Fed."
Here's C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
In 2007–2008, as U.S. attorney, Acosta approved a plea deal that allowed child-trafficking ring-leader Jeffrey Epstein to plead guilty to a single state charge of solicitation, in exchange for a federal non-prosecution agreement.[2] After Epstein's arrest in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges, Acosta faced renewed and harsher criticism for his role in the 2008 non-prosecution agreement, as well as criticism and calls for his resignation as Secretary of Labor; he resigned on July 19 and was replaced by Eugene Scalia.
In 2008, as U.S. Attorney, Acosta approved a federal non-prosecution agreement[2] with Jeffrey Epstein. That secret agreement, conducted without consulting the victims, was later ruled illegal by a federal judge for violating the Crime Victims' Rights Act.[26]
In March 2005, the Palm Beach Police Department began a 13-month undercover investigation of Epstein, including a search of his home, based on reports that he was involved with sex trafficking of minors.[27][28] Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation resulted in a 53-page indictment in June 2007.[27]
Acosta, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, agreed to a plea deal,[29] to grant immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, along with four named co-conspirators and any unnamed "potential co-conspirators". That agreement "essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes". At the time, this halted the investigation and sealed the indictment.
Renewed interest
In 2017, Acosta was nominated for Secretary of Labor. His handling of the Epstein case was discussed as part of his confirmation hearing.
On November 28, 2018, as rumors circulated that Acosta was being considered as a possible successor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Miami Herald published an investigation detailing Acosta's role in the Epstein case.[27] That story revealed the extent of collaboration between federal prosecutors and Epstein's attorneys in their efforts to keep victims from learning of the plea deal.
The Miami Herald describes an email from Epstein's attorney after his off-site meeting with Acosta: "'Thank you for the commitment you made to me during our Oct. 12 meeting,' Lefkowitz wrote in a letter to Acosta after their breakfast meeting in West Palm Beach. He added that he was hopeful that Acosta would abide by a promise to keep the deal confidential. 'You ... assured me that your office would not ... contact any of the identified individuals, potential witnesses or potential civil claimants and the respective counsel in this matter,' Lefkowitz wrote."
The Miami Herald article stated that certain aspects of Acosta's non-prosecution agreement violated federal law. "As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it." Victims, former prosecutors, and the retired Palm Beach police chief were among those quoted criticizing the agreement and Acosta's role in it.[30]
Victims' rights violation
After a lawsuit was filed in federal court, in 2019, a court ruled that the non-prosecution agreement was invalid and that prosecutors had violated the victim's rights with their non-prosecution agreement.
On February 21, 2019, a ruling in federal court returned Acosta's role in the Epstein case to the headlines.[31] The decision to keep the deal with Epstein secret until after it was finalized was found to be a violation of the Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004 (CVRA), which requires notifying victims of the progress of federal criminal cases. The CVRA was new and relatively untested at the time of the Epstein non-prosecution agreement. In 2008, representatives for two of Epstein's victims filed a lawsuit in federal court aiming to vacate the federal non-prosecution agreement on the grounds that it violated the CVRA.[30] For more than a decade, the U.S. Attorney's office denied that it acted in violation of victims' rights laws and argued that the CVRA did not apply in the Epstein case.[32] The government's contention that the CVRA did not apply was based on questions of timing (whether or not CVRA applied prior to filing of federal charges), relevance (whether the CVRA applied to non-prosecution agreements), and jurisdiction (whether the case should be considered a federal case or a state case under the CVRA). The court rejected those arguments in the February 21, 2019 ruling, finding that the CVRA did in fact apply and that victims should have been notified of the Epstein non-prosecution agreement in advance of its signing, to afford them the opportunity to influence its terms. At the conclusion of his ruling, the federal judge in the case noted that he was "not ruling that the decision not to prosecute was improper", but was "simply ruling that, under the facts of this case, there was a violation of the victims rights [for reasonable, accurate, and timely notice] under the CVRA."[33]
Because the CVRA does not specify penalties for failure to meet victims notification requirements, the judge offered both parties opportunities to suggest remedies—Epstein's victims who were party to the suit asked for rescission of the federal non-prosecution agreement with Epstein, while the government suggested other approaches, maintaining that other victims were against rescinding the agreement due to privacy concerns and possible impacts to restitution paid under the agreement.[34] Following the Herald investigation and related news coverage, members of Congress submitted a formal request to the U.S. Department of Justice for review of Acosta's role in the Epstein deal,[35] and several editorials called for Acosta's resignation or termination from his then-current position as U.S. Labor Secretary.[36][37] In February 2019, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility notified Senator Ben Sasse that it had opened an investigation into Epstein's prosecution.[38][39]
Epstein's arrest and Acosta's resignation
On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested by the FBI-NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force on sex trafficking charges stemming from activities alleged to have occurred in 2002–2005.[40]
Amid criticism of his mishandling of the Epstein case, Acosta resigned his role as Secretary of Labor effective July 19, 2019, after a public outcry.[41] An anonymous source claimed that when Acosta was vetted for his cabinet post in the Trump administration, he stated “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”[42]
According to an internal review conducted by the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which was released in November 2020, Acosta showed "poor judgment" in granting Epstein a non-prosecution agreement and failing to notify Epstein's alleged victims about this agreement.[43] In the report, Acosta denied that Epstein was an intelligence asset. The OPR report also stated that it found no evidence that Epstein was a cooperating witness or an intelligence asset.[44]
The first time I learned of Donald Trump’s political aspirations was in 2015, when he announced his intent to run for president and made a speech claiming that Mexico was sending scores of violent criminals over the border.
As an immigrant from Mexico, hearing him talk about my community in that way was jarring. But like many others, I didn’t think he could actually rise to power, given his political inexperience and, well, his personality.
Ten years later and just a few months into his second presidential term, Trump is just as eager to purge the U.S. of its Latin American immigrants. This time around, he’s realizing it won’t be as easy as he thought.
When he started his second presidential term, Trump was ambitious. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller announced in May that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would seek to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants per day to reach the administration’s mass deportation goals, as several outlets reported.
The number is outlandish; it’s assumed that he’s looking for people who have committed crimes, but those who are paying attention are seeing it play out differently.
In a court filing last week, Justice Department lawyers said the Department of Homeland Security had never actually set such a quota for arrests and deportations, The Guardian reported.
This sudden amnesia about that lofty quota feels a bit suspect. Trump’s whole campaign was run on the premise of arresting and deporting as many undocumented people as possible. In his process of trying to get rid of them, it seems that Trump is learning how beautifully entwined immigrants are in the fabric of this country.
The backtracking on this 3K-a-day quota might boil down to the reality that there aren’t nearly as many undocumented criminals as the administration had hoped. ICE has resorted to arresting people who are leaving immigration courts, some of whom are in the middle of seeking legal asylum. Even when allegedly playing dirty, the administration has managed to deport only around 700 people per day. On top of that, 65% of the immigrants detained since last October have no criminal convictions, according to the Cato Institute.
People are noting the very real damage that ICE is doing. They're talking about it to neighbors, they're protesting in the public square, they're writing letters to the editor.
“California law targets ICE agents’ use of masks,” (sacbee.com, July 22) When ICE sweeps people off the streets without identifying themselves and holds them in detention without due process or contact with their families, it is acting as if this country were a repressive totalitarian government. Justifying this practice as a thinly veiled need to protect ICE officers’ safety and security is absurd. Other local, state or federal law enforcement officers who also face safety dangers carry out their duties without the need for masks. The purpose of this ICE practice is solely to intimidate and sow terror and fear in our communities. California Senate Bill 627 — as well as federal legislation — is needed to reject this horrendous policing practice. Shirlie Marymee North Highlands
The absurd yet dangerous removal of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the offense of reporting jobs figures as they are collected has overshadowed the reasons why U.S. employment is struggling. There’s the argument that tariff uncertainty has finally caught up to the real economy, and the argument that the country only produces AI data centers and sick people for the health care system to manage. But one important issue has been pushed off to the side: the predictable economic impact of ICE’s terror campaign against immigrant communities.
This will have long-term macroeconomic consequences. Net immigration, which provides a steady supply of available workers in key fields, is way down this year. Employers are scrambling to find substitute workers and worrying about productivity losses. Remittance payments to Mexico have plummeted, suggesting a decline in these workers’ economic contributions, not only to their relatives, but to industries like home care, agriculture, and construction. Recent drops in residential construction could result from a lack of available workers as well.
This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on July 24, 2025.
By midday on a recent Monday, only a few customers had trickled into La Chispa de Oro, a once-busy Mexican eatery on Cesar Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights.
Behind the counter, owner Melchor Moreno monitored the money in his till, counting the few hundred dollars in sales — about half a typical weekday.
He glanced at his staff, counting with his fingers how much he’d owe in wages that day. The math didn’t add up.
“It doesn’t help that there’s no foot traffic, too…. The streets are empty. It’s kind of scary,” Moreno said.
Since immigration raids began sweeping through Los Angeles neighborhoods, Eastside restaurants have been scraping by, as even longtime customers are keeping themselves and their dollars at home out of fear of potential immigration enforcement. While the full economic toll is still uncertain, many business owners already feel the squeeze.
Moreno has cut staff hours. He’s stepped in to wash dishes. With fewer customers, his staff goes home with fewer tips.
“They’ve noticed it. The waitresses are taking less money home every day,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep doing this.”
Moreno, who is still paying off electricity bill debt accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic, estimates his restaurant has lost more than $7,000 since the raids began on June 6. To stay afloat, he’s now closing Tuesdays through the summer until fear stemming from the ICE raids fades, he hopes.
Since federal agents descended onto Los Angeles streets in early June, several United States citizens have been detained and held in immigration detention centers. A Capital & Main review of local reporting, video and social media posts found at least nine citizens were taken into custody by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Customs and Border Protection after protesting near or observing immigration raids in the Los Angeles area since June 6. Two are currently facing federal charges.
Job Garcia arrived at the Home Depot in Hollywood for his delivery gig for another company on the morning of June 19 expecting to have a regular day. But moments later, Garcia — a U.S. citizen — was tackled, arrested and detained by federal agents.
Garcia said he spotted vans pulling into the store’s parking lot, and began filming as federal agents started breaking the window of a truck with a man sitting behind the wheel. Videos taken by Garcia and other bystanders show several masked men in green vests that read “POLICE” and “U.S. Border Patrol” approach Garcia and tackle him to the ground.
“Give me your f**king hand! You want it, you got it,” one agent said. “You want to go to jail? You got it.”
The agents took Garcia to Dodger Stadium, where he told Capital & Main he was held for hours before being transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. The federal prison’s basement has been turned into a detention facility for people apprehended by federal immigration enforcement officers, where civil rights advocates say detainees are being kept in grossly overcrowded, dungeon-like conditions. One of the Border Patrol agents who detained Garcia is the same man who was subsequently arrested and charged with assaulting a Long Beach police officer and resisting arrest in a separate incident, according to Capital & Main’s review of the footage. “This matter is under investigation,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement to Capital & Main.
“This is a case of Border Patrol and ICE essentially punishing citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights. It goes against the values of this country,” said Ernest Herrera, an attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who is representing Garcia in a claim against Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, and ICE. “It looks more like the behavior of a crackpot military dictatorship in a different country. But it’s here. This is happening right now in our country.”
It’s unclear how many U.S. citizens federal agents have arrested since undertaking a series of immigration raids in Southern California starting in June. Federal officials did not answer Capital & Main’s questions about the detention of U.S. citizens.
Under the Trump administration's aggressive immigration crackdown, more women detained by immigration authorities are being exposed to sexual violence, mistreatment, and the denial of basic rights in detention centers across the United States, according to a new report.
Many women interviewed by the HuffPost said they were raped, denied medical care during their pregnancies, and subjected to other serious human rights violations while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
Serious pregnancy complications, sexual assault allegations, and suicide attempts are among the most frequently reported issues in ICE detention facilities, the report added. These incidents accounted for 60 percent of 911 calls made from the 10 largest ICE centers nationwide, according to a WIRED investigation published in June.
As
of late June, about 22,000 women were being held in ICE custody —
nearly 40 percent of the agency's total detainee population — according
to Detention Reports, a platform that analyzes publicly available data on immigration detention.
Advocates for women's rights told HuffPost that ICE's refusal to release gender-specific detention data is itself part of a broader pattern of rights violations and institutional opacity.
"They're creating this black box of impunity, where they're keeping women who are pregnant or who have advanced health needs," Zain Lakhani, director of migrant rights and justice at the Women's Refugee Commission, told the outlet. "There's no one watching for human rights abuses."
The current administration made sweeping mutilations of policies, institutions and programs which celebrated and protected diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Cuts in Medicaid, veterans’ affairs, education for public institutions and housing directly impact Black people. Attacks on voting rights, LGBTQA+ rights and workers’ rights is about us. The rise of the police state targets us. Immigration and the travel ban restrictions include us. Black livelihoods and Black bodies are all in the crosshairs. To pretend that trump’s policies will not disproportionately affect poor and working-class people, especially Black folks, is disingenuous. Further, any effort to persuade Black folks against fighting for their survival and uniting with other groups of people with common cause, is counterrevolutionary.
We are in dangerous times and our people need more guidance and motivation to get organized, not less. This is not the first regime in history to consolidate state power, to silence the media, to dismantle internal checks on abuse of power, to legitimize the criminalization of sectors of society, to expand the police state and target dissidents. Let us recognize the period we are in, learn from the lessons of the not-so distant past, and prepare our communities for the battles ahead. One important lesson to highlight is that a passive or an unorganized response to fascism doesn’t end well for a democracy and its people.
Republicans just passed $1 trillion in health care cuts and are kicking roughly 15 million people off their health care; Republican bill bans Planned Parenthood from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement funding—threatening to shutter clinics across the country
ICYMI on Friday: Senator Murray Statement on Trump Ripping Away Access to Abortion Care for Women Veterans Who Were Raped or Whose Health is in Danger
***WATCH FULL EVENT HERE; PHOTOS AND B-ROLL HERE***
Seattle, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, held a roundtable discussion with patient advocates and health care providers from Washington state and Idaho to discuss how recent moves by President Trump and Republicans in Congress to attack access to health care—especially reproductive health care—and slash Medicaid are harming people in Washington state and across the entire Pacific Northwest.
Joining Senator Murray for the event were; Rebecca Gibron, CEO, Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky; Dr. Keemi Ereme, OB/GYN at UW Medicine and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, family physician from rural Idaho and co-president of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare; Kayla Smith, a patient storyteller who traveled to Washington from Idaho for necessary abortion care and former plaintiff in Adkins v. State of Idaho; Emily Cuarenta, a patient storyteller and student at Eastern Washington University; and Heather Mullin, a patient storyteller and local advocate from the Seattle area.
“The horror stories caused by abortion bans have not stopped since Republicans ended the right to abortion, implemented cruel bans, and plunged this country into a full-blown health care crisis. And unfortunately, Republican attacks on abortion care have not stopped. Republicans passed devastating new attacks on health care and reproductive rights as part of their Big Ugly bill, which ‘defunds’ Planned Parenthood—a longtime dream for the far right and an absolute nightmare for everyone else. Clinics will close, putting abortion care, birth control services, cervical and breast cancer screenings, and other basic preventive care out of reach for millions of women,” said Senator Murray. “And let’s not forget all the other ways Trump and Republicans are attacking abortion. Trump ripped away protections ensuring women can get abortion care to save their lives. He put in place a near-total abortion ban for veterans and servicemembers at DoD and VA. He and Republicans are packing our courts with the most radical anti-abortion extremists. Meanwhile, Republicans are still trying to rip away access to safe medication abortion and advance dangerous ‘fetal personhood’ provisions, and they are still trying to ban abortion nationwide and put women and doctors in jail—blatantly overriding the will of the American people.”
“But we are still pushing back and fighting for reproductive rights in every way we can,” Senator Murray continued. “As Appropriations Vice Chair, I am working to reject Trump’s proposal to slash Title X and eliminate the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, among other awful ideas. The funding bill we passed out of committee last week funds these programs. Democrats are pushing to reverse the damage from Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, so we can restore Planned Parenthood funds, save patients from losing care, and save hospitals. And we are keeping our spotlight on how Republicans’ anti-abortion extremism is hurting women every day. From abortion care to rural hospitals, health care is under attack here in America. The fight to change this is today and every day until we can reverse these cuts and keep making progress.”
Defunding Planned Parenthood puts at least 200 health centers across the country at risk of closure—90 percent of them in states where abortion is legal—and will rip away health care for more than 1.1 million people, many of whom might not be able to get care anywhere else. Every year, Planned Parenthood provides health care to more than two million people, including STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings, birth control, HPV vaccines, wellness exams and other critical services. Recent research from the Guttmacher Institute found that, contrary to Republicans’ claims, Federally Qualified Health Centers do not have the capacity to readily serve the millions of people who currently rely on Planned Parenthood for care. Defunding Planned Parenthood will cost an estimated $261 million over the next decade.
President Trump also has taken direct aim at reproductive health care in the first few months of his term through a multitude of executive actions—issuing anti-choice executive orders, pardoning violent anti-abortion extremists, and taking a host of other actions to roll back efforts to protect access to reproductive health care across the country. On Friday, the Trump administration moved to revoke women veterans’ ability to receive abortion care through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when their pregnancy is putting their health at risk, or is the result of rape or incest, which Senator Murray swiftly condemned as an attack on the reproductive rights of women veterans.
“In the fall of 2022, my husband and I found out we were pregnant again with our second child. And this was just after Roe was overturned,” Kayla Smith, a patient storyteller and former plaintiff in Adkins v. State of Idaho. Kayla was Senator Patty Murray’s State of the Union guest last year. “The only thing that we were concerned about was preeclampsia, because that was what I had dealt with before in my prior pregnancy. And then, the day after the trigger law went into effect to ban abortion in the State of Idaho, we found out that our son had several fatal fetal anomalies. And so our maternal fetal medicine specialist shared with us that, unfortunately, if we wanted to end this very wanted pregnancy, that she would no longer be able to help us in the state of Idaho… We had to take out a $16,000 personal loan to drive eight hours from Idaho here, actually to the University of Washington… It was the most tragic thing we ever had to deal with to make that decision, but then to also be forced to flee our state to have to go somewhere else to get care that we should have gotten was just devastating… In that moment, I did not want an abortion, but I needed one. And I felt like my providers were not able to give me that standard of care that should be available to everyone… These abortion bans are not saving lives, they are actually putting more lives at risk.”
“Access to safe and legal abortion through Planned Parenthood saved my life,” said Heather Mullin, a patient storyteller and local advocate from the Seattle area. “I was the victim of a predator who was a respected person in our community and used his position of power and access to harm children. He once told me that he had noticed me when I was in the sixth grade, which makes me about 11 years old. I was repeatedly sexually assaulted from the age of 13 until I became pregnant when I was 15. And I knew that when I became pregnant at the time that I was not going to have the baby. I felt very afraid and alone, and I didn’t want my abuser’s baby to be my life sentence. So, I sought out a legal and safe abortion at Planned Parenthood. I took the bus during spring break of my freshman year of high school, when my parents thought I was at track practice. And I got an abortion, and nobody knew about it for a really long time—and I didn’t really talk about it publicly until the Dobbs decision. And I really felt it was important for people to know that all sorts of reasons there are for having an abortion, that you probably know someone who has had an abortion. And when I started talking about my story, I realized it was really a much more common experience than we sometimes think about and talk about. In our current state where we have outright abortion bans, including no exclusions for rape or incest, we’re talking about forcing children to give birth. And that’s the kind of thing that really keeps me up tonight, and why I’m here today to talk about the importance of funding abortion care and access to abortion. It’s disturbing to me that some of our government officials seem to be protecting predators instead of victims.”
“Before the ban on abortion care in the state, I was able to help my patients through deeply personal and often complicated decisions, in the privacy of an ER bay or exam room. Even our ability to do the jobs we were trained to do in time-sensitive and health-threatening emergencies, such as bleeding or infection or organ failure, put us in the crosshairs. Would we provide the stabilizing care they needed in their community healthcare system, with the providers they know and trust, and where their support system is in place for them, but risk going to jail for doing so?,” said Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, a family medicine obstetrician in rural Idaho for two decades and President of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare Foundation, representing over 1,500 Idaho healthcare professionals and concerned community members. “A maternal health care crisis has ensued. The longer Idahoans must travel out of state to get the care they need, not only will we face increasing maternal health complications, but also worsening physician shortages. By 15 months after the Dobbs decision and the Idaho trigger ban going into effect, nearly a quarter of my OBGYN colleagues and more than half of the maternal fetal medicine specialists I previously referred my patients with high-risk pregnancy conditions to stop practicing obstetrics in our state; and we have been unable to recruit physicians to replace them because of the chilling effect of these abortion bans. And it got worse after the initial exodus: In a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week by an Idaho colleague of mine, Idaho has suffered 35 percent net decline in OB/GYNs who practice obstetrics in Idaho since Idaho’s abortion bans went into effect. What this has meant is that Idaho continues to lose much needed medical professionals that are the cornerstones of women’s healthcare, not just during pregnancy, but across the entire lifespan. For example, I have patients suffering from post-menopausal bleeding who must wait months to get into an OBGYN to consult for the hysterectomy that they need. The reduction in this workforce further threatens healthcare access, not just for women but for all Idahoans. With pending Medicaid cuts looming, our ability to do our jobs to keep our communities safe and healthy will become that much more difficult.”
“Planned Parenthood affiliates in Washington provide high quality reproductive health care to more than 100,000 patients every year, including patients who come across state lines because their state has eliminated preventive care access and banned abortions entirely. But care in Washington is at risk like it is everywhere else: the Republican budget bill will eliminate health insurance for tens of thousands of Washingtonians, and will defund Planned Parenthood by banning us from Medicaid,” said Rebecca Gibron, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky. “Without support from state and local governments to fill the gap, health centers in Washington will close and patients will lose access to care. We are thankful to Senator Murray for being the national leader on reproductive health and rights as she fights to restore funding and reverse the ban, and we are thankful for leaders in Washington who are committed to finding local revenue to keep our doors open.”
“My husband serves in the Air Force, and attacks on reproductive freedom and access to health care feel like a slap in the face. We worry about the hostility of the next state we are stationed in,” said Emily Cuarenta, a student at Eastern Washington University who lives with her husband on an Air Force base in Spokane. Emily spoke about the abortion care she received in Georgia prior to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, where she was forced to travel and undergo a waiting period, an ultrasound, and medically inaccurate counseling that misinformed her about the risks of having an abortion. “The Dobbs decision opened the floodgates to oppressive, medically inaccurate laws that endanger the lives of pregnant people. In addition to suffering poor maternal health outcomes, pregnant people now fear criminalization of their pregnancy outcomes.”
“This legislation strips people of their access to reproductive healthcare, their choices in family planning and their fundamental human right to health care. This legislation will lead to many preventable deaths, and that is simply unacceptable,” said Dr. Keemi Ereme, an OB/GYN at UW Medicine and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Senator Murray has been the leading voice in the Senate speaking out and raising the alarm against Republicans’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood through their One Big Beautiful Bill Act. She has held constant recent events—including multiple events in Washington state—to sound the alarm on the devastating cuts in Republicans’ reconciliation bill. As the Senate was considering the legislation, Senator Murray put forward an amendment to strike a provision of the legislation that achieves anti-abortion extremists’ long-sought goal of “defunding” Planned Parenthood; Republicans blocked the amendment. Recently, Senator Murray introduced legislation to reverse the massive health care cuts Republicans passed into law last month and restore federal Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.
Senator Murray is a longtime leader in the fight to protect and expand access to reproductive health care and abortion rights, and she has led Congressional efforts to fight back after the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Murray has introduced more than a dozen pieces of legislation to protect reproductive rights from further attacks, protect providers, and help ensure women get the care they need; Murray has led efforts to push for passage of these bills on the floor multiple times. Last January, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Murray led her colleagues in hosting a “State of Abortion Rights” briefing with women who have suffered firsthand from Republican abortion bans, and last June, she chaired a HELP Committee hearing titled “The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Health Care Nightmare Across America.” Recently, Murray helped lead efforts to force Republicans on the record on votes to protect access to contraception and access to IVF (twice) last year, and she led her colleagues in raising the alarm about the threat a second Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights and abortion access in every state, as outlined in Project 2025. At a forum Senator Murray held this year on the anniversary of the Dobbs decision, Senator Murray spoke about Republicans’ plan to institute a backdoor nationwide abortion ban, including by defunding Planned Parenthood.
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