A Colorado school district paid $16.2 million for abuse of a five-year-old student by a bus attendant. Additionally, New York’s electric school bus mandate is nearing and questions persist. Read more in STN’s June issue, out now.

Following the death of an Ohio student near a transit bus stop, safety conversations have reignited. Michael Miller, transportation director for Sycamore Community Schools and president of the Ohio Association for Pupil Transportation, is joined by Todd Silverthorn, second OAPT vice president and transportation director for Kettering School District. They discuss how legislation and the driver shortage complicate operations and analyze the controversial use of transit buses and vans to provide required transportation to non-public schools.

Read more about safety.

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Left to right, Denver Mayor Michael Johnston, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, are sworn in during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on sanctuary cities' policies at the U.S. Capitol on March 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security over the weekend took down a public list of cities and jurisdictions that the Trump administration labeled as “sanctuary” cities, after a sharp rebuke from a group representing 3,000 sheriffs and local law enforcement.

On Saturday, National Sheriffs’ Association President Sheriff Kieran Donahue slammed the list as an “unnecessary erosion of unity and collaboration with law enforcement.”

“The completion and publication of this list has not only violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement, but it also has the potential to strain the relationship between Sheriffs and the White House administration,” Donahue said.

DHS published the list Thursday and it was unavailable by Sunday. It’s unclear when it was removed, but internet archives show Saturday as the last time the list was still active.

In a statement, DHS did not answer questions as to why the list was removed.

“As we have previously stated, the list is being constantly reviewed and can be changed at any time and will be updated regularly,” according to a DHS spokesperson. “Designation of a sanctuary jurisdiction is based on the evaluation of numerous factors, including self-identification as a Sanctuary Jurisdiction, noncompliance with Federal law enforcement in enforcing immigration laws, restrictions on information sharing, and legal protections for illegal aliens.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Fox News Sunday did not acknowledge that the list was taken down, but said some localities had “pushed back.”

“They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify,” Noem said. “They are giving sanctuary to criminals.”

List followed Trump executive order

Local law enforcement aids in immigration enforcement by holding immigrants in local jails until federal immigration officials can arrive.

The creation of the list stems from Donald Trump’s executive order in April that required DHS to produce a list of cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration officials in enforcement matters, in order to strip federal funding from those local governments.

Those jurisdictions are often dubbed “sanctuary cities,” but immigration enforcement still occurs in the city — there’s just no coordination between the local government and the federal government.

The jurisdictions are often a target for the Trump administration and Republicans, who support the President Donald Trump campaign promise of mass deportations of people without permanent legal status.

Congressional Republicans in March grilled mayors from Boston, Chicago and Denver, on their cities’ immigration policies during a six-hour hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

‘Strong objection’

Local officials were puzzled by the list.

One law enforcement association in North Dakota questioned why several counties — Billings, Golden Valley, Grant, Morton, Ramsey, Sioux, and Slope — were listed as sanctuary jurisdictions because those areas cooperate with federal immigration officials.

In a statement, the North Dakota Sheriff’s and Deputies Association said the “methodology and criteria used to compile this list is unknown,” and there has been no communication from DHS “on how to rectify this finding.”

“The elected Sheriffs of these counties take strong objection with language in this release characterizing them as ‘deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities,’” according to NDSDA.

“The North Dakota Sheriff’s and Deputies Association is working to gather more information regarding the lack of transparency and reasoning as to why the Department of Homeland Security did not fact check prior to incorrectly naming these North Dakota counties.”

Local advocacy groups also noted the problems with the DHS list.

“I assume they’ve removed (the list) because they were bombarded with complaints about inaccuracy and how and why these various jurisdictions got on the list,” Steven Brown, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, said in an interview Monday.

According to the Internet Archive website Wayback Machine, the states, as well as the District of Columbia, that were on the list included Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington state and Wisconsin.

Christopher Shea and Amy Dalrymple contributed to this story. 

A solar power array. Advocates say projects that help speed the conversion to clean energy, such as solar power, could be stymied by a U.S. House proposal to repeal clean energy tax credits. (Photo by Evan Houk/Maine Morning Star)

The tax cut legislation that U.S. House of Representatives Republicans are putting together in Washington includes measures that will cost thousands of jobs in Wisconsin and undercut the state’s progress toward cleaner energy, according to environmental and labor advocates.

To help pay for the extension of tax cuts enacted in the first Trump administration, the GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee is proposing to repeal clean energy tax credits, Politico reported this week. The tax credits were among the measures enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“These credits are not just numbers on a balance sheet out in Washington D.C,” said Emily Pritzkow, executive director of the Wisconsin Building Trades Council, in an online press conference Wednesday. “They are representing real jobs, real economic growth, and real progress towards Wisconsin’s sustainable energy infrastructure. Since the IRA was signed into law in 2022 we have seen an unprecedented boom in clean energy development in the trades.”

The press conference was hosted by Forward Together Wisconsin, a nonprofit established to inform people about the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate investments and to defend them.

“We’ve been seeing this real opportunity to drive energy costs down, and I cannot for the life of me understand why people want to reverse that progress,” said former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, president of Forward Together Wisconsin.

In addition to the tax credits that the U.S. House proposal would repeal, President Donald Trump in his second term has frozen federal clean energy grants that were part of the 2022 legislation. Those include grants to establish a network of electric vehicle charging stations — prompting a lawsuit by 15 states, including Wisconsin.

Solar energy investments that have boomed in the last three years are among those that are threatened by the House proposal, according to advocates.

“At a time when billions of dollars are being invested in states that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump, this proposed legislation will effectively dismantle the most successful industrial onshoring effort in U.S. history,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement this week.

Since passage of the IRA, Wisconsin has seen $933 million in clean energy and transportation private-sector investments, along with just over $2 billion from federal grants and loans, according to Innovation Policy & Technology, a San Francisco climate change policy think tank. The organization tallied 61 new clean energy and transportation projects that got underway in the state, with 45 manufacturing American-made products.

“Lower investment and higher energy bills due to repealing these federal programs and tax incentives will cost nearly 5,200 Wisconsin jobs in 2030 and more than 6,400 jobs in 2035, compared to current policies,” Innovation Policy & Technology reported.

The advocacy group Climate Power has calculated that without the federal support $5.4 billion for 15 planned Wisconsin clean energy projects could be in jeopardy.

Of those projects, 12 — 80% — are in five congressional districts represented by Republicans, according to Climate Power. Three representatives of those districts — Bryan Steil in the 1st CD, Scott Fitzgerald in the 5th CD and Glenn Grothman in the 6th CD — voted against the IRA in 2022. The other two, Derrick Van Orden in the 3rd CD and Tony Wied in the 8th CD, weren’t in office at the time but publicly opposed the legislation.

John Jacobs, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 494 in Southeast Wisconsin, said the clean energy tax credits and related policies have spurred investment and employment for the union’s members.

“I see first-hand how the clean energy tax credits have delivered on their promise, creating good family-sustaining union jobs across Wisconsin,” Jacobs said. “Repealing these tax credits could be devastating to many, but would put thousands of jobs at risk and hurt a growing industry.”

The tax credits were “an investment in America,” he added. The jobs lost if the credits are repealed “translate to economic instability for families across our state.”

The IRA also included a provision that extends the value of the tax credits to nonprofit organizations and government agencies.

Thanks to that benefit, called direct support payment, the Menasha Joint School District in the Fox Valley has qualified for a $4 million reimbursement from the federal government for installing rooftop solar energy and geothermal energy systems in a school currently under construction, said Brian Adesso, the school district’s business services director.

Once the school is complete the district expects to save $159,000 a year on its electric bill, “which is cost savings to local taxpayers and money that can be invested back into the students and staff,” Adesso said at the Forward Wisconsin press conference.

Adesso said the tax credits gave the district “certainty” it needed to be willing to undertake the clean energy additions to the project. Killing the credits would make that choice harder for school districts and impose higher costs on local property taxpayers, he added.

“The bill making its way through Congress takes a sledgehammer to the tax credits,” Addesso said — ending some credits early and attaching “bureaucratic restrictions that could make many of the credits unusable.”

Barnes said Forward Wisconsin Together is calling on Congress to protect the clean energy initiatives. “The people of Wisconsin deserve better,” he said. “The country deserves better. Clean energy as we know is the future, and we have to continue to invest in it.”

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At the Wednesday press conference, organized by the Asian Legislative Caucus, Yang highlighted the work of several Hmong Dane County community members. (Photo courtesy of Rep. Francesca Hong)

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the resettlement of Hmong refugees in Wisconsin. During a press conference Wednesday morning, Brenda Yang, the first Hmong person to serve on the Dane County Board of Supervisors, reflected on a complicated question: What does it mean to be Hmong?

“Is it one’s genetics? Is it being born into a Hmong family? Is it about the values of the community and prioritizing collective needs over individual needs or is it about knowing how to speak the Hmong language?” Yang mused.

“As I reflect on the many ways that I am Hmong, I realize that every new generation among us has had to wrestle with what it means to be Hmong, and despite the challenges of extinction, we have endured and overcome them through reimagining and redefining what it means to be Hmong, wherever we reside.”

In 1975, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Hmong families began resettling in the U.S., including in Wisconsin, aided by church organizations. According to the Hmong American Center, the U.S. government enlisted Hmong allies to assist with its “secret war” — the covert military operations carried out in Laos during the Vietnam War against the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao. Hmong were persecuted by the Lao and Vietnamese governments as a result, forcing them to flee. The last group of Hmong refugee families came to the U.S. between June 2004 and May 2006.

At the Wednesday press conference, organized by the Legislative Asian Caucus, Yang highlighted the work of several Hmong Dane County community members including Manila Kue, who is the founder and CEO of Grand Journey, an organization that provides support services for Hmong and Southeast Asian elders, and Nkauj Nou Vang-Vue, who is the the first school principal of Hmong descent in the Madison Metropolitan School District and also leads the only Hmong-English Language Immersion Program in Wisconsin. She said the leaders are prime examples of people working to embrace their cultural identity as a way to heal and reconcile with the past traumas endured by Hmong and Southeast Asian communities.

“I am reminded that to be Hmong is to be free. I come from a long line of deep history, rich culture and immense resilience,” Yang said. “To be Hmong is to be free and to be free means to not only liberate ourselves but also to liberate others.”

Tammie Xiong, the executive director of the Hmong American Women’s Association, was born in the U.S. to Hmong refugees and she said she has “made it my duty to never forget what happened and why.” Families including hers, she said, “came as Hmong and Southeast Asian refugees uprooted from our homelands, resettled in a country whose language we did not speak, into a new context we would have to learn to live and build community in.”

The state Assembly approved two resolutions this week, including one to celebrate 50 years of strength and resilience of the Hmong, Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese people and another to commemorate Hmong-Lao Veterans Day and honor the Hmong-Lao veterans who served with U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War. Xiong said those resolutions are an important step in remembering history.

“The 50th year allows us to look back on where we have been, what we have been able to build here in the U.S.,” Xiong said. “We have gone to school. Some of us have become entrepreneurs, adding to the U.S. economy. Many of us are teachers, mental health practitioners, carpenters, artists, community organizers, researchers, healers, scientists, caretakers. The list goes on and on and these are also positions that continue to nourish and support the community.”

“We must never forget and we will never forget,” Xiong said.

Wisconsin is now the state with the third largest Hmong population in the U.S. with over 55,000 people. Xiong noted that they are “a young community, where the median age is 26 years old, and many of us here in Wisconsin still live at or below the poverty level.”

“Our communities did not come here by choice,” Zon Moua, director of organizing for Dane County-based nonprofit Freedom Inc, said. “We came here because of war, because of displacement, and because of U.S. foreign policy and when we arrived, we were given very little to rebuild our lives, and for five decades, southeast Asian people have worked tirelessly to survive, to heal and to build futures for ourselves and our families.

Moua said the anniversary commemoration is also about looking forward and working to improve the lives of Hmong people in Wisconsin.

“What we need is our elected leaders to choose not only to stand with us today, but to act with us tomorrow,” Moua said. She called for fully funding culturally specific victim services, investing in housing and supporting leadership pathways for Southeast Asian youth, “especially those who are trans and queer.”

“It means teaching our history in schools and making sure our communities are no longer an afterthought,” she said. “We are here to build and we invite you to build with us.”

Pheng Thao, who is the co-executive director of Southeast Asian Action and Southeast Asian Freedom Network, called attention to the challenges that some Hmong and Asian Americans are now facing from the Trump administration.

A Hmong woman who was born in Thailand and has lived in the Milwaukee-area since she was eight months old, was recently swept up in the Trump administration’s deportation efforts and sent to Laos — a country she had never been to and where she doesn’t speak the language.

“Those who came here as refugees, my generation, are being detained and deported back to Laos, a country that they do not know or to Cambodia, a country that they’ve never seen or to Vietnam to a place that they do not know the language…,” Thao said. “This is double punishment, and this is something that our families are forced to reconcile with again, and our community is forced to reconcile with forced family separation again.”

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Main Street in the Wisconsin community of Cambridge. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

As a former small business owner for 27 years and a longtime board member of the Monroe Street Merchants Association in Madison, I’ve spent decades working to strengthen the small businesses and Main Streets that make our communities thrive. Today, I’m deeply concerned — because Main Streets across America are under threat like never before.

The sweeping tariffs imposed by the current administration are already fueling inflation, disrupting supply chains, and pushing small businesses to the brink. Local retailers, independent producers and small manufacturers — the very backbone of our neighborhoods — are being hit hardest.

Carol “Orange” Schroeder, our board chair at the Monroe Street Merchants Association and owner of Orange Tree Imports, a favorite Madison store, understands this better than most. This year, Orange is celebrating 50 years in business — an incredible milestone. Over the decades, she’s helped independent retailers nationwide weather many challenges, including fierce online competition. But as she recently wrote, not even the pandemic has matched the level of economic turmoil small businesses are facing today.

The problem is clear and devastating: suppliers can’t get the goods they need, vendors are questioning whether they can stay afloat and customers — grappling with rising prices and financial anxiety — are pulling back from shopping locally. Sales reps are going unpaid as orders are canceled, and stores of all sizes are bracing for empty shelves. In short, the social fabric that binds our communities is beginning to fray under the weight of uncertainty.

The National Retail Federation recently warned that these tariffs threaten the American dream — and they’re right. Small businesses aren’t just part of our economy; they’re central to our national identity, job creation, innovation and the strength of our local communities.

Now more than ever, Congress must step up and act. Policymakers have a critical opportunity to end these harmful tariffs, restore stability, and reassert balance in our trade policies. Just as importantly, Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over the power of the purse — a responsibility that rests with the legislative branch, not the executive alone.

The stakes couldn’t be clearer. Without immediate action, we face shuttered storefronts, lost jobs and an avoidable recession. According to Gallup, Americans’ economic outlook is now worse than at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic or the global financial crisis — a sobering indicator of just how fragile the moment is.

This is not a partisan issue. It’s a matter of economic survival, community resilience and protecting the American dream for generations to come.

Congress must act now. Small businesses, workers, and families across the country are counting on bold leadership. It’s time to end the tariff chaos, restore stability, and ensure Main Street can keep doing what it does best: creating jobs, driving innovation and strengthening the communities we all call home.

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An engineer works at a cargo port storage yard. Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump have generated uncertainty about the economy for many businesses and consumers, according to economic forecasters. (Photo by Vithun Khamsong/Getty Images)

Over a buffet lunch Wednesday, a roomful of bankers got a mixed picture of the national economy in the short term. For Wisconsin, the longer term outlook appears more certain, although there may be little comfort from that.

Speaking at an economic forecast luncheon hosted by the Wisconsin Bankers Association and the news outlet WisBusiness, part of WisPolitcs.com, Dale Knapp, director of research at Forward Analytics, reviewed the persistent demographic slump that has put Wisconsin on a troubling trajectory for the coming decades.

That trajectory has been evident already for some 20 years, Knapp said, and it centers on the population bulge from baby boomers — people born between 1946 and 1964. That generation was 65% more numerous than the group born in the previous 19-year period, he said. And the subsequent generations have been about 20% smaller in number or even less.

The baby boom produced an explosion of demand for everything from toys to homes to schools and universities, Knapp observed. Now the last of that generation is passing into retirement, and with smaller populations in the generations that follow there are “worker shortages all across the state,” Knapp said.

Between 2020 and 2040, the working age population, ages 18 to 64, is projected to fall by 15% on average in all but six Wisconsin counties, Knapp said. Automation may pick up the slack in some industries, including manufacturing and possibly fast food service, he suggested.

Immigration is another remedy, Knapp said — but also “a challenge given what’s going on in the White House now.”

“We need to fix the border problem to a degree,” Knapp said. “If you do that, then maybe you can get the two parties in Washington together and say, ‘OK, we need to fix legal immigration by expanding it.'”

Knapp’s other proffered solution is to invest funds to offer families $16,000 to move to Wisconsin from out of state. With 3,000 families a year, the money could be repaid with the added income and sales tax revenues, “and we could fund it forever,” he said.

National economic uncertainty

Outlining the current state of the nation’s pocketbook and its near-term forecast, economist Andrea Sorensen of US Bank in Minneapolis said that the economy “is actually doing probably better than most people think.”

That’s despite the uncertainty that has ballooned since President Donald Trump took office in January, she said. That uncertainty also looms over the horizon, however.

The nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — the broadest measure of the overall economy — has been growing by more than 2% over the last couple of years through the end of 2024.

Data issued Wednesday morning showed GDP shrank 0.3% in the first quarter. Sorensen said that was for an unusual reason, however.

U.S. businesses stocked up on goods from overseas to get ahead of the tariffs Trump imposed after taking office, she said. She attributed the slight first-quarter dip to those imports, because their value is subtracted from GDP.

The GDP estimate released Wednesday is the first of three that will be produced for the quarter, and Sorensen said her economic team believes the next two estimates will be better.

She views other indicators as relatively favorable.

The national labor market remains strong. Month-to-month employment growth has cooled some since the hiring spikes that followed the economic crash from the COVID-19 pandemic.  Still, “we still consider it to be quite healthy,” she said.

“People who have jobs have money to spend,” Sorensen said. “So as long as the labor market is holding up, we think the economy could be OK.”

Consumer spending also remains strong, she said, even though surveys show dramatic declines in both consumer and business confidence.

“We know it means people are not happy and they don’t have high hopes,” Sorensen said. “But if we’re talking recession, that sort of depressed sentiment needs to translate into actual economic activity. And so far, it hasn’t. And we’re not actually sure if it will.”

Tariffs are a wild card

The Trump administration’s tariff policies, however, remain a major wild card.

A broad 10% tax on imports that took effect April 5 remains in place with a few exceptions. Tariffs of up to 50% on about 60 countries are on a 90-day pause. An active tariff remains on goods from China — initially 125% and more recently raised to 145%.

Overall that’s netted out to a U.S. effective tariff rate — the net tariff on all imports from other countries — between 25% and 30%. That’s 10 times the effective tariff rate of 2.5% a year ago.

“This hasn’t happened in over 100 years,” Sorensen said. “The economy is just structurally very different, and we can try to make forecasts and comparisons —  and we do all day every day —  but we don’t know. There is just so much unknown what this will do.”

For that reason, economic uncertainty is “sky high,” she continued. “I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on.”

Businesses “are kind of paralyzed,” Sorensen said. “How can you make a business investment decision if you have no idea what tariffs are going to be tomorrow, next week, next year?”

Some larger employers have already begun announcing plans to reshore work in the U.S. But Sorensen said in response to one audience member’s question that isn’t an option for many smaller employers.

A company that sources products overseas might gain a temporary advantage by returning production to the U.S., she said.

“They can’t risk making the wrong choice,” however, Sorensen said. “What we’re hearing is they don’t trust that that tariff will remain in place. So, they can’t make the investment decisions to bring production back to the U.S. because they might want to undo it again as soon as policy changes.”

In addition, “our supply chains are so intertwined that everything has some input that’s imported,” she said.

Tariffs will also squeeze low- and middle-income households, where spending takes a larger share of their earnings — “households that were already struggling,” Sorensen said.

Migration presents another pressure point. Policies to reduce immigration and deport immigrants will hurt some states and some sectors of the economy more than others, she said.

Yet an additional unknown is how the escalating trade conflicts with the rest of the world will affect services — where the U.S. has a trade surplus.

“President Trump has never mentioned that, because he probably doesn’t want us to know that, right? It makes trade look a little more fair, but that’s not the story he wants,” Sorensen said.

So far, other countries haven’t targeted U.S. services in retaliation for the tariffs it has imposed.

Nevertheless, “if countries really want to get us economically, they would go after services,” Sorensen said.

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A doctor holding T-shaped intrauterine birth control device. (Getty Photos) 

WASHINGTON — The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday challenging the Trump administration’s decision to withhold Title X family planning grants.

The 35-page filing alleges the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the reproductive health program with funding approved by Congress, has withheld $65.8 million over disagreements about organizations’ “opposition to racism” and “providing care to undocumented immigrants.”

“The Affected Members and their subrecipients operate hundreds of Title X service sites across these states, which together provide family planning care to hundreds of thousands of low-income patients, many of whom would not otherwise be able to afford such care,” the complaint says. 

“Depriving these individuals of the high-quality, essential health care provided by Title X-funded health centers reduces access to (sexually transmitted infection) screening and treatment, cancer screening, and contraception, threatens the health and wellbeing of the individuals who rely on Title X for care, and undermines public health.”

The lawsuit contends California, Hawaiʻi, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and Utah have been completely cut off from Title X family planning grants, while Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia have had their access to the funding reduced.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia but hadn’t been assigned to a judge as of Thursday afternoon.

HHS did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Another suit

The lawsuit is the latest filed by organizations and Democratic state attorneys general challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze funding for dozens of programs.

Some, but not all, of the cases are subject to injunctions from district courts that so far have prevented the spending cuts from taking effect while the cases proceed.

The Impoundment Control Act, a 1970s-era law that requires the president to spend the money Congress appropriates, is the subject of many of the disagreements between those filing lawsuits and the Trump administration.

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association wrote in the lawsuit that it represents nearly 900 members, including state, county and local health departments.

Its members “operate or administer more than 3,000 health centers that provide family planning services to more than 2.2 million patients each year.”

HHS sent letters to some of the association’s members in late March, notifying them that their Title X family planning grant funding was “being temporarily withheld based on possible violations of the terms and conditions set forth in the notice of award,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges HHS’ decision to freeze the funding stems from its members having statements on their websites “indicating support for diversity, equity, and inclusion and opposition to racism, which, HHS claims, ‘suggests’ that the Affected Members are or may be engaged in conduct that violates federal civil rights laws.”

The federal government also chose to withhold the Title X funding over “a single public statement that HHS claims gives it ‘reason to believe’ that some of the Affected Members may be providing care to undocumented immigrants, in violation of Executive Order 14218 ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.’”

The lawsuit says that HHS never actually told any of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association’s members that they had violated federal regulations, executive orders, or the law. The letters from HHS referenced only “possible violations.”