Judge Decides She Is the Law, Blocks Congressional Defunding of Planned Parenthood

Wild judicial activism has become the norm in the age of Trump, but the latest decision from a federal court on Monday to block Congress’ defunding of Planned Parenthood is the most egregious example yet.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani appears to be on a crusade to ensure that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of abortion, receives funding from taxpayers today, tomorrow, and forever no matter how the people’s representatives vote.

The Massachusetts judge ruled that Planned Parenthood clinics around the country must continue to be reimbursed by Medicaid even though Congress just voted in the One Big Beautiful Bill to pull the funding.

What was her justification for blocking an act of Congress?

“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order according to the Associated Press. “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.”

I’m not a lawyer, but that doesn’t sound like a legal argument. It’s a policy argument, like the ones debated and voted on in Congress. You know, that governing body intended to make laws for the United States under the Constitution.

I’d also like to note the Associated Press’s deceptive headline which stated that a judge has blocked the “Trump administration’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.” Again, this wasn’t done by an executive order, the ruling concerns an act of Congress signed by the president.

The Trump administration did comment on the absurd ruling.

“We strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” a White House spokesman told The Daily Signal. “States should not be forced to fund organizations that have chosen political advocacy over patient care. This ruling undermines state flexibility and disregards longstanding concerns about accountability.”

The spokesman further said that the defunding was duly passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump.

He said that the “judge’s decision to grant the injunction on the basis that defunding an entity is an unconstitutional criminal punishment is not only absurd but illogical and incorrect. It is orders like these that underscore the audacity of the lower courts as well as the chaos within the judicial branch.”

Apparently, Talwani thinks she alone can decide what the country funds or doesn’t fund. This level of judicial activism backed by little more that “we should keep funding things I believe in,” makes the activist Warren Supreme Court of the 1970s seem downright prudent by comparison.

This is not Talwani’s first crack at judicial activism. The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas wrote a profile of her after she imposed a temporary restraining order on removing Planned Parenthood funds after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in early July.

She has donated to high-profile Democrats, temporarily blocked some of Trump’s revocations of work permits, and ruled in one case that a 12-year-old student couldn’t wear a T-shirt that said “There are only two genders” because it interfered with the rights of other students.

It appears that left-wing judges are just going to dispense with the formalities and make grand declarations for the country based on their ideology and nothing else. It’s a good thing the Supreme Court limited nationwide injunctions because this nonsense will destroy the efficacy of the courts.

Historian Carl Paulus wrote this about the Left’s “jurisprudence” on X:

Paulus further called this a “sort of secular magisterium,” where they see the job of the courts not as a body to rule on the constitutionality of laws, but as a force “to secure and interpret the secular Deposit of Faith.” Exactly. In this case, the secular faith is in the idea that not only is abortion always a positive good, but the American people must also give money to sustain it in perpetuity.

Obviously, Talwani’s decision can’t stand and will likely soon be overturned. This does, however, demonstrate how left-wing activist judges have completely abandoned the notion that they are upholding the law. Instead, they’ve decided that they are the law.

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