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ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Consumers Challenge Trump Administration Rule That Threatens Insurance Coverage for Abortion
The rule imposes more than $1 billion in unnecessary costs in an effort to coerce insurance companies to stop offering coverage for abortion, affecting more than 3 million consumers.
WASHINGTON
Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Inc., and several consumers around the country filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration's new rule designed to make insurance companies stop offering coverage for abortion. They are represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., and Brown Goldstein & Levy, LLP.
In December 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new rule that, if implemented, would force insurance companies that sell plans in the Affordable Care Act individual marketplaces to send two separate bills to customers -- one for the coverage of abortion care, and another for coverage of other health care. Insurers will also have to instruct their customers to pay the bills using two checks, two money orders, or two electronic transactions every month.
As the administration acknowledged in finalizing the rule, the extensive administrative burdens will lead to higher premiums for consumers and will cause some insurers to drop insurance coverage for abortion altogether. As the administration also acknowledged, confusion about these new requirements will lead some people to miss payments and risk losing their health insurance coverage entirely.
"If this rule takes effect, I face the terrifying risk of losing not only my insurance coverage for abortion, but my insurance coverage entirely, which would be devastating for me given my pre-existing condition," said Rebecca, a resident of Washington, D.C. and plaintiff in the case. "That's why I'm joining the ACLU and Planned Parenthood to fight back. It is cruel and unacceptable that the Trump administration is interfering in my health care and trying to interfere with how health insurance companies do business, just because they want to make it more difficult for me to access my right to abortion."
"The Trump administration's new insurance rule is another attack on abortion care, designed solely to push safe, legal abortion further out of reach," said Meagan Burrows, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "And yet again, its actions will have the most devastating effect on already marginalized communities, including low-income people, people with limited English proficiency, and people with disabilities. Abortion is health care, and our government should be making it easier -- not harder -- for people to get the health care they need."
More than 3 million consumers would be affected by the rule's onerous restrictions, including the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit from Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Maine.The rule would also affect one-third of the individual market exchange plans nationwide, including every individual plan offered on the marketplaces in Maryland. A fact sheet on the impact of the rule can be found here.
"Abortion opponents are waging everything they've got as part of their massive war on our access to health care," said Karen Nelson, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Inc. "The attacks and deceptions continue, but here's the truth: Abortion care is health care, and it should not be separated, "carved out", or treated differently from any other medical service. We will always fight to eliminate barriers and protect access to safe, legal abortion care and we will continue to provide people with the health care they need."
"This rule exists for one reason: to make it more difficult for people to access safe, legal abortion," said Alexis McGill Johnson, Acting President and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "The administration itself admits this rule has no quantifiable benefit -- its sole purpose is to create extra red tape for millions of people across the country. We will not stand for this administration's attempt to shame people and keep them from accessing health care. All people deserve to be able to access abortion in this country, and to have their health insurance cover this safe, legal medical procedure. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is proud to stand with Planned Parenthood of Maryland, the ACLU and these brave individual consumers to fight back against this harmful rule in court. We will never stop fighting for our patients, or for the right of all people to access sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, without shame or needless hurdles."
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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Trump's Indiana Redistricting Scheme Crashes and Burns in Overwhelming Defeat
The vote came after an emotional debate in which some Republican lawmakers detailed threats and harassment they'd received for opposing the president's redistricting scheme.
Dec 11, 2025
President Donald Trump's push to get Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections went down in overwhelming defeat in the Indiana state Senate on Thursday.
As reported by Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman, the proposal to support a mid-decade gerrymander in Indiana was rejected by a vote of 19 in favor to 31 opposed, with 21 Republican state senators crossing the aisle to vote with all 10 Democrats to torpedo the measure, which would have changed the projected balance of Indiana's current congressional makeup from seven Republicans and two Democrats to a 9-0 map in favor of the GOP.
The Senate vote came after the state House's approval of the bill and an emotional debate in which some Indiana Republicans opposed to the president's plan detailed violent threats they'd received from his supporters.
According to a report published in the Atlantic on Thursday, Republican Indiana state Sen. Greg Walker (41) this week detailed having heavily armed police come to his home as the result of a false emergency call, a practice commonly known as swatting.
Walker said that he refused to be intimated by such tactics, and added that "I fear for all states if we allow threats and intimidation to become the norm."
Indiana's rejection of the effort is a major blow to Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting crusade, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina.
Christina Harvey, executive director for Stand Up America, said that the Indiana state Senate's rejection of the Trump plan was an "important victory for democracy."
"For weeks, Indiana residents have been pleading with their state leaders to stop mid-decade redistricting and the Senate listened," Harvey said. “Despite threats to themselves and their families, a majority of Indiana senators were steadfast in rejecting this gerrymandered map."
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, praised the Republicans who rejected the president's scheme despite enduring threats and harassment.
"Threats of violence are never acceptable, and no lawmakers should face violent threats for simply standing up for their constituents," Bisognano said. "Republicans in other states who are facing a similar choice—whether to listen to their constituents or follow orders from Washington—should follow Indiana’s lead in rejecting this charade and finally put an end to the national gerrymandering crisis."
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Senators Demand Trump Admin Come Clean on Plan to 'Quietly Kill' Social Security Offices
The lawmakers accused the Social Security Administration of "a slash-first, think-later approach," for which "beneficiaries will pay the price."
Dec 11, 2025
Leading Senate Democrats and Independent US Sen. Bernie Sanders this week pressed the Trump administration for answers following reports that the Social Security Administration is planning to dramatically reduce visits to its field offices.
"We write with concerns regarding recent reports that the Social Security Administration is reorganizing its field office operations, and has established a goal of cutting the number of field office visits in half—amounting to 15 million fewer visits annually," Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a letter to SSA Administrator Frank Bisignano.
"Given that beneficiaries are already waiting months for field office appointments, and the agency has not shared with Congress or the public on how it plans to achieve this goal, we are concerned that these efforts are in fact part of a plan to 'quietly kill field offices,' implementing a backdoor cut in benefits by making it harder for Americans to access the Social Security customer services they need," the senators said.
"The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security."
Earlier this month, Nextgov/FCW revealed that the Social Security Administration said in internal documents that it wants “no more than 15 million total” in-person visits to its field offices in fiscal year 2026—or about half the current number of such visits. An anonymous SSA staffer told the outlet that senior agency officials are aiming for “fewer people in the front door" and for "all work that doesn’t require direct customer interactions to be centralized.”
As Warren's office noted Thursday:
The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security. Under Commissioner Bisignano, the administration has implemented policy changes that make it harder for Americans to get their benefits, including by implementing burdensome in-person and bug-prone identification processes that force millions more beneficiaries to visit field offices each year—at the same time they are slashing SSA’s workforce by around 7,000 and closing regional offices.
Instead of staffing up to meet these needs, SSA’s field office capacity has significantly declined. Beneficiaries are being forced to wait hours to get help—only to be told they will need to call to schedule an appointment.
"We are concerned that your plan is to force beneficiaries onto SSA’s bug-prone website or push them into customer service phone tree 'doom-loops'—which will almost certainly result in delayed or missed benefits for some individuals," the letter adds. "Once again, you seem to have adopted a slash-first, think-later approach to 'modernizing' SSA, and beneficiaries will pay the price."
The senators are asking Bisignano if the reports of proposed SSA office visit reductions are accurate, and if so, how and when the plan will be implemented, how the agency will "provide services to beneficiaries that would otherwise go to field offices," and how the reductions will affect already lengthy wait times and service online users and callers to the agency's 1-800 number.
The lawmakers' letter comes as Republican senators on Thursday voted down a proposed three-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, a move that is expected to result, on average, in a doubling of health insurance premiums for around 22 million people. Critics said the vote underscores the need for single-payer healthcare legislation like the Medicare for All Act reintroduced by Sanders and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) earlier this year.
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Trump's North American Trade Deal 'Created More Problems Than It Fixed': Analysis
The trade deficit has grown and the US has lost manufacturing jobs during the first nine months of Trump's second term.
Dec 11, 2025
A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute claims that the signature trade deal from President Donald Trump's first term has actually "created more problems than it fixed."
The report, published Thursday, notes that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), signed into law by Trump in 2020, has completely failed to fulfill Trump's stated goal of lowering the US trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, which has grown from a combined $125 billion in 2020 to $263 billion in 2025.
This increased trade deficit was particularly notable when it comes to the auto industry, says the report, written by EPI senior economist Adam S. Hersh.
"In the critical automotive industry that Trump said he wanted to reshore, imports of motor vehicles and parts from Mexico nearly doubled following USMCA, rising to $274 billion in 2024, up from $196 billion in 2019," the report explains. "Light-duty vehicles imports from Mexico rose 36% while imports of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles increased a whopping 256%."
The report also finds that the trade deal "left a gaping loophole for Chinese manufacturers to exploit duty-free access to North American markets without reciprocal market access for US manufacturers," the result of which was "Chinese firms expanded their direct investment footprint in Mexico by as much as 288% through 2023."
The bottom line, says the report, is "Trump’s USMCA created more problems than it fixed," and that "today the pressure on manufacturing jobs and deterioration in the trade balance with Mexico are worse than before USMCA."
However, the report also says that the US, Canada, and Mexico have an opportunity to significantly improve on USMCA given that the deal is up for review next year.
Among other things, the report recommends closing the loopholes that have allowed Chinese manufacturers to rapidly expand their footprint in Mexico; expanding the the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism that "has helped improve wages and working conditions in a number of specific workplaces"; and slashing intellectual property rights provisions that "currently allow companies to preempt local laws addressing negative externalities from digital service provision."
The EPI report came on the same day that American Economic Liberties Project's Rethink Trade program released an analysis showing that Trump so far has failed to live up to his pledge to reduce the US trade deficit and revive domestic manufacturing.
In all, Rethink Trade found that the US trade deficit increased more during the first nine months of 2025 than it did during the first nine months of 2024. Additionally, the group found that the US has actually lost 49,000 manufacturing jobs since the start of Trump's second term.
Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program, said that "the nine-month data show outcomes that are the opposite of President Trump’s promises to cut the trade deficit and create more American manufacturing jobs."
She noted that Trump's trade deals so far "seem to prioritize the demands of Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and other usual beneficiaries of decades of failed US trade policy instead of fixing the root causes of our huge trade deficit to help American manufacturing workers and firms as he promised."
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