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National Abortion Federation (NAF) on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett
Statement of The Very Reverend Katherine Ragsdale, President and CEO
WASHINGTON
Donald Trump's hasty nomination of a third Supreme Court justice threatens our basic rights and freedoms, including abortion access. As we grapple with a global pandemic and over 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, our senators should focus on providing relief to struggling families, not fast-tracking another Trump nominee.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly vowed to put forth nominees who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and Judge Amy Coney Barrett has passed this litmus test. Her extremist bona fides include writing that abortion is "always immoral" and voting twice, in her three short years as a federal appellate judge, in favor of abortion restrictions, both times in dissent.
Judge Barrett has the approval of ultraconservative and anti-abortion groups, and her views are out of step with the majority of Americans, who overwhelmingly support access to safe, legal abortion care. Seventy-seven percent of people in this country believe the Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade. We need a Supreme Court justice who will honor precedent, including Roe v. Wade, and that is not Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
This nomination comes as we continue to see relentless attacks on abortion access in the states and challenges to a number of abortion restrictions and outright bans making their way through the courts. We know that provoking these challenges is part of the coordinated anti-abortion strategy: enacting cruel and extreme state laws with the explicit purpose of providing the Supreme Court with a case that ultraconservative justices can use to overturn Roe.
And there's more at risk with this nomination than just Roe. The Supreme Court is the final defense against dangerous and unconstitutional attacks on all basic rights and precious freedoms that affect the most important parts of our lives, including our access to health care, racial equity, voting rights, protections for immigrants and workers, and marriage equality.
With so much at stake, this confirmation process should not be rushed, and the people should have a say in who fills this pivotal, lifetime seat. The next justice could dramatically shift the balance of our nation's highest court, and we need a nominee dedicated to equal justice for all. The Senate should wait to replace Justice Ginsburg until after the people have voted and the next president has been inaugurated.
The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is the professional association of abortion providers.Our members include individuals, private and non-profit clinics, Planned Parenthood affiliates, women's health centers, physicians' offices, and hospitals who together care for approximately half the women who choose abortion in the U.S. and Canada each year. Our members also include public hospitals and both public and private clinics in Mexico City and private clinics in Colombia.
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Trump Deportation Campaign Forcing Immigrants to Avoid Healthcare and Change Daily Routines
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” said one man. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
Nov 19, 2025
For people who have immigrated to the United States—regardless of whether they have legal status—life under the second Trump administration has provoked daily anxiety and fear—forcing many to make choices about whether it's safe to go to church services that once provided a sense of community, seek medical care, and send their children to school.
As federal immigration agents continued raiding communities in Charlotte, North Carolina—the latest target of the administration's mass deportation campaign—as well as other cities across the US, the New York Times/KFF poll released Tuesday gave a comprehensive look at how President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies have impacted both undocumented immigrants and people who have green cards and other legal documentation.
Nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants reported negative health impacts due to worries about being deported, separated from their families, or otherwise harmed due to their immigration status.
Health impacts they reported include problems sleeping or eating, worsening health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and worsening anxiety or stress.
Immigrants with legal documentation also reported these impacts in large numbers, with 47% saying they have experienced health issues stemming from worries about Trump's policies. Nearly a third of naturalized citizens said the same.
A 34-year-old Colombian woman in New York said her family is "scared of going out."
“We’re getting depressed," she said. "We’re scared that they’ll separate us, they’ll mistreat us.”
While experiencing increased negative health impacts, immigrants have become more likely to avoid getting medical care—as viral videos have shown US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents making arrests at medical offices.
Under the Biden administration, ICE and other federal agents were barred from conducting immigration enforcement at sensitive locations like schools and hospitals, but Trump rescinded those limits.
Between 2023-25, the share of adult immigrants who reported skipping or delaying healthcare increased from 22% to 29%. One in five said it was due to immigration-related worries.
Nearly a third of parents also said they had delayed or avoided medical appointments for their children; the share rose to 43% for undocumented immigrant parents.
About half of all adult immigrants and nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants said they were "somewhat" or "very" concerned about healthcare providers sharing information with immigration enforcement officials.
Two years ago, about 26% of immigrants reported fears that they or a family member could be deported or detained, and that number has jumped to 41%.
One-third of noncitizen immigrants said they have begun avoiding aspects of everyday life, and nearly 60% of undocumented immigrants said the same.
"We have been the workforce in construction, restaurants, janitorial,” Ana Luna, an immigrant who has lived in Los Angeles with her family for nearly two decades, told the Times. “Now we have to run, hide, or stay inside. And it’s especially heartbreaking for our children.”
Luna told the Times that her youngest child's school had recently informed her that immigration enforcement was nearby.
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” her husband, Gabriel Lorenzo, told the Times. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
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Trump Proposal to Weaken Endangered Species Act Will 'Accelerate the Extinction Crisis,' Green Groups Warn
The proposal "could seal the fate of animals that, without these protections, would disappear from the Earth," said the Sierra Club’s executive director.
Nov 19, 2025
Environmentalists are sounding the alarm about a slate of new proposals from the Trump administration to weaken the Endangered Species Act, which they say will put more imperiled species in danger to line the pockets of the wealthy.
On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it would once again roll back several key provisions of the ESA. Many had been in place for decades before they were slashed during President Donald Trump's first term. They were then restored under former President Joe Biden.
"These revisions end years of legal confusion and regulatory overreach, delivering certainty to states, tribes, landowners, and businesses while ensuring conservation efforts remain grounded in sound science and common sense," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a billionaire ally of the fossil fuel industry.
But some of the nation's leading environmental groups say the proposals will allow the government to flout science and approve new projects that will destroy the habitats of vulnerable creatures and accelerate the already worsening extinction crisis.
“The ESA is one of the world’s most powerful laws for conservation and is responsible for keeping 99% of listed species from extinction,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife.
The group said the changes "could accelerate the extinction crisis we face today." According to a 2023 investigation by the Montana Free Press, the ESA has prevented 291 species from going extinct since it was passed in 1973. At that point, around 40% of all animals and 34% of plants were considered at risk of extinction according to NatureServe, a nonprofit that collects conservation data.
“The ESA is only as effective as the regulations that implement it," Davenport said. “Rolling back these regulations risks reversing the ESA’s historic success and threatens the well-being of plant and animal species that pollinate our crops, generate medicine, keep our waterways clean, and support local economies.”
One of the rules being rolled back requires species to receive "blanket" protections when they are added to the list of threatened species. Instead of those blanket protections—which protect these newly-added species from killing, trapping, and other forms of harm—the FWS will instead create individual designations for each species.
According to Jackson Chiappinelli, a spokesperson for Earthjustice, some of the species that would lose protection under this rule would be the Florida manatee, California spotted owl, greater sage grouse, and monarch butterfly, which it said could remain unprotected for years after being listed.
Another major change would let the government consider "economic impacts" when deciding which habitats are required to be protected. In 1982, Congress modified the ESA to clarify that the secretary of the interior must make decisions "solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available," an amendment specifically intended to prevent economic factors from overawing environmental concerns.
The Interior Department said "the revised framework provides transparency and predictability for landowners and project proponents while maintaining the service’s authority to ensure that exclusions will not result in species extinction."
But Chiappinelli contends that the change would "violate the letter of the law" and warns that "the federal government could decide against protecting an endangered species after considering lost revenue from prohibiting a golf course or hotel development to be built where the species lives."
"If finalized, the rules would bias listing decisions with unreliable economic analyses, obstruct the ability to list new protected species, and make it easier to remove those now on the federal endangered or threatened list," said Ian Brickey, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club.
The proposed rules would also reduce the requirements for other federal agencies to consult with wildlife agencies to determine whether their actions could harm critical habitats. It also eliminates the requirement for agencies to "offset" habitat damage when approving new projects, such as logging or drilling, that harm protected species.
“Without rigorous consultations,” Davenport said, “projects could push species like the northern spotted owl and Cook Inlet beluga whale closer to extinction.”
The new proposals follow several efforts by the Trump administration to weaken protections for endangered species. Earlier this year, it proposed weakening the half-century-old definition of what counts as "harm" to endangered species to exclude habitat destruction.
The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has proposed rescinding the 2001 "Roadless Rule," which has shielded nearly 45 million acres of protected national forest from logging, oil and gas drilling, and road construction.
Amid the government shutdown, the administration announced its intent to lay off more than 2,000 Interior Department employees, including 143 from the FWS, though a federal judge blocked those layoffs.
It also attempted to sneak a provision into July's One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have mandated the sale of millions of acres of public lands, but it was stripped out in the Senate following fierce backlash.
"The Trump administration is stopping at nothing in its quest to put corporate polluters over people, wildlife and the environment," said Loren Blackford, the Sierra Club's executive director. "These regulations attempt to undermine the implementation of one of America’s bedrock environmental laws, and they could seal the fate of animals that, without these protections, would disappear from the Earth."
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Warren, Jayapal Introduce Bill Aimed at Curbing Corporate Meddling in Regulations
“While Donald Trump keeps selling away influence over our government, we’re fighting to ensure the rules are being written to help working Americans, not corporate interests," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Nov 19, 2025
Two progressive Democrats are teaming up to push legislation to curb corporate America's capture of the federal government's regulatory process.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday announced a new bill called the Experts Protect Effective Rules, Transparency, and Stability (EXPERTS) Act that aims to restore the role of subject matter experts in federal rulemaking.
Specifically, the bill would codify the Chevron doctrine, a 40-year legal precedent overturned last year by the US Supreme Court, which held that courts should be broadly deferential to decisions made by independent regulatory agencies about interpretations of congressional statutes.
The legislation would also push for more transparency by requiring the disclosure of funding sources for all "scientific, economic, and technical studies" that are submitted to agencies to influence the rulemaking process.
Additionally, the bill proposes speeding up the regulatory process by both "excluding private parties from using the negotiated rulemaking process" and reinstating a six-year limit for outside parties to file legal challenges to agencies' decisions.
In touting the legislation, the Democrats pitched it as a necessary tool to rein in corporate power.
“Many Americans are taught in civics classes that Congress passes a law and that’s it, but the reality is that any major legislation enacted must also be implemented and enforced by the executive branch to become a reality,” said Jayapal. “We are seeing the Trump administration dismantle systems created to ensure that federal regulation prioritizes public safety. At a time when corporations and CEOs have outsized power, it is critical that we ensure that public interest is protected. This bill will level the playing field to ensure that laws passed actually work for the American people."
Warren, meanwhile, argued that "giant corporations and their armies of lobbyists shouldn’t get to manipulate how our laws are implemented," and said that "while Donald Trump keeps selling away influence over our government, we’re fighting to ensure the rules are being written to help working Americans, not corporate interests."
The proposal earned an enthusiastic endorsement from Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert, who described it as "the marquee legislation to improve our regulatory system."
"The bill aims directly at the corporate capture of our rulemaking process, brings transparency to the regulatory review process and imposes a $250,000 fine on corporations that submit false information, among other things," she said. "The bill is essential law for the future of our health, safety, environment, and workers. Public Citizen urges swift passage in both chambers."
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