Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams

Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health clinics regained access to Medicaid funding on Saturday after a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, defunding the organizations, expired.

The provision depriving Planned Parenthood was touted as a major victory for the anti-abortion movement when the bill was signed on July 4, 2025, but, due to Senate rules, the defunding only lasted for one year, and Congress failed to renew it before its summer recess.

While this means that Planned Parenthood, Health Imperatives in Massachusetts, and Maine Family Planning can once again bill Medicaid for non-abortion-related healthcare, it doesn’t reverse the damage caused by a year-long lack of access to funds totaling more than $800 million per year for Planned Parenthood alone....

Hundreds of members of the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front descended on Washington DC Saturday morning as the nation’s capital prepared to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Members of the group, wearing masks and carrying Confederate and US flags, rode the DC metro and marched around parts of Capitol Hill before departing the city by train, as WUSA reported. Beyond the march itself, no other incidents were reported connected to the group.

“What kind of fascist hellscape is [happening] on Pennsylvania Ave at the Eastern Market Metro stop?” Georgetown Law professor Josh Chafetz wrote on Bluesky upon spotting the group....

The Trump administration continued its illegal bombing of small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific on Friday, killing two and leaving one survivor in its third such strike in five days.

US Southern Command announced the attack on social media, claiming that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

“Under [President Donald] Trump’s illegal orders, the US military conducted its third boat strike in five days against supposed drug smugglers, killing at least two. Each of these is a murder. Drug suspects should be arrested and prosecuted, not summarily executed,” former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote on social media Saturday in response to the news....

The government has largely won its first case, bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to “antifa,” which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025, despite the fact that no such organized group exists, and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups.

A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas, agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent.“

A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them kind of intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities will then think twice about protesting,” Suzanne Adely, interim president of the National Lawyers Guild, told The Associated Press....

The Department of Justice is investigating Minnesota leaders including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging that they are conspiring to impede federal immigration agents due to their outspoken criticism of the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to the Twin Cities.

The investigation, first reported by CBS News on Friday, marks yet another escalation from the Trump administration following the January 6 launch of what the Department of Homeland Security claimed was its larger-ever immigration operation in the Minneapolis area and the killing the next day of legal observer Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathon Ross.

“Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic,” Walz wrote on social media in response to news of the investigation. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.”...