The second Trump administration has been nibbling around the edges of abortion access. In June, it rescinded Biden-era guidance instructing emergency room doctors to perform emergency abortions to prevent serious pregnancy complications like organ loss and hemorrhaging. And Trump’s new “big, beautiful bill” pushes insurers to drop abortion coverage and blocks Medicaid reimbursements to abortion clinics.

These and other sneaky, wonky changes to federal abortion policy will affect how, where, and whether many people can get abortion care. But they stop well short of the full-frontal assault on reproductive rights that many Americans expected—whether in hope or in fear—from this government. To date, the Trump administration has seemed more focused on abducting immigrants than on controlling wombs.

But that may be about to change.

“A new Trump administration hire suggests that it is gearing up to start the next stage of its assault on U.S. democracy by cracking down on abortion,” my colleague Imani Gandy writes. Her latest Rewire News Group column explains why Republicans could soon dust off the Comstock Act—a long-dormant anti-obscenity law from 1873—and use it to make sending abortion pills by mail illegal.

“It’s the Republican trump card,” Gandy writes. “A back door for outlawing abortion nationwide.” Read her full story here.

Trump Hasn’t Forgotten About Abortion—Amidst ICE Raids, The Comstock Act Looms Heavy

Pro-democracy wins

• In a first-of-its-kind move, Maryland’s government will use a fund created by an optional provision of the Affordable Care Act to help pay for abortions, including for those who travel to the state for care, according to NPR. The state will use fees paid by insurers who participate in its insurance marketplace to give up to $2.5 million in grants to abortion funds.
• The Trump administration said it would release some of the more than $6 billion in Congressionally-allocated education grants it has withheld from states. The July 18 announcement came days after California and at least 22 other states sued the government to try to unfreeze the money, which funds programming for English-language learners and students from migrant families, as well as increase teacher training and classroom technology, among other educational initiatives.
• Multiple states have tried—but failed—to pass legislation classifying abortion drugs as controlled substances since the start of 2025, according to News From The States. That means that, for now, the drugs, which may be essential to other routine kinds of gynecologic care, will not face stricter regulation and surveillance.
• A Jewish woman may challenge Kentucky’s strict abortion bans in court, the Kentucky Lantern reported on July 15. In a 2022 lawsuit filed with two other Jewish women, Jessica Kalb argues that the the state’s laws, which define a fetus as a person once an egg fertilizes a sperm and bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, defers to “Christian values” that conflict with the Jewish belief that life begins at birth, not at conception. A Kentucky appeals court ruled on July 11 that her two co-plaintiffs lacked legal standing, but said Kalb’s case may continue. It will now go back to a lower court to be litigated.

Anti-democratic actions

• Congress has voted to cut more than $1 billion to U.S. public broadcasters. The money helps to fund well-known networks like National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service and keeps small regional public radio programs afloat, particularly in sparsely populated rural areas. The July 18 conservative win follows decades of unsuccessful efforts by Republicans to defund the nation’s public broadcasters, according to the New York Times.
• The Supreme Court ruled on July 14 that the Trump administration could fire more than a thousand employees at the Department of Education, according to the New York Times. The ruling comes amid an ongoing effort by the administration to dismantle the department, which is responsible for investigating school civil rights violations and overseeing federal student loans, among other duties.
• Lawyers at the U.S. Department of Justice are asking multiple states for copies of their voter rolls, the Washington Post reported. The requests appear to be related to ongoing attempts by the Trump administration to impose more restrictions on voting. One voting rights expert told the Post that President Donald Trump and his supporters “are trying to lay the groundwork to interfere with a free and fair election in 2026.”
• During a trial on the Trump administration’s efforts to deport international students and students who are not U.S. citizens, a senior State Department official on July 18 testified that criticizing Israel could factor into his team’s decision to revoke a student’s visa, the New York Times reported.

Reproductive rights

LGBTQ+ rights

• The National Suicide and Crisis Hotline is ended its specialized service for LGBTQ+ youth on July 17 at the direction of the Trump administration. The administration said it cut the dedicated 988 line “to focus on serving all help seekers,” STAT News reported. This explainer from the LGBTQ+ publication Them outlines what mental health resources remain for this community.
• Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center announced on July 15 that it was “pausing” gender-affirming care for new patients under the age of 18, according to CBS News. At least a dozen major hospital systems across the country have scaled back or closed their gender-affirming care programs for minors since January 2025 under pressure from the Trump administration.
• The drastic Medicaid cuts included in Trump’s newly-signed “big, beautiful bill” are expected to disproportionately impact the LGBTQ+ community, according to The 19th. “LGBTQ+ adults are twice as likely to use Medicaid as their main insurance,” The 19th reported. Coupled with the discrimination LGBTQ+ many people already confront in the medical field, “Trump’s new tax law could create insurmountable hurdles for their health care.”

Immigration

• The United States deported five immigrants to Eswatini, a tiny country in southern Africa, the Associated Press reported last week. The Department of Homeland Security said the men—from Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen, and Laos—were “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.” Eswatini, an absolute monarchy, said on X that it would ensure the “prisoners” were treated with “due process and respect for human rights.”
• A 15-year-old boy was among the first people locked up in the Trump administration’s new migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades, according to the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times. The teen, Alexis, was in a car that was pulled over by highway patrol on July 1. He told police he was over 18 “because of fear,” his father told the Herald/Times, and was taken in handcuffs to the barebones detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis initially claimed no minors were detained there but admitted on July 16 that Alexis had been sent there. He was transferred to a shelter for migrant children on July 4.
• The Trump administration will turn over the personal data of nearly 80 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reportedly to help ICE officials locate immigrants, the Associated Press reported July 17. ICE has already gained access to Internal Revenue Service data for similar use. Critics say sharing government-collected demographic information and home addresses, some of which is outdated, could lead to more raids targeting the wrong people and households.
• On July 17, the Department of Justice asked California sheriffs for lists of all incarcerated people who are not U.S. citizens, the New York Times reported. The DOJ said it would “pursue all available means of obtaining the data” if sheriffs did not voluntarily hand over the information.

Health and science

• Trump’s Medicaid cuts could lead to delays in care that result in an extra 1,000 deaths and 100,000 hospitalizations across the U.S. each year, NBC News reported. The numbers, calculated by health experts, echo similar projections published in June 2025.
• The Environmental Protection Agency announced on July 18 it is getting rid of its scientific research branch and has started firing hundreds of scientists, the New York Times reported.

DEI and civil rights

• The DOJ asked a judge to sentence a former Louisville detective who was convicted in the 2020 shooting death of Breonna Taylor to one day in jail, the New York Times reported on July 17. A jury in November 2024 found Brett Hankison guilty of violating Taylor’s civil rights during a botched late-night raid of her home, a conviction that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Hankison is expected to be sentenced today.

Recommended reading

• Meet the Philly Abortion Doula. In Philadelphia, one doula is using a mutual aid model to help pregnant people understand and navigate all their options—including abortion, and maybe even meal prep afterwards. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll tell you what we can do,” said the doula in Annemarie Dooling’s latest for Rewire News Group.

Unwind

• We can’t claim you’ll find this relaxing, but a new season of The Retrievals by Serial Productions and the New York Times is out. It seeks to understand why pain isn’t adequately managed in an estimated 100,000 U.S. cesarean sections each year, and what some researchers are doing to change that. It’s enraging—and honestly, a little terrifying—but definitely worth a listen.