Can you believe it’s August 4 already? These are officially the lazy, dog days of summer, but here at Rewire News Group we’re still working hard to inform, infuriate, and sometimes maybe even delight you. Today’s main story is of the infuriating variety: It’s about a new study showing that more than 1 million women with disabilities can’t get affordable birth control.

Contraception has become an even more essential way to prevent pregnancy now that abortion is outlawed or severely restricted in 19 U.S. states. And by law, most health insurance plans must cover contraception—from the daily hormonal pill to long-term intrauterine devices (IUDs), to permanent sterilization—at little to no charge.

There is one glaring exception: Medicare.

Best known as the federal health insurance program for adults aged 65-plus, Medicare also covers some 1.3 million reproductive-aged women with disabilities. But it won’t pay for them to get permanent contraception like tubal ligation (price tag: up to $6,000), even if they have a health condition that could make pregnancy dangerous. And Medicare only partially covers other kinds of birth control, meaning an IUD can cost upwards of $1,800.

Cost is already “a major deterrent to getting on birth control,” writes study author Meghan Bellerose in Rewire News Group. And since the Trump administration slashed federal funds for Medicare and Medicaid in July, the contraception gap for women with disabilities is likely to get worse. Bellerose teamed up with disability expert Robyn Powell to explain her study results for RNG readers. If you find their story as aggravating and important as I do, forward it to a friend—and encourage them to sign up for Rewire’s newsletters.

Immigration

• Venezuelan men who were deported from the U.S. to El Salvador over the last several months reported being sexually abused, denied food, and beaten daily in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. “I thought I was going to die there,” one said. Instead, on July 25, roughly 250 Venezuelan deportees were flown to Venezuela; in exchange, Venezuela freed ten American prisoners. Roughly 85,000 Salvadorans remained imprisoned in El Salvador, local human rights groups say.
• Lawyers allege that people imprisoned at Florida’s immigration detention center in the Everglades are being held without charges and denied meetings with attorneys. Their bond hearings, when a judge may order their release if they pay a fee, are also being cancelled, the complaint says. Nearly a dozen people detained at the facility have been on hunger strike for nearly two weeks to protest a lack of food, water failures, and mistreatment by guards, Gulf Coast News Fort Meyers reported.

Pro-democracy wins

• A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked a “big, beautiful bill” provision that revoked Planned Parenthood clinics’ Medicaid funding.
• The Trump administration cannot abruptly end deportation protections for migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal, a federal judge ruled on July 31.
• Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C. are suing the Department of Agriculture over privacy concerns after it requested the personal information of people who apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, including their names, Social Security Numbers, addresses, and dates of birth, NPR reported on July 28.
• Two New York Democratic members of Congress, Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman, introduced a bill on July 26 that would require Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security agents to identify themselves when arresting people. The House bill would also prevent them from using homemade, non-military masks on the job.
• The Department of Education is releasing $5 billion in frozen education grants to U.S. states, according to the Associated Press. This means that all $6 billion-plus in education funding withheld by the department on July 1 has now been released following a lawsuit by nearly two dozen states.

Anti-democratic actions

• More than 50 Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state this week to prevent a vote on a heavily gerrymandered, Trump-requested congressional district map for Texas that would favor Republicans in the 2026 midterms, the Texas Tribune reported. Their absence means there is no quorum in the lower chamber, so it cannot consider and pass legislation, per its own rules. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened the state house Democrats with removal if they do not return, according to the Texas Tribune.
• “The United States appears to be sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism,” a July 30 press release from the international democracy watchdog CIVICUS reads. “Peaceful protests are confronted with military force, critics are treated as criminals, journalists are targeted, and support for civil society and international cooperation have been cut back.” The U.S. has been classified as “narrowed” on CIVICUS’ map, the second-highest rating, since 2023. The category means people have the right to exercise civil freedoms, but these rights are occasionally violated.
• The Trump administration has frozen $108 million for Duke University’s medical school and health-care system, citing “systemic racial discrimination,” according to the New York Times.
• The Department of Justice alleged that Washington, D.C. District Judge James Boasberg—who has overseen several high-profile immigration and deportation cases—made improper comments that amounted to judicial misconduct in a complaint filed, on July 28, NBC News reported. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, asked that the Alien Enemies Act case assigned to Boasberg be reassigned, and that Boasberg face disciplinary action if he’s found to have committed willful misconduct, according to NBC News.

Reproductive rights

• Planned Parenthood and Maine Family Planning have both sued the Trump administration over its targeted funding cuts to nonprofit family planning clinics that provide abortion care and receive more than $800,000 in annual Medicaid reimbursements. Funding to Planned Parenthood was temporarily restored on July 28, 2025 after a judge blocked the law from taking effect. A day later, 22 states, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the District of Columbia filed a third federal lawsuit challenging the provision of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act responsible for the cuts, claiming it’s unconstitutional.

LGBTQ+ rights

• The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee quietly updated its eligibility rules to prevent transgender women from competing in women’s sports. The new restrictions break with the International Olympic Committee, which allows trans women to compete after they have transitioned.
• Legal groups Democracy Forward and the National Women’s Law Center sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on July 29, alleging that the agency is refusing to enforce workplace protections for transgender workers. The Associated Press reported that the agency has dropped at least six cases alleging gender discrimination against transgender workers and halted progress on some new ones. The plaintiffs also allege that the EEOC stopped payments to state and local civil rights agencies to help them investigate gender identity discrimination claims.

Health and science

• The Food and Drug Administration’s new vaccine chief has resigned after less than three months on the job, according to the New York Times. The departure of oncologist and Covid-19 vaccine critic Vinay Prasad came after pressure by the right-wing activist Laura Loomer—who criticized Prasad for denying approval of drugs for rare diseases—and by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum over regulations imposed on a drug to which Santorum has business ties.
• The Environmental Protection Agency is laying the groundwork to stop regulating greenhouse gas emissions, according to the New York Times. On July 29, the agency announced its intent to revoke a foundational 2009 scientific decision called the “endangerment finding,” which established that greenhouse gasses warmed the planet and as a result, harmed public health. The finding allowed the agency to cap the amount of air pollutants factories and cars may spew out.
• On July 29, 2025, the Senate confirmed Susan Monarez as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to NPR. Monarez, who holds a PhD in immunology and microbiology, previously helmed the agency in an acting capacity. A colleague described Monarez to NPR as a “hardworking civil servant” and said “we really need her in this role.”

Recommended reading

Unwind

When you see a TV show starring mostly TikTok “content creators,” you might be skeptical. But two that are out right now—Hulu’s Adults and Amazon Prime’s Overcompensating—defy expectations. Both shows center on young adults figuring out who they are and finding community with each other. They’re heartwarming, hilarious, and highly bingeable.