BREAKING: The Trump Administration Freezes $35 Million in Title X Funding

The attack will leave eight states without ANY federal family planning dollars

Apr 01, 2025

Abortion, Every Day has learned that the Trump administration is freezing close to $35 million in Title X funding that was set to be distributed Tuesday. This unprecedented move won’t just hit Planned Parenthood affiliates—it will impact multiple nonprofit organizations, including at least one that may have been targeted in retaliation for a lawsuit against the first Trump administration. Another group had millions in funding paused over a statement affirming their “commitment to addressing systemic racism.”

The scale of this funding freeze is staggering. Starting April 1, California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, and Utah will receive zero Title X dollars. Most of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Alaska will lose access as well. Other states impacted include Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

Remember, Title X is the nation’s only federal family planning program. It provides affordable reproductive health care—birth control, STI testing, cancer screenings—primarily to low-income and uninsured patients.

There’s no overstating the impact here: Title X is a safety net. Six in 10 women who visit a publicly funded clinic consider it their usual source of medical care; for four in 10, it’s their only source.

This is an attack on poor people and an attempt to dismantle public health.

Now, we knew something was coming. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration planned to strip Planned Parenthood of Title X funds under the guise of targeting “DEI” initiatives. What no one expected was the sheer number of non-Planned Parenthood groups targeted—and how blatantly cherry-picked the cuts appear to be.

One of the organizations impacted, for example, is Converge, Inc.—the Title X grantee for Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Abortion, Every Day obtained the letter sent to Converge by the Department of Health and Human Services through a source outside the grantee network. In it, HHS notifies the group that their funding is being withheld based on “possible violations” of federal civil rights law.

The supposed violation? A 2020 statement opposing racism in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

I want to be crystal clear here: Converge is the Mississippi’s only Title X grantee, and without federal funding—funding that runs out today—they will shutter. The 90 Mississippi clinics under their purview will be in jeopardy of closing, and the tens of thousands of women who rely on them for care will have nowhere to go. All because they opposed racism.

And while the HHS is telling grantees that their funding is only “temporarily” withheld, the administration is asking the groups to hand over an impossible amount of documentation in just ten days in order to comply with their investigation. Things like copies of lists of patients and their races, lists of undocumented patients, and copies of any grievances brought against their many health care centers.

The goal appears to be asking already-overtaxed organizations for so much, it will be impossible to comply.

What struck most of my sources was how many of the grantees targeted appear random. Did some HHS intern search their websites for mentions of racism or gender-affirming care? That said, one grantee may have been attacked in retaliation—which is certainly a Trump administration hobby. Essential Access, which serves California and Hawaii, just so happens to have sued the first Trump administration in 2019 over their Title X rules.

But again, it’s unclear. Some of the defunded groups provide abortions, others don’t. Some are Planned Parenthood affiliates, others aren’t. Folks seem to believe that chaos is part of the point.

The targets of the freeze may seem random, but the attack on reproductive health care has been in the works for years. Conservatives haven’t just been chipping away at funding—they’ve been plotting a total overhaul.

Last year, Republicans pushed to slash nearly $300 million from Title X. And then there’s Project 2025, which lays out how the Trump administration should “reframe” the family planning program to focus on “fertility awareness and holistic family planning,” and “education on healthy marriage and relationships.” They also want to end what they call “religious discrimination” in Title X grant funding—code for giving federal dollars to crisis pregnancy centers.

In plain English: They want to take money meant for real reproductive health care and hand it to religious extremists who oppose birth control. All while the country isin the midst of a full-blown reproductive health care crisis.

“President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement today. (Devastation really is the right word.)

Like the other nonprofits, the Planned Parenthood affiliates targeted were told by HHS that their funding was being withheld over “violations” of Trump’s executive orders—like promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We know what this is. Like every other Republican policy around reproductive health, it’s about punishment and power. The Trump administration is putting millions of women’s lives at risk in the interest of punishing providers who dare to care for the marginalized, who believe racism is real, and who think health care should be a human right. And they’re empowering the people who’ve been foaming at the mouth for years to destroy Planned Parenthood and replace the nation’s family planning program with a network of religious groups that tell women birth control is a sin.

And that’s the thing: Ending Title X funding in eight states is just the beginning—and gutting America’s family planning program is a means to an end.

I’ll have more on this breaking story in tomorrow’s daily report.