By CHRISTINE FERNANDO

CHICAGO (AP) — College student Maya Roman has the handoff down to a science: a text message, a walk to a designated site, and a paper bag delivered with condoms and Plan B emergency contraception. At DePaul University, it’s the only way students can get a sliver of sexual health support, she said.

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DePaul, a Catholic school in Chicago, prohibits distribution of any kind of birth control on its campus.

To get around that, a student group runs a covert contraceptive delivery network called “the womb service.” The group was once the university’s chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action, but it has been operating off campus since DePaul in June revoked its status as a student organization.

At Catholic universities, which generally do not offer contraceptives on their campuses or at school-run health centers, student groups have stepped in to fill what they see as gaps in reproductive health care. It often means navigating pushback from college administrators.

In line with church teachings that discourage premarital sex and birth control, many Catholic colleges restrict access to contraceptives on campus. The student activists say they are providing essential help on campuses that enroll students of all faiths.

At DePaul, the university said it banished the student group over its affiliation with Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. It said it also “reserves the right to restrict the distribution of medical or health supplies/devices items on university premises that it deems to be inappropriate from the perspective of the institution’s mission and values.”

“I was in disbelief,” Roman said of the group being forced to disband. “It was a flood of disappointment.”

Efforts to restrict contraception have mounted around the US

Far beyond college campuses, a growing number of Republican-led states have seen attempts to restrict access to contraception. Some state legislatures have sought to exclude emergency contraception and other birth control methods from state Medicaid programs or have introduced bills requiring parental consent for minors to access contraception.

The Trump administration has also frozen funding to family planning clinics that provide free or low-cost contraception and scrubbed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on birth control from government websites.

Conversely, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, signed legislation in August requiring colleges and universities to offer contraception and abortion medication at on-campus pharmacies and student health centers, but it applies only to public institutions.

“We do see this massive effort to restrict access to contraception and abortion throughout the U.S., not just on Catholic campuses,” said Jill Delston, associate professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied contraception access. “And on Catholic campuses, that may in some ways be amplified.”

Activist groups connect with students just off campus

Roman, an economics student at DePaul, grew up learning about reproductive health from her mother, a nurse. When she arrived on campus, she realized many of her peers had relatively limited sexual health knowledge. Meanwhile, she said she noticed DePaul’s sexual and reproductive health resources were lacking.

“It was seeing a need in the community and trying my best to address it right away,” she said.

Now, the group she leads receives about 15 to 25 orders each week for contraception and hosts sex education seminars.

“These schools disproportionately don’t provide contraception access, so students are stepping up to fill those gaps so that other students aren’t being prevented from controlling their own reproductive destiny and reproductive freedom,” said Maddy Niziolek, development specialist at Catholics for Choice, which helps students organize against Catholic universities’ restrictions on contraception access.

At Loyola University, another Catholic institution in Chicago, Students for Reproductive Justice delivers condoms, lubricant, pregnancy tests and emergency contraception directly to students. They receive as many as 20 orders in a single night. The group also hosts Free Condom Friday, where members pass out condoms at bus stops just off campus.

The group applied for registered student organization status in 2016 but was denied, said Alyssa Suarez Tineo, a junior studying women and gender studies and an organizer for SRJ Loyola.

“Loyola’s motto is ‘cura personalis,’ care for the whole person,” she said. “And this is just an example of Loyola not living up to what it promises.”

At the University of Notre Dame, the student group Irish 4 Reproductive Health formed in 2017 to file a lawsuit challenging the university’s decision to deny birth control coverage to students and employees. The group today distributes contraception off campus.

Gabriella Shirtcliff, the group’s co-president, said its work “helps reduce the risk of unplanned pregnancy that might require someone to get an abortion.”

Organizers see Catholic colleges as ‘challenging environments’

A lack of access to contraception can have deep, long-term impacts on students’ lives, Delston said.

“What’s at stake for these students is their bodily autonomy — the direction of the rest of their lives, their ability to pursue their goals, get a degree, have a career or start a family at the time it suits them,” she said.

In 2020, the American Society for Emergency Contraception launched an effort to help student activists expand contraception access on college campuses. The group has helped install 150 vending machines that dispense emergency contraception on campuses.

At Catholic universities, students usually have to start smaller than a vending machine, said Kelly Cleland, the group’s executive director. The first step, she said, is helping students figure out what’s possible.

“This is a lesson for them about organizing in challenging environments,” she said.

At DePaul, the students behind the womb service have re-applied under a new name — Students United for Reproductive Justice — and plan to continue distributing contraceptives this semester. DePaul has not approved the registration. Roman said she hopes more students on Catholic campuses challenge their universities’ reproductive health policies.

“It is possible; it is feasible,” she said. “And you’re not alone in this fight.”

This story was first published on Sept. 30, 2025. It was updated on Oct. 1, 2025 to make clear that the student group at DePaul University does not have status as registered on campus.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By JOEY CAPPELLETTI and STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gathered in the unusually quiet halls of the U.S. Capitol, Republican leaders faced the cameras for a second day and implored Democrats to reopen the government.

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“We want to protect hardworking federal workers,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday morning, before criticizing his counterparts. “Democrats are the ones who have decided to inflict the pain.”

It’s a striking role reversal. Budget standoffs for years have been the bane of Republican congressional leaders who had to wrestle with conservatives on their side ready to shut down the government to get their policy demands. Democrats often stood as willing partners to keeping the government open, lending crucial votes to protect programs they had championed.

“Both parties have completely flip-flopped to the opposite side of the same issue that hasn’t changed,” said GOP Sen. Rand Paul. “Congress has truly entered the upside down world.”

The change is happening in large part because President Donald Trump exercises top-down control over a mostly unified GOP — and faces little internal resistance to his budget priorities. The shift is unfolding as the shutdown threatens government services, forces the furlough of federal workers and gives the Trump administration another opportunity to remake the federal government.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been left scrambling for leverage in the first year of Trump’s second term, using the funding fight to exert what influence they can. It’s an awkward posture for a party that has long cast itself as the adults in the room during shutdown threats — something not lost on Republicans.

At a Wednesday morning news conference, Republicans looped an old clip of New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declaring, “It’s not normal to shut down the government if we don’t get what we want.”

A new GOP consensus on short-term spending

Short-term government funding legislation — known as continuing resolutions on Capitol Hill – once roiled hardline conservatives who viewed them as a dereliction of their duty to set the government’s funding levels. That fight became so bitter in 2023 that right-wing lawmakers initiated the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker after he relied on Democrats to pass a “clean” continuing resolution.

But now, Paul of Kentucky has been the lone Republican to join Senate Democrats in opposing a short-term funding measure backed by GOP leaders that would keep government funding generally at current levels through Nov. 21. In explaining his vote, Paul said the measure “continues Biden spending levels” which Trump had previously pledged to roll back.

Many of Paul’s previous fiscal hawk allies, however, have changed their tune.

“We need to reopen the government. Let’s fix America’s problems, let’s work together to solve them, but let’s reopen the government,” Vice President JD Vance said Thursday.

When he was in the Senate, Vance never voted in favor of final passage of a continuing resolution. Instead he argued that the leverage should be used to gain significant policy wins.

“Why shouldn’t we be trying to force this government shutdown fight to get something out of it that’s good for the American people?” Vance said last September on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast.

This week, Vance said: “You don’t have policy disagreements that serve as the basis for a government shutdown.”

Trump’s budget director, Russ Vought, has also taken a new tack now that he is back in the White House. While Joe Biden was president, Vought directed a conservative organization called The Center for Renewing America and counseled Republicans in Congress to use the prospect of a shutdown to gain policy concessions.

Yet this week, he charged that Democrats were “hostage taking” as they demanded that Congress take up health care policy.

In retaliation, Vought has threatened to initiate mass layoffs of federal workers and Wednesday announced that the White House was withholding funding for already approved projects in some blue states.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Mn., center, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., from right, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel ,Balce Ceneta)

Trump’s tight grip unifies the GOP on the surface

The shutdown, which began Wednesday, shows no sign of resolution. Republicans appear increasingly comfortable with their position, reflecting Trump’s firm control on the party’s agenda.

In a striking contrast to the internal division that once plagued GOP spending fights, party leaders displayed unity on the Capitol balcony on the first day of the shutdown.

“The President, House Republicans, Senate Republicans, we’re all united on this,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said at the gathering, while holding the pages of the Republicans’ continuing resolution that has already passed the House. That bill would reopen the government if it passed the Senate.

Trump’s second term has seen far less resistance from Republicans than his first. His major tax and spending proposal, along with his personnel appointments, have largely moved forward unchallenged — a break from his first term when GOP lawmakers frequently pushed back against his proposals and actions.

Still, tensions remain just below the surface. The Republican administration’s push for aggressive spending cuts — and its resistance to renewing certain health care subsidies — has sparked quiet concern inside the party.

Signs of Republican unease

One of the biggest flashpoints is the impending expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Some Republicans are sympathetic to the Democratic demands for an extension of the tax credits. If they allowed to expire, there will be large rate increases for many people who purchase their health care coverage on the marketplace. It would add financial stress to key Republican constituencies like small business owners, contractors, farmers and ranchers.

When Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, floated a one-year extension to the health care subsidies during a Senate floor vote Wednesday, it attracted attention from Democrats and Republicans alike.

“Sometimes there’s a misunderstanding that we’re divided on the ACA credits, we’re not. So now we’re moving forward to eliminate the fraud and also find a way back to pre-pandemic levels,” Rounds said.

There’s also a growing unease with how the Trump administration is leading Republicans through the shutdown. GOP lawmakers feel they hold the political advantage in the fight, but some are beginning to express doubts as the president and his budget director prepare to unleash mass layoffs and permanent program cuts.

Trump’s penchant for hurling insults at Democratic lawmakers – many who will be crucial to leading Congress out of the spending impasse – has also undercut the messaging of Republican leaders. When Johnson was asked Thursday what he thought about Trump posting doctored videos of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero, he offered a bit of advice for his Democratic counterpart.

“Man, just ignore it,” Johnson said.

By MATT OTT, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage ticked up for the second straight week following a string of declines that had brought down home borrowing costs to their lowest level in nearly a year.

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The average long-term mortgage rate rose this week to 6.34% from 6.3% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.12%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also inched up. The average rate rose to 5.55% from 5.49% the previous week. A year ago, it was 5.25%, Freddie Mac said.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

The 10-year yield was at 4.10% at midday Thursday, down from 4.19% the same time last week. Much of that decline has come in the past few days, driven by discouraging reports on the U.S. economy, particularly the job market.

By IBRAHIM HAZBOUN and RENATA BRITO

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli naval forces boarded most of the vessels in a flotilla attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza on Thursday and detained dozens aboard, including European lawmakers, drawing widespread condemnation.

The Global Sumud Flotilla was the largest yet to try to break the blockade, and it comes at a time of growing criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where its offensive has laid waste to wide swaths of territory and killed tens of thousands of people.

Activists had said they hoped that the sheer number of boats would make it more difficult for Israeli authorities to intercept them all — but Israel’s Foreign Ministry declared the operation over on Thursday afternoon.

Widespread protests

Supporters of the flotilla took to the streets in several major cities after news of the interception broke — including in Rome; Istanbul; Athens, Greece; and Buenos Aires, Argentina — to decry the Israeli operation and the ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip.

In the northern Italian city of Bologna, dozens of protesters and university students scuffled with police outside the city’s central train station. Police in riot gear used batons to push back the protesters who were trying to occupy the train station and chanting “Free Palestine” and “Shame on you”. Italy’s largest union called for a one-day general strike on Friday.

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The flotilla, which started out with more than 40 boats and nearly 450 activists, was carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Its main goal, they said, remained “to break Israel’s illegal siege and end the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry dismissed it as a “provocation,” saying that various countries have offered to deliver the aid the boats were carrying. Israel has come under intense criticism for how much aid it lets into Gaza and how it distributes the goods. It has vehemently denied it is committing genocide.

The organizers of the flotilla said at least 39 of their boats were intercepted or assumed intercepted in a nightlong Israeli operation. Israeli authorities later said only one boat remained “at a distance” and would be intercepted if it approached.

The flotilla has streamed its voyage online via live cameras aboard different boats, though connections were lost as Israeli authorities began boarding them in international waters on Wednesday evening.

An ongoing war and an even longer blockade

The Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered this war. Fighters killed some 1,200 people that day, while 251 others were abducted. Forty-eight hostages are still held in Gaza — around 20 believed to be alive.

Israel’s ensuing campaign has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its toll. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and whose figures are viewed by experts as the most reliable estimate, has said women and children make up around half the dead.

Israel has maintained varying degrees of blockade on Gaza since Hamas seized power in 2007, saying it is necessary to contain the group. Critics deride the policy as collective punishment.

After the war started, Israel tightened the blockade but eased up later under U.S. pressure. In March, it sealed the territory off from all food, medicine and other goods for 2 ½ months, contributing to Gaza’s slide into famine.

The flotilla said it wanted to establish a humanitarian corridor by sea, given the little aid that was reaching Gaza by land.

Activists and European lawmakers detained

Israeli forces detained and removed dozens of people — including Greta Thunberg, former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau and European Parliament member Rima Hassan — from the flotilla.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted photos and videos of some of the activists detainees saying in a statement on X that they were “safe and in good health” and would be transferred to Israel for deportation.

Earlier, live broadcasts from the activists showed Israeli boats approaching their vessels, spraying them with water canons and flashing bright lights before troops boarded the flotilla.

Anticipating the interceptions, activists wearing life jackets sat in circles and raised their hands in the air. Some managed to stream the moment live from their cellphones before tossing their devices into the sea.

Many decry flotilla’s interception

Turkey, Colombia, Pakistan and others condemned Israel’s interception of the flotilla.

Italy, France, Poland and other European nations, which had warned the activists not to continue the journey and avoid confrontation with Israel, said they were working with Israeli diplomatic authorities to ensure their citizens were transferred to land and deported home swiftly.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, one of Israel’s staunchest allies, on Thursday slammed Italian unions for their decision to call a general strike on Friday in solidarity with the flotilla.

“I continue to believe that all this brings no benefit to the Palestinian people. On the other hand, I understand that it will bring a lot of problems to Italian citizens,” Meloni told reporters upon her arrival in Copenhagen for a summit.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry described the interceptions as an “act of terrorism” and a severe breach of international law in a statement late Wednesday.

The detention of activists was part of Israel’s “ongoing aggression,” the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said, adding that Israel’s blockade of Gaza had caused “immense suffering” for more than 2 million Palestinians in the strip.

Israel has argued its actions constitute a lawful naval blockade needed to prevent Hamas from importing arms, while critics consider it collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.

Whether the blockade is militarily justified is a point of contention. But the flotilla argues they are a civilian, unarmed group and that the passage of humanitarian aid is guaranteed under international law.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced late Wednesday that his government would expel Israel’s diplomatic delegation in the South American country and terminate a free trade agreement with Israel over the interception. Two Colombian citizens are taking part in the flotilla.

Petro has repeatedly described Israel’s siege of Gaza as an act of genocide, something Israel vehemently denies.

Brito reported from Barcelona, Spain. Associated Press journalists Giada Zampano in Rome; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.