By PATRICK WHITTLE and GEOFF MULVIHILL

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — An item in Republicans’ sweeping policy and tax bill intended to block Medicaid dollars from flowing to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortion provider, is also hitting a major medical provider in Maine.

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Maine Family Planning filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday seeking to restore the reimbursements.

Accessing health care in Maine — one of the Northeast’s poorest states and its most rural — is a challenge in areas far from population centers such as Portland and Bangor.

Vanessa Shields-Haas, a nurse practitioner, said the organization’s clinics have been seeing all patients as usual and completing Medicaid paperwork for visits — but not submitting it because it appears the provision took effect as soon as the law was signed.

“Knowing how hard it is to access care in this state, not allowing these community members to access their care, it’s cruel,” Shields-Haas said.

Maine clinics appear to be only others included in cuts

Republican lawmakers targeted Planned Parenthood in one piece of what President Donald Trump dubbed the “big beautiful” bill that Congress passed and the president signed earlier this month.

While advocates focused on Planned Parenthood, the bill did not mention it by name. Instead, it cut off reimbursements for organizations that are primarily engaged in family planning services — which generally include things such as contraception, abortion and pregnancy tests — and received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023.

The U.S. Senate’s parliamentarian rejected a 2017 effort to defund Planned Parenthood because it was written to exclude all other providers by barring payments only to groups that received more than $350 million a year in Medicaid funds. The not-for-profit Maine organization asserts in its legal challenge that the threshold was lowered to $800,000 this time around to make sure Planned Parenthood would not be the only affected entity.

It is the only other organization that has come forward publicly to say that its funding is at risk, too.

Federal law already bars taxpayer money from covering most abortions. Instead, the money in question involves other health services, such as cancer screenings and tests, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

Proponents of that wrinkle in the law say abortion providers use Medicaid money for other services to subsidize abortion.

“This has never been just about Planned Parenthood,” Autumn Christensen, vice president of public policy for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement. “It’s about any Big Abortion business or network that performs abortions. Taxpayers should never be forced to prop up an industry that profits from ending human lives.”

The Associated Press has sought comment from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is named in the lawsuit.

Maine Family Planning goes beyond abortion

Maine Family Planning operates 18 clinics across the state.

In 2024, it had about 7,200 family planning patients, including 645 who obtained abortions. Services include pregnancy testing, contraception, family planning counseling, breast exams, cancer screenings and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

Some of the sites also offer primary care services, where there are another 600 or so patients. There are about 800 gender-affirming care patients and about 200 who use its upstart mobile clinic, said George Hill, the president and CEO of the organization.

Hill said that for about two-thirds of its patients, Maine Family Planning is the only place they get medical care in a typical year.

About half of the patients not seeking abortions are enrolled in Medicaid, and the clinics have been receiving about $1.9 million a year in reimbursements, which accounts for about one-fourth of the organization’s budget.

“It’s a difficult state to provide care in and now we’re facing this,” Hill said. In its lawsuit, the group says it has enough reserves to keep seeing patients covered by Medicaid without reimbursement only through October.

Finding health care can be a struggle in this rural state

Maine Family Planning says that if it had to turn away patients, it would be more complicated for them than simply finding another provider. There aren’t enough in rural areas, the group notes — and many don’t accept Medicaid.

One patient, Ashley Smith, said she started going to Maine Family Planning about five years ago when she could not find other health care she could afford. While she’s not enrolled in Medicaid, she fears clinics could be shuttered because of cuts.

“I am so worried that if my clinic closes, I don’t know what I’ll do or if I’ll be able to see another provider,” Smith said.

Maine Family Planning also supports care at more than 40 other health care facilities. Other than the Planned Parenthood locations that receive money from Maine Family Planning, those other providers don’t stand to lose their Medicaid reimbursements.

But, Hill said, the loss of Medicaid funding for Maine Family Planning would mean the group would have less to send to partners.

The Maine clinics say the law violates their right to equal protection

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Maine Family Planning in the challenge, says in its legal filing that the defunding denies it equal protection under the law because it would have funding cut off, but organizations that provide similar services would not.

“The administration would rather topple a statewide safety network than let a patient get a cancer screening at a facility that also offers abortion care,” Meetra Mehdizadeh, a Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer, said in an interview.

Planned Parenthood already sued and won a reprieve from a judge, preventing its Medicaid payments cutoff — at least until July 21 — while a court considers that case.

Planned Parenthood has warned that the law could put 200 of its affiliates’ roughly 600 clinics across the U.S. at risk of closing.

Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

By JILL COLVIN

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump is lashing out at his own supporters as he tries to clamp down on criticism over his administration’s handling of much-hyped records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation, which Trump now calls a “Hoax.”

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this “bull——,” hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote Wednesday on his Truth Social site, using an expletive in his post. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he went on.

The rhetoric marks a dramatic escalation for the Republican president, who has broken with some of his most loyal backers in the past, but never with such fervor.

The schism centers on his administration’s handling of the Epstein, who was found dead in his New York jail cell in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. Last week, the Justice Department and the FBI acknowledged that Epstein did not maintain a “client list” to whom underage girls were trafficked, and they said no more files related to the investigation would be made public, despite past promises from Attorney General Pam Bondi that had raised the expectations of conservative influencers and conspiracy theorists.

Bondi had suggested in February such a document was sitting on her desk waiting for review. Last week, however, she said she had been referring generally to the Epstein case file, not a client list.

“It’s a new administration and everything is going to come out to the public,” she had said at one point.

Trump has since defended Bondi and chided a reporter for asking about the documents.

“I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is,” he said Tuesday.

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The blowup comes after Trump and many figures in his administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, have spent years stoking dark and disproved conspiracy theories, including embracing QAnon-tinged propaganda that casts Trump as a savior sent to demolish the “deep state.”

Trump’s comments so far have not been enough to quell those who are still demanding answers.

“For this to go away, you’re going to lose 10%” of the “Make America Great Again” movement, former adviser and Steve Bannon said during a gathering of young conservatives recently.

Far-right commentator Jack Posobiec has said he will not rest “until we go full Jan. 6 committee on the Jeffrey Epstein files.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also appeared to break with Trump, calling for the Justice Department to “put everything out there and let the people decide.”

“The White House and the White House team are privy to facts that I don’t know. This isn’t my lane. I haven’t been involved in that, but I agree with the sentiment to put it out there,” Johnson told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.

By ABDELRAHMAN SHAHEEN and KAREEM CHEHAYEB

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian government officials and leaders in the Druze religious minority announced Wednesday a renewed ceasefire after days of clashes that have threatened to unravel the country’s postwar political transition and have drawn intervention by Syria’s powerful neighbor, Israel.

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It was not immediately clear if the new agreement – which was announced by Syrian state media and in a video message by a Druze religious leader – would hold. A previous ceasefire announced the day before quickly fell apart.

The announcement came after Israel launched a series of rare airstrikes in the heart of Damascus, part of a campaign that it said is intended to defend the Druze – who also form a substantial community in Israel – and to push Islamic militants away from its border.

The escalating violence has appeared to be the most serious threat yet to the ability of Syria’s new rulers to consolidate control of the country after a rebel offensive led by Islamist insurgent groups ousted longtime despotic leader, Bashar Assad, in December, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war.

As clashes have raged for days in the southern Syrian city of Sweida between government forces and Druze armed groups, Israel has launched dozens of strikes targeting government troops and convoys, and on Wednesday struck the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters in the heart of Damascus.

That strike killed one person and injured 18, Syrian officials said. Another strike hit near the presidential palace in the hills outside of Damascus.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said after the airstrike in a post on X that the “painful blows have begun.” An Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the army was preparing for a “multitude of scenarios” and that a brigade, normally comprising thousands of soldiers, was being pulled out of Gaza and sent to the Golan Heights.

Syria’s Defense Ministry had earlier blamed militias in the Druze-majority area of Sweida for violating a ceasefire agreement that had been reached Tuesday, causing Syrian army soldiers to return fire. It said they were “adhering to rules of engagement to protect residents, prevent harm, and ensure the safe return of those who left the city back to their homes.”

Meanwhile, reports of attacks on civilians continued to surface, and Druze with family members in the conflict zone searched desperately for information about their fate amid communication blackouts.

The primarily Sunni Muslim leaders have faced suspicion from religious and ethnic minorities, whose fears increased after clashes between government forces and pro-Assad armed groups in March spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks. Hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs, were killed.

Druze fear for the lives of their relatives in Sweida

In Jaramana near the Syrian capital, Evelyn Azzam, 20, said she fears that her husband, Robert Kiwan, 23, is dead. The newlyweds live in the Damascus suburb, but Kiwan would commute to Sweida for work each morning and got trapped there when the clashes erupted.

Azzam said she was on the phone with Kiwan when security forces questioned him and a colleague about whether they were affiliated with Druze militias. When her husband’s colleague raised his voice, she heard a gunshot. Kiwan was then shot while trying to appeal.

“They shot my husband in the hip from what I could gather,” she said, struggling to hold back tears. “The ambulance took him to the hospital. Since then, we have no idea what has happened.”

A Syrian Druze from Sweida living in the United Arab Emirates said her mother, father, and sister were hiding in a basement in their home near the hospital, where they could hear the sound of shelling and bullets from outside. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear her family might be targeted.

She had struggled to get hold of them, but when she reached them, she said, “I heard them cry. I have never heard them this way before.”

Another Druze woman living in the UAE with family members in Sweida, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said a cousin told her that a house where their relatives lived had been burned down with everyone inside it.

It reminded her of when the Islamic State extremist group attacked Sweida in 2018, she said. Her uncle was among many civilians there who took arms to fight back while Assad’s forces stood aside. He was killed in the fighting.

“It’s the same right now,” she told The Associated Press. The Druze fighters, she said, are “just people who are protecting their province and their families.”

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

Reports of killings and looting in Druze areas

The latest escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province.

Government forces that intervened to restore order then clashed with the Druze.

Videos surfaced on social media of government-affiliated fighters forcibly shaving the mustaches of Druze sheikhs, and stepping on Druze flags and pictures of religious clerics. Other videos showed Druze fighters beating captured government forces and posing by their dead bodies. AP reporters in the area saw burned and looted houses.

No official casualty figures have been released since Monday, when the Syrian Interior Ministry said 30 people had been killed. The U.K.-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 250 people had been killed as of Wednesday morning, including four children, five women and 138 soldiers and security forces.

The observatory said at least 21 people were killed in “field executions.”

Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued a statement Wednesday condemning the violations.

“These criminal and illegal actions cannot be accepted under any circumstances, and completely contradicts the principles that the Syrian state is built on,” the statement read, vowing that perpetrators, “whether from individuals or organizations outside of the law, will be held accountable legally, and we will never allow this to happen without punishment.”

Druze in the Golan gathered along the border fence to protest the violence against Druze in Syria.

Israel threatens to scale up its intervention

In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the military. In Syria, the Druze have been divided over how to deal with the country’s new leaders, with some advocating for integrating into the new system while others remained suspicious and pushed for an autonomous Druze region.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the Israeli army “will continue to attack regime forces until they withdraw from the area — and will also soon raise the bar of responses against the regime if the message is not understood.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday night that Israel has “a commitment to preserve the southwestern region of Syria as a demilitarized area on Israel’s border” and has “an obligation to safeguard the Druze locals.”

Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders since Assad’s fall, saying it doesn’t want Islamist militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria.

Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.

The U.S. House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services held a hearing recently about diversity, equity and inclusion. Fewer than five of the 90 minutes were spent talking about health care or anything related to money. Instead, conservative lawmakers wasted time and taxpayers’ dollars advancing an anti-DEI agenda with which they have become obsessed. Anecdotes were more interesting to them than were evidence-based truths about the Americans whom discrimination most harms.

Because the GOP comprises the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, all but one of the four expert witnesses in the hearing were theirs. Like the three other times I had testified on Capitol Hill, I was the lone Democrat. The Republicans’ strategy was familiar: Ask a series of yes/no questions that would require contextualization to answer adequately, then interrupt as the witness attempts to provide a nuanced response.

One question for me from Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas): “Should people be treated differently based on their race?” As I had done in my written testimony, I tried to explain to him that Black, Indigenous, Asian American and Latino American people have long been mistreated because of their race, which has led to persistent and pervasive racial inequities that disadvantage them relative to white people. But he apparently did not want to hear any of those facts, because he kept cutting me off, repeatedly declaring that this was a yes or no question.

Gill posed another question to which he did not allow an informative answer: “Do you believe that race should be considered in employer hiring practices?” For centuries, racism and white supremacy have been powerful determinants of who works where, what they are paid, and their opportunities for advancement to leadership in workplaces across industries. Race should not influence employment outcomes, but it too often has and still does.

Because of both implicit and explicit biases, race influences hiring processes across industries. Research makes painstakingly clear, though, that it is white applicants who most often and most lucratively benefit from preferential treatment. People of color and job seekers with ethnic-sounding last names have long been and continue to be routinely discriminated against, a highly cited University of Chicago study shows.

I do not believe that the remedy for discrimination is more discrimination. Instead, strategy and intentionality are both necessary and required to right past and present wrongs in hiring processes. Because the inequities are racialized and gendered, programs and practices ought to deliberately address the mindsets, structures and systems that have routinely locked irrefutably qualified people of color and women out of well-deserved opportunities. Perhaps had I been allowed to answer fully, Gill and I would have found common ground in our opposition to unlawful workplace discrimination.

Corporations, universities and other organizations need high-quality professional learning experiences that help employees who are involved in hiring processes understand how and why white job applicants are typically presumed to be smarter and more qualified than applicants of color. Gill and other opponents of diversity programs need to learn about these particular manifestations of white supremacy too. They also could benefit from exposure to research that shows how workplace racial stratification systems cyclically route the majority of employees of color into the lowest-paid, lowest-authority jobs and lock them out of leadership positions.

Federal statistics show that 77% of managers across all industries are white. Furthermore, 84% of executive-level leaders at Fortune 100 companies are white, according to a Heidrick & Struggles report. If our positions had been reversed and I were the one posing questions, I would have asked Gill about those statistics: Is it that most white people are just that much more talented and deserving than people of color, or could it be something else? In the midst of our chaotic crosstalk, I was able to make the point that I do not believe that white candidates are the only qualified people for jobs.

“I didn’t say that, nobody said that,” Gill replied. “And you’re not going to intimidate me by slandering me as a racist.” I did not say or imply that he was. However, his mistaken presumption is revealing and unsurprising. It sometimes happens — especially among white people — when simplistic or otherwise problematic positions on race are challenged. I was able to make this clear: “And you’re not going to intimidate me by insisting that I called you a racist.” I reminded him that a hearing transcript confirming what I actually said would be made publicly available.

Gill was in search of yes/no responses to his questions. Racism and racial inequities in employment, university admissions and other processes are far more complicated than that.

But if he was indeed only interested in simple truths, there are at least two.

First, professionals of color and women are systematically passed over for job opportunities and promotions because of their race and gender considerably more often than are their white male counterparts.

Second, diversity policies and programs aim to redress such inequities accrued to employees because of their skin color, nationality, ethnicity, sex, gender, disability, weight, accent, sexual orientation and other traits.

Shaun Harper is a professor of education, business and public policy at the University of Southern California and the author of “Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.” He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

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