Four of the 14 Planned Parenthood clinics in Minnesota and four of the six in Iowa will shut down in a year, the Midwestern affiliate operating them said Friday, blaming a freeze in federal funds, budget cuts proposed in Congress and state restrictions on abortion.

The clinics closing in Iowa include the only Planned Parenthood facility in the state that provides abortion procedures, in Ames, home to Iowa State University. The others are in Cedar Rapids, Sioux City and the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale.

Two of the clinics being shut down by Planned Parenthood North Central States are in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, in Apple Valley and Richfield. The others are in central Minnesota in Alexandria and Bemidji. Of the four, the Richfield clinic provides abortion procedures.

The Planned Parenthood affiliate said it would lay off 66 employees and ask 37 additional employees to move to different clinics. The organization also said it plans to keep investing in telemedicine services and sees 20,000 patients a year virtually. The affiliate serves five states — Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

“We have been fighting to hold together an unsustainable infrastructure as the landscape shifts around us and an onslaught of attacks continues,” Ruth Richardson, the affiliate’s president and CEO, said in a statement.

Of the remaining 15 clinics operated by Planned Parenthood North Central States, six will provide abortion procedures — five of them in Minnesota, including three in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The other clinic is in Omaha, Nebraska.

The affiliate said that in April, President Donald Trump’s administration froze $2.8 million in federal funds for Minnesota to provide birth control and other services, such as cervical cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

While federal funds can’t be used for most abortions, abortion opponents have long argued that Planned Parenthood affiliates should not receive any taxpayer dollars, saying the money still indirectly underwrites abortion services.

Planned Parenthood North Central States also cited proposed cuts in Medicaid, which provides health coverage for low-income Americans, as well as a Trump administration proposal to eliminate funding for teenage pregnancy prevention programs.

Related Articles

Publix recalls baby food pouches after testing finds elevated levels of lead

Weight-loss drugs may lower cancer risk in people with diabetes, a study suggests

RFK Jr.’s MAHA report raises concerns about vaccines, American foods and prescription drugs

FDA panel is split on updates to COVID shots as questions loom for fall vaccinations

Measles is very contagious. Here’s how to avoid it

In addition, Republican-led Iowa last year banned most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant, causing the number performed there to drop 60% in the first six months the law was in effect and dramatically increasing the number of patients traveling to Minnesota and Nebraska.

After the closings, Planned Parenthood North Central States will operate 10 brick-and-mortar clinics in Minnesota, two in Iowa, two in Nebraska, and one in South Dakota. It operates none in North Dakota, though its Moorhead, Minnesota, clinic is across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota.

McDonald’s said Friday that it’s closing down CosMc’s, a new restaurant format it began piloting in the U.S. last year.

Related Articles

A Planned Parenthood affiliate plans to close 4 clinics in Minnesota, another 4 in Iowa

Justice Department reaches deal to allow Boeing to avoid prosecution over 737 Max crashes

St. Paul chef to shut down charity accused of mixing funds with restaurants

One Tech Tip: These are the apps that can now avoid Apple’s in-app payment system

FTC abandons Biden-era effort to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard

But the company said beverages inspired by CosMc’s will soon be tested at U.S. McDonald’s locations. Among the drinks on CosMc’s current menu: a matcha iced latte, a turmeric spiced latte, a prickly pear-flavored slushy with popping candy on top and a frozen sour cherry energy drink.

McDonald’s announced in late 2023 that it wanted to test a small-format store with customizable drinks and treats that would appeal to afternoon snackers – and potentially grab sales from rivals like Starbucks and Dutch Bros. McDonald’s sales often slump in the afternoon between mealtimes and the company wants to change that.

“This is a $100 billion category that’s growing faster than the rest of (casual dining) and with superior margins. And it’s a space that we believe we have the right to win,” McDonald’s Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski said at the time.

But Kempczinski said CosMc’s drinks might be too complex to fit in with regular McDonald’s store operations.

McDonald’s wound up opening one CosMc’s location near its headquarters in Chicago and seven in Texas. Five locations remain, but the company plans to shut them all down by the end of June. The company is also shutting down CosMc’s app.

McDonald’s said CosMc’s allowed it to experiment with bold flavors and different technologies, like drive-thru lanes that manage traffic based on the complexity of orders. It was also able to quickly edit the menu based on customer feedback.

BY MATTHEW LEE, AAMER MADHANI and SEUNG MIN KIM

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is ordering a massive overhaul of the National Security Council that will shrink its size and return many career appointees back to their home agencies, according to two U.S. officials and one person familiar with the reorganization.

Related Articles

Trump approves FEMA disaster relief for 8 states

Belgian princess left in doubt about her Harvard future following Trump’s foreign student ban

Trump signs executive orders to boost nuclear power, speed up approvals

What issues to watch as ‘big, beautiful bill’ moves to the Senate

Trump’s team is divided on how to tackle the president’s vow to ease sanctions on Syria

The move is expected to significantly reduce the number of staff at the NSC, according to the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel matter. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been serving as national security adviser since early this month following the ouster of Mike Waltz, who was nominated to serve as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.

The NSC has been in a continual state of tumult for much of the early going of Trump’s second go-around in the White House.

Waltz was ousted weeks after Trump said that he’d fired several NSC officials, just a day after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty.

The White House days into the administration sidelined about 160 NSC aides, sending them home while the administration reviewed staffing and tried to align it with Trump’s agenda. The aides were career government employees, commonly referred to as detailees.

This latest shakeup amounts to a “liquidation” of NSC staffing with both career government detailees on assignment to the NSC being sent back to their home agencies and several political appointees being fired from their positions, according to the person familiar with the decision.

A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed that the overhaul, first reported by Axios, was underway but declined further comment.

By TARA COPP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Military air traffic controllers lost contact with an Army helicopter for about 20 seconds as it neared the Pentagon on the flight that caused two commercial jets to abort their landings this month at a Washington airport, the Army told The Associated Press on Friday.

Related Articles

Trump approves FEMA disaster relief for 8 states

Belgian princess left in doubt about her Harvard future following Trump’s foreign student ban

Trump signs executive orders to boost nuclear power, speed up approvals

What issues to watch as ‘big, beautiful bill’ moves to the Senate

Trump’s team is divided on how to tackle the president’s vow to ease sanctions on Syria

The aborted landings on May 1 added to general unease about continued close calls between government helicopters and commercial airplanes near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport following a deadly midair collision in January between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter that killed 67 people.

In March, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that helicopters would be permanently restricted from flying on the same route where the collision occurred. After the May 1 incident, the Army paused all flights into and out of the Pentagon as it works with the FAA to address safety issues.

Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the head of Army aviation, told the AP in an exclusive interview that the controllers lost contact with the Black Hawk because a temporary control tower antenna was not set up in a location where it would be able to maintain contact with the helicopter as it flew low and rounded the Pentagon to land. He said the antenna was set up during construction of a new control tower and has now been moved to the roof of the Pentagon.

Braman said federal air traffic controllers inside the Washington airport also didn’t have a good fix on the location of the helicopter. The Black Hawk was transmitting data that should have given controllers its precise location, but Braman said FAA officials told him in meetings last week that the data the controllers were getting from multiple feeds and sensors was inconclusive, with some of it deviating by as much as three-quarters of a mile.

“It certainly led to confusion of air traffic control of where they were,” Braman said.

Former FAA and NTSB crash investigator Jeff Guzzetti said he thinks the air traffic controller did the right thing by ordering the two planes to go around that day.

“The Army, to me, seems to be attempting to sidestep some of their responsibility here. And it just sounds like excuses to say ‘Hey, we had our ADS-B on and that should have been enough for them to see where we were.’ That sounds too simplistic to me,” Guzzetti said.

The FAA declined to comment on whether its controllers could not get a good fix on the Black Hawk’s location due to their own equipment issues, citing the ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is pushing to have the agency modernize its air traffic control systems and equipment, which has failed controllers responsible for Newark Liberty Internal Airport’s airspace at critical moments in recent weeks.

In the initial reporting on the aborted landings, an FAA official suggested the Army helicopter was on a “scenic route.”

But the ADS-B-Out data, which the Army shared with the AP on Friday, shows the crew hewed closely to its approved flight path — directly up the I-395 highway corridor, which is called Route 5, then rounding the Pentagon.

FAA air traffic controllers at the airport aborted the landing of a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 during the Black Hawk’s initial flight toward the Pentagon because they realized both aircraft would be nearing the Pentagon around the same time, Braman said.

Because of the 20-second loss of contact, the Pentagon’s tower did not clear the Black Hawk to land, so the helicopter circled the Pentagon a second time. That’s when air traffic controllers at the airport decided to abort the landing of a second jet, a Republic Airways Embraer E170, because they did not have a confident fix on the Black Hawk’s location, Braman said.

Josh Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska.