Jerome R. Corsi's Blog, page 9

Outraged: FBI agents sat on photo of Kirk assassination suspect for 12 hours before briefing Patel

Kash Patel

FBI agents in Salt Lake City reportedly sat on a crucial photo of the suspected assassin who assassinated Charlie Kirk for nearly 12 hours before sharing it with their boss, Director Kash Patel.

This delay prompted an angry response from Patel, who was incensed that he was not informed more quickly.

Charlie Kirk, the fearless founder of Turning Point USA and a relentless voice against the radical left’s agenda, was murdered in cold blood on Wednesday while addressing thousands of students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

Just hours after the assassination, Kash Patel announced that a second person of interest had been taken into custody following Kirk’s murder. Law enforcement at the time claimed the assassin was “dressed in all dark clothing” and fired a single shot “potentially from a roof.”

But hours later, Patel confirmed that the individual questioned had been released after interrogation.

“The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement. Our investigation continues and we will continue to release information in interest of transparency,” Kash Patel said.

The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement. Our investigation continues and we will continue to release information in interest of transparency https://t.co/YXsG6YpFR5

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) September 10, 2025

The FBI said during a press conference on Thursday that the assassin walked by several Ring cameras as he strolled through a neighborhood on his way to the campus.

TMZ obtained video of the suspected assassin dressed in all black walking through a neighborhood with a strange gait.

The Utah Public Safety Administration released four additional photos of the alleged shooter late Thursday night.

We’re releasing additional photos of the person of interest in connection with the murder of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. Please send all tips available to: https://t.co/XXzYBH1GkE pic.twitter.com/DgLOlrU6Cx

— Utah Public Safety (@UtahDPS) September 12, 2025

However, a new revelation from the New York Times shows that FBI agents in Salt Lake City withheld the photo of the suspected killer for nearly 12 hours before finally presenting it to their boss.

The shocking delay outraged Director Patel, who reportedly exploded during a Thursday morning online meeting with 200 agents.

The New York Times reported:

On Thursday morning, a day after hastily suggesting the person who gunned down Charlie Kirk was in custody, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, convened an online meeting with 200 agents around the country to discuss the manhunt. It was a tense affair.

[…]

The director wasted no time before calling out subordinates that he said failed to give him timely information and was incensed that agents in Salt Lake City waited nearly 12 hours to show him a photo of the suspected killer, according to three people familiar on the exchange.

Mr. Patel said he would not tolerate any more “Mickey Mouse operations,” an official on the call recounted. It was one of his few utterances without profanity, the person added.

On Saturday, Patel wrote on X, stating, “Against all recommendations, we demanded the video footage and enhanced stills of the suspect be released to the public. Robinson’s father, who ultimately turned him in to authorities, told law enforcement that he recognized his son in that released video.”

Against all recommendations, we demanded the video footage and enhanced stills of the suspect be released to the public.

Robinson’s father, who ultimately turned him in to authorities, told law enforcement that he recognized his son in that released video. pic.twitter.com/OwjVlYDh7S

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) September 13, 2025

[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com]

The martyrdom of my friend Charlie Kirk

It is difficult enough to write about the most high-profile political assassination in this country since the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy killings of 1968. It is considerably more difficult to do so when the victim was a personal friend. The pain is profound. Charlie Kirk and I had gotten close, and we had spoken less than 24 hours before the fatal bullet struck to discuss his upcoming campus tour. But if there is one thing that I know about Charlie, the quintessential public square warrior, it is that he would not have wanted us to sit on the sidelines.

The stakes are too high. We have a nation – and a civilization – to save. So, we fight back our tears and we summon the fortitude to plow ahead. We do so not because it is easy but because it is right. An assassin may have permanently silenced Charlie, but we won’t let him silence us too. As it says in the book of Psalms, one of Charlie’s favorite books of the Bible: “Hope for the Lord, be strong and He will give your heart courage, and hope for the Lord.” We must all now channel that courage – Charlie’s signature trait.

Charlie Kirk died, as so often seems to happen to the greats, doing what he loved: modeling civil discourse in the public battle of ideas. The living embodiment of the First Amendment in his tragically truncated life, Charlie died as a (literal) martyr for free speech. He was murdered one day after the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released a discomfiting survey showing that one-third of university students believe violence is an appropriate response to speech. The celebratory reaction to Charlie’s assassination across swaths of left-wing social media was also positively chilling.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but: This is how republics die. A people that loses the ability to engage in civil debate and instead resorts to violence is a people no longer capable of republican self-governance. It is a people that has ceased to be human and has instead become indistinguishable from the animals. It is a people that has renounced the fundamental uniqueness of mankind, rooted in another one of Charlie’s favorite books of the Bible, the book of Genesis: “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him.”

There is nothing good down that road. There can only be chaos and anarchy. There can be no civilization or human flourishing.

Is this – the senseless assassination of a devoted young father and husband – finally, (SET ITAL) finally(END ITAL), the turning point after which America will pull itself back from brink of political violence and willful self-destruction? I’d certainly like to think so. But it is hard not to be skeptical. There was no turning point after James Hodgkinson attempted to assassinate the Republican congressional baseball team in 2017. There was no turning point after Nicholas Roske attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. There was no turning point after the senseless murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year. There are too many other examples to count.

There are two easy ways we can all honor Charlie’s legacy. At the time of his death, Charlie was putting the finishing touches on a book about the Sabbath – yet another biblical concept he championed in his personal life. It would be a fitting tribute to Charlie – and the Hebrew Bible-rooted form of Christianity that he, like the American Founders, so greatly championed – for more Christians and Jews alike to honor Charlie by committing to honor the Sabbath just like he did. We must also double down like never before in our commitment to free speech and the civil exchange of ideas. His martyrdom must galvanize younger conservatives like never before. We must not allow Charlie to have died in vain as a free speech martyr.

Charlie and I held a different conception of the nature of the Divine. But we shared a passion for the Judeo-Christian biblical inheritance that is the backbone of Western civilization and the reason for that civilization’s superiority over the forces of darkness. As a religious Jew and a religious Christian, furthermore, we also both believed in the possibility of eternal life.

To quote the psalmist once more, then: “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff – they will comfort me.” Charlie, always one to not merely talk the talk but also walk the walk, has now himself walked in the valley of the shadow of death. And I have no doubt that the Lord is comforting him at this very moment.

Pray for his beautiful wife, Erika, and the Kirks’ two young children, who will now grow up without their father. And as for you, Charlie: Thank you for all you did. I hope to see you on the other side, my friend.

Why is America so polarized? I can tell you

I had a different column planned for this week – on the same topic that’s in the title, as it so happens. But not five minutes before I sat down to write it, I heard that conservative commentator and speaker Charlie Kirk had been shot in the neck at a speaking event in Utah.

Before I could get even a few paragraphs completed, it was announced that he had died.

I’m sickened by this. Charlie was just 31 years old. A devout Christian. A husband and father of two little children. We had mutual friends. A founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie made a name for himself traveling to college campuses, engaging with young people, debunking falsehoods and presenting evidence for the positions he took, challenging his audience to think.

And for that, he was murdered. Killed in cold blood at an event where the shooter knew there would be phones and videos, so Charlie’s family, friends, loved ones, colleagues and followers could watch him die not just once but over and over and over again.

All because Charlie had the courage to tell the truth.

I had originally chosen this topic because the Carnegie Corporation of New York is, for the third year in a row, soliciting proposals from academics and other notable people around the theme of why the United States has become so polarized. They offer large sums of money and the prestigious title of “Carnegie Fellow” to those chosen to produce scholarship or other writing on the subject.

I’m skeptical, however, about how much real impact this kind of work will have, because I don’t get the sense that journalists, academics or policymakers are interested in listening to anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.

So, I’ll offer my own explanation. Charlie’s murder is just the latest example in a long litany of horrific examples that explain why America is so polarized. And it comes down to this:

The division in America is, at its core, between those who want the truth – want to know it and want to be able to say it – and those who believe that with power comes the right to decide what the truth is, and to substitute a “narrative,” if that suits their purposes.

America is polarized because Americans have been betrayed and manipulated and exploited and lied to by the most important cultural institutions we have – government, the medical profession, the justice system, the educational system, the media, the entertainment industry.

I could write a book with examples, but here are just a few:

– We were lied to about the origins of COVID-19. We were lied to about our government’s role in funding the gain-of-function research that made a virus like COVID-19 possible.

– We were lied to about the safety of the mRNA shots, which were never vaccines.

– We were lied to about who was at greatest risk from contracting COVID-19. We were lied to about the actual immunity that came with contracting the virus versus taking shot after shot after shot.

– We were manipulated and forced by the government, employers and educational institutions into taking those injections, shutting down our businesses, closing our schools and masking our children. We were lied to about the real dangers that the mRNA shots posed to young people and pregnant women. We are still trying to discover the health risks of those shots and to calculate the economic and educational losses caused by those decisions.

– In fact, it now appears that we’ve not been told the truth about the safety of the childhood vaccines generally – at least with the current scheduled amount of them.

– During the 2016 presidential election, our government was actively using social media corporations to censor us, and only Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (now X) exposed that vile conspiracy.

– We were lied to about Joe Biden’s mental capacity and actual engagement not only while he was running for reelection in 2024 but throughout his entire term as president of the United States.

– We continue to be told by medical professionals, school administrators, teachers and others that men can become women, and vice versa, by force of will. We are told that toddlers can change their “gender” and that biological males have no physical advantage over females in sports. Families with children suffering with mental or emotional illness are manipulated and exploited, told that their children will commit suicide if not allowed to “transition,” assisted by drugs that will destroy their future fertility, prevent adult sexual maturity and possibly exacerbate mental illness, and with surgeries that will mutilate or remove otherwise healthy body parts.

– We have been told that retail theft on a widespread scale is “reparations,” that rioting and burning are “mostly peaceful protests,” that keeping criminals incarcerated is “racist,” that allowing the homeless, the mentally ill and those with addictions to live out their horrors on public streets is “compassionate,” and that opposing illegal immigration is selfish and xenophobic.

– We have watched as the death of a drug addict is celebrated with thousands of news articles, elaborate funerals, a gold casket and weeping politicians, but an innocent young Ukrainian woman stabbed to death by a repeat felon on public transit doesn’t even warrant a single story. (And when she does get news coverage, her death is downplayed by the legacy media as just clickbait for conservatives.)

America is polarized because the people and institutions we should be able to trust lie to us as a matter of course for their own benefit, and because anyone who tries to get to the truth and bring it to the attention of the public – in fact, anyone with an opinion that runs counter to that of the elites is this country – is denounced as a conspiracy theorist, a kook, a threat to “our democracy,” to “public health” and to some people’s very existence.

That inflammatory rhetoric is completely detached from reality and encourages violence. We are seeing it. Every. Single. Day. And yet, even when confronted with the consequences of their exaggerations and lies, those who create and amplify them don’t backpedal, they don’t apologize, they don’t reconsider.

They double down. They blame the victim. They gaslight us harder.

That’s why America is so polarized. That’s why social media is filled with posts proclaiming that conservatives and Trump supporters deserve to die. And I won’t be surprised if it turns out that that’s why Charlie Kirk was shot and killed.

President Trump confirms alleged Kirk assassin has a transgender partner

 

President Trump confirmed to Newsmax reporter Rob Schmitt that Charlie Kirk’s assassin, Tyler Robinson, indeed has a transgender partner.

“President Trump told me this morning, Kirk assassin has a trans gf,” Rob Schmitt said on X.

President Trump told me this morning, Kirk assassin has a trans gf.

— Rob Schmitt (@SchmittNYC) September 13, 2025

Tyler Robinson lived with his transgender partner – a male to female trans, according to Fox News reporter Brooke Singman.

The transgender partner is cooperating with the FBI.

The FBI used Robinson’s texts with his transgender partner to solidify that Robinson was the assassin.

The Daily Mail reported on Saturday that Lance Twiggs was identified as Robinson’s ‘roommate’ and possible transgender partner who is cooperating with law enforcement.

Lance Twiggs appears to have ‘transitioned’ within the last couple of years.

How did Lance Twiggs get radicalized and turn transgender within 2-3 years?

Her mother’s Facebook page has him basically gone after 2022.

Unreal pic.twitter.com/QDCo8eqeBa

— Harry Bosch (@HarryB0sch) September 13, 2025

DEVELOPING…

[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com]

‘The Charlie Kirk Act’? Young woman pleads with Trump for new law

A young redheaded TikTokker, who goes by Ellie May on X, posted a video hoping it would get in front of the eyes of President Trump – and it has. The president posted it on his Truth Social account Saturday afternoon.

The woman pleads with the president to spearhead the passage of “The Charlie Kirk Act,” which would hold media companies accountable for lying to the American people.

She cites 2013 action by President Obama that repealed the 1948 Smit-Mundt Act, a law that prohibited propaganda in the media.

“Make it damn near impossible for these people to continue to lie to the American public, which has brought chaos, hatred and division all across the country,” she says.

“Because of their hateful lies, a man has lost his life. … Force journalists to finally start telling the truth.”

WATCH:

@elonmusk please consider helping us pass The Charlie Kirk Act pic.twitter.com/NfQejxnnkW

— Robert Cain (@UCYIMD0NE) September 13, 2025

‘We want our country back’: Charlie Kirk honored during massive ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London

At least 100,000 people flooded the streets for London Saturday for a “Unite the Kingdom” rally, taking the opportunity to honor slain American civil rights leader Charlie Kirk in the process.

As Fox News reported, the rally was organized by activist Tommy Robinson, who said a video shown about Kirk was to thank and “honor the life of one of our generation’s greatest.” Elon Musk also appeared via video link and condemned the left as “the party of murder” following Kirk’s death.

The tribute video included a viral clip of Kirk giving life advice to a 13-year-old girl at a Turning Point USA event.

Robinson billed the march as a demonstration for free speech, saying it was also held in defense of British heritage and culture, which many Brits say has been harmed by increased immigration into the U.K.

The American conservative icon, assassinated in Utah Wednesday, was “a man who inspired a generation of young men based on courage and based on faith,” Robinson told the cheering crowd, which also sang Kirk’s name.

“In honor of Charlie Kirk and in honor of freedom on the 13th we march,” Robinson wrote in a social media post earlier in the week.

One demonstrator carried a sign reading, “Freedom of speech is dead. RIP Charlie Kirk,” according to The Associated Press.

Demonstrators carried the St. George’s red-and-white flag of England and the Union Jack. Many chanted, “We want our country back,” Fox reported.

Police estimated the crowd at about 110,000 people, while organizers claimed the figure was in the millions. A rival protest drew about 5,000 marchers.

Musk condemned the murder of Kirk.

“You see how much violence there is on the left, with our friend Charlie Kirk getting murdered in cold blood this week, and people on the left celebrating it openly,” Musk said. “The left is the party of murder.”

Robinson claimed that migrants now had more rights in court than the “British public, the people that built this nation.”

Added Musk, “You can’t get to the truth without freedom of speech, without active debate. … the essence of democracy is a government for the people, by the people.”

“I see a rapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive, uncontrolled migration and a government that has failed in its duty to protect its citizens.”

“Britain is at a fork in the road – to darkness or greatness – and that will be decided only in a matter of years.”

Robinson posted a video on X that shows the massive size of the crowd:

The guardian reported "110k" at our London rally today.

Yet, literally had their own helicopter showing the millions of patriots

Legacy media proving again they'll just lie to your face for their own agenda.

This is why nobody trusts them.

We are the media now. pic.twitter.com/s0yOh2NEfe

— Tommy Robinson (@TRobinsonNewEra) September 13, 2025

Perfectly synchronized: China’s anniversary choreography called a ‘victory’

Chinese military forces

The V-Day parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on September 3, marking 80 years since the defeat of Japan, has prompted many observations. Among them: The symbolism of Xi Jinping flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un. The tone of Xi’s speech – China is “never intimidated by any bullies” and stands between “good and evil, light and darkness, progress and reaction.” The display of new generation weapons. The many affirmations that the Chinese Communist Party won the victory against Japan and has created the New China. And this metamessage: the whole Chinese people are firmly united against hegemony, meaning American hegemony. The world’s China specialists will be thinking this through for some time.

What I noticed, however, was how the pageant of the parade, broadcast worldwide, available live on YouTube, was singly designed – indeed choreographed – to advance the Chinese Communist Party’s narratives and goals. There was no cacophony of journalists from many outlets reporting their own takes from this or that corner of the square. There was one video feed and one scripted narration.

The work was surely more than a year in preparation.

On the military side, the thousands of troops who paraded in front of the leaders assembled on Tiananmen must have spent months on the grinders learning to march in lockstep. All were the same height and built to assure flawless symmetry in their formations. Every motion – the head movements, the shouts of loyalty – was perfect. Every uniform was fresh, new, and fitted.

When the formation of troops standing aside their vehicles broke after Xi Jinping passed them in review, they double timed in perfect formations. How they leapt through the hatches with full packs and weapons took my breath away. Their movements were well practiced!

The vehicles and the flatbeds carrying weapons, missiles, aircraft, boats, torpedoes, and aircraft drove past Tiananmen in perfect alignment – surely the product of many rehearsals.

On the media side, every view and sound was scripted, each camera perfectly placed to reinforce the event’s messaging. (I imagine that as Xi and the international leaders climbed the stairway, no camera was on the landings to record Kim Jong Un’s exertions.)

Xi Jinping and those who interpreted his speech into foreign languages were perfectly synchronized. Sound and video engineers assured the outdoor patriotic songs by young people (with perfect youth in front of the cameras) were broadcast clearly.

As the troops passed in review before Xi Jinping, the formations had been shaped and the cameras placed to show each formation filling the camera frame – soldiers and broadcasters so well coordinated that each shot of marching troops communicated unity, mass, resolve, and prowess.

International television or social media viewers may have compared the V-Day parade in Beijing with the 250th Birthday of the U.S. Army Grand Military Parade and Celebration on June 14 earlier this year. The American troops who gathered in Washington from different divisions around the nation marched capably, but they did not show the same military precision. Uniforms were not fitted. Some ranks and files had tall and short soldiers together – just as they serve together. Their utilitarian military boots did not snap with each step. They hadn’t spent months practicing.

The President and the American public saw a fighting Army, not Potemkin parade units. Yet many overseas viewers may have gathered erroneous impressions that the PLA is somehow more committed and more soldierly.

I must give a grudging acknowledgment to China Central Television and the many cadres and soldiers who made the parade such effective propaganda. They showcased China’s military and informational power. Yet in those tight shots of soldiers filling the camera frames, I also saw an homage to Lani Riefenstahl.

In the Air Force before his career in the Foreign Service, the author marched in many parades. While he served in Beijing, he watched all the patriotic holiday specials.

After his Air Force service in Vietnam, Korea, and the Air Force Academy faculty, Donald M. Bishop entered the Foreign Service. His 31 years as a public diplomacy officer took him to East Asia, Africa, and South and Central Asia, and he was detailed to the Pentagon as the Foreign Policy Advisor to two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare at Marine Corps University. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Marine Corps University, the Department of the Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, or the U.S. Government.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

CEO of Maine nonprofit gets big payout as organization complains about loss of tax funding

(Photo by olieman.eth on Unsplash)

Topline: The Gulf of Maine Research Institute said the loss of up to $4 million in federal funding this year will affect its community work, but that’s as the nonprofit has been spending significant portions of its budget on high compensation for its top executives. Tax returns show that former President Don Perkins collected $737,000 in the six months before he retired.

Key facts: The research institute’s mission is to support Maine’s fishing economy and prepare for the future effects of climate change on the region. It received $10.4 million in government funding in fiscal year 2024 and raised $7.8 million privately.

The same year, the institute spent $8.3 million on payroll — including a record $2.1 million for senior officers and directors — and $603,000 on travel.

Perkins’ compensation included $360,205 in salary, $221,562 for “other compensation,” a $50,000 bonus and more. The governor of Maine only makes $70,000.

The current president, Glenn Prickett, made $217,948 in nine months. Three others earned more than $200,000.

Perkins had been collecting large payouts for years, including in 2020, when the research institute received a $1.1 million Paycheck Protection Program loan from the federal government. The loans were meant to help businesses struggling with their payroll during the Covid-19 pandemic, but Perkins earned $538,343 that year, and the nonprofit’s assets increased by almost $4 million.

Perkins earned $977,000 in 2022 and $728,000 in 2023.

Despite the payroll expenses, the nonprofit has blamed the federal government for interrupting its work after the Trump administration terminated an Environmental Protection Agency grant and temporarily froze a Department of Energy grant. The research institute told the Maine Monitor they have cancelled their “energy solutions program,” which was studying the concerns fishermen had with offshore wind projects.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com . 

Supporting quote: A spokesperson from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute told OpenTheBooks that its salaries are “benchmarked against regional and national peers to determine the market rate to hire a high-caliber CEO. Competitive pay and benefits allow us to retain our staff, without whom we could not fulfill our nonprofit mission to serve fishing communities, Maine students and their teachers, local seafood businesses, and the many other communities who rely on us for support.”

Background: In the past two years, federal grants to the research institute have paid for “storytelling assets” for local restaurants to “boost consumption of seafood” for $222,000. Other grants included $183,000 for “disadvantaged working waterfront communities to have meaningful involvement in the offshore wind development process in the Gulf of Maine” and $182,000 for a six-week program called “ecological and social change in a rapidly warming ocean region.”

Summary: Opinions on the government’s cuts to nonprofit funding are varied, but most taxpayers would likely agree that taxpayer money should not help fund huge CEO compensation packages.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

The Centennial State: Planned Parenthood’s ruse to pocket state tax dollars

Colorado Capitol

The latest state to cave to Planned Parenthood’s utterly false claims about a loss of federal Medicaid dollars (which aren’t even in effect due to a judge’s ruling) is Colorado, where lawmakers approved Senate Bill 25B-2 to cover up to $4.4 million in Medicaid reimbursements to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, using state taxpayer dollars.

The extreme pro-abortion state’s lawmakers made this decision despite the state’s $2.2 billion deficit.

The move came in response to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act, which removed Medicaid dollars from entities that provide abortion (as of October 1, 2025) and received more than $800,000 in Medicaid expenditures during a previous fiscal year.

Key Takeaways:

Pro-abortion Colorado recently decided to make up for any of Planned Parenthood’s potential loss in federal Medicaid funding by covering up to $4.4M in reimbursements, despite a $2.2B state budget deficit.

Though Planned Parenthood has been closing brick-and-mortar facilities and blaming Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” that defunding never went into effect due to a judge’s order, and the corporation had already also decided to expand its virtual business.

Catch Up Quick:

Planned Parenthood has threatened the closures of hundreds of facilities; to make up those (not yet lost) funds, the organization has been seeking a bailout from states with pro-abortion leadership.

But in truth, Planned Parenthood — which has lost donors due to its own “mission creep” — is playing the victim for political gain, as it had already been planning closures and consolidations with a deliberate move toward telehealth in all of its affiliates.

As Planned Parenthood shutters brick-and-mortar facilities, it is driving clients to its new online services business model, which increasingly relies upon telehealth — including the mailing of abortion pills. Its “Virtual Health Centers (VHCs)” are popping up across the country as part of a larger restructuring plan put in place years ago.

The Details:

In Colorado, state taxpayer dollars can now fund abortions. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) is the main affiliate operating facilities in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Rep. Jenny Willford, who sponsored Colorado’s bill, told 9news.com: “I ran this bill because when I had started and taken my first job and didn’t have health care, I went to Planned Parenthood for a physical for birth control, as well as other screenings that were just really important that I needed access to.”

“Under the Republican federal budget bill, Planned Parenthood was removed from the federal Medicaid program,” Jack Teter, Vice President of Government Affairs at PPRM, told 9news.com. “This adds us back in. So the state has the ability to give the authority to the state Medicaid department to ensure that patients who are insured through Medicaid can continue coming to Planned Parenthood for their services.”

He added:

We have canceled services and resumed them two times already, where we’ve canceled them, resumed services, canceled them, resumed services, and so this bill gives us stability. It means that we will not have to again cancel appointments for our patients. We’ll be able to maintain those services. People will be able to come into care. There will not be a disruption for them.

But, as Live Action News previously stated, “Planned Parenthood’s top priority is not the wellbeing of clients — it’s abortion. When that is threatened, the organization protects its own financial interests to force abortion upon the taxpayer, closing facilities to create legal muscle and increase its bucket of revenue.”

Ironically, Colorado’s measure didn’t mention abortion or Planned Parenthood. The bill requires the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) to fund entities that are “[p]rohibited from receiving reimbursement from the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services due to the entity providing certain reproductive health-care services.”

According to the State’s Fiscal Notice, HCPF paid Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains $4,864,104 in FY2024 “for covered services provided to eligible Medicaid members, of which $4,377,694 was federally funded.”

Live Action News previously documented how PPRM recently received a $20M donation from MacKenzie Scott, yet they are targeting states like Colorado while refusing to stop committing abortions. According to media reports since Dobbs, PPRM provided “more than $12.5 million” to fund abortion.

PPRM’s “post-Roe Expansion Plan” included spending millions on a “10,000-square-foot building” to make abortion a “safe haven for access,” the affiliate’s 2022 annual report stated.

The Backstory:

The 2025 Reconciliation Act removed Medicaid dollars from entities that provide abortion (as of October 1, 2025) and receive more than $800,000 in Medicaid expenditures (during a previous fiscal year). The “Big, Beautiful Bill” was signed into law by President Trump on July 4, 2025 and commenced on July 7, 2025.

As previously noted by Live Action News:

… Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and Planned Parenthood Association of Utah [] filed a lawsuit against HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and immediately thereafter, the Obama-appointed judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO). The Trump administration issued a response to the judge’s TRO in a memorandum filed on July 14.

July 21, 2025: U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani released a 36-page memorandum and order putting in place a preliminary injunction against the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

July 28, 2025: Judge Talwani issued a new, expanded preliminary injunction ordering the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to continue federal Medicaid funding for all Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide.

August 11, 2025: The Government appealed and moved in the First Circuit to stay the preliminary injunctions pending appeal.

August 19, 2025: The First Circuit denied that motion.

August 20, 2025: The Government notified the court that it would not seek leave to file a Reply in support of the pending stay motion, but noted that the government “may seek relief from the First Circuit and, if further relief is necessary, from the Supreme Court in advance of October 1, 2025 – the date as of which ‘prohibited entity’ status will begin to apply.”

August 29, 2025: Judge Talwani again denied the Government’s motion pending appeal.

An emergency motion for a restraining order in a similar lawsuit filed by Maine Family Planning has been denied.

By The Numbers:

As Live Action News noted in a previous article:

Most of Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding comes from Title X family planning funding and Medicaid reimbursements. Recipients of federal taxpayer dollars are required to report child sexual abuse, protect patient privacy, refrain from fraud and discriminating based on race and other characteristics, yet Planned Parenthood has repeatedly failed to comply.

Despite this, Planned Parenthood’s 2023-24 annual report showed the abortion corporation — which targets minors for ‘transgender services’ — raked in nearly $800 million – nearly $93M more in government funds than the previous year (39% of the organization’s total revenue), while committing 402,230 abortions, the highest recorded number to date.

Since 2000, while the organization’s services, clients, and donors have plummeted, Planned Parenthood has committed over 7.5M abortions (7,534,941) and received nearly $11.4B from taxpayers while accumulating nearly $2.2B in excess revenue.

It is estimated that only 2% of women of childbearing age visit Planned Parenthood.

Meanwhile, as previously reported, “Planned Parenthood recorded over $684M in private revenue last year, because, according to a former senior executive, ‘outrage tends to fuel donations; the more restrictions on abortion, the more it benefits the national office.'”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

Fanciful theories: Climate zealots must be stopped from abusing courts for political goals

This article was originally published by The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission. 

Once upon a time, political battles were waged mostly during election campaigns or in the halls of government. In recent years, though, politicians and issue advocates increasingly refuse to recognize traditional political battlegrounds as the only venues where their fights can be waged. When faced with defeat in the political arena, the losers are increasingly turning to the courts, weaponizing the judicial system to achieve political ends.

In the early months of the current Trump administration, we’ve witnessed this spectacle on issue after issue, challenging the president’s efforts to control illegal immigration, reduce the size of government, eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, impose tariffs, etc. – an unprecedented abuse of the court system to try to stop the administration’s political agenda.

President Trump’s actions to reverse the Biden administration’s dangerous environmental and climate policies have not been immune from the parade of lawsuits. But environmental extremists have always been bolder. For years, they have aggressively used the courts to attack not just government policies and agencies, but companies themselves over often fanciful theories of cause-and-effect.

One consistent effort has been an attempt to hold coal, oil and gas companies accountable for their alleged roles in “climate change.” Across the country and in various local, state and federal courts, lawsuits have been filed accusing energy industries of misleading the public or covering up the impacts of their actions on weather patterns.

The Paris climate accord of 2015 served as the catalyst for most of the more recent lawsuits, which totaled nearly 100 at last count. One pro-renewables source reported late last year, “The number of cases filed against fossil fuel companies each year has nearly tripled since the Paris Agreement was reached in 2015.” The lawsuits demand that companies acknowledge their supposed role in climate change, or attempt to win monetary damages from the alleged offenders, or try to force businesses to reduce emissions or stop production altogether.

In other words, climate activists – including a growing number of city and state leaders – are increasingly turning to the courts to achieve what they were unable to accomplish through legislative means. Sadly, in too many cases, leftwing judges have been happy to oblige.

The good news is that other judges are rightfully recognizing the cases as frivolous, and even cases that find initial success in friendly venues are increasingly reversed as they move through the appeals process. Recent weeks have seen a trend of court decisions ruling that lawsuits alleging climate damage are often spurious or outside the purview of the jurisdictions where they are filed.

Earlier this month, a South Carolina judge dismissed a suit brought by the city of Charleston against Exxon Mobile, Chevron and additional local businesses claiming the oil companies had covered up what they knew about greenhouse gas emissions and “accused the companies of mounting a disinformation campaign to cast doubt on climate science and failing to warn the public about the dangers ahead,” as the New York Times reported.

“Those actions increased demand for fossil fuels” – how dare a company try to expand the market for its product! – “which led to emissions and the grave risks linked to climate change that the historic coastal city now faces, including flooding and sea-level rise,” the argument went, according to the Times. The city claimed that the companies’ actions were in violation of state tort laws and South Carolina’s Unfair Trade Practices Act.

But Judge Robert M. Young was having none of it, ruling that the city’s claims were “premised on, and seek redress for, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions,” issues that fall under federal, not state, law. Young also ruled that his court lacked jurisdiction over companies based in other states. Young warned that adjudicating such suits in local municipalities would lead to a “chaotic web of conflicting legal obligations” for defendants, adding that the ultimate decisions “must rest with the federal political branches that are legally and substantively equipped to address them.”

Repeat: The judge ruled that the issues should be addressed by “the federal political branches” rather than the courts. Why? Because these are questions of policy and politics rather than law. Similar cases have also been recently dismissed in Baltimore, New Jersey and Bucks County, Pa.

The Trump administration is trying to combat the epidemic of municipalities and state governments turning to the courts for political grievances. Earlier this year, the president issued an executive order defining such complaints as threats to national security, and the Justice Department filed lawsuits in an effort to prevent Hawaii and Michigan from pursuing such claims in court.

The abuse of our judicial system to achieve partisan political ends is out of control, and judges must put a stop to it. The judicial branch is designed to adjudicate laws, not serve as a backup venue for policy losers in the legislative branch.

 

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for  The Empowerment Alliance , which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Empowerment Alliance.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.