The Trump administration has quietly axed $213.6 million in teen pregnancy prevention programs and research at more than 80 institutions around the country. The decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will end five-year grants that were designed to find scientifically valid ways to help teenagers make healthy decisions that avoid unwanted pregnancies. Health officials say cutting off money midway through multiyear research projects is highly unusual and wasteful because it means there can be no scientifically valid findings.  

With national focus on GOP efforts to repeal the ACA, attention is being diverted away from another critical health crisis: state-wide efforts to legislate and restrict reproductive rights.  Since 2010, when elections swept a wave of anti-choice politicians into office across the country, virtually all reproductive health legislation at the state level has focused on restricting abortion access. During the first six months of this year, 28 states introduced legislation to ban abortion in some form, while six worked to ban the procedure entirely.  Most hard-hit are Southern and Midwestern states, where conservative politicians have a long history of undermining reproductive rights.  

When Dona Wells, an original founder of the EMW abortion clinics in Kentucky, began pushing for abortion rights in her state in the 1960s, she never believed abortion care would become legal. In 1973, with the landmark Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, everything changed - not only in Kentucky, but across the country. Abortion was finally legalized, and Wells was thrilled. She eventually helped found the EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville, followed by the EMW Women's Clinic in Lexington. Today, EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville is Kentucky's last abortion provider. And, if the state has its way, it will soon be shuttering the clinic's doors.  

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Since the start of the year through July 18, at least 150 kids under 13 have been struck by stray bullets, according to an analysis by The Trace of data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan organization that tracks shootings around the country. Seventeen died. The youngest victim was just three days old.

 

Every Republican voted to confirm Bush, except for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who was absent. Every Democrat voted against him, except Sen. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) who abstained. It's a lifetime post.  The Senate voted Thursday to put judge John Bush on a seat on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, despite Bush's questionable past statements about abortion, slavery, climate change, health care and Nancy Pelosi.

 

For a while there, it appeared that the GOP's long-running assault on voting rights was finally losing steam. In recent years, federal courts have struck down or significantly weakened several of the country's worst voting restrictions. At the same time, many states-including red ones-have debated or passed bills to expand access to registration and polling places. Since January, according to a recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 99 bills to restrict voting rights have been introduced in 31 states. 

 

If the Republican Party's crusade to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is truly over, Monday night provided a fittingly sudden and chaotic ending. Early in the evening, two conservative Republican senators--Mike Lee, of Utah, and Jerry Moran, of Kansas--issued statements saying that they wouldn't support the revised health-care-reform bill that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, released last Thursday. Since the Republicans have a majority of just two in the Senate, and two other Republicans-Susan Collins, of Maine, and Rand Paul, of Kentucky-had already announced that they wouldn't vote for the legislation, the effort to secure its passage looked lost.

The scandal is historically large mostly because it is not shocking. Trump ran for the presidency promising to perpetrate outrages against the political tradition, and, although he has not built the wall, he has perpetrated the outrages. The scandal, the deep scandal, is that he was, in fact, elected. Watergate was a political scandal caused by Nixon and his underlings and by no one else, which meant that, when Nixon was gone, so was the "long national nightmare." That is not our situation today. Trump could decide on a whim to resign tomorrow. But masses of people will still be yearning for  an authoritarian leader and a violent political culture. 

Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump's lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office. Updated July 20: The president is still lying, so we've added to this list, and provided links to the facts in each case.