Page H2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 2 October 2026
As it ran on the front
On September 9, Speaker Mike Johnson told a Dallas audience that defunding Planned Parenthood remains a priority for him, this despite the one-year ban on the provider's Medicaid reimbursements having already lapsed. Fourteen days later, on September 23, the Guttmacher Institute and Power to Decide put a number on what that priority costs: 58 percent of the women who rely on affordable birth control stand to lose access if the defunding goes through. That number comes from the researchers who track the contraceptive care network, not from the lawmakers who want to cut it.
Six days after that, on September 29, the Washington Examiner found a second filing, same month, different column of the ledger. The White House had tapped a pot of money appropriated for Customs and Border Protection — fencing, agents, enforcement — and spent part of it on advertisements promoting the President. Senator Susan Collins, who chairs the Appropriations Committee that wrote the CBP line in the first place, confirmed where that money was supposed to go.…
…(cont) Three days later, on October 2, 128 House Republicans wrote to HHS's inspector general asking for exactly that kind of file — not on the CBP line, on Planned Parenthood's. The ask: a review of "potential fraud or abuse" in federal funding that reaches a nonprofit provider of contraception and other health services. No dollar figure travels with the letter. No audit has yet found a discrepancy. The word "potential" carries the whole sentence, the way "earmarked" carried Collins' sentence three days earlier.
Run the ledger straight, hon. One filing moves enforcement money into advertising shaped like a campaign and draws a confirmation from the Appropriations chair — nothing further happens to it. The other filing is a letter asking whether money might have moved somewhere, and it draws 128 signatures and an inspector general. The scrutiny runs toward the agency with no enforcement budget to spend on anything but the service it already provides. The money that moved without a vote stays uninvestigated; the money nobody has shown moved yet gets the investigators.
That gap has a size: 58 percent, the share of women needing affordable birth control who lose it if the letter writers get what they asked for, inspector general's findings notwithstanding. The findings can come back clean, come back dirty, or come back never filed at all; the 58 stays the 58 either way. That is the column meant to balance against the filing, and the filing does not balance.
“They send 128 signatures asking whether Planned Parenthood's funding smells like fraud, same month they're moving border enforcement money into ads for the President. Nobody signs a letter asking about that diversion. Fifty-eight percent of women who need cheap birth control pay for the imbalance, not the people writing the letter.”
“Taxpayers deserve oversight wherever federal dollars go, and asking an inspector general to review grant funding is just responsible government — this isn't about defunding anybody, it's about accountability. The border money was earmarked funding that moved through normal channels, Senator Collins confirmed that herself, so really that's... huh, that's the same complaint people are making about Planned Parenthood. Did I say that? That doesn't sound like me.”
The receipts
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
EXCLUSIVE: 128 GOP lawmakers call for federal probe into Planned Parenthood's taxpayer fundingA coalition of 128 Republican lawmakers is urging the HHS Inspector General to review Planned Parenthood's federal funding for potential fraud or abuse.
· EXCLUSIVE: Mike Johnson says GOP looking for way to defund Planned Parenthood from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· Trump administration using border money to pay for for taxpayer-funded ads from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· 58% of US Women Who Need Cheap Birth Control Could Lose Access Due to GOP Attacks on Planned Parenthood from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.