1. Pope pens letter to the editor while in hospital as Buckingham Palace announces King Charles’ visit, Pope Francis says in a letter to an Italian newspaper that his lengthy illness has made clearer to him the absurdity of war and the power of words to shape the truth and facts, By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, March 19, 2025, 8:01 AM
Pope Francis, in a letter from his hospital bed, expressed that his prolonged illness has made him more aware of the “absurdity of war” and called for renewed diplomatic efforts and a revitalization of international organizations. He also emphasized the power of words in shaping human environments and urged the media to use them responsibly. While Francis showed slight improvements in his health, including using less oxygen, the Vatican has not confirmed when he will be released. Buckingham Palace announced a planned audience with King Charles III in April, contingent on the pope’s recovery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/18/vatican-pope-king-charles/ad8eb3e4-03d6-11f0-941f-6ca83a0bd35b_story.html
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2. Texas charges midwife in first arrest under state’s abortion ban, Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, alleges Maria Margarita Rojas performed illegal abortions and practiced medicine without a license., By Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Kyle Melnick, The Washington Post, March 19, 2025, 7:09 PM
Maria Margarita Rojas, a Houston-area midwife, was arrested for providing illegal abortions and practicing medicine without a license, marking the first criminal charges under Texas’ near-total abortion ban. Rojas allegedly performed abortions at four clinics in the Houston suburbs, employing unlicensed individuals, including Jose Ley, who also faces charges. The investigation began after complaints about abortions provided to two women who did not meet the criteria for legal procedures under Texas law. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton emphasized the state’s pro-life stance and vowed to hold those violating abortion laws accountable, while reproductive rights advocates condemned the charges as part of a broader effort to restrict abortion access in Texas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/03/17/texas-abortion-doctor-attorney-general-paxton/
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3. Trump begins to crack down on states that defy new rules for transgender athletes, By Susan Ferrechio, The Washington Times, March 19, 2025
Blue states are defying President Trump’s executive orders banning transgender males from participating in female sports and using female locker rooms, risking significant federal funding cuts for public schools. The Trump administration has already threatened Maine with the loss of nearly $200,000 in federal funding and is investigating Illinois schools over similar policies. Despite the threats, many Democratic-led states are resisting the executive orders, arguing they conflict with federal laws and constitutional protections. The situation may lead to a clash over education funding and could prompt some states to alter their policies amid ongoing legal and political battles.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/18/donald-trump-begins-crack-states-defy-new-rules-transgender-athletes/
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4. Federal judge blocks Trump administration from banning transgender people from military service, A federal judge has blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, By Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press, March 18, 2025, 9:31 PM
A federal judge, Ana Reyes, blocked the enforcement of President Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from serving in the military, ruling it likely violates their constitutional rights. The decision followed a legal challenge from transgender service members and came amidst broader legal challenges to Trump’s policies targeting the transgender community. While the ruling grants temporary relief to affected service members, Reyes allowed time for the administration to appeal before her order takes effect on Friday.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/18/trump-transgender-troops-military/8aed6368-0452-11f0-941f-6ca83a0bd35b_story.html
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5. Appeals court blocks Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, A three-judge panel has ruled that Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is unconstitutional and ordered it permanently blocked by a trial court, By Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press, March 18, 2025, 5:19 PM
A three-judge panel ruled that Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is unconstitutional and must be permanently blocked, citing discrimination and violations of parental rights. The law, which also banned transgender women and girls from participating in female sports, was previously allowed to take effect but was reversed by the court. Ohio’s Attorney General immediately vowed to appeal the decision, continuing the legal battle over the law, which has already faced significant setbacks, including a veto from Governor Mike DeWine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2025/03/18/transgender-health-ohio-gender-affirming-care-lawsuit/4c54e726-0438-11f0-941f-6ca83a0bd35b_story.html
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6. Hillsdale Schools Columbia, The tiny college has much to teach the Ivy League about how to stand up for values., By William McGurn, The Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2025, 5:34 PM, Opinion
Columbia University’s interim President Katrina Armstrong sounded unequivocal in a Saturday statement: “In this moment, I want to reiterate: Columbia University will stand by its values.”
The “moment” isn’t a good one for her university. Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student who helped lead last spring’s anti-Israel disruptions, was arrested at his university-owned apartment on March 8. The Justice Department says it is looking at whether Columbia’s handling of incidents “violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.” On top of it all, President Trump is threatening to cancel $400 million Columbia receives from the federal government on the grounds that the school hasn’t done enough to combat antisemitism on campus.
What’s a university president to do? Columbia’s irresolute response to campus occupations has already claimed the resignation of one president. If Dr. Armstrong, a physician, is looking for an example of how an institution of higher learning stands up, there is an excellent model: tiny Hillsdale College.
On the surface, the two institutions have little in common. Columbia is a 270-year-old Ivy League university with 8,900 undergraduate and 26,000 graduate students. It is an urban campus in upper Manhattan and has a $14.8 billion endowment.
Hillsdale, by contrast, remains the small liberal-arts college it was at its founding in 1844. The campus is in rural Michigan and has a total enrollment of about 1,700. The endowment is roughly $900 million.
Hillsdale is thriving. But it faced its own challenge from the federal government in the 1970s, when the Department of Health, Education and Welfare threatened to cut off all government funds unless Hillsdale began counting students by race. Hillsdale would be considered a “recipient college” for the purpose of regulation even if the only government money it received came from student loans and Pell grants.
Like Columbia, Hillsdale issued a statement—saying it would “resist, by all legal means, any encroachments on its independence.” The college noted that its founding charter had declared it open to all persons, “irrespective of nationality, color, or sex”—notable for a school founded before the U.S. abolished slavery. In 1956 its undefeated football team refused to play in the Tangerine Bowl when game officials demanded it leave its black players home.
“Hillsdale believed that accepting money from the federal government would require compromises that a free university must not make,” says Larry Arnn, Hillsdale’s current president.
Refusal to compromise its principles wasn’t without costs. Hillsdale didn’t get anywhere near $400 million. Mr. Arnn says it was more like $1 million a year. That was a lot of money for a small college, and unless Hillsdale found a way to make up the shortfall, students receiving federal loans would have to drop out. Hillsdale students couldn’t even enroll in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps without jeopardizing the school’s independent status.
But a funny thing happened. The college’s stand for its values brought it many new supporters—and donors.
Then there’s Columbia. Dr. Armstrong’s statement this weekend is typical of the modern academy: lofty, clichéd and maddeningly unspecific. She declared that “Columbia will do the right thing,” without spelling out what the school thinks that is.
Her statement makes it seem that Columbia is dying to tell the Trump administration to get stuffed—but is afraid of losing that $400 million. If she and her colleagues say what they really think, the taxpayer-funded party’s over. The school once boasted of its commitment to “diversity, equity and inclusion,” but its colleges and departments have been busy deleting or fiddling with their DEI statements on their web pages. Anything to keep the gravy train flowing.
In the unlikely event that Columbia decided to follow Hillsdale’s lead and forgo federal funding, the university would be freer to defend some of its practices on speech grounds. It would be liberated from Title VI and Title IX, which prohibit discrimination by educational institutions that take federal money.
But even without federal dollars, Columbia wouldn’t solve all its legal problems. It would still be subject to Title VII, which governs employment discrimination. On March 5, the acting chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that she would “hold accountable universities and colleges which have created a hostile-work environment for their Jewish employees.” New York state and local civil-rights laws also apply regardless of federal funding.
But breaking up with Uncle Sam would still be smart. All government dollars come with strings attached. If Columbia wants more freedom to live out its values, it will have to cut the federal funding cord.
“The word ‘college’ means partnership,” Mr. Arnn says, “which Aristotle writes requires the pursuit of a common good. If you cannot name the good, you have no partnership.” Columbia has much to learn from Hillsdale.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/hillsdale-schools-columbia-university-federal-funding-legal-bccfd093
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7. Mr. President, stop funding your political enemies, It’s time to put Planned Parenthood out of business, By Kristan Hawkins, The Washington Times, March 19, 2025, Opinion
What highly protected business, friend to the Democratic Party and recipient of nearly $700 million in annual taxpayer funding faces review as the Trump administration opens long-closed books? It’s an impressive list, but some sacred political cows have escaped inspection longer than others. The business is abortion, and the holder of the largest franchise, Planned Parenthood, has some explaining to do.
President Trump’s political enemies, including Big Abortion Pharma and Planned Parenthood, have long gone after Republicans with the same viciousness they employ against innocent life in the womb. Their aggressive election and lobbying operations net scores of Democratic political victories and serious cash, and their political friends haven’t been shy with U.S. taxpayers’ money.
Mr. Trump, it’s time to defund your political enemies.
The federal business of abortion can be found in mandates, long-established programs such as Medicaid, regulations and bureaucratic bias. A Make America Healthy Again approach to life in the womb would transform the debate from pessimism in the face of an adverse fetal diagnosis (often wrong) to hope for a future. As a mother of two children with a genetic condition, that matters to me.
In the Department of Government Efficiency environment, Planned Parenthood must justify its “services” requiring the compelled generosity of the American people. The nearly $700 million it received in 2023 amounted to 34% of its overall revenue. The Family Research Council noted in an explosive 2022 report, “Since 1993, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, has reported carrying out 7,442,666 abortions, all while receiving over $10.35 billion in total taxpayer funding.” Are we sure our money has been spent correctly?
Abortion is federal as long as we pay for it. Planned Parenthood has prioritized only one set of political friends, and they don’t have an R next to their names.
A television ad running on Fox News looks at the anti-Trump activism of the abortion lobbyists at Planned Parenthood. Corporate abortion took center stage last year at the Democratic National Convention.
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Planned Parenthood’s ”advocacy and political organizations made a record-breaking $69.5 million investment during the 2024 election cycle” while providing campaign space to the Harris-Walz campaign in Florida.
The “service” provided was lacking. Not even The New York Times says the nation’s No. 1 abortion vendor is in good shape, as reported in its February expose, “Botched Care and Tired Staff: Planned Parenthood in Crisis.”
After the release of disturbing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood haggling over the prices of the broken bodies of aborted babies, Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative panels on Planned Parenthood and infant lives.
The select committee’s final report, issued Dec. 30, 2016, included evidence of financial misdeeds. It said: “Based on 51 known external audits or other reviews of Planned Parenthood affiliates’ financial data and practices, and 61 federal audits of state family planning programs by HHS-OIG, Planned Parenthood affiliates have overbilled $132.4 million in Medicaid and other healthcare funding programs. These audit results are troubling, given their limitations in scope, detail, and timeframe; in fact, of 57 U.S. Planned Parenthood affiliates, only 19 have been audited.”
While our money pours into the abortion giant, patients are fleeing.
According to its 2023 annual report, Planned Parenthood saw barely more than 2 million patients, compared with 32.5 million treated at federally funded and qualified health care centers that do everything and much more than Planned Parenthood, minus the abortions.
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Planned Parenthood supports only Democrats, is bad at its job and is easily replaceable. Women don’t need it, and neither do Republicans.
To truly bring about Mr. Trump’s vision of reducing federal engagement on abortion, we must cut off funds to political agitators hooked on our tax money. It’s time to tell Planned Parenthood to fund itself.
Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, with more than 1,400 groups on middle and high school, college and university, medical and law school campuses in all 50 states. Follow her @KristanHawkins or subscribe to her podcast, “The Kristan Hawkins Show.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/17/mr-president-stop-funding-political-enemies/
__________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association.
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