A federal judge drew enormous backlash from Republicans after she blocked the Trump Administration on Monday from following through on a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that strips federal funding from Planned Parenthood.
Critics of Judge Indira Talwani said her fast-acting decision to grant Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion vendor, a temporary restraining order was an extraordinary overreach of judicial authority.
Tom Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital the judge’s move was "obviously out of bounds."
"What you have here is Congress exercising its explicit constitutional authority to make spending decisions, and you have a district judge arguably trying to exercise power she doesn't have to force Congress to change," Jipping said.
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Talwani, a Boston-based judge appointed by former President Barack Obama, issued the temporary order, which lasts 14 days, after Planned Parenthood sued the government over the One Big Beautiful Act, a massive tax and budget bill. The provision stripped Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood, which the nonprofit said could force it to close roughly 200 of its 600 facilities and deprive about one million customers of non-abortion-related services.
Congress narrowly passed the bill with no support from Democrats last week, and Trump signed it into law on July 4.
Talwani’s brief two-page order came on the same day Planned Parenthood sued, and it contained only the explanation that the nonprofit showed "good cause" for the temporary relief.
"I don't know how fast that judge reads, but she issued her TRO within a couple of hours," Jipping said. "That makes her court look like a fast food drive-through."
Sen. Mike Lee, a lawyer and Senate Judiciary Committee member, said he believed the judge’s order was not an innocent mistake and floated the idea that the House could initiate impeachment proceedings against the judge.
"We have the best judicial system in the world, but it’s run by fallible, mortal humans. People make mistakes. But unless I’m missing something here, this wasn’t an honest mistake," Lee said. "This was a pretty egregious judicial usurpation of legislative power."
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Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who once represented numerous Jan. 6 defendants, suggested on X that the First Circuit Court of Appeals reassign the case.
"The only way District Judges are going to be disciplined to adhere to their role is if they are sanctioned for brazenly ignoring the limits of their authority for partisan ends," Shipley wrote.
Talwani set a hearing for July 21 to consider arguments from Planned Parenthood and the named agencies in the lawsuit, Health and Human Services and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) could challenge the order in the interim. DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle said the judge's restraining order amounted to "lawless overreach," and he called for the Supreme Court to intervene.
The order came in response to Planned Parenthood claiming in its lawsuit that Congress's budget bill unconstitutionally targeted Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions.
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Opponents of abortion have focused their energy on weakening Planned Parenthood in the years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and the passage of the budget bill marked a milestone success for them. Some told Fox News Digital recently that it was one of several steps they needed to take to address the glaring fact that abortions remain prevalent and could even be on the rise.
Attorneys for Planned Parenthood said Medicaid does not cover abortion and that depriving Planned Parenthood of its hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements would cause more than half of its customers to lose access to services that do not include abortion.
Cancer and sexually transmitted infections would go undetected, especially for low-income people, and more unplanned pregnancies would occur because of a lack of contraception access, the Planned Parenthood attorneys said.
"The adverse public health consequences of the Defund Provision will be grave," the attorneys wrote.
Some Democrats celebrated Talwani's order but did not address the legality of it.
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) said on Bluesky that the judge in her home state delivered "some good news" for people who have relied on Planned Parenthood for health care.
"But make no mistake: our fight is far from over," Clark wrote.