Mike Sacks
@mikesacks.bsky.social
23K followers 760 following 1.9K posts
NY-17 Congressional Candidate. Democracy advocate. Former political-legal journalist. Retired competitive air guitarist. Second-Best dad ever. mikesacksforcongress.com
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mikesacks.bsky.social
I’m running for Congress.

I’ve spent my career holding the powerful accountable as a political & legal journalist. I’m running for Congress to tell you the truth, fight for New York, and Unf*ck Our Country.

Join us: secure.actblue.com/donate/mbs-e...

Learn more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=20U5...
Unf*ck Our Country
YouTube video by Mike Sacks for Congress
www.youtube.com
Reposted by Mike Sacks
mikesacks.bsky.social
Straight-up firing everyone in OPA goes way beyond even Project 2025, which sought to “reframe” Title X’s family planning program.
Title X. The Title X family planning program should be reframed with a focus on better education around fertility awareness and holistic family planning and a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs that understands the program and is able to work within its legislative framework (ideally, an MD). In addition, the Office of Population Affairs should eliminate religious discrimination in grant selections and guarantee the right of conscience and religious freedom of health care workers and participants in the Title X program.
In 2021, HHS reversed a Trump Administration regulation that required grantees to maintain strict physical and financial separation between Title X activity and abortion-related activity Under the Biden Administration's regulation,? Title X activity can be conducted alongside abortion activity without strict physical and financial separation. The regulation also requires grantees to refer for abortions despite sincere moral or religious objections. This effectively bans otherwise qualified pro-life grantees from participating in the program.
HHS should rescind the Biden Administration's regulation and reinstate the Trump Administration regulation for the program. It should also do this quickly (the Biden Administration completed its regulatory process and issued a final rule in less than nine months) and expand the potential grantee population beyond abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
Congress should complement these efforts by passing legislation such as the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would prohibit family planning grants from going to entities that perform abortions or provide funding to other entities that perform abortions. This would help to protect the integrity of the Title X program even under an abortion-friendly Administration. • Provide educational information on healthy marriage and relationships at Title X family planning clinics. HHS should require clinics it funds under Title X (family planning) to provide information to customers about the importance of marriage to family and personal well-being and refer them to available federal, state, and nonprofit marriage resources.
Reposted by Mike Sacks
mikesacks.bsky.social
Get yourself a Congressperson who won’t let Trump destroy your packages.

mikesacksforcongress.com
iamvishnurajan.bsky.social
Well. The saga of the tea I ordered from India has reached its sad conclusion after 3 weeks. It seems the package failed to clear customs and has been destroyed. Lmao.
09/26/2025 7:22 Ρ.Μ.

Unable to Deliver

The customs clearance has failed and the shipment is abandoned
Louisville, KY, United States

09/26/2025 7:02 Ρ.Μ.

We're sorry, your package did not clear customs and has been removed from the UPS network. Per customs guidelines, it has been destroyed. Please contact the sender for more information.

Louisville, KY, United States
mikesacks.bsky.social
Taps sign
mikesacks.bsky.social
Get yourself a Congressperson who won’t let Trump destroy your packages.

mikesacksforcongress.com
iamvishnurajan.bsky.social
Well. The saga of the tea I ordered from India has reached its sad conclusion after 3 weeks. It seems the package failed to clear customs and has been destroyed. Lmao.
mikesacks.bsky.social
Trump destroy package
dieworkwear.bsky.social
About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages
Business Insider headline reads: UPS is telling customers that their packages coming to the US are marked for destruction.
mikesacks.bsky.social
Get yourself a Congressperson who won’t let Trump destroy your packages.

mikesacksforcongress.com
iamvishnurajan.bsky.social
Well. The saga of the tea I ordered from India has reached its sad conclusion after 3 weeks. It seems the package failed to clear customs and has been destroyed. Lmao.
09/26/2025 7:22 Ρ.Μ.

Unable to Deliver

The customs clearance has failed and the shipment is abandoned
Louisville, KY, United States

09/26/2025 7:02 Ρ.Μ.

We're sorry, your package did not clear customs and has been removed from the UPS network. Per customs guidelines, it has been destroyed. Please contact the sender for more information.

Louisville, KY, United States
mikesacks.bsky.social
The Trump admin, however, hasn’t yet rescinded the Biden rule…but I guess you don’t have to when you freeze funding for the programs and then fire all the program officers.
mikesacks.bsky.social
Biden conditioned Title X funding on recipients’ providing abortion counseling and referrals.

OK and TN sued, but appeals courts sided with Biden.

www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/f...

www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf...
mikesacks.bsky.social
Since Reagan, the key Title X fight’s been over the family planning program’s funding abortion counseling and referrals.

The Rehnquist Court let GHWB forbid such funding: www.oyez.org/cases/1990/8...
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www.oyez.org
mikesacks.bsky.social
CA5 ended up walking back Emperor Amarillo’s order but still gave parents in Texas a veto over the federal law’s requirements to serve adolescents
Before RICHMAN, Chief Judge, and HAYNES and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.
STUART KYLE DUNCAN, Circuit Judge:
INTRODUCTION
Since 1970, the federal Title X program has given clinics hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to distribute contraceptives and other family planning services. By statute, Title X grantees must serve "adolescents" while also "[t]o the extent practical... encourag[ing] family participation."
42 U.S.C. § 300(a). The question before us is whether Title X preempts a Texas law giving parents the right to consent to their teenagers' obtaining contraceptives. See TEX. FAM. CODE § 151.001(a)(6).
We hold that Title X does not preempt Texas's law. A grantee can comply with both. Moreover, Title X's goal (encouraging family participation in teens' receiving family planning services) is not undermined by Texas's goal (empowering parents to consent to their teen's receiving contraceptives). To the contrary, the two laws reinforce each other. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment declaring that Title X does not preempt Texas's parental consent law.
In doing so, we agree with the district court that the plaintiff, Alexander Deanda, has standing. If Title X preempts Texas's law, as the government maintains, it would nullify Deanda's right to consent to his children's medical care. That invasion of Deanda's state-created right alone creates Article II! injury. See Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 342 (2016);
Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 (1975).
Because we agree on preemption, we need not reach the district court's holding that Title X violates Deanda's constitutional right to direct his children's upbringing.
We depart from the district court on one point, however. Its final judgment partially vacated a regulation, 42 C.F.R. § 59.10(b), which forbids Title X grantees from notifying parents or obtaining their consent. The regulation, promulgated after Deanda filed suit, was not challenged by Deanda under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") or otherwise.
Nor did the summary judgment order address the regulation's validity or preemptive force. We therefore conclude that the court erred by vacating the regulation under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2) of the APA.
mikesacks.bsky.social
In 2022, Emperor Amarillo declared that Title X’s contraception counseling “violates the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children,” and used the case to further undermine the right to contraception itself. cases.justia.com/federal/dist...
12 Relying on the "right of privacy," the Supreme Court has held the State may not impose a blanket prohibition on the distribution of contraceptives to minors. See Carey v. Pop. Servs., Intern., 431 U.S. 678, 694 (1977). "That the constitutionally protected right of privacy extends to an individual's liberty to make choices regarding contraception does not, however, automatically invalidate every state regulation in this area." Id. at 685-86. The correctness of Carey's holding on blanket bans of contraceptives is also in doubt insofar as it relies on Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479(1965). See Dobbs, 142 S. Ct. at 2301 (Thomas, J., concurring)
(urging the Court to reconsider Griswold because it is "demonstrably erroneous").
mikesacks.bsky.social
The right wing’s been at war with Title X’s family planning program since Reagan over the program’s contraception counseling and, under Dem presidents, abortion referrals.
mikesacks.bsky.social
Straight-up firing everyone in OPA goes way beyond even Project 2025, which sought to “reframe” Title X’s family planning program.
Title X. The Title X family planning program should be reframed with a focus on better education around fertility awareness and holistic family planning and a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs that understands the program and is able to work within its legislative framework (ideally, an MD). In addition, the Office of Population Affairs should eliminate religious discrimination in grant selections and guarantee the right of conscience and religious freedom of health care workers and participants in the Title X program.
In 2021, HHS reversed a Trump Administration regulation that required grantees to maintain strict physical and financial separation between Title X activity and abortion-related activity Under the Biden Administration's regulation,? Title X activity can be conducted alongside abortion activity without strict physical and financial separation. The regulation also requires grantees to refer for abortions despite sincere moral or religious objections. This effectively bans otherwise qualified pro-life grantees from participating in the program.
HHS should rescind the Biden Administration's regulation and reinstate the Trump Administration regulation for the program. It should also do this quickly (the Biden Administration completed its regulatory process and issued a final rule in less than nine months) and expand the potential grantee population beyond abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
Congress should complement these efforts by passing legislation such as the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would prohibit family planning grants from going to entities that perform abortions or provide funding to other entities that perform abortions. This would help to protect the integrity of the Title X program even under an abortion-friendly Administration. • Provide educational information on healthy marriage and relationships at Title X family planning clinics. HHS should require clinics it funds under Title X (family planning) to provide information to customers about the importance of marriage to family and personal well-being and refer them to available federal, state, and nonprofit marriage resources.
mikesacks.bsky.social
Not trying to be glib. This is some Charles I stuff, and exactly why impoundments are constitutionally forbidden.
mikesacks.bsky.social
The Originalists!
samhalpert.bsky.social
Dems floated a narrow bill to fund the military, which can’t move because the House isn’t in session. Meanwhile, DoD is now going to spend funds not appropriated by Congress to ensure military paychecks continue.

POTUS now both commands and provisions the military. Unconstitutional and SO dangerous
The Office of Management and Budget sent a notification to Congress about their intent to use research and development funds to pay members of the military, two sources with direct knowledge tell NBC News.
A spokesperson for the OMB confirmed to NBC
News that it plans to use the research and development funds and that there are two years' worth of funds available within the Department of Defense.
mikesacks.bsky.social
mikesacks.bsky.social
We must be relentless in our resistance, merciless in our mockery, and eternal in our hope.
wweek.com
Jack Dickinson, 26, says “we’re winning this.”
mikesacks.bsky.social
Guess the gaslighting Trump judge
For Mr. Trump's allies, lower court judges are the ones who exceeded their authority in blocking presidential actions, interfering with what they claim is a popular mandate.
That view was shared by one judge, a Trump appointee, who praised the Supreme Court for "flushing out anti-democratic rulings" with its emergency orders.
mikesacks.bsky.social
I'm translating this from Perry as: yo Roberts Court, if I can hold a couple hearings, do a deep dive into history, and emerge with a 50-page TRO memo over the course of 5 days, you can bother to explain yourselves when propping up these lying fascists on the shadow docket.
mikesacks.bsky.social
In which Judge Perry all but calls the Trump admin lying fascists:
Reposted by Mike Sacks
mikesacks.bsky.social
Judge Perry on Trump’s attempt to send Nat’l Guard to Chicago: “not even the Founding Father most ardently in favor of a strong federal government believed that one state’s militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution”

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
mikesacks.bsky.social
Judge Perry on Trump’s attempt to send Nat’l Guard to Chicago: “not even the Founding Father most ardently in favor of a strong federal government believed that one state’s militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution”

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
mikesacks.bsky.social
They lied about lowering costs so to get in office and steal from us to benefit their billionaire backers
atrupar.com
Mamdani: "Trump ran on 3 promises - punishment of his political enemies, easing cost of living crisis, & mass deportation. It's that second promise that brought so many to his campaign. And yet he's unable & unwilling to deliver bc he's beholden to the very billionaires that are profiting off of it"
Reposted by Mike Sacks
brianbeutler.bsky.social
Something I hope the Dems who’d satisfy themselves with a health-care subsidy concession alone will consider. www.offmessage.net/p/how-to-rev...