Two weeks ago, Massachusetts federal Judge Indira Talwani enjoined an act of Congress, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, from ceasing to affirmatively fund Planned Parenthood and its affiliates. She did so without explanation of her legal reasoning and without waiting to even hear the Justice Department defend the law, and she left in place the “temporary restraining order” until a hearing on Friday, though the order in fact did not restrain the federal government but instead compelled it to take affirmative steps to irrevocably change the status quo by spending money it couldn’t easily get back.

Today, Talwani explained herself. A 36-page opinion ordered that the federal government “shall take all steps necessary to ensure that Medicaid funding continues to be disbursed in the customary manner and timeframes to Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and other Planned Parenthood Federation of America Members who will not provide abortion services.” Thus, moneys must be spent from the Treasury not only without the consent of Congress but over its explicit objections. She continued to order Planned Parenthood to post only an admittedly “nominal” $100 bond in case her order is overturned on appeal.

Today’s opinion is no more persuasive than the unexplained order. Talwani’s legal theory is that Planned Parenthood affiliates have a right of speech and association to continue receiving taxpayer money over the objections of Congress if the affiliates in states where abortion is banned do not perform abortions, and that Planned Parenthood performing abortions and engaging in politics with the financial benefits of taxpayer funding is an “expressive” right that Congress must fund. The idea that money might be fungible in the real world is never even considered. The opinion is full of rhetoric and euphemisms that echo Planned Parenthood, and it drips with scorn for the elected government. In a critical passage, Talwani argues that the federal government fails to show how defunding the nation’s largest for-profit abortion provider from federal money “relates to Congress’s goal of reducing abortion.” Nobody in the actual real world believes this.