Federal court pauses Trump changes to Teen Pregnancy Prevention program

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s changes to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program that resulted in the abrupt loss of tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.  The order from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by former President Obama, pauses the administration's effort to reshape the TPP program into abstinence-only curricula.  Cooper sided with the plaintiffs, including a Midwest Planned Parenthood chapter; the nonprofit Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States; Hennepin County, Minn.; and King County, Wash., which had sued earlier this summer after the administration issued new funding criteria and then canceled the vast majority of active TPP awards just 72 hours later. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) "is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy—  or even whether it is worth preventing at all—and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint,” Cooper wrote.   “But it is not at liberty, under the Administrative Procedure Act ('APA'), to impose conditions on grant recipients that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained. The preliminary record suggests that HHS has done just that.” The HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In June, the administration cut 53 grants worth about $67 million from groups that taught youth …