Briefing: Quick updates on Immigration + Medical Research + Medicaid
We’re back after a two-week break to rest, regroup, and invest in some longer-term project priorities. In the coming weeks, you can expect to see more of our issue teams rolling out topical tags, like the ones that debuted in our Immigration timeline. These tags power filtered views that give you more control over exactly what you want to see (and share!) within our issue areas. You can see topically-filtered views at work in our Immigration update below. We’ll continue to roll out other small functional improvements as well, like the ability to filter our timelines by the date a timeline entry was added, separately from the date the event occurred.
Our break was the first in our new seasonal rotation. At the end of each quarter, we’ll collectively put down our tools for a beat to preserve our own well-being and the quality of our work. Unbreaking is an entirely volunteer effort, and a labor of love that is exclusively built with the hard work of human brains and human hands. We salute the members of the Pro Publica Guild, who stopped their work this week for a different reason. Their collective bargaining agreement negotiations are stalled, and one of their major conflicts is how generative AI will be deployed in their newsroom. We believe that organizations doing important reporting on power and injustice must themselves operate with integrity, and we are enduringly grateful to the journalists who hold that line.
Immigration
The Immigration team added 47 new entries to our timeline. Our updates include status revocations, dangerous and sometimes deadly detention conditions, new incidents of street violence, and the people being targeted by DHS in its surges and named operations. The volume is telling: even when immigration has been pushed off the front page, the administration is using every lever within its reach to enact state violence in the name of “immigration enforcement.”
Medical Research Funding
The Medical Research Funding team added 7 new entries to our timeline. The NIH released its annual summary of funding data, which showed a steep drop in the number of scientists who earned key grants in 2025. A separate analysis showed that last year’s funding disruptions and grant terminations disproportionately affected early-career researchers and women. Looking forward, Trump’s 2027 budget seeks to cut $5 billion from the NIH along with a drastic restructuring of its institutes.
Medicaid
The Medicaid team added one new event to our timeline. In March, a group of 23 states dropped its lawsuit (PDF) over a 2025 federal budget provision banning Medicaid reimbursement to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion care. This was the last of three legal challenges to the provision that we have been tracking.
How to help
We’re making a special request right now for new volunteers to join our immigration team. Unbreaking is run in the spirit of a mutual aid cooperative, with researchers, writers, editors, and community organizers working collaboratively to create and maintain our timelines and explainers. We welcome both experts in government as well as curious and interested observers. You can learn more about our work, make a contribution, or apply to join us.
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