Here’s a fun little fact for your Wednesday morning. The current ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood expires on July 4th. Independence Day. The day we celebrate freedom from tyranny is the exact day Planned Parenthood gets its independence from accountability and starts vacuuming up $800 million a year in taxpayer cash again.

You genuinely cannot make this timeline up. Somewhere in Washington, a congressional staffer picked that date and nobody in the room said, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t set the abortion lobby’s payday on America’s birthday.” Unbelievable.

A coalition of 38 pro-life leaders just sent a letter to the Senate demanding a 10-year extension of the funding ban. Lila Rose from Live Action, Kristan Hawkins from Students for Life, Marjorie Dannenfelser from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America — basically every major pro-life organization in the country signed this thing. Their message is simple: if you let this deadline pass, you’re handing Planned Parenthood $800 million a year of our money. For a decade, that’s $8 billion.

Eight. Billion. Dollars. To an organization whose primary business is killing babies.

Senator Josh Hawley has already introduced an amendment that would create a budget mechanism to ban Medicaid funding to abortion providers through 2035. The vehicle is the reconciliation bill that Senate Republicans are working on for immigration operations. The path is right there. All they have to do is walk through it.

So what’s the holdup? The Senate. As usual.

Republicans have a majority. They have the amendment. They have the reconciliation vehicle. They have 38 pro-life organizations publicly demanding action. And they have a deadline that’s less than 75 days away. If the Senate can’t get this done with all of that lined up, then we need to have a serious conversation about what exactly we’re electing these people to do.

Planned Parenthood’s president, Alexis McGill Johnson, is already crying about it. She says any member of Congress who supports the ban is “choosing to sacrifice our health care system” just to “score points for their anti-abortion agenda.” She claims 23 clinics have already closed because of the current restrictions, with 50 more shutting down across 18 states last year.

Good. That’s 73 fewer places distributing cross-sex hormones to confused teenagers and performing abortions on demand. We’re supposed to be upset about that?

Lila Rose put it perfectly: “American taxpayers should never be forced to subsidize an industry that distributes cross-sex hormones to vulnerable kids and kills millions of preborn American babies through abortion every year.” That’s not a radical statement. That’s basic common sense that about 70% of Americans agree with when you actually poll them honestly.

The pro-life coalition called the 10-year extension “one of the most meaningful pro-taxpayer reforms Congress can enact.” And they’re right. This isn’t just a pro-life issue — it’s a taxpayer issue. We shouldn’t be funding Planned Parenthood for the same reason we shouldn’t be funding any private organization that half the country finds morally repugnant. Take your $800 million and raise it from your own donors. Planned Parenthood pulls in hundreds of millions in private donations every year. They don’t need our money. They want it because it’s easier than fundraising, and because it gives them political leverage.

The July 4th deadline is a gift and a curse. It’s a curse because if the Senate drops the ball, the funding spigot turns back on automatically. But it’s a gift because every Republican senator now has a crystal clear moment to show their voters where they stand. There’s no hiding on this one. You either vote to extend the ban or you vote to hand Planned Parenthood a check for $800 million. On Independence Day.

We fought a revolution because we were tired of a distant government spending our money on things we didn’t consent to. Two hundred and fifty years later, the Senate is about to let it happen again — this time with an organization that performs over 300,000 abortions a year.

The fireworks are going to hit different this July if the Senate lets this one slide. Call your senator. Tell them the Fourth of July is for celebrating liberty, not for writing blank checks to the abortion industry.