Thanh Tan, Texas Tribune

As state officials prepare to take full control of the once federally funded Texas Women’s Health Program on Nov. 1, they’re running into a series of unexpected challenges, from controversy around proposed rule changes to questions about how to cover the 130,000 enrolled clients within the confines of a tight state budget. 

The state has pledged to forgo $35 million in annual federal funding — a 9 to 1 match — in order to exclude Planned Parenthood clinics from the program, clinics that have used Women's Health Program dollars to provide contraception and cancer screenings, but not abortions. Two separate courts have blocked Texas from ejecting those clinics ahead of legal hearings scheduled for the fall.

Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Perry has directed the Health and Human Services Commission to find a way to fund the 6-year-old program exclusively with state dollars. 

A district judge in Austin has ordered Texas to temporarily stop its enforcement of a rule that would have removed 49 Planned Parenthood clinics from the state’s Medicaid Women’s Health Program starting May 1.

In a 25-page opinion, United States District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the Planned Parenthood organizations that filed the lawsuit proved there could be irreparable harm to their clinics that rely on Women’s Health Program funding to help uninsured Texans access cervical and breast cancer screenings, birth control and STD testing. Yeakel also expressed doubt that the state could find enough providers by Tuesday to replace the Planned Parenthood clinics with other health providers.

In the battle between state leaders and the Obama administration over Texas’ decision to oust health care providers affiliated with abortion clinics from a five-year-old contraception and cancer-screening program, both sides believe they are the victims.

The Obama administration says Texas is violating federal law by limiting where poor women can seek health care, and it announced last week that it was cutting off financing for the Texas Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which does not pay for abortions and received $9 in federal financing for every $1 the state contributed.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison broke ranks from her party on Thursday to urge Gov. Rick Perry — her opponent in the 2010 Texas governor's race — to re-negotiate with the Obama administration to keep federal funding for the Medicaid Women's Health Program.

A state rule that forces Planned Parenthood out of Texas' Women's Health Program takes effect today, and in response, the Obama administration is preparing to halt federal funding for the program. But the change won't be immediate: Texas health officials say it will take a few weeks to transition to a fully state-run program from one that had been 90-percent funded by the federal government. 

Since the standoff between Texas and the federal government erupted over the state's decision to write clinics "affiliated" with abortion providers out of the Women's Health Program, abortion opponents have argued that there are thousands of more comprehensive health care providers available to take Planned Parenthood's place. By law, none of the clinics enrolled in the five-year-old program were performing abortions.

Two of the Legislature's top public health leaders are defending Republican lawmakers’ pledge to end the entire Women's Health Program rather than allow Planned Parenthood to participate. The joint state-federal reproductive health program provides contraception and cancer screenings — but not abortions — to 130,000 poor Texans, many of them at Planned Parenthood clinics.

"I guess we all need to see what it looks like when we don’t have it, and then we may need to regroup at that point," said state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, the chairwoman of the House Public Health Committee. "If we lose the Women’s Health Program, obviously, it’s got to be the top of our list in 2013 to look at and open up the conversation again and move forward because it is a safety net for so many women."

Susan G. Komen for the Cure's decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood — which has performed breast cancer screenings and mammograms with Komen grants for the last five years — is hitting home for clinics in Dallas, Austin and Waco.

Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region reports that its six-year partnership with Dallas-based Komen has performed 720 clinical breast exams and risk assessments for poor women under the age of 40. Over the last three years, the North Texas Planned Parenthood chapter in Dallas has used Komen dollars to provide about 580 mammograms to poor women. And in Waco, Planned Parenthood of Central Texas has relied heavily on Komen funds to screen, diagnose and treat women across 10 counties. In 2010, the federal Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program, in conjunction with Komen funding, provided 609 Central Texas women with mammograms, 292 with diagnostic services and 329 with cervical cancer screenings. Twenty-four Medicaid-eligible women with breast or cervical cancer received treatment.

Rather than invest millions of dollars in a Florida campaign, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul has focused on states farther down the Republican presidential calendar. So his fourth-place finish in Tuesday’s Sunshine State primary was probably no surprise.

The 16th debate of the Republican presidential primary season ended Monday with front-runner Mitt Romney bruised but not beaten. Gov. Rick Perry delivered one of his stronger performances, while Congressman Ron Paul remained blunt and unwavering on his anti-war, noninterventionist foreign policies.

During a two-hour debate before a highly enthused and vocal audience in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the moderators from Fox News and The Wall Street Journal mentioned the notable absence of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who dropped out of the race earlier in the day. That left the four underdogs scrambling for more airtime. They spent the first quarter of the debate criticizing Romney’s business record as the former head of Bain Capital, disputing his job-creation claims.

In the end, no one was really surprised.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul survived the New Hampshire primary Tuesday with his runner-up status intact. The candidate had been polling in second place for days, and voters proved the surveys right. 

Though the candidate could not overtake former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's commanding lead, the second-place finish will give his campaign another kick-start in fundraising and momentum as it moves to the first-in-the-South primary Jan. 21 in South Carolina.

"We've had a victory for the cause of liberty ... and there's no way they're going to stop the momentum," Paul said Tuesday night in a speech laced with underdog rhetoric and aimed at his fans across the country. "We are dangerous to the status quo!"

If the polls are any indication, it's unlikely that U.S. Rep. Ron Paul will emerge as the victor in today's primary in New Hampshire. But he's strongly positioned to take second.

Finishing anywhere in the top tier would help to propel his campaign forward, said the University of New Hampshire's Dante Scala, an expert on the first-in-the nation primary.

Paul's following in the Granite State has been well documented in recent days. His fiscally conservative and anti-federal government stances, plus his non-interventionist foreign policies, attract a motley crew of supporters, from the young to the elderly, the most liberal to the ultra conservative.

This week, GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry outlined his plans to criminalize insider trading in Congress and to make it a part-time body, similar to the Texas Legislature. One fiscal watchdog group, Texans for Public Justice, warns that Perry should be careful what he wishes for. The Lone Star state, they say, may not be a model of good government.

Newly — and fiercely — critical of using public office for personal financial gain, Gov. Rick Perry this week unveiled a campaign ad demanding that lawmakers who use “insider knowledge to profit in the stock market” be jailed, and he rolled out an overhaul plan of the federal government that would make that possible by criminalizing insider trading by members of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul appeared in an online-only interview with ABC News and Yahoo on Tuesday morning, part of a day-long series that involves one-on-one discussions with all eight Republican presidential candidates.

Early in the 15-minute interview, Paul resumed his lambast of Federal Reserve policies. He reiterated his belief that government involvement in public education and welfare programs is "socialist" and his preference for privatization of most functions, including schools and transportation.

A giddy Gov. Rick Perry was fidgety and full of exuberance in this must-watch speech recorded in New Hampshire Friday night.

The revealing video appears to have gone viral. Business Insider called it the “Bizarre Video of Rick Perry That Everyone is Talking About.” Fox News linked to the YouTube sensation, a compilation of the giddiest moments from the speech, saying it shows “Perry Uncorked in One of His Wildest Speeches Yet.”

Perry spokesman Mark Miner said the governor was "passionate in his remarks" but he said he saw nothing unusual in Perry's delivery of his speech.

It’s Rick Perry like you’ve never seen him.