Chris Smith Abortion Healthcare New Jersey

Chris Smith Led 128 Republicans in Asking for a Federal Probe of Planned Parenthood. Their Letter Says It 'Illegally Received $88 Million.' The Government Hasn't Found That.

Chris Smith co-led a 128-Republican letter asking HHS's inspector general to investigate Planned Parenthood. It describes an SBA eligibility review of pandemic loans as a probe into whether affiliates 'illegally received $88 million' — months after the last attack on Planned Parenthood's funding closed nearly 30 clinics.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 03, 2026

Chris Smith co-chairs the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. On October 2, Fox News reported that he had opened a new front against Planned Parenthood.

Smith, a New Jersey Republican, and Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford led 128 Republican lawmakers in a letter asking the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general to review Planned Parenthood's federal funding and, "if appropriate, initiate an investigation." Smith's office posted the Fox News report announcing it.

The request casts a wide net. The lawmakers want the watchdog to comb through the HHS programs, grants, contracts and sub-awards that reach Planned Parenthood and its affiliates — and, if it finds problems, consider penalties up to cutting them out of federal health programs entirely.

The $88 million claim

The letter leans on a federal review of pandemic loans. The Small Business Administration is looking at more than $88 million in COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program loans that 38 Planned Parenthood affiliates received.

The lawmakers' letter describes that as an investigation into whether the affiliates "illegally received $88 million."

That's not what the government says it's doing. Even Fox News, which got the letter first, noted that the SBA has described its action as a review of whether the affiliates were eligible for the loans — and that "the review itself is not a finding that the affiliates violated the law."

The letter also cites reports alleging Planned Parenthood failed to follow child-abuse reporting rules. Fox notes those have not been established as findings by the inspector general either. When Fox asked, the inspector general's office said it hadn't even received the letter yet.

Smith said a probe is "long overdue."

What the last attack on Planned Parenthood did

This is not an abstract fight. Republicans already used Trump's 2025 budget bill to ban Planned Parenthood from Medicaid for one year after the law passed in July 2025. Medicaid patients only regained access on July 3, 2026, when the ban expired.

According to Planned Parenthood's own figures, reported by the Times Leader, the ban forced nearly 30 clinics across the country to close. And from October 2025 to April 2026, compared with the same months a year earlier:

Almost 25% fewer packs of birth control pills were dispensed.
IUD and other long-acting birth control visits fell 26%.
Breast exams fell 20%.
STI testing fell 10%.

Those are the services most people walk into Planned Parenthood for. In Pennsylvania, Planned Parenthood Keystone had seen 5,253 Medicaid patients the year before; it treated them unpaid for eight months, then had to start referring them out.

The ban ran out. Smith's letter asks for the review that could lead to the next one — exclusion from federal health programs — and it frames an unfinished eligibility review as illegal conduct to get there.

What the record shows

Chris Smith co-led a letter from 128 Republicans asking HHS's inspector general to investigate Planned Parenthood and consider cutting it out of federal health programs. The letter calls an SBA review of $88 million in pandemic loans an investigation into whether affiliates "illegally received" the money, though the SBA describes it as an eligibility review that is not a finding of wrongdoing. The last Republican funding ban on Planned Parenthood, in Trump's 2025 budget bill, closed nearly 30 clinics by Planned Parenthood's count and cut birth control and breast exam visits by a fifth or more.