Inside the Hush-Money Payments That May Decide Trump’s Legal Fate - Years of interviews with potential witnesses provide insights into the Manhattan D.A.’s case. - link
How Putin Criminalized Journalism in Russia - The case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter being held in Moscow on espionage charges, is only the most recent example of the Kremlin’s crackdown on reporters. - link
The Same Ole Line Dudes Are Waiting for You - Donald Trump’s arraignment was a circus for the media, but it was just another day at the office for New York’s professional line sitters. - link
Fighting for the Right to Come and Go - In Mexico, return-migrant activists are asserting their “pocha” heritage and working to end legal and cultural exclusion. - link
Israel on the Brink: Understanding the Judicial Overhaul, and the Protests Against It - Two writers, Ruth and Avishai Margalit, talk with David Remnick about the extensive protests against anti-democratic maneuvering by the government. Plus, the country star Margo Price. - link
From Vox
Meet the MAGA movement’s new favorite autocrat -
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele speaks during a military ceremony in 2020. | Aphotografia/Getty Images
The American right is falling in love with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, over his crime crackdown. But he’s also tearing down Salvadoran democracy.
When Donald Trump was arrested this week, most world leaders stayed silent. But Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, tweeted about it immediately.
“[J]ust imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate,” Bukele wrote. “The United States ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”
Such a development would be convenient for Bukele, who has emerged as one of the most prominent — and flamboyant — elected autocrats on the global stage. In the span of roughly a year, the 41-year-old leader has declared a state of emergency, suspended civil rights protections, detained tens of thousands of citizens indefinitely without charge, built a new mega-prison made up of cells that cram 100 people in each, and packed the country’s highest court with his picks — who then promptly changed electoral rules to allow him to run again in 2024.
The response on the American right has been strikingly different. The authoritarian rhetoric, brash right-wing policies, and loud social media presence have captured the imagination of a small but influential group of American conservatives. In the past year, leading figures in MAGA world — including Tucker Carlson, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone — have praised Bukele, and even instructed Americans to learn from his example.
Among the things Bukele’s new right-wing fans like most about him are his harsh criminal justice policies. The Salvadoran murder rate, once one of the highest in the world, has plummeted during Bukele’s time in power (though it should be noted it was already falling before he came into office). The gangs that have long brutalized El Salvador’s civilians, most notably MS-13 and Barrio 18, seem weaker. Polls show that Bukele is stratospherically popular, with independent surveys showing favorability ratings in the 80s and even 90s.
For this, some on the American right — like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — have cheered him on, largely ignoring his attack on the country’s democracy:
I just returned from #ElSalvador where government officials are been sanctioned by the Biden Administration for rounding up gangs that have extorted,mutilated and murdered people for decades pic.twitter.com/Cp8uanXlBO
Conservative commentators’ praise for Bukele has been even more effusive.
“‘He’s ‘authoritarian’? He’s wielding authority to do good, to get the bad guys and help the good guys. We should be doing that too,” the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles said in a late February monologue. “‘Authoritarian’ is just a word that liberals use when conservatives wield political power.”
The conservative attraction to Bukele is primarily concentrated among very online right-wingers like Knowles — not yet approaching the widespread Republican admiration for Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. “They’re the useful idiots for Bukele’s worldwide PR campaign,” Daniel DiMartino, a fellow at the center-right Manhattan Institute, says of Bukele’s American fans.
But his rising popularity does illustrate the way that the ideas of the post-Trump conservative movement, including its obsession with crime and public disorder, create a very natural on-ramp to outright anti-democratic politics. And it should serve as a warning to liberals.
El Salvador isn’t the only country where an elected authoritarian has become stratospherically popular by launching a crackdown on crime that shreds civil liberties. Attacking liberal rights as a hindrance to enforcing public order is a style of politics that has proven effective around the world, and one that is often bound up with an attack on democracy itself.
Illiberalism has a constituency. Liberals need to take that reality seriously, and not be complacent about liberalism’s popular appeal.
The bitcoin dictator
The American right’s love affair with Bukele started with bitcoin.
In 2021, this culminated in a law that legalized the use of bitcoin as legal tender. He even proposed building something called “Bitcoin City,” an entire new town shaped like a coin built at the base of a volcano, in order to power bitcoin mining with geothermal energy. He has continued to push crypto even after the crash in November 2022, which did real damage to the Salvadoran government’s balance sheet.
The bitcoin obsession demonstrated that he was extremely, extremely online. His active Twitter account used an image of him with laser beams coming out of his eyes as his profile picture — a common meme, especially in crypto circles, but one that probably would seem odd to his constituents who weren’t scrolling through Twitter and Reddit all day.
Daniel Rothschild, the executive director of the libertarian Mercatus Center, sees this as the origin story of Bukele’s popularity on the American right.
“If you’re locked into the right Twitter circles, he’s been one of those people who has been a consistent presence for the last four years,” Rothschild tells me.
Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images
Bukele speaks at the closing ceremony of the Latin Bitcoin conference in El Salvador on November 20, 2021.
As Bukele’s crypto fan club was growing, his attacks on democracy were becoming more brazen.
In February 2020, Bukele asked the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly — then controlled by opposing parties — to grant him over $100 million to purchase new equipment for the Territorial Control Plan, an anti-gang initiative. When the legislature refused, he sent in military and police forces to occupy the parliament building.
In a speech outside the building, he made the message of the act quite explicit. “If we wanted to press the button [and evict legislators by force], we would press the button,” Bukele told supporters.
About a year later, Bukele’s party won the country’s legislative elections and gained a two-thirds majority in its Parliament. He wasted little time in securing power: In May of 2021, his party voted to remove the country’s attorney general, who was investigating Bukele’s party for corruption and clandestine negotiations with gangs, and all five judges on the Constitutional Court. All were replaced with Bukele allies.
An open letter issued at the time from 100 Latin American civil society organizations warned that “the illegitimate capture of judicial authorities connected to political power and the consequent disappearance of the principle of separation of powers are a dangerous precedent for democracy in the hemisphere.”
This warning proved prescient. In September 2021, the pliant Supreme Court ruled that Bukele could run for reelection despite an explicit ban on a president serving more than one term. Predictably, Bukele later announced that he would be competing in the 2024 presidential contest.
The abolition of term limits has proven to be a consistent predictor of when an elected president in a weak democracy is moving to install himself in power for life. Political scientists Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Erica Frantz, and Joseph Wright warned in a 2022 op-ed that Bukele’s behavior could be a “red flag” for democracy in El Salvador, one that typically suggests “a leader’s intention to stay in office by subverting rules established to curb executive power.”
But if you were to read only Bukele’s supporters in the American crypto world, you would be forgiven for getting a different impression of his government. Balaji Srinivasan, a leading crypto figure and anti-woke commentator with nearly 900,000 Twitter followers, repeatedly promoted El Salvador throughout 2021 and 2022 — praising the country as a “freedom jurisdiction” that was offering “strong pushback” against the “wokes,” and crediting Bukele personally for working “to add El Salvador to the ranks of ascending world countries.”
And in the last year or so, Bukele’s profile has only grown.
Tough on crime, tough on freedom
El Salvador has long had one of the world’s highest murder rates. UN data shows that, despite a multi-year decline, the country still had one of the highest global murder rates at the beginning of 2022.
March 25 and 26 of that year were unusually violent even by Salvadoran standards: 76 people were killed in that span, roughly as many as were murdered in the entire month of February 2022. On March 27, Bukele announced a state of emergency (also called a “state of exception”) and a new crackdown on crime. Per the US State Department, the crackdown suspended some of the most basic civil rights in a democratic society.
“Security forces were empowered to arrest anyone suspected of belonging to a gang or providing support to gangs,” the State Department explained in a 2022 report on Salvadoran human rights. “In addition, the state of exception suspended the rights to be informed immediately of the reason for detention, to legal defense during initial investigations, to privacy in conversations and correspondence, and to freedom of association.”
A year into the crackdown, there’s clear evidence that murder rates have continued to decline. But the extent to which Bukele’s crackdown contributed is debatable. Previous harsh crackdowns in El Salvador had temporarily led to declines in gang violence, only for it to pick back up.
Yet experts say there are some reasons to believe this one might be different: Bukele hit the gangs fast at a time when they weren’t prepared for it, potentially creating a leadership vacuum that might make it hard for the organizations to fully recover. It’ll take time to know just how effective it was.
The consequences for human rights, however, have been undeniably dire. Tens of thousands of Salvadoran citizens have been arrested and imprisoned. An October 2022 report from the International Crisis Group found that “El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, at around 2 per cent of the adult population.”
And yet the years of gang violence have been so painful, and so sustained, that many Salvadorans have welcomed the crackdown — hence Bukele’s currently high approval ratings.
The fact that the people approve of his behavior does not make it less autocratic. Latin American dictators often start out with popular support while consolidating power — see Alberto Fujimori in Peru or Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Eliminating basic protections, including rights against unlawful arrest and protections for press freedom, are so dangerous to liberal democracy that they should worry any observer regardless of how popular they might be in the moment.
But his attacks on liberal freedoms are precisely what has earned Bukele a new following on the American right.
It certainly helps that, on Twitter and in public appearances, Bukele has proven himself fluent in American right-wing argot. Take his Tucker Carlson interview, which aired in November 2022. In that conversation, Bukele speaks extensively about bitcoin, but transitions seamlessly into a harangue about the alleged malfeasance of the American liberal elite.
“I’m from El Salvador, a third-world country in Central America, and I myself see cities here [in the US] and say, ‘I wouldn’t live here,’” Bukele told Carlson. “The demise of the US has to come from within. No external enemy can cause this much damage.”
The following tweet from Bukele, seemingly an attempt to encourage Americans to emigrate to El Salvador, is another good example. Look at the image’s 1950s trad aesthetic, the way it presents a white family watching an old-timey TV excited about “no fentanyl crisis” and “USD and Bitcoin as legal tenders” in “The New Land of the Free”:
This PR campaign, which includes striking videos showing Bukele’s new mega-prison and mass arrests, has captured the imagination of many on the American New Right and extended MAGA universe.
Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republicans Club, writes, “Americans could … look to El Salvador, a small but proud nation, as a blueprint for governance and public safety.”
Rod Dreher, one of Viktor Orbán’s biggest boosters in the American media, wrote a piece titled “Nayib Bukele: Serious about Saving Civilization,” in which he argued, “[W]e are going to need a politician like that to de-wokify the US Government and, to the extent that it is legally possible, American society.”
Right-wing Twitter is replete with New Right types praising Bukele’s war on crime. Here’s Jack Posobiec, a conservative influencer with 2 million Twitter followers, calling for Bukele to be named “Man of the Year” and gushing over images of hunched-over and shirtless prisoners:
Here’s Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, praising a video allegedly depicting prisoners being made to destroy gravestones of gang members:
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, sends out teams of prisoners to destroy any tombstones with gang symbols.
His reforms to end violent crime in his country have been so effective that his approval sits above 80%. pic.twitter.com/cCyInbaZt3
Bukele enthusiastically promotes all of this stuff on his own Twitter feed, either by retweeting it directly or repackaging it into his own propaganda videos. One such video, for example, begins with a series of right-wing American talk show hosts praising Bukele’s crime crackdown in English:
There is no attempt in these encomia to reckon with his attacks on democracy, like literally sending the armed forces into the National Assembly. If the consequences of the crime crackdowns for civil liberty are mentioned, it’s only to dismiss them as the whining of human rights-obsessed liberals who are unable to take crime seriously. They look at his heavy-handed response and abuse of civil liberties as the basic building blocks of a model to be imported to the US.
This “lusting after caudillismo,” as Rothschild put it in an article in the UnPopulist, is what worries him and people on the right like DiMartino. After the Trump experience, they certainly should be worried.
But conservatives aren’t the only ones who should do some soul-searching.
The worry for liberals is that Bukele’s popularity — and the popularity of his brand of illiberalism — is real, as confirmed by international surveys. The crime crackdown is the biggest reason why, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 95 percent of Salvadorans crediting his policies with the reduction in violence.
The Salvadoran strongman is not the only authoritarian-inclined leader in the world to ride illiberal anti-crime politics to popularity. It’s a common pattern in Southeast Asia in particular, a kind of politics that political scientist Tom Pepinsky terms “democracy against disorder.”
This is a mode of politics wherein democratic politicians gain support by promising ultra-harsh, or even illegal, measures against crime and criminality. The key is the elevation of “order above law,” arguing that maintaining social cohesion and safety is a value above the law itself. It’s a political style that has paid dividends for the former leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, as well as politicians in Thailand and Indonesia.
And now it is paying off for Bukele. The American right is watching and taking notes.
In Showing up, Michelle Williams is an artist desperately trying to get anything done -
Michelle Williams in Showing Up. | A24
Kelly Reichardt’s latest film turns the frustration of mundane distractions thwarting art into gentle comedy.
When you’re young, you think doing creative work is all about the lightning strike of inspiration, the muse turning up and giving you some gift. But read interviews with artists, or become one yourself, and you realize that actually making art means a life of simply turning up, most days. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it sucks. And when life knocks you off course, you just keep going.
I think that’s why Kelly Reichardt named her new film Showing Up, and it’s probably why I love it so much. Like all of Reichardt’s films — among them Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, and First Cow — it is a movie about trudging toward an uncertain destination, at times enjoying and at times enduring your companions, and sometimes sitting down to rest. In this case, that destination is art.
It’s Reichardt’s fourth collaboration with Michelle Williams and seventh with co-writer Jon Raymond, significant not just because it’s relatively unusual but because it signals that Reichardt knows a thing or two about working with, and around, other people. Williams plays Lizzy, a stressed-out Portland sculptor with a show coming up and a broken water heater. Her landlord, Jo (Hong Chau, always terrific) is an artist, too, and has two shows coming up, which makes her slowness in fixing the water heater all the more galling to Lizzy.
Showing Up — an unusually cheerful and funny film for Reichardt — is, in its essence, a chronicle of a Sisyphean quest rendered against the backdrop of laid-back Portland. Lizzy needs to get work done, but the most mundane stuff keeps throwing itself in the way, and she can barely keep the rock from rolling back on her. There’s the matter of the water heater. There’s also the bird her cat injures, which becomes her responsibility. Her parents (Maryann Plunkett and Judd Hirsch), artists themselves, are being annoying; her dad has house guests that Lizzy is pretty sure are taking advantage of him. Her creatively inclined brother (John Magaro) seems to be on a downward spiral, and Lizzy isn’t sure what to do. She is barely keeping her head above water, and meanwhile her creeping fear that nobody will come to her show, will even want to see her work, is lurking in the background.
A24
Michelle Williams and Hong Chau in Showing Up.
Reichardt is a master at weaving a plot that’s so subtle that the inattentive viewer might be tempted to mistake it for merely a premise, a movie where “nothing happens.” That’s in part because what does happen is very everyday stuff, the kinds of things that happen to us all. You’re just trying to get your work done, but the phone keeps ringing, and that package needs mailing, and you don’t know what to have for lunch today, the dog needs walking, and you forgot the plumber had to be let in at noon. Like running on a treadmill, you’re doing a lot and going nowhere.
But Reichardt’s genius is in turning the frustrations of life — which have, in past films, ranged from a broken-down car to a broken-down covered wagon — into fodder for characters to either grow, or not. Her movies are road movies, even the ones that aren’t on the road, like this one; people are on a journey without a definite destination, with mishaps along the way, and, most often, with companions they find a little less than ideal.
In Showing Up, then, the task is to get a little further down the road. If you pay attention, you start to realize that this episode in Lizzy’s life is important precisely because it’s the point at which she might be tempted to quit — to give up making art, assume she’ll never be as celebrated as Jo, and take up some other task. The film’s tension comes from that question, though it never telegraphs it loudly: Which path will she choose?
It’s a particularly poignant tale coming from Reichardt, whose work is well-regarded by fans and critics. Her films premiere at prestigious festivals, and major actors seek her out. But her filmmaking practice is still deliberately minimalist and understated; she shoots in Portland, on small budgets, and has been a professor at Bard for a long time. Less disciplined and skilled filmmakers have lept from small-budget films to big-budget schlock and watched their work suffer as a result. Reichardt’s acclaim stems in part from her consistency and commitment to artistic freedom.
It’s not a freedom available to everyone, nor can everyone be good at their work. But it’s not hard to understand Lizzy as a stand-in for all the artists who find themselves working quietly, worrying that they might never get beyond the point they’re at, worrying that even thinking that way makes them less, somehow, of a real artist.
Showing Up is a knowing nod at everyone who finds making creative work a nearly impossible task amid the mundane distractions of ordinary life. So I take it as another road movie, one in which we’re the protagonists alongside Lizzy, and the movie is a companion along the way. For the attentive, those willing to settle into the film’s rhythm, it’s a balm and a wink — a gentle exhortation to keep, well, showing up.
Showing Up is playing in theaters.
A Texas judge just issued a national ruling against medication abortion. What now? -
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
The status of mifepristone in America, explained.
A decision in a highly anticipated federal court case was issued today: A district judge in Texas suspended the federal approval of mifepristone, a US Food and Drug Administration-approved drug used to induce abortions.
But the decision will not go into effect for seven days to allow the federal government time to appeal the decision or seek emergency relief, meaning that for now, the medication will remain available.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas issued a ruling revoking the FDA’s approval of the drug. If the ruling goes into effect after the seven-day window passes, it would mean that US health care providers, which are subject to FDA rules and regulations, could no longer prescribe mifepristone — even in blue states where abortion is not otherwise restricted.
The case will almost certainly be appealed, and one possibility is that the appellate court or the Supreme Court issues a stay whilethe lawsuit continues, meaning mifepristone could continue to be prescribed in the states where it is currently legal.
A federal judge in Washington State issued a directly contradictory ruling on Friday evening, moments after Kacsmaryk’s, prohibiting the FDA from pulling mifepristone from the market.
The availability of the drug will ultimately be decided by higher courts. But if mifepristone were to be pulled off the market, the consequences for access to abortion would be severe.Medication abortion — referring to the combination of both mifepristone and misoprostol — accounts for more than half of all abortions in the US, and is used typically within the first 10 to 12 weeks of a pregnancy. It’s become the most common method for ending pregnancies in the United States, partly due to its safety record, its lower cost, diminished access to in-person care, and greater opportunities for privacy.
The anti-abortion movement has been trying to restrict access to medication abortion since before the overturn of Roe,but those tactics were focused primarily on curbing access state by state, not through sweeping national action. The Texas lawsuit represents the increasing aggressiveness of the anti-abortion movement to take aim not only at abortion access in conservative states controlled by Republicans, but also deep blue states run by Democrats.
What is mifepristone?
Mifepristone is a prescription drug that works by blocking the hormone progesterone, which maintains the interior of the uterus. If progesterone is blocked, the uterus can’t support a pregnancy and the embryo is detached.
For medication abortions, a second drug — misoprostol — is then used. Misoprostol has been around since the 1970s, and was first developed to treat stomach ulcers. An individual seeking to end a pregnancy would take misoprostol 24 to 48 hours after mifepristone, causing their cervix to soften, and their uterus to contract and expel the embryo.
Mifepristone is also used for other situations like miscarriage management, and helping patients with Cushing’s syndrome who also have Type 2 diabetes. Lawyers for the plaintiffs insist restricting mifepristone for abortion won’t impact patients who use the drug for other reasons, but already some pharmacists and doctors have resisted prescribing misoprostol to patients, wary of breaking new laws or suspicious patients will use the drugs covertly for an abortion. Walgreens recently confirmed it would not dispense mifepristone even in states where the drug remains legal, following threats from anti-abortion groups and Republican attorneys general.
The drug was authorized by the FDA in 2000 and is approved for ending a pregnancy in the US up to 10 weeks’ gestation, though the World Health Organization recommends mifepristone up to 12 weeks.
Between 2000 and 2018, more than 3.7 million women in the United States used the medication — sold under the brand Mifeprex — to end an early pregnancy. In 2016 the FDA reported mifepristone’s “efficacy and safety have become well-established by both research and experience, and serious complications have proven to be extremely rare.” Three years later the agency approved a generic version, GenBioPro.
Why is there a lawsuit attacking mifepristone?
Back in November, a lawsuit challenging the legality of mifepristone was filed on behalf of a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Led by the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, the lawsuit claims the FDA caved to political pressure under Bill Clinton when it approved mifepristone more than 22 years ago, and it should thus be pulled from the market.
The lawsuit claims the FDA didn’t properly assess mifepristone’s safety, and that the federal government has put people at risk more recently by making the medication easier to obtain. Examples it cites include the FDA extending in 2016 the recommended window of time to take mifepristone from seven weeks of a pregnancy up to 10, and removing a requirement in 2021 that women must pick up mifepristone in-person, thereby making telehealth and mail-orders more accessible.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has affirmed medication abortion as a safe method to terminate pregnancy, and concluded that there is no medical need for the drugs to be administered in the physical presence of a health care provider. The FDA has also repeatedly rejected the evidence the plaintiffs claim shows medication abortion is unsafe.
The case has virtually no scientific merit, and challenging the use of a drug that has been studied and safely used for over two decades is highly unusual. Most Americans also believe medication abortion should be accessible. A poll released in early March found majorities of Americans — including majorities of Democrats and independents — support keeping medication abortion legal and allowing women to use it at home to end an early-stage pregnancy. Another recent survey found 59 percent of voters disapprove of overturning the FDA’s approval of abortion medication, including 72 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Independents, and 40 percent of Republicans.
But legal experts concede these are legally unpredictable times given the politicization of the courts. The federal lawsuit was intentionally filed in Amarillo, Texas, so that Kacsmaryk, a conservative judge, would hear the case. Kacsmaryk was appointed by Donald Trump and is a former Christian activist who has denounced the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s.
Last year, he ruled that federal law prohibiting certain forms of discrimination by health providers does not protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and in a separate case, he concluded that teenagers can’t access birth control without their parents’ permission under Title X, a federal program that provides family planning and preventative health services. Kacsmaryk claimed allowing teenagers to decide for themselves about birth control would “violat[e] the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.”
What are the implications of the decision?
This was a lower-court decision, so this legal battle is not over —and the judge’s decision gives the federal government seven days to seek emergency relief. The federal government will either appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, or directly to the US Supreme Court.
One possibility is that the appellate court or the Supreme Court issues a “stay” as the case continues to be litigated, meaning mifepristone could continue to be prescribed, even once the seven-day window has passed, while the lawsuit goes on. When Roe was on the books, there were lots of court-ordered abortion bans upheld in district courts like Kacsmaryk’s, but then never enforced because pro-abortion rights attorneys would successfully win “stays” as they proceeded to appeal the bans in higher-level courts. Whether an appellate court in a post-Roe environment would be as willing to block a lower judge’s order while the case continues is an open question.
David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University who specializes in reproductive rights law, said before Kacsmaryk issued his order that typically an appellate court would consider whether a lower court order would be so disruptive to the status quo that it needs to be put on hold while they consider the case. In normal times, abruptly taking off the market an FDA-approved drug that has been safely used by millions of women for over 20 years would certainly meet the threshold of “very disruptive” to the status quo.
“But I think we are in a world where the conservative Fifth Circuit feels very emboldened, so we can’t count on [a stay],” Cohen told Vox. Another option is the FDA appeals directly to the Supreme Court, skipping the Fifth Circuit. “We’ve seen more litigants doing that in recent years, though usually it’s been conservative litigants,” Cohen explained. “I don’t know if the FDA would want to do that, but it’s possible they think they’d get a fairer shake at the Supreme Court.”
What options for abortion are still available right now?
For the next seven days, nothing will change, according to Kacsmaryk’s order.
Even if the drug is ultimately pulled from the market, people seeking abortions could still access care at in-person clinics for the surgical abortion procedure. But those abortions typically cost more money, and require more time and resources from the already-strapped clinics. In its legal filing opposing the lawsuit, the US Justice Department warned that taking mifepristone off the market would lead to delays and overcrowding at these in-person clinics, which were already managing an influx of out-of-state patients since Roe was overturned.
Another option that would remain even if the order takes effect is ordering pills from the European-based nonprofit Aid Access, which bypasses US restrictions by prescribing the drugs to patients from overseas. This European organization services people in all 50 states, but because the medication ships internationally, it can often take two to three weeks for pills to arrive.
A third option would be pursuing medication abortion using only misoprostol. This method is not FDA-approved, but it is backed by the World Health Organization, and a common way of ending pregnancies around the world. Last month, the first study to examine misoprostol-only abortions in the US was published and researchers found the drug to be 88 percent effective, with few incidents of serious adverse events or signs of a potential abortion complication. In comparison, research in the US on using mifepristone and misoprostol together have shown success rates of 95 percent. But research on misoprostol-only abortions in other countries have also shown similar efficacious results, ranging between 95 and 99 percent.
Abortion providers, though they express adamant opposition to the Texas lawsuit, have also been preparing to offer misoprostol-only abortions if mifepristone is taken off market. The National Abortion Federation, in its clinical guidelines, says that “where mifepristone is either not legally available or inaccessible, misoprostol-alone regimens may be offered.” Because misoprostol has been FDA approved to treat stomach ulcers and can be prescribed off-label for solo use, there is less concern that access to that drug will disappear.
There are also pending federal lawsuits to expand access to medication abortion
In addition to battling this lawsuit from anti-abortion groups, reproductive health organizations have been planning their own legal strategies to expand access to abortion pills. In January, two such lawsuits were filed, claiming two states’ restrictions on mifepristone illegally preempt the FDA.
Through the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Actin 1938, Congress empowered the FDA as the sole agency to approve drugs in the US. It’s responsible for reviewing a drug’s safety, weighing its risks and benefits, and regulating appropriate conditions for safe and effective use.
With this in mind, GenBioPro, the generic manufacturer of mifepristone, argued in a new lawsuit that West Virginia’s state abortion ban is unconstitutional because it violates the supremacy and commerce clauses of the US Constitution, which empowers the FDA as the sole regulator of drugs across the country.
A similar case, filed in January by an OB-GYN in North Carolina, challenged state officials for imposing restrictions on mifepristone that go beyond what the FDA requires. North Carolina requires doctors to provide mifepristone in-person at a particular type of facility after a 72-hour waiting period and, in some cases, an ultrasound.
Experts say there is a “strong, though legally uncertain” argument that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution gives the federal government authority over these conflicting state rules. This idea — that federal regulation of drugs would take precedence, and a state cannot ban a drug that has been given federal approval — is known as the preemption argument.
For now, legal scholars say it’s unclear how preemption arguments will play out in court. Courts often grant deference to the FDA, though there are relatively few examples involving drugs. The main precedent is a 2014 case where a federal judge struck down a Massachusetts effort to restrict the opioid Zohydro, since the FDA had approved the painkiller. If the plaintiffs win their case, millions more people could have easier access to mifepristone.
From The Hindu: Sports
Indian boxing squad for World Championships - Shiva Thapa, Mohammad Hussamuddin and Deepak Bhoria headline Indian challenge
Expert view: Viswanathan Anand runs an eye over Nepomniachtchi vs. Ding -
Morning Digest | House panel apprised of collusive threat from China and Pakistan; T.N. sanctions graft case probe against EPS, and more - Here’s a select list of stories to read before you start your day
Super Giants spinners leave Sunrisers in a tangle, make it a walk in the park - Krunal scalps three, including Markram for a golden duck; Mishra, Bishnoi prove ideal foil; Lucknow chases down the target with four overs to spare
Romualdo, who has been well tuned, may score in the first division of the Nilgiris Police Trophy -
From The Hindu: National News
PM Modi flags off Chennai-Coimbatore Vande Bharat Express in Tamil Nadu - Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, TN Governor R.N. Ravi, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin and Union Minister of State L. Murugan were present.
Challenging Samastha, CIC goes ahead with augmented syllabus - CIC to introduce new academic streams in Wafi and Wafiya system, including science programmes. Coaching for NEET, JEE and Civil Services exam too is being planned
Silverware seized from car of Boney Kapoor’s company in Davangere -
CJ bench sets aside single-judge order in Musaddilal ED seizure case -
BJP plans to air 100th Mann Ki Baat in U.P. madrassas and dargahs - An Urdu translation of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12 Mann Ki Baat speeches made in 2022 will also be made distributed to maulanas and Muslim religious scholars on April 30
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine to export electricity again after months of Russian attacks - Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure led to blackouts throughout winter.
One Romanian family’s fatal attempt to reach the US - What drove the Iordache family to make a desperate bid to reach the US from Canada?
Evan Gershkovich: Russia charges US journalist with spying - reports - Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last week, categorically rejects the accusations, reports say.
Becker says time in prison was ‘brutal’ - Former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker says he is building his “third chapter” after eight months in prison.
People were taking drugs in Spain 3,000 years ago, study finds - A new study finds people in Menorca got high on hallucinogenic drugs during the Bronze Age.
From Ars Technica
Klaus Teuber made Catan, and it changed the world’s expectations for board games - One man’s quest to re-create ancient exploration opened up new tabletop worlds. - link
We’re one step closer to reading an octopus’s mind - A recording device and electrodes were implanted in the very flexible cephalopods. - link
New photo reveals extent of Centaur V anomaly explosion [Updated] - “A column of burning, clear hydrogen shot up into a mushroom cloud.” - link
Artists astound with AI-generated film stills from a parallel universe - A Q&A with “synthographer” Julie Wieland on the #aicinema movement. - link
RIP to Dropcams, Nest Secure: Google is shutting down servers next year - Sales ended years ago, but they’ll turn into bricks when the servers shut down. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
3 drunk guys entered a taxi -
The taxi driver knew that they were drunk so he started the engine & turned it off again. Then said, “We have reached your destination”. The 1st guy gave him money & the 2nd guy said “Thank you”. The 3rd guy slapped the driver. The driver was shocked thinking the 3rd drunk knew what he did. But then he asked “What was that for?”. The 3rd guy replied, “Control your speed next time, you nearly killed us!”
One Easter Sunday, a man goes to church and returns home with two black eyes. -
His wife inquires as to how he got the black eyes.
The man goes on to say, “a lady stood up in front of me during mass, I saw her dress was stuck in the butt crack, so I reached out and tugged it out. She whirled around, became furious, and punched me in the eye.”
“That explains one black eye,” the wife says, “but what about the other?” The man explains, “I figured she must have liked her dress stuck up in her butt crack, so when she turned around I stuffed it back up there”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24566081/1236700782.jpg)
Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24567282/showingup2.jpg)
A24
