Supreme Court Temporarily Restores Access to Abortion Pill by Mail.

A lower-court ruling had reinstated a Food and Drug Administration requirement that patients visit a health care provider in person to obtain mifepristone.

The Supreme Court on Monday restored nationwide access to a widely used abortion medication in a temporary order that will, for now, allow women to once again obtain the pill mifepristone by mail.

In a brief order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. paused a lower-court ruling from Friday that had prevented abortion providers from prescribing the pills by telemedicine and shipping them to patients, causing confusion for providers and patients. The one-sentence order imposes a pause until at least May 11. He requested that the parties file briefs by Thursday, and then the full court will determine how to proceed.

The state of Louisiana sued the Food and Drug Administration to restrict access to mifepristone, saying the availability of the medication by mail has allowed abortions to continue in the state despite its near-total ban.

Medication is now the method used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States, and is typically delivered in the form of a two-drug regimen through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Friday’s ruling from the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit temporarily reinstated an F.D.A. requirement that patients visit medical providers in person to obtain mifepristone while the litigation continues. That rule was first lifted in 2021.

Two manufacturers of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, on Saturday asked the Supreme Court to intervene. In court filings, Danco’s lawyers said the Fifth Circuit ruling “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions” and forces the companies, F.D.A., providers, patients and pharmacies “all to guess at what is allowed and what is not.”

About one-fourth of abortions in the United States are now provided through telemedicine.

Justice Alito’s order, known as an administrative stay, was provisional and expected, but an important interim step for women seeking to obtain mifepristone in the next week. The order does not signal how the full court may eventually handle the case.

Justice Alito acted on his own at this stage because he is the justice assigned to handle emergency applications from the region of the country covered by the Fifth Circuit.

The Trump administration has defended the F.D.A. in court, but has not said whether it supports keeping in place the regulations that make it easier for women to obtain the pills. The F.D.A. is conducting a review of mifepristone, and the administration had asked the lower court to put the litigation on hold until that review is complete.

The case over access to the abortion pill puts the Trump administration in an awkward political position in the lead up to the midterm elections because many of President Trump’s allies and supporters oppose abortion. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the F.D.A., declined to comment on Saturday, citing the “ongoing litigation.”

After the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion, Republican-led states like Louisiana imposed strict bans. In response, many Democratic-led states passed shield laws that protect abortion providers who prescribe pills by telemedicine and send them to patients in states with abortion bans.

Louisiana and abortion opponents have asserted in court that the F.D.A.’s decision to allow abortion pills to be available by mail posed safety risks to women and increased health care costs for states that had banned abortion.

Major medical organizations and supporters of reproductive rights have pointed to more than 100 studies that have found the pills to be safe and effective, with serious side effects rare.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a similar attempt to restrict access to mifepristone in a case brought by antiabortion physicians. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the court, said the doctors did not have legal grounds to sue because they did not prescribe mifepristone and had not suffered any direct harm from the F.D.A.’s loosening of regulations for obtaining the drug.

The physicians “want F.D.A. to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, adding that the under the Constitution, a group’s “desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.”

In the Louisiana case, the state says it has a legal basis to challenge the regulations because it is defending a strict law against abortion it began enforcing after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Lawyers for the state argue that “streams of mifepristone” are being mailed into the state despite its abortion laws. The pills, the state also asserts, have added to Medicaid costs when public hospitals must treat patients experiencing complications from pills received by mail.

In response, the companies told the Supreme Court in filings on Saturday that the harms cited by the state are too indirect and insufficient to establish grounds to sue. (New York Times)

A Look Around at Politics.

How low can Trump numbers go?

Will Texas give us a Democratic Senator?

What just happened in the Lone Star State.

Trump delusional. Delusional.

Blue candidates expected to join the House including three in Texas.

The biggest Texas question of all: Can James Talarico, Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, win?

In the Texas Public Opinion Research survey, conducted in mid-April, likely general election voters in the Lone Star State say they would back Talarico over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R), 44 percent to 41 percent — just outside the poll’s margin of error. Another 11 percent of respondents say they’re undecided. (Source. The Hill)

Local Political News In NYC.

Go Zohran go!

EXCLUSIVE: Mayor Mamdani and Rep. Ritchie Torres announce $2M to expand high-speed internet in The Bronx and Upper Manhattan – Bronx Times

You may have heard that the contest in the 12th Congressional District in NYC is hot.

When I sat down [with Jack Schlossberg], I was bracing for an unpleasant meal. In person, though, Schlossberg is little like his online self. “I spent the first 30 years of my life inside a library,” he says. He comes across as serious and smart.

Schlossberg graduated from Collegiate, where, according to schoolmates of his, he never talked about his pedigree and it was an unspoken rule not to bring it up. From there, he went to Yale, then to a job in Tokyo with Suntory, the liquor company, and then to a posting at the State Department while his mother was ambassador to Japan. After that, he earned a dual business-and-law degree from Harvard. (None of this would be in evidence from his LinkedIn, which lists his current job as “Director of the CIA” and his work experience as “Special Assistant to Lauren Boebert” and a flight attendant with Pan Am; Harvard Law is noted, but Schlossberg says his role there was “dermatologist.”) (New York magazine)

Jack Schlossberg, frontrunner, grabbed a big endorsement.

Here is his first ad with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Click on the image to watch. 👇

It turns out most Americans are wiser than we might have thought based on the 2024 Election Result.

Most Americans doubt Donald Trump's fitness to lead: Poll

A new poll found that most Americans say they believe President Trump is mentally and physically unfit to serve as commander in chief.

The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 59 percent of U.S. respondents said that Trump does not have the mental sharpness it takes to lead the country. Forty percent of respondents said the president is mentally equipped for leadership, and 1 percent of participants skipped the question.

Comparatively, 55 percent of U.S. adults said Trump is not in good enough physical health to serve as president, while 44 percent disagreed and 1 percent of survey participants skipped the question.

More than half of respondents, 54 percent, said they do not believe the president is a strong leader.

Sixty-seven percent of survey participants also said they don’t think Trump carefully considers important decisions.

The responses fall in line with separate recent surveys indicating the president’s disapproval rating reached a new high.

His disapproval has been driven in part by affordability concerns stemming from the Iran war and tariffs.

The Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping point responsible for carrying a fifth of the world’s oil transits, has remained closed to commercial traffic, in turn driving up gas and energy prices.

The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 50 percent of respondents said they believe gas prices will become worse in the next year, 21 percent said they believe prices will get better, 15 percent expected prices to stay the same and 13 percent were unsure of future conditions.
On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said “once the Strait opens, you’ll see prices come down, come down immediately” in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

He later added, “It’s going to take time to get back to where we were before this conflict began, but you’re going to see, I think, immediate relief once the strait opens.”

Last month, the president said prices will drop “tremendously” before midterm elections.

An American naval blockade is preventing commercial ships from passing through the strait as Iran’s threat to shoot down vessels remains in place.

U.S. strikes on Iran have largely subsided since a ceasefire went into effect last month; Trump has told Congress the war has been “terminated.”

Sixty-one percent of survey respondents said the Iran war has increased the threat of terrorism against Americans, 11 percent said it decreased threats, 26 percent said it makes no difference and 2 percent of people skipped the question.

The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll was conducted online April 24-28 among 2,560 U.S. adults nationwide. The margin for error is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points. (The Hill)

One more thing.

They know Trump is unfit for the Presidency and they hadn’t even seen these. 👇

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was announced yesterday.

‘Liberation,’ a Memory Play About ’70s Feminism, Wins Drama Pulitzer.

The prize board called the playwright Bess Wohl’s work “a striking blend of comedy and sincerity.”

Bess Wohl was partly inspired by her mother, a Ms. magazine contributor who belonged to a consciousness-raising group.

“Liberation,” a funny, probing and powerful new play by Bess Wohl that explores the women’s movement of the 1970s through the eyes of participants in a small consciousness-raising group, on Monday won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, one of the most prestigious honors in the field.

The Pulitzer board called the play “a striking blend of comedy and sincerity that explores the legacy of the consciousness-raising feminist groups of the 1970s, using the story of the playwright’s mother to demonstrate how the movement grew out of conversation, and that anyone experiencing the play has joined the discussion.”

Wohl, in a telephone interview shortly after the announcement, called the prize “a huge honor.” She said she had been wanting to write a play about the legacy of second-wave feminism for about 15 years. She had written, workshopped and discarded several drafts, and then, during the coronavirus pandemic, had interviewed more alumnae of a consciousness-raising group and finished “Liberation.”

“I just feel incredibly grateful that the play was recognized, and it’s really meaningful to me especially now at a time when women’s rights are under assault, along with the rights of many, many Americans,” she said. “This is a play about people coming together and trying to change the world for the better, and I feel grateful to be able to put that message out into the world right now.”

The play is set in a basement basketball court at an Ohio recreation center; the narrator is a contemporary woman trying to understand her mother’s early activism, and traveling back in time to explore the consciousness-raising group. The play is partly inspired by Wohl’s own life: Her mother, Lisa Cronin Wohl, a writer who was a Ms. magazine contributor, belonged to a similar group in the 1970s.

“Liberation” had a Broadway run this season, opening in October to unanimously strong reviews.

“The miracle of this play is that the circle feels as if it is extending to embrace us all,” the critic Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote in The New York Times. She added, “Not only does its sustained pace make the story downright suspenseful — we quickly become invested in these women and wonder what will become of them — but spending time in their company is also an unadulterated pleasure.”

The play, directed by Whitney White, struggled at the box office. The subject matter and the lack of well-known stars made it a tough sell, and it closed in February.

Even before the Pulitzer announcement, “Liberation” had a post-Broadway future. Several prominent regional theaters are expected to stage it over the next year, including Studio Theater in Washington; Berkeley Repertory Theater in Berkeley, Calif.; and Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

Before arriving on Broadway, “Liberation” had an Off Broadway run early last year at the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, where the Times critic Jesse Green called it “gripping and funny and formally daring.”

Wohl, a 50-year-old New Yorker, had one previous play on Broadway, “Grand Horizons,” in 2020, and is also known for her breakout work, “Small Mouth Sounds,” which ran Off Broadway in 2015.

The other finalists for this year’s drama Pulitzer were “Bowl EP,” a lyrical play about a lazy romance between two skateboarding musicians, written by Nazareth Hassan, and “Meet the Cartozians,” exploring Armenian American identity at two moments a century apart, written by Talene Monahon.(New York Times).

One more thing.