politics

Here you go - from the article (not allow to post full detail in summary due to community rules):

First, Department of Justice lawyers requested a two-month extension on Monday in a lawsuit seeking to reimpose outdated restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone — changes that would limit access nationwide by ending telemedicine prescriptions. There should be no need for an extension. It’s a case that the Biden DOJ asked a federal judge to dismiss in January after the Supreme Court decided last term that the original plaintiffs weren’t injured by the Food and Drug Administration’s actions on mifepristone and didn’t have legal standing to sue.

But a group of three state attorneys general tried to keep the case alive by joining the lawsuit in the Texas courtroom, a state to which they have no connection. (The AGs are also arguing that the drugs can’t be mailed due to the Comstock Act, an anti-vice law from 1873.) Notorious anti-abortion judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said in January that the case could continue, and last week he granted the extension request, meaning the government’s brief is now due by May 5.

The fact that Trump administration lawyers said they need time to “familiarize themselves” with the case is alarming in and of itself. The three states do not have standing to sue and, as a procedural matter, it should have been dead once the Supreme Court said the original plaintiffs couldn’t move forward. While this lawsuit should be tossed in a shredder, it could be a vehicle for the administration to try to roll back access to mifepristone via the courts should the FDA decline to take action itself. Project 2025 calls on the FDA to revoke its approval of mifepristone and, short of that, revert to 2016 regulations requiring in-person dispensing and limiting use to the first seven weeks of pregnancy, not 10. The lawsuit is asking courts to do basically the same thing.

Next, the administration asked on Tuesday to participate in Supreme Court arguments alongside South Carolina in a case about whether states can exclude Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs, even for non-abortion services. South Carolina seeks to disqualify any abortion provider from Medicaid because it claims that “payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion.” Arguments are on April 2. If the Supreme Court sides with the state, it would mean people with Medicaid can’t use their insurance at Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers, which would decimate people’s access to affordable birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and more.

The moves are all steps toward achieving the Project 2025 goals of banning abortion and restricting access to birth control nationwide.

The Trump administration asking to join the oral argument is an ominous sign that it will allow even more Republican-controlled states to copy the move, which abortion opponents refer to as “defunding” Planned Parenthood. It’s a longtime goal of the conservative movement and it’s also an action item in Project 2025. The playbook not only calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to encourage states to exclude abortion providers from Medicaid, but it also urges HHS to go even further and propose a federal rule that would disqualify abortion providers from Medicaid nationwide. If the administration took that maximalist step, it would be yet another data point that “leaving abortion to the states” was a campaign trail lie.

Finally, the administration dismissed a lawsuit on Wednesday that Biden’s DOJ had filed against Idaho because its abortion ban violates a federal law regarding care in emergency rooms. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires any hospital that receives federal funds, which is most of them, to provide stabilizing care to patients. For pregnant women facing complications like their water breaking too early, that care can include abortion. But Idaho’s abortion ban prohibits terminating a pregnancy unless someone’s life is at risk — threats to their health aren’t enough.

During the three months that Idaho could fully enforce its law, hospitals airlifted six pregnant patients out of state because of the possibility that they’d need abortions prohibited under state law. (An Idaho hospital system anticipated that the Trump administration would change course so it sued the state in a separate case and a judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the law as litigation continues.)

Project 2025 calls for HHS to rescind the Biden administration’s 2022 guidance that EMTALA protects people’s ability to have emergency abortions, even in states where the procedure is banned. It also urges HHS to drop any EMTALA enforcement lawsuits and end any investigations into hospitals allegedly refusing to perform abortions in emergency situations. The Trump administration is following the Project 2025 playbook: Dropping the lawsuit is a precursor to rewriting federal guidance, which would chill care nationwide. These three actions on abortion and reproductive freedom aren’t exactly quiet to lawyers, advocacy groups and reporters, but you’d be hard pressed to find a non-news-obsessed voter who knows about them. The moves are all steps toward achieving the Project 2025 goals of banning abortion and restricting access to birth control nationwide and, sadly, there’s much more to come on this front. It was all written down before the election