FRIDAY 4/21/23

UPDATE: SCOTUS Friday evening retained full access to mifespristone -- for now. It placed on-hold U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's earlier ruling that the Food and Drug Administration was wrong in 2000 to make the abortion drug more accessible. The legal battle over whether to permanently reimpose restrictions, which could extend to the entire U.S., will continue. The only noted dissents were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., who say they would not have granted the Biden administration's request for a stay on the lower court decision, according to The Washington Post.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the banning of mifepristone by a Texas-based federal judge was due by Midnight Friday. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk put the pill in play when he reversed the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the drug used to induce abortions.

U.S. Response to Violence in Sudan – More than 400 people have been killed in a conflict in Sudan between its army and a powerful paramilitary force, The Washington Post reports, and the White House Thursday announced the U.S. is moving in troops nearby in case U.S. diplomats and other personnel need to be safely evacuated. Airstrikes, gunfire and artillery have struck the capital, Khartoum, though the violence is spreading through other parts of Sudan. At least 3,500 have been injured in the last six days, according to the World Health Organization, and at least one of the 400-plus killed was an American. 

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On Thursday’s SpaceX Starship Explosion – The unmanned Starship’s crash succeeded as a test-launch, SpaceX said Thursday – it was a “rapid, unplanned disassembly.”

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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