Politics

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Jarrett Renshaw

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – Frustrated abortion opponents met with White House officials on Friday amid growing criticism in the anti-abortion movement that President Donald Trump has not moved aggressively enough to advance key priorities, including new restrictions and stronger enforcement.

The guest list for the meeting was not disclosed but Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said its influential president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, attended.

“Marjorie had a very constructive meeting at the White House today,” said Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for the group.

Earlier this week Dannenfelser told the Wall Street Journal that abortions have risen in the United States since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, adding that “Trump is the problem.”

Tensions have grown between Trump and parts of the anti-abortion movement that were among his strongest political allies during his first presidential campaign. 

While activists credit Trump for helping overturn Roe v. Wade through his Supreme Court appointments, some groups say the administration has not followed through with aggressive federal action to curb abortion access, including tighter restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone and enforcement against online pill distributors.

Since Roe’s overturning, Trump has repeatedly said abortion policy should be decided by individual states.

White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster defended the administration’s record.

“President Trump is the most pro-life and pro-family president in American history, and his Administration has announced a series of bold actions to safeguard life and uphold Americans’ fundamental freedoms, including ending federal funding of abortion abroad,” Schuster said in a statement. 

Data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research group, show abortions have risen since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning its decision making abortion legal nationwide, with an estimated 1,126,000 provided by clinicians in 2025, the highest since 2009, driven largely by the expanded use of abortion pills, which now account for 65% of abortions in states where the procedure is legal.

The pressure campaign has intensified in recent months as Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups push the Food and Drug Administration to revisit safety rules surrounding mifepristone, which is used in more than half of U.S. abortions. Senate Republicans in March launched a probe into abortion pill manufacturers and urged the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on online sales of the drug.

The White House signed off on ​a plan to fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Makary has been under growing pressure to produce a safety review of mifepristone and Dannenfelser renewed her call this week to fire him.

The debate over abortion medication has escalated following a series of court rulings over mail-order access to mifepristone. 

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily restored access to the drug through telemedicine and mail delivery while litigation continues.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Cynthia Osterman)

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By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Michael Erman

May 8 (Reuters) – The White House is considering naming FDA Deputy Commissioner Kyle Diamantas, who heads up the agency’s food group, as acting commissioner of the agency to replace current head Marty Makary, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Potential names being considered to be the actual nominee to run the agency include former FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn and former acting commissioner and assistant Health Secretary Brett Giroir, according to one of the sources and two other sources.

The White House was not immediately available for comment.

The White House has already signed off on a plan to fire U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, Reuters reported earlier on Friday. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

Other names being considered for acting FDA commissioner include Grace Graham – the agency’s deputy commissioner in charge of policy, legislation, and international affairs – and Sara Brenner, recently named a senior counselor to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the sources said.

Diamantas, Graham, Brenner, Hahn and Giroir were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Yasmeen Abutaleb and Jarrett Renshaw in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Deepa Babington)

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By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK, May 8 (Reuters) – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s best-known campaign promise was tentatively advanced in a cacophonous college auditorium as a city housing board agreed in a provisional vote to consider freezing the rent for about a million regulated apartments.

In a weeks-long annual ritual culminating in a final vote in June, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board fixes how much landlords can raise the rent for tenants of rent-stabilized apartments, home to about a quarter of all New Yorkers. The board weighs tenants’ wages and landlords’ incomes from their buildings, inflation, taxes, shifts in housing supply and myriad other factors in closely scrutinized public calculations.

In the provisional vote late on Thursday, barely audible over the chanting and cheering of hundreds of tenants filling the audience, the board set a range ahead of the next month’s final vote: rent adjustments of zero to 2% for 1-year lease renewals, and zero to 4% for 2-year renewals. In short, a rent freeze remains a possibility, but an increase has not been ruled out.

“Freeze the rent!” tenants shouted, applauding every mention of the word ‘zero’ from the nine board members who sat behind a table onstage, and booing every number they heard larger than that. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Housing is a human right!” they chanted.

The board’s members, six appointed by Mamdani, pressed on as if they could not see or hear the hundreds of yelling New Yorkers arrayed before them, and the zero to 2% proposal was passed by a vote of 7-1, with one member abstaining.

Mamdani ran for mayor of America’s financial capital last year as a democratic socialist, promising to freeze rents and tackle soaring costs of groceries, childcare and other necessities in a city where the median rent for a newly leased apartment is $3,950, according to listings agency StreetEasy.

His success with voters has been admired and studied by fellow Democrats as they seek to regain power at the state and national level. It even impressed Republican U.S. President Donald Trump, a billionaire building developer.

ROACHES, MICE AND MOLD

Since Mamdani took office in January, moving from a roughly $2,300-per-month 1-bedroom Queens apartment to Manhattan’s 5-bedroom Gracie Mansion, New Yorkers have watched to see whether the simple declarative promises of the campaign trail will come to fruition.

“We have a new mayor, and he also lived in a stabilized apartment, he worked in the past with the people who had housing issues,” said Moreom Perven, before showing Reuters around her rent-stabilized studio apartment in Jamaica, Queens, ahead of Thursday’s vote. “He understands the situation of New York City, how we are suffering, and I expect this time, we’ll have the good news.”

Perven, 49, has lived in her apartment since 2000, now paying just under $1,300 a month in rent to a real-estate management company that owns more than 2,000 apartments in the city. Across her building’s 187 apartments, there are 270 active complaints, according to city building records, and 66 open housing code violations. Perven and her neighbors find themselves repeatedly waging battles with their landlord over basic maintenance.

“Roaches, mice, broken tiles, then water leakage, mold, bed bugs,” Perven recounted, sitting by a second refrigerator-freezer she bought and installed near the landlord-supplied one that hasn’t been cold in a long time. “They don’t want to invest money to fix the issue.”

Perven, a part-time tenants counselor for a housing-rights advocacy group, traveled with some of her neighbors to Thursday’s meeting.

Hundreds of tenants, waving signs in English, Spanish, Chinese and Bengali, filled the sidewalk outside, beating drums and blowing whistles that security would not let them take inside.

The tenants have divided broadly into two camps. There’s the Tenants Bloc, calling for a rent freeze, which has happened only three times in more than 50 years of rent-stabilization laws. And the Rent Justice Coalition, including Pervem and others, calling for an unheard-of negative adjustment, a “rent rollback,” to offset the cumulative 12% rent increase that came under Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, over his four-year term.

PROPERTY OWNERS CITE FINANCIAL DISTRESS

Property owners have also given testimony through the Real Estate Board of New York and similar advocacy groups, who argue that operating costs are rising, particularly in older buildings.

Mamdani, despite appointing a majority of board members, has no power to influence its decision beyond saying what he would like to see. Instead, he has used city resources to make sure New Yorkers know their rights and to goose turnout at the four remaining public hearings before the June 25 vote.

In a statement on Thursday night, Mamdani encouraged both tenants and landlords “to make their voices heard and speak directly to what this housing crisis looks like in their lives.”

Speaking for property owners, REBNY executive Basha Gerhards argued that the board’s preliminary ranges “ignore the clear financial distress shown in the data” and that “a freeze or near-freeze is unjustifiable.”

Perven left the vote downcast as a rent rollback seemed out of the question at least this year. She and other tenants were glad the range included zero, but worried that past final votes tended to fall somewhere in the middle.

“We need to organize. We need to fight back,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll see the same energy until June, for the final vote.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Aleksandra Michalska; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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By Valerie Volcovici and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – Members of Maryland’s congressional delegation are awaiting answers from the U.S. Air Force about its delay in informing them about a fuel leak from Andrews Air Force Base into a tributary of the Potomac River.

Maryland lawmakers said they still have not gotten a response from the Defense Department after they sent a letter earlier this week seeking answers about a fuel leak into Piscataway Creek in Prince George’s County that they were only notified about on March 23, two months after 32,000 gallons of jet fuel were discharged.

Approximately 22,000 gallons of fuel were discharged into the environment, contaminating soils and nearby Piscataway Creek.

The delegation, except for Republican Congressman Andy Harris, said the Air Force did not initially disclose the full extent of the spill and only did so weeks after the fact.

“Their failure to immediately contain the spill is unacceptable on its own, but their lack of transparency made matters worse – denying the Maryland Department of the Environment the opportunity to implement containment measures that could have limited the damage,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a statement on Friday.

The Air Force said the Air Force Secretary would respond directly to the lawmakers.

The base said on Friday it was responding to the fuel leak “after personnel discovered fuel odors and observed a visible sheen on Piscataway Creek on March 23, 2026.”

“Mitigation measures are in place to contain the release and prevent further migration, while the spill is being investigated and addressed. The installation is coordinating closely with environmental authorities to ensure all appropriate steps are taken to protect surrounding waterways and ecosystems,” the base said.

In the letter to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, the lawmakers said Joint Base Andrews didn’t reveal the full extent of the spill until April 8, more than two weeks after notifying the state of the incident.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to testify on Capitol Hill next week before House and Senate appropriations subcommittees and is expected to be asked about the spill, lawmakers said.

The oil spill is the latest environmental incident involving the Potomac watershed. In January, a large DC Water sewer pipe burst near the C&O Canal in Montgomery County, Maryland, and contaminated the river with raw sewage.

The Potomac Conservancy said the river is also vulnerable to pollution from the rapid buildout of data centers in the D.C. metro area.

“It’s part of a broader pattern of infrastructure failures and pollution events that continue to threaten the Potomac River’s health,” the environmental group said.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A major federal raid around a park near downtown Los Angeles long known for rampant drug use and homeless encampments came just as voting kicked off for mayor in a city where public safety concerns continue to vex residents.

During a difficult first term framed by the most destructive wildfire in city history and its aftermath, Democratic Mayor Karen Bass has been trying to convince the city council to accelerate police hiring as she seeks a second, four-year term. The primary election ends June 2.

Wednesday’s raid resulted in 18 arrests and targeted fentanyl and methamphetamine distribution in and around MacArthur Park, located in a densely populated immigrant neighborhood west of downtown. It came after years of complaints from residents about crime, drug use and gang activity in the area.

City Hall has been under pressure to suspend a needle giveaway program at the park that has been blamed by some for sustaining the neighborhood’s problems, not solving them. Such programs provide drug users with clean needles with the goal of preventing transmission of HIV or other infections.

During a Wednesday debate, Bass signaled she would end the program at the park, placing her in agreement with rival Spencer Pratt, a Republican, who said he wanted a citywide ban on needle exchanges. Another candidate, Democratic City Councilmember Nithya Raman, said she would retain the program.

Bass spokesperson Paige Sterling said in a statement, “We are actively reviewing these programs citywide and recognize that many of them are operating alongside other valuable services.”

Police statistics show property and violent crime are down this year in the city compared to 2025.

“No matter what these crime statistics are telling anybody, it’s not how people feel on the street,” Pratt said.

During the debate, Bass said, “We can’t keep LA safe with the size of the department we have now.”

Safety issues extend beyond the parochial. World Cup games begin in Southern California next month, and Los Angeles will host the 2028 Olympics. The federal government spearheads security at the Olympics, but there are already concerns the Los Angeles Police Department will not have adequate funding or personnel to hold up its end of the job.

President Donald Trump has long had a strained relationship with heavily Democratic California. In 2019, he threatened to intercede in the state’s homeless crisis but never followed through. California is home to the so-called Trump resistance and Trump often depicts California as representing all that he sees wrong in America.

Los Angeles, in particular, has been a target of the administration’s criticism. Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to the city last summer against Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes in response to protests after immigration raids across the region. A new federal anti-fraud task force has targeted Los Angeles over widespread hospice fraud, though Newsom says his administration has long been addressing the problem.

But federal authorities did team up with the LAPD in the drug raid.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, a Trump administration appointee, said in a statement that authorities were “reclaiming MacArthur Park from criminals and drug addicts to return this public space to the citizens.” Bass said the operation had been planned for “many months.” Pratt said he welcomed greater federal involvement, praising the joint raid as “unbelievable.”

The mayor’s race in the city of nearly 4 million has been playing out at a challenging time, with longstanding complaints about homelessness, buckled streets and sidewalks, and climbing rents and home prices. Population in the once-booming region is falling — Los Angeles County lost about 54,000 people from July 2024 to July 2025, the largest numeric population drop for a county in the nation, according to federal figures.

As a candidate four years ago, Bass talked of expanding the police department. But its ranks have spiraled downward from a high of 10,000 sworn personnel in 2020 to roughly 8,700.

Bass points to figures showing her office has reduced the homeless population, but sagging tent encampments and lines of rusting RVs remain commonplace sights in much of the city.

The contest in heavily Democratic LA — which also includes tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and community activist Rae Huang — bears some similarity to the 2022 race, when billionaire developer Rick Caruso promised to expand spending on police amid widespread concerns over crime and homelessness. Bass comfortably won.

Norm Langer, owner of Langer’s Delicatessen across from the park, had considered closing the iconic restaurant because of drug use and encampments that he said were driving away business.

He told reporters Wednesday he was “absolutely thrilled” with the federal raid but also appeared to question Bass’ commitment to ending the needle giveaway at the park.

The program, he said, is “prolonging these people getting help.”

John Alle, who owns the restaurant building, said the LAPD had cut patrols in the park.

“We’ve got a day or two where we don’t have MacArthur Park patrolled. And we’re suffering the consequences,” Alle said. “The crime has not gone down.”

___

Associated Press journalist Eugene Garcia contributed.

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The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.

The court ruled 4-3 that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.

Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”

“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” he wrote.

Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S. House map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.

Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee said the ruling was another sign of GOP momentum heading into the midterms.

“We’re on offense, and we’re going to win,” he said in a statement.

Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said Democrats respect the court’s opinion but lamented that it overturned the will of the voters: “They voted YES because they wanted to fight back against the Trump power grab.”

Suzan DelBene, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, criticized the court majority for what she said was a decision that “cast aside the will of the voters,” but she said the people will have the final say.

“In November, they will, and they’ll power Democrats to the House majority,” she said in a statement.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after each census to account for population changes. But Trump started an unusual flurry of mid-decade redistricting last year when he encouraged Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts in a bid to win several additional U.S. House seats and hold on to their party’s narrow majority in the midterm elections.

California responded with new voter-approved districts drawn to Democrats’ advantage, and Utah’s top court imposed a new congressional map that also helps Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans stand to gain from new House districts passed in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. They could add even more after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, which has prompted some other Republican states to consider redrawing their maps in time for this year’s elections.

Virginia currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans who were elected from districts imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census. The new districts could have given Democrats an improved chance to win all but one of the state’s 11 congressional seats.

The Supreme Court’s majority was critical of the state’s redrawing of the congressional maps to benefit one political party. Those justices noted that 47% of the state’s voters supported GOP congressional candidates in 2024 but the new map could result in Democrats making up 91% of the state’s House delegation.

Under the Democratic-drawn map, five districts would have been anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia, including one stretching out like a lobster to consume Republican-leaning rural areas. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads would have diluted the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia would have lumped together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.

The state Supreme Court’s seven justices are appointed by the state legislature, which has toggled back and forth between Democratic, Republican and split control over recent years. Legal experts say the body doesn’t have a set ideological profile

The case before the court focused not on the shape of the new districts but rather on the process the General Assembly used to authorize them.

Because the state’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose an amendment to redraw the districts. That required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between, to place the amendment on the ballot.

The legislature’s initial approval of the amendment occurred last October — while early voting was underway but before it concluded on the day of the general election. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January. Lawmakers also approved a separate bill in February laying out the new districts, subject to voter approval of the constitutional amendment.

Judicial arguments focused on whether the legislature’s initial approval of the amendment came too late, because early voting already had begun for the 2025 general election.

Attorney Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued that the “election” should be defined narrowly to mean the Tuesday of the general election. In that case, the legislature’s first vote on the redistricting amendment occurred before the election and was constitutional, he told judges.

But, the Supreme Court said in its ruling, “this view appears to be wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas McCarthy, argued that an “election” should be interpreted to cover the entire period during which people can cast ballots, which lasts several weeks in Virginia. If that’s the case, he told justices, then the legislature’s initial endorsement of the redistricting amendment came too late to comply with the state constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed with that argument, writing: “The General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election.”

By the time lawmakers initially endorsed the constitutional amendment, statewide voters already had cast more than 1.3 million ballots in the general election, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast, the court said.

The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms a decision by a judge in rural Tazewell County, in southwestern Virginia. The court had placed a hold on that ruling and allowed the redistricting vote to proceed before hearing arguments on the case.

In the dissent to Friday’s ruling, Chief Justice Cleo Powell said the election for the purpose of considering the amendment does not include the early voting period.

“The majority’s definition creates an infinite voting loop that appears to have no established beginning,” she wrote, “only a definitive end: Election Day.”

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By Joseph Ax and Tim Reid

May 8 (Reuters) – Virginia’s top court on Friday threw out a new electoral map that was crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. congressional seats to Democrats, in a setback to Democratic hopes of retaking the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.

In a 4-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court rejected a Democratic-backed ballot measure approved by voters in April that reconfigured the state’s U.S. House of Representatives districts for partisan advantage.

Ruling in favor of a Republican challenge, the court’s majority found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedure last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in time to reach the ballot ahead of the November election.

The ruling boosts Republican hopes of keeping control of the U.S. House, despite a razor-thin majority and deep voter unhappiness with President Donald Trump.

On his Truth Social account, Trump called the ruling a “huge win for the Republican Party.”

Democrats cried foul, with Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, calling the court’s decision undemocratic and ignoring the will of millions of voters who had voted in favor of changing the electoral map.

Kyle Kondik, a nonpartisan elections analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said while it was still too early to predict the impact of the ruling, it had undoubtedly improved the electoral chances for Republicans.

“Whatever odds you would have given to Republicans winning the House yesterday, I think you would raise them today,” he said.

Democrats pursued the Virginia measure as part of a nationwide battle by both parties to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit. The mid-cycle process of redrawing maps is unusual. Maps are typically redrawn once a decade after the national census.

Republicans now hold a clear advantage in the fight, which began last year when Trump pushed Texas Republicans to rip up their electoral map and draw new district lines, targeting five Democratic U.S. House incumbents.

Democrats suffered a major blow last week when the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

Already, Republican-controlled states such as Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina have taken steps toward drawing new maps in time for the November elections, with some even postponing party primary elections to give lawmakers time.

DEMOCRATS STARTED TOO LATE

With Virginia’s map now invalidated, Republicans could eventually end up with an advantage in 10 House seats or more nationwide, pending the outcome of the efforts in those Southern states.

Republicans can afford to lose only two net seats in November’s elections to maintain control of the U.S. House.

Virginia voters had approved the Democratic-backed map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% to 48.3% margin, according to an Associated Press tally. The referendum was the final step in a complicated legislative maneuver to sidestep a constitutional amendment, passed by voters in 2020, that had put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.

Under Virginia state law, two consecutive legislatures – with a state election in between – must approve a proposed constitutional amendment before it can be put to a vote.

The Democratic legislative majority approved the amendment in October, days before the November state election. Democrats, who gained additional legislative seats in that vote, then passed the amendment for a second time in January and scheduled the referendum for April.

Republicans filed multiple lawsuits, claiming in part that there was no intervening election since early voting had already started when the amendment was first passed.

In Friday’s decision, the Virginia Supreme Court agreed.

“The General Assembly voted for the first time to propose the constitutional amendment to the electorate on October 31, 2025,” the majority wrote. “By that date, over 1.3 million votes had been cast in the general election, which was approximately 40% of the total vote for that election cycle.”

In dissent, Chief Justice Cleo Powell, joined by two other justices, wrote that the court had improperly stretched the meaning of the word “election” to include weeks of early voting.

“This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and federal law define an election,” Powell said.

Kondik said if Democrats had begun the process of trying to redraw congressional maps sooner, they might have prevailed in court against the Republican legal challenge, which was led by the Republican National Committee.

“Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose,” said Joe Gruters, the RNC chairman.

Underscoring the stakes of the Virginia redistricting fight, Democratic and Republican-affiliated groups spent close to $100 million on the referendum campaign.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Tim Reid; Editing by Will Dunham, Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

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By Andrew Chung

May 7 (Reuters) – Louisiana urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to prevent abortion pills from being prescribed through telemedicine and distributed by mail, as the Republican-led state presses its case to overturn a 2023 federal rule that made access to the medication easier. 

Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s office in a filing asked the justices to deny emergency requests by two manufacturers of the abortion pill to lift a lower court’s decision that narrowed access to it by blocking the regulation nationwide while the state’s legal challenge continues. 

The regulation concerning the medication, called mifepristone, was issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. 

Murrill’s office said the regulation has allowed medication abortions to skyrocket despite the state’s near-total ban on abortion.

“Notwithstanding Louisiana’s policy and laws, hundreds of abortions are occurring every month in Louisiana. That is the predictable consequence of a drug war enabled by President Biden’s FDA,” the office said in the filing.

The rule is currently in effect following an interim order by the Supreme Court on Monday that temporarily paused the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of Louisiana. That action was intended to give the justices time to decide on the requests by mifepristone makers Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro. 

The case has thrust the contentious issue of abortion back in front of the justices as abortion opponents again try to scale back access to mifepristone, with the November U.S. congressional elections looming.

The Supreme Court in 2024 unanimously rejected an initial bid by anti-abortion groups and doctors to roll back FDA regulations that had eased access to mifepristone, ruling that these plaintiffs lacked the necessary legal standing to pursue the challenge.

The ongoing battles over abortion rights follow the court’s 2022 ruling that overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent that had legalized abortion nationwide. That ruling has prompted 13 states to enact near-total bans on the procedure, while several others have sharply restricted access.

Since that ruling, anti-abortion advocates have targeted mifepristone, claiming that it is unsafe for women to take and that the FDA should not have approved it or relaxed limits on its use. 

The FDA has said mifepristone was approved based on scientific evidence and continues to be safe and effective for its intended purpose when used as directed. Reproductive health experts note that hundreds of clinical trials, studies and medical reviews have shown that mifepristone is safe and that complications are exceedingly rare.

They have said abortion opponents have misrepresented studies that actually show that complications and serious adverse events for women who have accessed the pill by telehealth and the mail are rare. 

Mifepristone, given FDA regulatory approval in 2000, is taken with another drug called misoprostol to perform medication abortions, a method that now accounts for more than 60% of all abortions in the United States. 

Louisiana sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025 claiming that the FDA’s determination that data supported eliminating the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone – which it calls a longstanding safeguard – was illegal and undermined the state’s abortion ban. 

Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro intervened in the litigation to defend the regulation. Republican President Donald Trump’s administration opposed Louisiana’s challenge, citing an ongoing review of safety regulations concerning mifepristone. The administration also argued that Louisiana does not have legal standing to pursue its case. 

In April, U.S. Judge David Joseph in Lafayette, Louisiana, declined to block the regulation but agreed with the administration to put the case on hold pending the review. The 5th Circuit blocked the rule on May 1. 

Abortion rights advocates call the Trump administration’s review politically motivated and unnecessary given decades of studies showing the safety of mifepristone. They said that the review could lead to tighter restrictions on the medication. 

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama lawmakers looking to take part in a national redistricting battle could vote Friday on a plan to alter state’s congressional primaries if the courts allow Republican state officials to switch to more advantageous U.S. House maps ahead of the November midterm elections.

The Alabama legislation, which needs only a final Senate vote to go to Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, seeks to leverage a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana case that significantly weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

Republicans in Southern states have moved quickly to try to capitalize on the case. Tennessee enacted new congressional districts Thursday that carve up a Democratic-held, Black-majority district in Memphis. Louisiana postponed its U.S. House primaries as lawmakers work to enact new districts. And Republicans in the South Carolina House also have proposed a new U.S. House map.

Even before the high court ruling, Republicans and Democrats already were engaged in a fierce redistricting battle, each seeking an edge in the midterm elections that will determine control of the closely divided House.

Since President Donald Trump prodded Texas to redraw its congressional districts last summer, a total of nine states have adopted new House districts. From that, Republicans think they could gain as many as 14 seats while Democrats think they could gain up to 10. But the parties may not get everything they sought, because the gerrymandering could backfire in some highly competitive districts.

Alabama has asked federal judges to lift a court order requiring the state to have a second district where Black voters are the majority or close to it. That district gave rise in 2024 to the election of Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who is Black.

Republicans instead want to put in place a map lawmakers drew in 2023 — which was rejected by a federal court — that could allow them to reclaim Figures’ district. Black residents currently make up about 48% of the district’s voting-age population. That would drop to about 39% under the 2023 map.

Republicans hope the federal courts will see the case differently in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Louisiana decision. If a court grants Alabama’s request, the legislation under consideration would ignore the May 19 primary for some congressional seats and direct the governor to schedule a new primary under the revised districts.

“It is an if, and only if, the courts take action,” Republican state Sen. Chris Elliott said.

The House passed the legislation on a party-line vote Wednesday, and a Senate committee on Thursday advanced it to the full chamber.

Addressing the Senate committee, Figures said his concern isn’t for himself but for the people who fought for decades “to have a voice in what government looks like.”

“I ran into a gentleman last night, and he said, ‘Hey man, I hear your job is on the line.’ And I told him, ‘No, Shomari Figures is going to be OK. Your voice is on the line,’” Figures said.

Some Democrats noted that the state’s segregationist past isn’t that long ago, and it was districts created under the Voting Rights Act that gave rise to Black representation after centuries of disenfranchisement.

“How long are we going to have to repeat history before we realize that all people deserve to be respected and deserve to have the feeling that they are valued?” asked Democratic state Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, who is Black.

Republicans in the South Carolina House distributed a proposed new U.S. House map Thursday. It would give the GOP an improved chance at winning the only seat currently held by a Democrat.

The proposal would take Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn out of the 6th District he has represented since 1992 while splitting the district into four different ones. Clyburn’s current district is made up of nearly 50% Black voters and in the 2024 presidential election, greater than 60% of residents voted for Democrat Kamala Harris.

The proposed map also would split the Democratic stronghold of Columbia and its redder suburbs into four different districts.

The state House on Wednesday approved a resolution giving lawmakers permission to return after the May 14 end of their regular work to continue consideration of a redistricting plan. But the Senate on Thursday delayed a decision on the resolution, because members wanted some idea of what the new districts could look like, Republican Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said.

After the House plan was released, Massey cited continued concerns. He said as many as four districts could become competitive, requiring substantial support for Republican candidates and hurting down-ballot races for the party.

“If we get too cute with this, we could end up losing seats,” Massey said.

The state’s primary elections are June 9.

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Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina, and Lieb from Jefferson City, Missouri.

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By Jasper Ward

May 7 (Reuters) – New York state is set to ban law enforcement from wearing masks while on duty, Governor Kathy Hochul said on Thursday, a move that is likely to be challenged by the Trump administration.

The announcement was made as Hochul, a Democrat, said an agreement had been reached with state lawmakers on New York’s 2027 budget, which included sweeping immigration changes.

Blake G. Washington, the state’s budget director, expects the bills to be passed by the Democratic-led legislature as soon as next week.

Under that agreement, state law enforcement will be prohibited from working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on federal immigration efforts. It will also ban ICE from entering schools, healthcare facilities, homes and other sensitive locations without a judicial warrant.

“We’re also banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks, except in rare circumstances where there’s a genuine operational need, like a gas mask,” Hochul said.

“No members of state, local or federal law enforcement wear masks during ordinary operations,” she said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has federal oversight of immigration operations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other Democratic states, including California and New Jersey, have rolled out similar efforts prohibiting ICE from wearing masks while carrying out Republican President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration campaign.

The U.S. Justice Department sued those states challenging the bans. A federal judge struck down the California ban in February, saying that it “unlawfully discriminates against federal officers.”

(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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