Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, the Republican White House embraced the “Friday night news dump” with unnerving enthusiasm. If it was a Friday night ahead of a holiday weekend, the public was even more likely to see — or if the strategy was executed effectively, not see — a provocative announcement.
As we were reminded late last week, Trump-appointed judges occasionally make use of the same tactics. NBC News reported on an important ruling that was issued late on Good Friday, during Passover, ahead of a holiday weekend.
In an unprecedented move, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s longtime approval of key abortion pill mifepristone, though he gave the government a week to appeal his decision. If the ruling does eventually go into effect, it would curtail access to the standard regimen for medication abortion nationwide.
As a Slate analysis added, the judge’s order marked “the first time in history that a court has claimed the authority to single-handedly pull a drug from the market, a power that courts do not, in fact, have.”
For those unfamiliar with mifepristone, the FDA approved it nearly a quarter of a century ago, be used as part of a two-step process to terminate unwanted pregnancies up to 10 weeks. The drug has proven to be safe, effective and commonly used.
And according to a Trump-appointed judge in Texas, access to this safe, effective and commonly used medication must be curtailed across the country.
After Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, one of the more frequently used talking points on the right was that the fight over reproductive rights would now simply be a state-by-state issue. The demise of the Roe precedent wouldn’t impose a new national policy, conservatives said, because states that support abortion rights could continue to implement progressive policies.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling was a timely reminder that this talking point…
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