Tangle - The Supreme Court's abortion pill order.

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

The Supreme Court's mifepristone order. On Friday night, the Supreme Court granted a request from the Biden administration and a drug manufacturer to put a Texas judge's ruling on hold that would have suspended the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, SCOTUSblog reported.We covered Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's ruling in a previous edition of Tangle.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. You can also check out our latest YouTube video here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (1:33), Today’s story (3:29), Left’s take (5:54), Right’s take (9:30), Isaac’s take (12:54), Listener question (15:49), Under the Radar (18:28), Numbers (19:25), Have a nice day (20:08)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Soule, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the Supreme Court's Mifepristone order, which came down on Friday evening, and what it means for abortion access and the abortion pill in America. Before we jump in, though, a quick heads up in case you missed it. On Friday, we published a subscribers-only newsletter on how a bill becomes law. We did not just do the basics civics 101 stuff. We also went into lobbying and earmarks and backdoor deals.

I spoke to four congressional staffers off the record about their experience getting legislation across the line and what sort of goes into that. It is a pretty interesting piece. I think we got a lot of positive feedback on it. If you want to check it out, you can find it at readtangled.com. You will need a subscription to unlock it in its entirety, but I think it's worth the read. All right, with that out of the way, we'll start off today with our quick hits. First up, U.S. Special Forces evacuated the American embassy in Sudan yesterday, airlifting roughly 100 government workers from the capital as fighting entered its ninth day. Number two, 11 of 20 Florida GOP representatives have now endorsed former President Donald Trump over suspected Republican candidate and Florida Governor Ron

DeSantis. Number three, Russia's Air Force accidentally bombed the Belgorod, its own city, which lies 25 miles east of the Russia-Ukraine border. At least three people were injured. Number four, Bud Light's VP of Marketing, Alyssa Heinerscheid, and her boss, Daniel Blake, were placed on leave. Both were involved in the marketing campaign with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Number five, jury selection begins today in the trial of the man accused of killing 11 people at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018. Facing an 11.59 p.m. Eastern Time deadline of its own choosing and a day of high drama, the U.S. Supreme Court has just weighed in on another pivotal and consequential question in the nation's divide over abortion.

The Supreme Court has blocked restrictions on the abortion pill Mifeprestone. Earlier this month, a federal judge issued a ruling that would revoke the drug's two-decade-old FDA approval. An appeals court then ruled it could stay available, but with limits. The drug Mifepristone has been available to women for more than 20 years, used in more than half of all abortions in the U.S. Just moments ago, the Supreme Court preserved full access to the abortion pill for now, as the case plays out in the courts, issuing what is called a full stay of that controversial ruling by a Texas judge. On Friday night, the Supreme Court granted a request from the Biden administration and a drug

manufacturer to put a Texas judge's ruling on hold that would have suspended the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion drug Mifepristone. We covered Judge Matthew Kazmarek's ruling in a previous edition of the Tangle podcast. Medication abortions account for over half of all abortions performed in the United States. The Supreme Court's decision to suspend Kazmarek's ruling sends the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which will hear arguments next week. In practice, the order means the FDA's approval will stand as that case plays out and the drug will remain widely available in states where abortion remains legal. If the plaintiffs win in the Fifth Circuit,

the Biden administration will appeal to the Supreme Court, which would hear the case next summer. Kazimierik had sided with challengers who argued that the FDA approved the drug despite legitimate safety concerns and had expanded its availability during the pandemic beyond what that approval had allowed. The Biden administration challenged that ruling to the Fifth Circuit, which blocked a part of the ruling that suspended the FDA's approval but allowed the part of Kazimiercz's order to stand that limits over-mail access to the drug. In response, the Biden administration appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which sided with their appeal and kept the entire order on hold while the government's challenge plays out

in the Fifth Circuit. The Supreme Court's decision came in a 7-2 vote. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have denied the Biden administration's request, though neither directly defended Kazimiercz's ruling. Instead, Alito penned a four-page dissent in which he argued that the court did not need to act now, saying that allowing the ruling to stand would keep Mifepristone available in the manner it had been up until 2016. Alito also criticized Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Amy Coney Barrett, who have criticized the use of the so-called shadow docket in the past, but used this emergency order to keep Mifepristone available. Today, we're going to take a look at

some responses to the order what the left is saying. Many on the left applaud the ruling, but criticize Alito's dissent on several fronts. Some argue Alito is proving to be an over-the-top, partisan justice. Others say this is not the end of attacks on the abortion bill. In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin said the court delivered a sigh of relief and an outrageous dissent. Justice Alito's dissent is yet another example of his intemperate partisan rhetoric and perfectly encapsulates how unmoored from reason he has become. Alito asserts there would be no irreparable injury in denying the stay because

the Biden administration has not dispelled legitimate doubts that would obey the court's order on Mifepristone. This unprecedented attack on the government's obedience to court rulings based on nothing is out of order. There is zero evidence, stray pundits and legislative backbenchers don't count, that the Biden administration would essentially put itself in contempt of court. Alito also demonstrates that he does not care one whit about the women affected if the drug were suddenly made unavailable. He also accuses the government of judge shopping by going to the Ninth Circuit to get a contrary opinion, which takes some nerve given that the anti-abortion activists searched out a single district division in Amarillo, Texas, where they were certain to draw a judge who embraces their cause.

In The Atlantic, Mary Ziegler said the justices pass on an abortion pill ban until they hear a better case. Abortion rights supporters can draw an optimistic reading from the stay, Ziegler said. Only justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, and not even Alito, the only dissenting justice who wrote anything, expressed any support for the plaintiff's arguments. Rather than discuss the plaintiff's standing or the merits of their case, Alito preferred to complain that the FDA had not shown that it would have been injured had the Fifth Circuit ruling gone into effect, because regulators would likely have used their discretion not to go after unapproved uses of Mifepristone. But there were deep problems with the plaintiff's case, and it

was hard to argue with a straight face that they had standing to sue. Kazmarek and the Fifth Circuit prepared the way for a reading of the Comstock Act as a nationwide abortion ban, and the abortion rights opponents will file other suits to take advantage. Already, Idaho passed a law limiting interstate travel for an abortion, the first such state restriction, and part of a strategy that, if successful, could empower conservative states to limit the ability of progressive ones to treat patients from elsewhere. In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern said the court stopped a lawless judicial effort to ban the drug.

Not a single justice even tried to defend the decision by Kaczmarek, Stern said. Friday's stay sends a strong message to the lower courts that SCOTUS will not entertain this cynical attempt to impose new nationwide restrictions and potentially even a ban on abortion. This is a good omen for this case, as even the two dissenters could not bring themselves to pretend that the lower courts got it right. Alito railed against the emergency order and accused his fellow justices of hypocrisy for intervening here. He also claimed the Fifth Circuit's decision would have merely reinstated restrictions that existed until 2016. That's not remotely true, Stern said. The Fifth Circuit's decision would bar M Mifepristone's manufacturer from distributing

the drug for months and would have raised the very real possibility that Kazmaier could hold both FDA officials and drug makers in contempt depending on how they distributed the drug. All right, that is it for the leftist thing, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right is divided, with some arguing that this was the right ruling and others saying Alito made strong points in his dissent. Some criticized Democrats for embracing the quote-unquote illegitimate Supreme Court when it rules in their favor. Others argue Miffa Pristone is dangerous and the court should limit its use. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said America's supposed dissent into the handmaid's tale was put on pause. Note the irony of progressive praising the same high court they call a threat to democracy and women's rights,

the board wrote. As we've written, the role of judges doesn't include second-guessing the FDA's judgment unless it violates procedure or the law. It's also questionable whether the anti-abortion physicians have demonstrated a sufficiently concrete injury that is traceable to the FDA's actions to have legal standing to sue, the board said. In his dissent, Justice Alito made some valid points about the procedural issues without expressing a view on the merits of the case. He hoisted the liberal justices on their past criticisms of the court's conservatives for deciding cases on the emergency docket. Several Democrats suggested the FDA ignore the court order on the premise the U.S. legal process can't be trusted. Well, apparently it can, the board said. In red state, Becca Lauer agreed with the points made in Alito's dissent. The Democrats and their allies in the abortion business couldn't be rejoicing louder over

the temporary move, which keeps restrictions on the distribution of the drug from taking effect in states across the country, she wrote. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease.

Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Those changes would have included requiring women to see a doctor in person before receiving the

pills and banning the ability for someone to order them by mail. Alito was right that for 16 years, three administrations defended previous rules for Mifepristone. The unfettered access to abortion is a religious tenet of the modern Democrat Party, which voters should keep in mind when they pull the lever in 2024. It's a stance that's widely out of step with the majority of Americans, she said, adding that Biden is the most abortion-friendly president the United States has ever had. The legal fight didn't end with what SCOTUS did Friday. They sent it back to the lower courts, specifically the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. We'll see where it goes from here.

In town hall, Rebecca Downs said the common but dangerous abortion pill method will remain available and unchanged. The ruling does not mean the decision was 7-2, just that only Thomas and Alito have made the dissent public. That Biden put out a statement so quickly supporting the ruling is especially concerning, and he is ignoring how the FDA made changes in December 2021 to make the method even less safer and less regulated. Now, women can receive abortion-inducing drugs in the mail without an in-person visit, Down said. In November of 2021, just before the FDA made their decision, the Charlotte Loeser CLI Institute released a peer-reviewed journal that showed emergency room visits went up 507% between 2002 and 2015 following this method,

and that 60% of visits were incorrectly attributed to miscarriages down said. The FDA appears to have a pattern of dangerous behavior, as it did not properly look to studies showing adverse effects from the method. All right, that is it for what the right and the left are saying, which brings us to my take. So I know that it's a little unbecoming to take victory laps, but I'm pretty pleased with my prediction on how this would all turn out. When we covered this story two weeks ago, I took an unusually black and white stance in my take. This is what I wrote then. Regardless of my feelings on abortion or Roe v. Wade, the argument is much less complex here. Judge Kazmarek is wrong. He has overstepped, bent the law to match his activism, and opened a can

of worms that both undermines the legitimacy of our courts and further pushes the envelope on what politically motivated judges are willing to do in public view. The plaintiffs don't have standing, the approval is beyond the statute of limitations to be challenged, and Kaczmarek ignores decades of precedent on laws like the Comstock Act. The extremism of Kaczmarek's ruling and the disingenuous nature of it are self-evident. Of course, in today's tribalized politics, it's hard to criticize your own team, so you end up with weaselly sentences like the ones in the journal's editorial. Judge Matthew Kaczmarek agreed but made several legal leaps, or quote,

this is a legal stretch. I also said that the Biden administration should get this case before the Supreme Court as soon as possible, adding that, quote, I'm quite confident the court, even with its conservative majority, will recognize the layered fallacies of Kazmarek's injunction and correct this wrong. Quite a few liberal readers wrote in asking how I could trust the illegitimate Supreme Court, which they view as totally captured by right-wing theocracy. But the court is not that simple, not illegitimate, and functioned exactly as it should have in this case. All three Trump-appointed justices backed the stay, and absent from even Alito's dissent, which I admit was over-the-top and discouraging on a few different levels, was a single sentence

defending Kazmarek's ruling or where the Fifth Circuit had landed. It was clear to anyone who gave Kazmarek's ruling an honest look that it was pure, unbridled judicial activism. Kudos to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, pro-life activist Patrick Brown, and several writers at Reason Magazine who spoke out against their own team and called out the unreasonableness of the ruling in real time. We should do more to celebrate the honest brokers like that in today's increasingly tribal political warfare. For now, Mifepristone will remain as is, available under the gold standard approval of the FDA and out of reach of a lone activist judge in Texas. If the plaintiffs win in the Fifth Circuit, the court will hear arguments a little more than a year from now, and it seems pretty clear they will run against the plaintiffs in this case unless a new argument

is found. Perhaps more interestingly, this case could now fall smack dab in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign season, something I'm sure many Democrats will be happy to use to their political favor. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Mary in Papikiu, Hawaii. I have no idea how to say that. Would you say that you have moved more to the left or to the right after starting Tangle, Mary asked. This is an interesting question. So I'll make two points I've made before. First, as I've said since interviewing him, I think Hiram Lewis is right that there is a myth of the left and right. There are no fixed poles on either side with clear ideological stances attached to them.

Instead, there are left and right tribes whose positions and values constantly evolve, influenced by issues and events of the times. So it's hard to say whether I have changed or the polls have changed. Second, it is a very issue-dependent question. For example, my views on prison have moved further to the left, while my views on the Trump-Russia story have moved further to the right. Overall, I'd say the net impact has been moving slightly to the right in the way most people probably understand the right. Overall, I'd say the net impact has been moving slightly to the right in the way most people probably understand the right. I think a big part of that is the strongest arguments on the right are still harder to find in the media than the strongest arguments on the left.

I was encountering very good liberal arguments on most big issues while working as a political journalist, but dedicating my life to seeking out an equal amount of conservative opinion has given me more exposure to the best thinkers on the right. Most of the mainstream media or corporate media still caricatures the conservative view or elevates the most far-right folks in the Republican Party, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. The right misrepresents the opposition too, obviously. Just watch primetime Fox News where all the most outlandish liberals are made out to be the mainstream. But I think it's easier to passively

miss the strong conservative arguments than vice versa. It's very much a mixed bag, though. The last few years have made me far more cynical about the most popular right-wing pundits and politicians who seem increasingly devoid of policy and overwhelmingly interested in owning the libs rather than winning any hearts or minds. I've also become more cynical about the Democratic Party, which seems to be increasingly lacking any other identity besides Trump is bad. In a paradoxical way, both tribes are less appealing to me now than they were five years ago. If anything, doing Tangle has made me much more confident in the complexity of our biggest political issues. I am way, way more skeptical of anyone who says they have the

answer and far more interested in the people who marry ideas from across the political spectrum to solve our biggest problems by consensus. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our Under the Radar section. On Thursday, Judiciary Committee Republicans and Chairman Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican from Ohio, shared excerpts from an interview with former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell. In the interview, Morrell said Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the impetus for the public statement signed by current and past intelligence officials alleging the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation campaign. Morell alleged that Blinken, then a

campaign advisor for candidate Biden, called him and asked for his opinion on the story. Morell also said he participated in the letter because he wanted Biden to win. Democrats have accused Jordan of a selective leak that omitted Morrell, saying plainly he was never asked to make the statement. Fox News has the story and the pushback, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who said they oppose laws banning access to medication abortion is 64%, according to a new NPA Marist poll. The percentage of Americans who said they support laws banning access to medication abortion is 35%. The percentage of Republicans who said they oppose laws banning access to medication abortion is 55%.

Republicans who said they oppose laws banning access to medication abortion is 55 percent. And the percentage of Democrats who said they oppose the laws is 73 percent. The percentage of Republicans who said they support laws banning access to medication abortion is 44 percent. And the percentage of Democrats who said they support laws banning access to medication abortion is 26 percent. All right. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. For decades, technologists have been trying to find a way to perfect carbon capture, but a new discovery from scientists might be the microbe version of what they have long sought. Researchers say cyanobacterium,

which was found in September in a volcanic hot spring in Italy, gobbles up carbon dioxide astonishingly quickly. The researchers are hoping to use microbes that have naturally evolved to capture CO2 as a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Some companies like Lanza Tech are already harnessing bacteria to capture CO2 and turn it into commercial fuels. Elon Musk and Shell are also backing cyanocapture, which is using cyanobacteria to create biomass and biological oils. The Guardian has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description.

All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com slash membership and consider becoming a member. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Hope you guys have a good weekend. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Law. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was Thank you. We'll see you next time. who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.