WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar - Episode 33

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about the court case challenging abortion pills by mail, the court case blocking the Trump administration from deporting 350,000 Haitians, the end of the Department of Homeland Security's recent shutdown, and more.

This is Under the Radar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Now, here's your host, Luke Miller. This week on Under the Radar, hear about the court case challenging abortion pills by mail, the court case blocking the Trump administration from deporting 350,000 Haitians, the end of the Department of Homeland Security's recent shutdown, and more. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and on this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media.

Well, they're covering the president's latest tweets. Here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome to Under the Radar. The first piece of news I have for you this week is a court case that was likely on its way to the Supreme Court, but the DOJ has filed a brief to try to stop it from ever reaching the Supreme Court if it gets its way. The case is called Missouri v. FDA, and in the case, Missouri is challenging a federal provision from the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that allows the abortion drug Miffipristone

to be shipped through the mail, which means that in a state where abortion is illegal, you can get abortion drugs shipped to you from other states under federal protection. Now, I'll certainly get into some of the ramifications of that, but the big news here is that this filing from the DOJ is trying to block this lawsuit, meaning that Missouri would not be able to challenge the FDA for allowing abortion drugs to be shipped through the mail. Now, that might and probably should cause a red flag to go off in your mind, at least if you're pro-life or if you're pro-Trump or both,

that the Trump-D-O-J is trying to block an actively pro-life lawsuit. Well, they provide some justification for doing this that sounds good on its face, but I'll also get into some reasons for valid criticism from the pro-life Trump base. So first of all, the claim from the Trump administration, and particularly the Department of Justice, is that allowing this lawsuit to move forward would inhibit a safety study that they're currently conducting on the abortion pill. This abortion pill is called Mitha Press Stone, and its medication used primarily for medical abortion, and can be used up to 10 weeks to end an early pregnancy. So early last year, FDA administrator Marty McCari and HHS director RFK Jr., initiated an

REMS review or a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy for MIFA Prestone. So for a lot of pro-life advocates, that seemed to be a win. It seemed like the HHS department was going to review Mifah Prestone, the abortion pill for safety and issue some new guidelines that might actually crack down on some of these mail-order abortion pills. And at least three times since the second Trump administration started, the Trump DOJ has issued these kinds of filings blocking lawsuits against mail-order abortion pills to allow this REMS safety study conducted by the FDA to go forward. To call this what it actually is, this is the Trump

administration protecting access to the abortion pill through mail, and they haven't actually specified how allowing these cases to go forward would inhibit their REMS study. Well, this study has been going on for a year and a half now, and not only have we not seen any results from the study, it has yet to be released, but more importantly, in the meantime, abortions are actually increasing even in states where medical abortion is banned. And so one of the reasons for the pro-life Trump base to be frustrated is the lack of urgency from the Trump DOJ, from the Trump FDA, and from the Trump administration overall in dealing with the pro-life issue, in dealing with the abortion pill issue particularly, because it's responsible for so many abortions, I mean, hundreds of thousands of abortions a year, and it allows

access to abortion in states where abortion is illegal, because you can just have a pill ship there through the mail. Lawsuits like this one from Missouri could be an easy way to put them on hold or slow them down at least minimally. For pro-lifers, that would seem to be a win. And so to see the Trump-D-OJ blocking efforts like this from the state of Missouri, from Kansas, from Idaho, and from others, to try to block access to mail-order abortion pills, which are illegal in their states, to see the Trump-D-O-J blocking those for a never-ending study to continue is frustrating, and rightfully so, particularly because it was one of the major issues of the 2024 election. And And so the Harris campaign accused President Trump of wanting to ban abortion nationwide.

But President Trump never said that he wanted a national abortion ban. More importantly, he's never made any efforts toward a national abortion ban. And he's always been relatively moderate on the issue, even though he has appealed to most pro-life voters, particularly in general elections when he's not competing against other Republicans who might be more pro-life than he is. However, in her recent memoir, Melania Trump came out as firmly pro-choice, pro-abortion, and that in and of itself is not enough to question President Trump. pro-life status. After all, Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan's wife, was also pro-choice in a way. Barbara Bush was also openly pro-choice. So it's not uncommon to see Republican presidents have first ladies who are pro-abortion. But it's also not unreasonable to think that President Trump has kind of pushed this issue to the back burner and that it might not be a particularly

pressing issue for him, given the fact that he actually used to describe himself as very pro-choice. Take a listen to him in 1999 in this interview on Meet the Press. I'm very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still, I just believe in choice.

And again, it may be a little bit of a New York background because there is some different attitude in different parts of the country. And, you know, I was raised in New York and grew up and work and everything else in New York City. But I am strongly for choice, and yet I hate the concept of abortion. But you would not ban it? No.

Or ban partial birth abortion? No, I would, I would, I am pro-choice in every respect and as far as it goes, but I just hate it. So that's President Trump in 1999, and that's obviously a pretty nuanced take, right? Like, he says three or four times in that clip that he hates abortion, he hates the concept of it, but that he's very pro-choice all the way. And we can't fully judge him on his opinions in 1999. I mean, he also said that if he ran for president, Oprah would be his vice presidential choice. So we can't take everything that he said in 1999 as his opinions in 2026.

but the fact that he has not always been staunchly pro-life can give his pro-life base some reason to wonder when his DOJ starts to block things like this Missouri v. FDA lawsuit that could actually lead to pro-life steps in the right direction, particularly when abortions are actually increasing post-Rovey Wade, and this was the other issue that I wanted to touch on in this case. So one of the undeniable biggest wins of the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, I should say, from 2017 through 2020, was the appointment of conservative originalists, pro-life Supreme Court justices, however you want to phrase that. And in 2022, in the infamous Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case, which allowed abortion to be legal and protected on the federal level. Now, that was obviously a huge pro-life win. And pro-lifers, particularly ones who voted for Trump, were rightfully thrilled with that decision and expected to see the number of aborted babies go down. However, in 2022, according to the Society for Family Planning, So the year that the Dobbs decision came out, the number of monthly abortions was at 79,620 in

2023. That went up about 9,000 per month to 88,180, and went up another 7,000 in 2024 to 95,250 abortions per month. And through June 2025, that had gone up another 3,000 to 98,630 babies being aborted every month. That's a 19,000 abortion per month increase from the Dobbs decision in 2022 to mid-2025 and an increase of 228,000 babies per year being aborted over the last three years. And that would mean that in 2025 there were approximately 1.2 million babies aborted in the United States. The Society for Family Planning also estimated that 27% of those abortions were through telehealth, which means that they were facilitated by abortion pills sent through the mail. So that's 27% of all of those abortions, which would be over 300,000 abortions in the United States.

States, just in the year 2025, that were directly facilitated by abortion pills like the one that we're talking about in this case, like Mifipristone, being shipped through the mail. So that's why pro-lifers care so much about this particular case and about this particular issue. It's facilitating 300,000 abortions in a year. And this is the third time since the second Trump administration started that the DOJ, the Trump DOJ, has blocked a Supreme Court case challenging abortion pills being sent through the mail, which is what's allowing these abortions to expand in states where abortion is illegal. For example, there are tens of thousands of abortions happening in states like Texas, where medical abortion is banned. The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, has tried to penalize abortionists who are accused of shipping pills into the state,

but they're federally protected from this provision, and because other states like New York, have put in place laws to shield abortionists from being targeted at the state or federal level. Moreover, as Marjorie Dandenfelser points out, who is the president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Organization, which has a presence on Hillsdale's campus, she says, quote, the pro-life movement has very simple demands. There should be no place on the market for drugs meant to poison and kill innocent human beings, but at the very least, this administration can and should take them out of the mail. This is no more or less than the policy of the first Trump administration. Which, this is something very important to point out in this particular case. It was not legal to ship these Miffiprestone abortion pills through the mail until COVID happened.

During COVID, there was a policy that relaxed regulations for dispensing the abortion pill. guess since people weren't legally allowed to go to many of these stores that would allow you to buy them in person. But during the first Trump administration, this was not a thing. This was not legal. And up to this point, it seems that the second Trump administration is content with conducting a safety review of Mifiprestone internally through the FDA and not allowing cases to go forward that actually challenged the legality of mail order abortion pills. You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio for Hillsdale 101.7 FM. The next piece of news I have for you this week is another court case, this time about ending temporary protected status for Haitians in the United States.

So as you may recall, the Department of Homeland Security under Christie Nome issued an order revoking temporary protected status for about 350,000 Haitians that live and work in the United States. On February 2nd, a district court judge blocked that order. The administration then appealed that to the U.S. Appeals Court. And that's the decision that has come down this week. So on March 7th, according to Reuters, a divided U.S. Appeals Court has refused to let the Trump administration revoke legal protections that allow more than 350,000 Haitians to live and work in the U.S. and avoid being returned to their gang-violence-stricken country. Now, there's a little bit of relevant history and background information that goes into this case. First of all, temporary protected status is something that the U.S. government can designate certain groups with, like they had done with Venezuelans for a long time, like they've done with Haitians since 2010,

that allows people from these protected groups to come live and work in the United States, because that temporary protected status designation means that they would otherwise face danger or persecution in their home country. The federal government, in arguing this case, draws a lot of attention to the word temporary, because temporary protected status has to mean temporary. But what does that actually mean? So temporary protected status for Haitians began in 2010. So that means we're going on 16 full years of temporary protected status. And Kristy Noem and the DHS were arguing that TPS was never meant to serve as a de facto amnesty policy.

It was never meant to give people within the TPS designation permanent access to live and work in the United States. It's supposed to be temporary for a reason. As the one dissenting judge on the district court that made this decision pointed out, This is the exact same logic that was used in the Venezuela TPS case just last year. So last May, the Supreme Court issued an order allowing temporary protected status to be revoked for about 350,000 Venezuelans who were living and working in the United States. Now, at the time, the focus was on the MS-13 gangs that were making headlines in the United States and the drug trafficking that was going on to the United States through these gangs.

But other than that external focus, the cases are very, very similar. There was about the same amount of people under the temporary protected status designation, about 350,000 people in both cases. In the Venezuela case, it went through this exact same procedure, where the DHS attempted to end temporary protected status. A low court blocked it, a district court blocked it. He went to the court of appeals, which upheld the district court's efforts to block it. And then the Supreme Court jumped in and allowed the Trump administration to revoke temporary protected status for about 350,000 Venezuelans. That was in May of 2025, as of 2025. As of right now, 99% of those people have lost their temporary protected status, which does and has subjected them to the ability to be deported, to lose their jobs in the United States, to lose government benefits that come with being in the United States, and so on.

And the argument that you were seeing from many people against the removal of TPS status for Venezuelans is that, well, it was dangerous in their home country. There was a reason that they were given temporary protected status in the first place is that they would be subject to dangerous conditions if they were deported back to Venezuela. Well, considering that Venezuela at the time was operating under a dictator that was dangerous enough that the U.S. felt like they needed to go in and remove him, and we still removed the temporary protected status of Venezuelans in the United States at the time, it would be hard to argue that the same logic shouldn't apply to Haiti. Now, this particular group of Haitian temporary protected status holders in the United States became an issue in the 2024 election when we had some events surrounding Haitians in Illinois, and we got this absolute gem of a quote from President Trump in the debate. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in.

They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame. So that was President Trump in the 2024 presidential debate. And man, did that clip cause a lot of upheaval on social media? President Trump doubled down on his comments about Haiti. And I won't use the term that he used, but he basically called it a garbush.

country and in response I was reliably informed by the media and by liberals in particular that Haiti is already great Bill Maher and others were starting a trend where they were wearing these shirts that said Haiti is already great in response to the make America great again slogan and showing their outrage at President Trump's denigrating comments about Haiti But as you might expect now that President Trump wants to deport 350,000 Haitians who are currently living in the United States back to Haiti now all of a sudden Haiti isn't such a great place to live and President Trump is cruel for wanting to deport Haitians back to Just kind of an interesting turn there. But even though that picture of Haiti does seem to be a lot closer to the truth than the one put forward by the Haiti is great already crowd, at least according to this district court order, that doesn't

necessarily legally obligate us to keep 350,000 refugees living here permanently. But in the court order, the district court judges describe the situation in Haiti as being very dangerous. They say that people sent back to Haiti would face violence amid a collapsing rule of law, because the government cannot effectively maintain security and criminal gangs and violence violence are widespread. They also say that deported TPS holders would be vulnerable to violence if return because armed gangs control many areas and civilians face significant safety risks. They also note that people return to Haiti could lack access to life-sustaining medical care. And so these judges came to the conclusion that deporting these Haitians back to Haiti would be

devastating for them. And so we need to further extend their TPS status within the United States. So there's a couple of things to point out about this. First of all, that's been the situation in Haiti for a long time. And if we haven't seen much of improvement in the 16 years since Haitians have been designated with the temporary protected status in the United States, then it's unlikely that we're going to see much improvement in the near future in Haiti. And so if we can't remove temporary protected status until conditions improve enough for our liking in Haiti, that means that the temporary protected status designation does turn into a de facto amnesty of Storts, as the DHS was pointing out in this case. The second thing to point

out about this is that if things like high risk of violence and lack of medical care means that a country is too dangerous to live in, then we should have an obligation to bring in basically all of the citizens of Haiti, or all citizens in third world countries for that matter, because that's a very common situation in third world countries to be subject to those kinds of things. So if people in third world countries being subject to lack of access to medical care and to risk of violence among the civilian population, then that means that we would have an obligation to the other 12 million people who live in Haiti and to anybody who faces a similar situation around the world to allow them to live and work in the United States, and that's not sustainable either, especially if temporary

in the temporary protected status designation doesn't really have an end limit. So if the Supreme Court decided that Venezuela wasn't too dangerous to return people to, then it doesn't seem likely that they're going to rule Haiti is too dangerous to return people to. And by that, I mean, it's likely that the Supreme Court is going to step in just like they did with the Venezuela case and overturned this district court's decision, blocking the Department of Homeland Security from removing temporary protected status from the 350,000 Haitians living in the United States. The last piece of news I have for you this week is about a bill that just passed through the House of Representatives entitled the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2026. This was the final piece of the big budget

debacle that's been going on for the last few months to fund the government for fiscal year 2026. As you might recall, we had the longest government shutdown in American history last year over this, and we actually had a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that began, on February 14th because the continuing resolution that was funding the Department of Homeland Security expired and the fiscal year 2026 funding had not yet been enacted. Well, this is the funding for fiscal year 2026 and because of the date of this happening, I would imagine that it will be fast-tracked to become law and begin funding the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2026, which we're halfway into at this point. Now, there's nothing particularly unique about the bill itself except for the timing. The bill passed through the House of Representatives, on March 5th, which coincides with the date that Christy Noem, the appointed secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was fired from her job as head of DHS. Now, I would imagine that this is a concession that was made by President Trump to allow this funding to pass through. Because the Department of Homeland Security is in charge of the policy that would probably be considered central to this administration, which is border policy and deportations.

Now, Christy Noem has been in charge of this whole project, and it's been shaky to say the least. While the crisis at the sub-executive, border has effectively been eliminated. Most of that can be attributed to the funding that was given to Customs and Border Protection under the one big beautiful bill last year, and not really two efforts by the DHS. The DHS has more been in charge of the deportation efforts, and that's where the problems for Christy Nome began. First of all, the way that they went about the deportation efforts was very theatrical. Clearly, the implicit goal of staging these elaborate shows of force by ICE going into these big cities to carry out deportation efforts and clashing with protesters. And this was clearly meant to scare people in a way. It was meant to cause illegal immigrants to self-deport.

And that effort has actually been more effective than the deportations carried out by ICE. As I've covered in other shows, there's been less deportations under this administration than the Obama administration. So Christy Noem's DHS has not been particularly effective in carrying out President Trump's deportation agenda. One of the things that was brought up in Christyneum's hearings before Congress this week was that a $220 million DHS ad campaign was greenlighted by Christyneum without the consent of President Trump to encourage people to self-deport, but that money was not properly spent and was not cleared by President Trump, which turned some of his will against her. There was also a lot of backlash to Christy known for her handling of the two fatal shootings that happened at the hands of ice, which I talked about last week on the show, Renee Good and Alex Prattie, which regardless of how those cases turn out, is not a particularly good look for the Department of Homeland Security. And those things all add up eventually, right? You get misuse of

funds, you get ineffective execution of the deportation efforts in a way that has actually caused mass outcry against the administration. And you get a couple of very high-profile shootings carried out by ICE, which is under the Department of Homeland Security, all that adds up to a difficult situation for President Trump, who is trying to negotiate with Congress, with particularly Democrats in Congress, to get DHS funded, which is something that he needs if he wants to continue to try to carry out deportation efforts.

So on the same day that this appropriations bill to fund DHS was passed through the House, Christyneum was fired as head of the Department of Homeland Security, and President Trump has nominated Senator from Oklahoma Mark Wayne Mullen, who will replace Christyneum at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security if and when he is confirmed by the Senate. So while Kristy Noem had an excellent record as governor of South Dakota, particularly on economic and fiscal issues within the state, her tenure as head of the Department of Homeland Security is coming to an end.

She is being reassigned to a different role within the federal government, but it's clearly her being fired as head of the DHS, and given the timing of the appropriations bill for DHS, was likely a concession to Democrats to allow some of that funding to go through in hopes that they can get a less divisive and more effective leader for the Department of Homeland Security. So to recap this week, we covered the DOJ's protection of mail-order abortion pills from state challengers. We covered the temporary protected status case for Haitians in the United States,

and we covered the firing of Christy Noem for the long-awaited DHS funding bill. Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thanks for listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller, here on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.