Gavin Newsom Says California Is “Done” With Walgreens After Abortion Pill Stance

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Monday that his state will no longer do business with Walgreens because the pharmacy chain decided not to dispense abortion pills.

Walgreens initially said in January that it would offer mifepristone, one of the medications used to induce an abortion. The Food and Drug Administration changed its rules to allow pharmacies in states that still allow abortion to dispense the drug. Pharmacies would need to get certified to do so because the FDA currently classifies mifepristone as a high-risk drug, despite the fact that there is no data backing that decision up.

Walgreens and CVS, two of the biggest U.S. pharmacy chains, said they would seek certification. But in February, Walgreens changed course following intense pressure from anti-abortion lawmakers and said it would no longer dispense mifepristone in 20 states with Republican attorneys general.

Newsom slammed the chain Monday, saying its decision “cowers to extremists and puts women’s lives at risk.”

Newsom did not say what he meant by ceasing to do business, for instance whether he would order all Walgreens locations in California to close. He also has yet to outline a plan for what happens after business with Walgreens stops, including making sure that the measure does not accidentally strand communities without an easily accessible pharmacy.

But Newsom is the first governor to take such a clear stance in favor of maintaining access to abortion, an important move as the right to the procedure is increasingly under attack.

Medication abortions make up more than half of all abortions in the United States and are considered a crucial tool in maintaining access to the procedure since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Republican lawmakers are trying to make it harder to access abortion pills, for instance in Texas, where an official introduced a bill last week that would compel internet providers in the state to block websites that sell or provide information on how to obtain the medication. Another lawmaker introduced a bill that would ban credit card companies from processing transactions for abortion pills.

A federal judge will soon rule whether the FDA improperly approved mifepristone for sale, which could make it more difficult to purchase the medicine.

When links and photos stopped loading on Twitter Monday, platform owner Elon Musk was quick to assure users that the issue was only temporary and explain what had caused the problem.

Just kidding!

In the hour that Twitter was down, Musk was busy sharing misinformation and transphobic misogynistic opinions. He responded to two different tweets about a judge ruling USA Powerlifting had discriminated against a transgender athlete by banning her from participating in women’s competitions.

Musk complained the ruling was “extremely unfair to anyone with XX chromosomes” and said “civilization is going” nuts, alongside the peanut emoji.

He argued that Anthony Fauci had “egregiously betrayed the public trust” while overseeing the U.S. Covid-19 response and implied he would consider labeling CNN as “state-affiliated media.”

Musk also argued that changes to farming policy were “messed up” and would have no effect on combating climate change.

“Idiocracy is happening so fast,” he replied to a video clip of teenagers saying that farming was the primary driver of global warming.

When a user tweeted a quotation that said boys with higher IQs have less sex, Musk commented that finding was “super concerning.” The tweet Musk replied to did not have a source for the quotation, but it appears to come from a 2000 study called “Smart teens don’t have sex (or kiss much either).”

The full context of the study is looking at the link between intelligence level and sexual activity for teenagers from grades seven through 12. The study found that teens at both the high and low ends of the intelligence spectrum were less likely to have sex. The study also did not say whether teens weren’t having sex because they couldn’t find partners or because they were choosing to wait.

Musk has shown before he thinks he can trashpost his way out of crises, but it hasn’t been going so well. Advertisers have left the platform in droves since he took over, and every day there seems to be a new report of how he is trying—and failing—to keep Twitter afloat.

Links and photos shared on Twitter stopped loading Monday, amid reports of increasing chaos and decreasing ability to function within the company.

Images stopped displaying on Twitter, while anyone who clicked on a link got an error message that told them, “Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.” Thousands of people had reported issues across the platform, according to DownDetector.

An API, or application programming interface, allows multiple separate computer systems to communicate. Twitter’s API, as explained by Wired, “allows third parties to retrieve and analyze public Twitter data, which can then be used to create programmable bots and separate applications that connect to the platform.”

Twitter announced in early February that it would get rid of its free API in favor of a “paid basic tier,” which many said was because the company was running severely short on funds. Many users speculated Monday that Twitter ending the free API had caused its own system to crash. Third-party apps such as TweetDeck were also not working on Monday.

Others said the issue could be because the platform’s internal link shortener was down. Twitter said the issues were temporary but only said they were due to “an internal change that had some unintended consequences.”

But the crashing links are just the cherry on top of a truly horrendous Monday for Twitter owner Elon Musk, after the BBC reported that changes and layoffs he made have rendered the company unable to protect users from trolls, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, and child sexual exploitation.

It was already known that hate speech flourished on Twitter under Musk. The social media research group National Contagion Research Institute found that in the 12 hours after Musk bought Twitter, use of the n-word increased almost 500 percent.

But the BBC, citing academic data and interviews with anonymous Twitter insiders, found that child sexual exploitation was on the rise and not reported to law enforcement at a sufficient rate. It also learned that targeted disinformation campaigns are going “undetected,” and accounts that follow misogynistic and abusive profiles have increased 69 percent.

Musk replied by essentially saying, “Sorry, not sorry.”

But the Tesla CEO has locked himself into a vicious cycle. Advertisers and users have left the platform in droves since he took over, forcing him to try to slash costs wherever possible. This includes firing employees, auctioning off everything in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, taking money from the Taliban, and apparently just not paying rent.

As a result, as the BBC found, Twitter has neither the funds nor the manpower to moderate content on the platform. Any efforts to do so are thwarted by the boss’s penchant for letting Nazis back online. As a result, more advertisers are turned off Twitter, leaving Musk scrambling all the more to make money.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose conspiratorial record spans QAnon and Jewish space lasers to helping incite the January 6 attack on the Capitol, wants the government to recognize anti-fascists as terrorists.

Yes, in Greene’s mind: To be the opposite of a terrorist, to be a citizen in good standing, you’d have to be consequently the opposite of an anti-fascist.

On Sunday, videos circulated online showing what appeared to be construction equipment meant for Atlanta’s planned “Public Safety Training Center” (or as non-officers call it, “Cop City”) on fire, after reported clashes between protesters and the police. Greene reacted to the videos, calling it “domestic terrorism” and announcing her intention to lead a resolution to declare antifa a “terrorist organization” on Tuesday.

Atlanta’s police training center has been met with opposition since its approval in 2021, just shortly after the Black Lives Matters protests against police brutality that swept the country. Swaths of people, from environmental organizations and forest defenders to neighborhood associations and local schools, have come out strongly against the $90 million project. The proposal includes a shooting range and mock village, which earned it the nickname “Cop City.”

The proposed location for the police training center is an abandoned prison complex in the South River Forest; the old complex, the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, was allegedly host to “systemic abuse, torture, overcrowding, neglect, and racialized violence” throughout its history, and there is suspicion that “unmarked graves of prisoners exist on the grounds.”

The project has spurred all the more scrutiny after police in January shot and killed environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, during a police raid of an encampment on site. Police say that Tortuguita shot at them, which prompted them to fire back. An officer was in fact hospitalized after being shot in the abdomen—but protesters contested the police’s claim and bodycam footage later revealed a cop saying, “You fucked your own officer up.” After initially claiming that no footage of the shooting existed, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation admitted five days later that footage of the shooting’s aftermath did exist.

In the footage, about 14 seconds of continuous gunfire can be heard, not a back-and-forth exchange of gunfire between Tortuguita and the police. Shortly after, a person is heard asking, “Is this target practice?”

This is the context in which Greene groups all those opposed to the bloated police project (environmentalists, students and teachers, everyday residents of the city) under the blanket term “antifa” and then calls for them to be labeled “domestic terrorists.” The always-suspicious Greene has expressed no skepticism about the police’s account of what some may deem state-sanctioned murder, but of course had plenty to say about burning construction equipment.

Bear in mind that while Greene calls for a “national divorce” and wants the government to recognize people opposed to fascism as “terrorists,” Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has said he will “never leave” and “always take care of” Greene.

A group of 16 attorneys general have called out Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for a plan to collect information on students who seek gender-affirming care on college campuses.

The governing body for Florida’s state university system, the Board of Governors, requested in January that higher education institutions submit reports on any students who go to campus health centers for gender dysphoria. The institutions would have to say whether people asked for, were referred for, or were provided with “sex-reassignment treatment” and how many people were diagnosed with a gender identity disorder. The reports are also supposed to include how many people underwent a gender-reaffirming surgery and a breakdown of patients by age.

“This information request may be intended to intimidate, and will actually intimidate, university administrators and health care providers and chill vulnerable students … from accessing necessary medical care,” the attorneys general wrote in the letter to DeSantis on Friday. “Public reports suggest that you may seek to use the information sought to eliminate funding for necessary gender-affirming health care for students.”

“Such actions jeopardize the health, safety and well-being of young people and their families, contravene well-accepted medical standards, unduly insert the state into the provider-patient relationship, violate students’ rights under federal law—including privacy—and offend basic human rights.”

DeSantis has cracked down on LGBTQ rights in his state, pushing through the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and banning transgender girls from playing girls’ sports. He cut off funding under Medicaid for gender-affirming treatment and asked the state board of medicine to ban any such treatment for people under 18.

The Board of Governors said that any information submitted would be kept anonymous, but asking for the students’ breakdown by age would help identify any organizations that provide gender-affirming treatment to younger patients.

In a similar vein, the Florida High School Athletics Association will require high school student athletes to tell their schools their sex assigned at birth. Critics worry the newly added question—and before it, a proposed requirement that students share details on their menstrual history—could be used to out transgender students.

The Board of Governors’ proposal is the latest in a wave of state-level policy moves targeting LGBTQ people, particularly trans people, across the country. Lawmakers usually argue they are trying to protect children’s well-being, but a study published in January found that trans and nonbinary teenagers who receive gender-affirming care have significantly less depression and anxiety and are more satisfied with their lives than before treatment. However, laws that single out trans people expose them to more violence.