Texas Expands Its Horrific Anti-Abortion Crusade Beyond State Lines

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken the Lone Star State’s abortion battle to the national stage, suing a New York doctor for prescribing the abortion pill to an in-state resident.

New York’s state law protects doctors and providers providing abortion care from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions, making the Empire State a home base for companies shipping out the abortion pill to consumers around the country.

Paxton has accused Dr. Margaret Carpenter of mailing the pills to a Collin County resident who allegedly consumed the medication when she was nine weeks pregnant, reported The Texas Tribune. The lawsuit does not mention if the woman was successful in terminating her pregnancy.

Now Paxton is asking the county court to order Carpenter to pay $100,000 for every violation of the state’s near-total abortion ban. (Violators of the draconian abortion law could also serve up to life in prison and have their Texas medical license revoked.) The lawsuit is the first attempt to enforce a state abortion ban beyond its borders.

“Abortion is, and will continue to be, legal and protected in New York. As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion care, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access,” wrote New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement responding to Paxton’s lawsuit. “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats. I will continue to defend reproductive freedom and justice for New Yorkers, including from out-of-state anti-choice attacks.”

The two-drug prescription commonly referred to as the “abortion pill” is a mixture of mifepristone and misoprostol. The procedure accounts for more than half of all the abortions in the United States, according to a 2022 report by the Guttmacher Institute, and has become a crucial tool as abortion restrictions limit access to in-person medical visits. It is more than 95 percent effective at ending pregnancies when used before 10 weeks of pregnancy, according to statistics by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Access to mifepristone has become an increasingly fraught political issue in the years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. In October, the attorneys general of Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho—a cohort of states with some of the most draconian abortion restrictions in the nation—sued the federal government to limit access to the drug, arguing that the medication should be illegal for minors (misoprostol is fully legal as it is used for other treatments).

The suit also accused the Food and Drug Administration of having “unlawfully removed its prohibition against mailing abortion drugs,” allowing what the attorneys general described as a “a 50-state abortion drug mailing economy” to undermine their states’ abortion laws.

But their moral ground for pushing the ban was seemingly less focused on protecting children’s health than it was on actually creating more children, with the lawsuit detailing the (apparently) unfortunate ramifications that abortion access has on an (apparently) desirable conundrum: teenage pregnancy.

“This study thus suggests that remote dispensing of abortion drugs by mail, common carrier, and interactive computer service is depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers in Plaintiff States, even if other overall birth rates may have been lower than otherwise was projected,” the suit read on page 190.

The Supreme Court unexpectedly saved mifepristone access in June, when it unanimously ruled that a group of different plaintiffs, represented by the right-wing Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, did not have legal standing to sue the FDA and that the legal organization had failed to demonstrate how its clients were personally harmed by the drug’s existence on the market.

By and large, most Americans support abortion access. In a 2023 Gallup poll, just 12 percent of surveyed Americans said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Meanwhile, 69 percent believe that it should be legal in the first trimester of pregnancy.

This article has been updated.

In an effort to shrink the size of the federal government, Donald Trump’s transition team is considering different plans to abolish a crucial financial regulatory agency—a move that could have far-reaching effects on the economy.

While interviewing potential nominees for positions heading up government financial agencies, Trump advisers have floated whether it would be worth dissolving some agencies, like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The team is considering moving the responsibilities of the FDIC, which include providing deposit insurance for banks, to the Treasury Department, some people familiar with the matter told the Journal.

Potential nominees have also been meeting with DOGE co-chairs technocrat troll Elon Musk and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, the major Trump donor tapped to lead the Treasury, according to sources.

The FDIC is key to financial stability and security because it insures funds in depositors’ checking and savings accounts. To threaten that insurance would almost certainly cause customers to fear that their money is no longer safe. It could potentially lead to a run on the banks, which might result in banks failing in a major financial collapse.

But if a cut makes the wiley DOGE czars feel like they’re reducing bureaucratic redundancies, it must be worth it, right?

Sheila Bair, who previously served as chair of the FDIC, warned about the plan to dissolve the essential regulator.

“Eliminating the FDIC is so out there, not sure it needs response,” Bair wrote in a post on X Friday. “FDIC has a perfect record of protecting insured deposits for over 90 years. Strong consumer confidence in the brand, providing stability during crises. During the [Great Financial Crisis], money was running INTO banks.”

Bair, who also served as the former assistant secretary for financial institutions, explained that the Treasury Department was not well suited to take on the responsibilities of the FDIC.

“As a former Treasury official, big supporter of the Department, but it would not be a good home for deposit insurance. Deposit insurance is funded by bank premiums, not taxpayers. Treasury has no expertise in handling bank failures. Changing the guarantor would create confusion among depositors who are comforted by the ‘FDIC Insured’ sign at their banks,” she added in a separate post.

Critics are torching a New York Times op-ed Friday by the chief of UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, arguing that the $23.5 million-salaried executive’s message overwhelmingly ignored the failures actively perpetuated by his company in the American health care system.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty condemned the American public’s gleeful response to the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was assassinated by a masked gunman last week on the streets of New York City just hours before an investor meeting.

In roughly 600 words, he also attempted to deflect his insurance network’s responsibility in the growing inequity in America’s health care system, vaguely pointing to a “patchwork” of failures decades in the making while swearing that his corporate network—which reported $22 billion in profits in 2023 alone, nearly three times the figure reported by CVS, the second-most-profitable health insurance company that year—was consistently fighting to “deliver high-quality care and lower costs.”

But readers weren’t buying it.

Instead, they swarmed the Times with negative feedback, piling on more than 2,500 comments within hours of the article’s publication, temporarily disabling its Comments section. Users shared their own horrible experiences with the health insurance industry, deriding Witty’s vapid analysis as a “self-serving essay” that did nothing to address UnitedHealthcare’s role in a system that prioritizes shareholder profits over successful medical outcomes for its clients.

Federal data from 2022 compiled by the personal finance website ValuePenguin found that UnitedHealthcare far outpaced its competitors when it came to denying coverage, rejecting 32 percent or roughly one in three claims. In 2024, the insurer’s parent group spent more than $5.8 million lobbying Congress on health care–related issues.

Meanwhile, Americans are paying more than ever for health insurance, with costs far outpacing the rate of inflation. A Kaiser Family Foundation report published earlier this year found that the vast majority of U.S. adults are worried about being able to afford a major medical expense, regardless of their financial position.

Tulsi Gabbard is flopping in her meetings to persuade Senate Republicans to back her unpopular nomination as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, according to a report from The Hill published Friday.

“She was proving to be a little shallow, like a House member talking at a hearing and not someone who needs to provide the president’s daily intelligence briefing,” one source familiar with the meetings told The Hill.

It seems that in her exchanges, Gabbard had been all sound, no fury. One Senate Republican, who called Gabbard’s meetings “BS sessions,” said that several Republicans were left wanting more substantive responses.

“I’ve heard that she’s not very well prepared,” the Republican senator said. “I’ve heard not great things.”

A second Senate Republican said she’d elicited “a lot of eyerolls” from senators.

One Senate GOP aide, whose member had met with Gabbard, said her disastrous audiences with Senate Republicans “don’t make it easy” for her to gain the support she needs to be confirmed. “She’s got some work to do if she wants the job. The more she meets with serious people, the more they’ll see there’s a competency deficit.”

The aide noted to The Hill that Gabbard’s “just not educated” on the kind of work involved in the position but said she was “a capable person who could learn quickly.”

Gabbard is “probably more vulnerable than [Pete] Hegseth right now,” another source familiar with the meetings said.

Yet another Senate Republican noted that Gabbard’s issues stemmed from having to walk back her position opposing reauthorization of FISA, a foreign spying tool that she would have to defend as head of U.S. national intelligence.

Gabbard’s bid for the high-ranking role has faced significant criticism, not only because she lacks experience in the intelligence profession but also because of her penchant for defending some of the world’s most violent autocrats—but of course she and Trump have that in common.

Trump transition spokesperson Alexa Henning pushed back on the characterization that Gabbard has been struggling in her meetings on Capitol Hill.

“These cowardly anonymous sources are desperately trying to hold on to power, so they hide behind the media to spread these falsities that directly subvert the will of the American people. President Trump won with a mandate for change from the American people, and that’s one of the reasons he nominated Lt. Col. Gabbard for DNI,” Henning said in a statement.

On Monday, Daniel Penny was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide. On Saturday, he is expected to join President-elect Donald Trump at the Army-Navy college football game as the invited guest of his soon-to-be vice president, JD Vance.

Last year, Penny choked Jordan Neely, a homeless and severely mentally ill fellow passenger, to death on a New York City subway train. As a result of both his actions—Penny claimed he was protecting his fellow passengers, although there is no clear evidence they were in immediate danger—and his subsequent arrest, the 26-year-old former Marine quickly became a folk hero on the American right.

In a post on X on Friday, Vance confirmed reports that Penny had accepted his invitation to join him and Trump. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation,” Vance wrote, “and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.”

Trump will also reportedly be joined by his scandal-ridden defense secretary pick, Pete Hegseth, as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whom Trump is reportedly considering as a backup if Hegseth’s nomination falls through.

Like many on the American right, Vance and DeSantis have embraced Penny. “It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place,” Vance tweeted. DeSantis agreed, writing that “the acquittal of Daniel Penny is clearly the just and correct verdict. I must admit I was skeptical that a jury in New York City would reach a unanimous not guilty verdict, and the jury deserves credit for doing the right thing.”

Trump has been a regular presence at the annual Army-Navy game, which is also known as “The President’s Game” because it is often attended by the commander in chief. Penny’s presence as a guest of honor, meanwhile, upholds a Republican Party tradition of embracing vigilantes.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who in 2020 killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and who successfully insisted in court that he had been acting in self-defense, was feted by the party, receiving job offers from top GOP officials, as well as a standing ovation at a Turning Point USA conference. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, meanwhile, earned a 2020 Republican National Convention speaking spot for brandishing guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.

Penny currently faces a civil suit brought against him by Jordan Neely’s father, Andre Zachery.